At this point, they had successfully entered the city, obtained their urban household registration, and no longer needed to work. They could stay at home, listening to the radio or watching television whenever they pleased. They could drink whatever they wanted, like malted milk beverages and carbonated water, and eat whatever they desired when hungry, be it chicken, fish, eggs, or meat.
Pastries and candies were in endless supply.
A life of having as much as they wanted.
This smoothly led Du Rushen and his wife to become addicted.
Although they had some complaints about not being able to directly handle large sums of cash and that other aspects of their lives weren't quite as extravagant as they had imagined, where they could have anything they wanted, overall they were quite satisfied.
After all, this life was far better than their past.
However, Ding Yun's plan was clearly a long-term one, not something that could yield results in a short time, so she wasn't in a hurry. Many things didn't require her personal attention anyway.
Furthermore, she had specifically assigned people to keep an eye on the entire Du Rushen family, so she wasn't worried about them causing any trouble.
Thus, it didn't matter if it took a long time.
She had plenty of time to wait for her plan to succeed.
After arranging for the Du Rushen family, Ding Yun communicated with the local authorities to obtain various relevant documents. In the name of the village collective, she funded the construction of a public cemetery and then moved all the ashes of her great-grandfather's entire family, as well as some of the clothing from their tombs, into the cemetery.
She hired people to specifically manage it.
Of course, if villagers wanted to relocate their graves, they could also move them in, but Zhou Huihua and her family were not included.
Even to exclude Zhou Huihua and her family,
Ding Yun also requested one yuan from each of the other households in the village, from those who did not have animosity towards her. This was to symbolically show that everyone had contributed financially and effort-wise, which would give her a reason to refuse Zhou Huihua's family entry into the village cemetery after their deaths.
Once all these matters were settled.
Ding Yun then confidently began to expand her new industry.
This was the product of frozen semi-finished gourmet foods.
Of course, while she was diligently expanding her new industry, the corresponding courses in the space had not yet ended. Moreover, because her new industry was also related to food, the teachers in the space had updated their tasks in real-time.
She needed to develop semi-finished products of regional cuisine suitable for each region for sale, as well as semi-finished products that could cater to the tastes of most of the national population for sale.
And using this as a benchmark, to expand globally.
Developing semi-finished products that suited the general tastes of various countries.
In addition, there were over a dozen other assessments, and Ding Yun had to complete all of them to graduate and become a culinary god.
This was undoubtedly another extremely arduous task.
It also required an extremely long lifespan.
But things still had to be done, so Ding Yun naturally became busy again. And this time, she wouldn't just be running around within the country.
Instead, she would be running around the entire world.
The time required would be far more than three years.
With the experience from the last time, Ding Yun spent slightly less time in China this time, about half a year less. This was also unavoidable, as China was vast, and even with experience, there were so many places to visit.
No matter how much time was saved, it wouldn't be much less.
After finishing her domestic travels, she moved on to overseas.
This time, due to unfamiliarity, cultural and linguistic differences, taste disparities, and other factors, the pace inevitably slowed down. Small countries were fine, taking only a month or two to complete. For larger countries, it would take at least half a year to a year to complete one country. Just as Ding Yun had finished visiting and dealing with several neighboring countries,
Her biological parents were hospitalized.
One suffered a stroke and thrombosis, along with a host of other chronic illnesses, such as high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
The other suffered from diabetes and kidney failure.
Of course, there were also many other minor ailments.
Only their son, being young, currently had no major problems besides being overweight.
Du Rushen, who had suffered a stroke, was paralyzed.
The one with kidney failure required long-term control and treatment.
Regarding this, Ding Yun's superficial requirement was active treatment, but in reality, she didn't pay much attention. She specifically instructed that they should no longer be fed all sorts of rich foods, and only be given vegetarian meals, as vegetarian as possible, and as unpalatable as possible, while still being healthy.
However, they could be given a small amount of money each month, a few thousand yuan, and their actions should not be overly restricted; what they wanted to do should not be interfered with.
The doctor's orders were that they couldn't eat too well.
She indeed complied and no longer provided rich meats.
But if they had money in hand and secretly ran out to buy things they wanted to eat, she couldn't control that, as she was still overseas.
Whether they could survive from now on would depend on whether they could control themselves, their self-discipline, and whether they could successfully transition from luxury to frugality.
If not, it couldn't be blamed on her.
After giving these instructions and commands, Ding Yun no longer concerned herself with household matters. Besides spending a required amount of time each day handling company affairs, all her remaining time was dedicated to completing the assigned tasks.
Another year or so passed.
Ding Yun received a message of mourning.
