"Wouldn't that be giving them a bargain if we buy at a high price? That would be a huge loss for us!" Jack Ma said, clearly dissatisfied.

However, his dissatisfaction changed nothing. In fact, while TaoBao's stock price did rise slightly after the event, the increase was minimal, and the trading volume had shrunk significantly.

After all, those who wanted to sell had already sold. A portion of retail investors were still holding on, but only because the stock price was too low to sell without taking a massive loss.

The so-called "pump and dump" scheme never materialized. It seemed the other party was only buying, not selling, indicating they intended to hold the stock for the long term.

The one buying up TaoBao stock in large quantities was, of course, Yi Anguo, who had now acquired 45.6 percent of the company's shares.

He knew that Jack Ma, in order to consolidate his power, would surely privatize the publicly traded shares in Hong Kong and delist them. Once the privatization in Hong Kong was complete, those delisted shares would fall into Jack Ma's hands, thereby strengthening his control over TaoBao.

Of course, Yi Anguo was not going to let him acquire those shares so easily. At the very least, he intended to get a piece of the action. Even if he ultimately allowed Jack Ma to acquire the shares, Yi Anguo was determined to make him pay a steep price.

For example, the best-case scenario would be to exchange them for shares in PaymentBao.

With the continuous growth of Anjing Online Supermarket, the number of registered users for Anjing Payment had also surged, and its services were no longer limited to the online supermarket.

Since the investment in Qiangdong Company, shoppers on Qiangdong Mall could now also use Anjing Payment. Additionally, e-commerce companies backed by HuaLong Investment, such as the No. 1 Online Supermarket, also began accepting Anjing Payment for purchases.

Meanwhile, Anjing Logistics was expanding its courier services as well. Furthermore, HuaXing's official website now allowed customers to purchase mobile phones using Anjing Payment.

At the same time, Yi Anguo established another new company called FanTuanNet, which focused on group buying and food delivery services. Although he had already invested in Shanghai's first domestic food delivery company and the American pioneer of group buying, this didn't stop him from founding his own.

As for whether FanTuanNet would survive the fierce competition in the future "War of a Thousand Group Buys," that was not a concern for Yi Anguo.

FanTuanNet first launched in Shenzhen. By leveraging customer traffic from Anjing Online Supermarket and Anjing Payment for promotion, the initial batch of partner merchants quickly saw the benefits. Since there were few merchants in the initial launch, competition was minimal. As a result, each one saw their sales skyrocket far beyond normal levels, and they soon became overwhelmed with orders.

While the situation was manageable for some partner businesses, those in the restaurant industry were a different story. They were completely overwhelmed and had to stop accepting orders because they simply couldn't keep up.

When nearby restaurants saw this, they all became eager to join the FanTuanNet food delivery platform. After all, if business was so good you couldn't keep up, how much money could you be making? Even with an additional service fee, it was deemed worthwhile, as the potential for higher earnings was clear.

Moreover, the service fee per order wasn't high. It was just one yuan from the merchant and another one-yuan delivery fee from the consumer, totaling two yuan per order. While two yuan may not seem like much, a delivery courier could handle many orders in a day, allowing it to add up to a significant sum. A courier could deliver over a hundred orders daily, earning 200 yuan.

Since the platform had just launched and there were few delivery couriers, competition wasn't fierce, and the industry hadn't started to cannibalize itself yet. An income of 200 yuan per day was definitely not low, especially in the central downtown area of Shenzhen in 2008.

On December 24, Christmas Eve in the West, the price of international crude oil futures hit a new low, dropping to 36 US dollars a barrel.

Yi Anguo completely cleared his short positions and began to go long. He knew that in less than half a month, the price would rebound to over 50 US dollars a barrel. From its peak of 147 US dollars a barrel, the price had now plummeted by a total of 111 dollars.

At his peak, Yi Anguo held over one million short contracts for international crude oil futures. Although he didn't have that many at the start or the end—beginning and finishing with only two hundred thousand contracts—his average position was nearly six hundred thousand contracts. With an average position of nearly 600,000 contracts, every one-dollar drop in price translated to a staggering 600 million US dollars in profit. Thus, his total earnings exceeded 60 billion US dollars.

For 2008 alone, his profits from international crude oil futures reached a staggering one hundred and ten billion US dollars.

This was a terrifying figure. Furthermore, all trading had concluded, and the funds had already been withdrawn to his bank accounts. This wasn't just assets on paper; it was real, liquid cash.

Of course, Yi Anguo had also spent a lot on various investment projects, but the remaining money was still impressive. He had plans for this money and certainly wasn't going to let it sit idle in a bank account; he intended to invest it.

However, the time was not yet right. When the moment did arrive, he was confident he could put any amount of money to use.

Moreover, in just over ten days, the price of crude oil futures was set to rise back above 50 US dollars a barrel. He could harvest another round of profits then—at least a few billion more, given the anticipated 14-dollar surge.

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