That night on Baima Island, all the staff stayed up working tirelessly.
They set up a massive welcome banner and a flower wall at the arrival dock, and the red carpet was brought out, thoroughly cleaned, ready to be laid from the dock to the hotel lobby first thing in the morning.
Bernard Elno, who had just enjoyed an underwater spa massage with his wife, was still grumbling to her in the lift on their way up, “Why did that American singer choose now to come to the Maldives? The whole island will probably be filled with shouting and screaming, it’s going to be bloody annoying.”
His wife casually replied, “What’s there to be annoyed about? We’re running a business, as long as the guests can pay, we need to treat them well.”
Bernard Elno complained, “I don’t want my carefully crafted luxury resort turning into a noisy market-like fan-chasing scene. Unfortunately, this woman’s influence is too great to refuse her arrival, and we’ve got to put on a welcoming show, it’s really irritating.”
His wife shrugged, “I told you before, if you want to holiday here yourself, it’s best to cancel all bookings so our family can have the whole island to ourselves, quiet and safe, but you wouldn’t listen.”
Bernard Elno scoffed, “You make it sound so simple. Do you know how much we’d have to pay if we cancelled the hotel bookings because of us? Three to five times the order value, maybe even their airfare and compensation for emotional distress. If we get those litigious types, the trouble will just keep coming.”
His wife, arms crossed and muttering discontentedly, “You’re already so wealthy, can’t you have a bit more vision? Even if we compensate these guests at the highest rate, as you say, how much could we lose? A few million, maybe tens of millions of dollars at most. Our family has hundreds of billions in assets, with annual profits in the tens of billions, and returns from various investments we can’t even keep track of, what’s that amount of money?”
Bernard Elno waved his hand, “You don’t understand, money looks good but doesn’t last. There’s a Chinese saying, ‘save where you can.’ We should avoid unnecessary waste, how do you know we won’t have major expenses in the future?”
In truth, Bernard Elno had never told his wife that he spent 108 billion dollars in China to buy a single elixir.
At the Rejuvenation Pill auction, he was expelled from the venue along with An Chongqiu, and Garet Flynn’s son lost payment ability due to a power grab, so he luckily secured a Rejuvenation Pill for 72 billion dollars.
At the time, his group and personal liquid funds were only around 80 billion dollars.
What he didn’t expect was that, after already allocating over 3 billion dollars’ worth of goods, the pill’s owner still wasn’t satisfied and demanded an additional 50% allocation, 36 billion dollars’ worth, much of it on instalments.
For one Rejuvenation Pill, Bernard Elno’s assets had shrunk significantly, his personal and group cash flow was stretched thin, and there were still many instalments to be paid from future profits. At this point, let alone millions, he wasn’t willing to let go of even 100,000 dollars in revenue.
Moreover, another crucial reason was that he was counting on saving enough money over the years to buy a second Rejuvenation Pill when the effects of the first wore off.
This meant he needed to amass one or two hundred billion dollars over the next decade or so to have a chance at living another 20 years.