Her beloved father, Du Rushen, who ultimately couldn't control his appetite, had unfortunately passed away due to illness.
Her mother was also on the verge of death.
Although she was inwardly "grieved," Ding Yun ultimately couldn't spare the time to return and stated that since she couldn't return, the funeral didn't need to be a grand affair.
A simple burial would suffice.
When she had time to return, she would naturally pay her respects.
As for her younger brother, she sent him to a boarding school and informed him that if he could get into college, she would provide four years of tuition and living expenses. If he couldn't get into college, then it was up to him; she could only support him until high school graduation, after which he would have to make his own way.
Whether he wanted to cry, make a fuss, or be dissatisfied, Ding Yun wouldn't hear it.
It didn't matter at all.
Thus, the original host's relatives were all dealt with.
Several more years passed until Ding Yun's registered age reached thirty, while her actual age exceeded fifty. Only then did she finally complete all the tasks assigned by the teachers in the space, successfully advancing to become a culinary god and graduating. She no longer needed to enter the space for fixed study daily, which made her age faster than others.
"Congratulations, you have now successfully graduated.
Our training mission is also complete. From now on, please work hard to repay the loan: ten thousand dishes of culinary god level!
We hope you can complete the repayment as soon as possible. Only by completing the repayment can this space be fully unlocked.
Becoming a culinary god-level kitchen and storage space.
You can choose to enter with your physical body or soul!"
After awarding Ding Yun the all-around culinary god degree certificate, the culinary teacher sternly explained the subsequent situation and reminded Ding Yun that she still owed ten thousand culinary god-level dishes before disappearing.
At the same time, in front of Ding Yun.
A new virtual screen appeared.
[Loan Repayment Mission —
Ten thousand unique culinary god-level dishes.
Current progress 0/10000.]
[Upon completion of the loan repayment mission, the internal teaching mode of the space will be completely unloaded, leaving only the kitchen space and storage space, which the host can use freely and independently.
Consciousness mode and physical body mode will be simultaneously activated.
Explore more autonomous choices and changes yourself.]
"My heavens, I almost forgot. I think I chose loan-based learning. Ten thousand unique culinary god-level dishes. Never mind, worry less about more debt. I'll go back and handle the group's affairs first!"
Although Ding Yun really wanted to finish the ten thousand dishes she owed as soon as possible to get it over with, she hadn't returned to the main group in a very long time. Even though she had been keeping an eye on things and reviewing accounts over the years, there was still a difference between watching things in person and not. To avoid major problems within the group,
And prevent it from becoming an empty shell and being sidelined,
Ding Yun decided to return first. She needed to go back, just like she did a few years ago for the snack task, to clean up and reorganize the senior management, adjust salaries and benefits, and then consider repaying the debt and cooking.
Originally, Ding Yun thought the situation would be manageable, and the difficulty wouldn't be much greater than last time. However, she underestimated the huge difference between leaving the company for three years and leaving it for eight or nine years. She also underestimated the difference between a few hundred and tens of thousands of management personnel.
When she returned, she conducted investigations and reviewed accounts, only to discover some absurd discrepancies in the books.
And the audacity of certain management personnel.
The actions of some individuals could no longer be resolved by dismissal; they needed to be sued and sent to prison directly.
Thus, with Ding Yun's return,
The group, which had been renamed Du's Food Group a few years prior, experienced a large-scale purge from top to bottom, which could barely be called bloody and stormy.
Some were fired, some were prosecuted.
Some were promoted, some received salary increases.
Social security and housing funds were also fully arranged.
Although Ding Yun's actions were significant, and she replaced more than half of the tens of thousands of senior management personnel, because she increased salaries and arranged social security and housing funds for all staff in the group, not only did the group not experience any turmoil,
Instead, everyone cheered for the president.
If the group were a country, ordinary employees would be the common people. For ordinary people, it wouldn't matter who was in power or who was emperor, as long as their interests weren't affected. In fact, if they benefited, they would cheer with joy.
They would even support those who gave them benefits.
The large-scale changes in senior management had no impact on anyone other than those employees who had gotten in through connections.
Furthermore, Ding Yun promptly raised salaries to appease everyone.
Therefore, there were naturally no problems.
At this point, Ding Yun's food group had grown to a considerable scale and possessed significant volume and influence. In terms of snacks, not only did domestic sales account for over half of the domestic market share, but several hundred million yuan worth of various snacks were also exported annually. Frozen semi-finished food ingredients, fresh produce, and ice cream also accounted for over half of the domestic market share, though exports were still lagging.
This was because Ding Yun did not intend to engage in large-scale exports. She planned to establish factories in different countries.
The initial investment was larger, but the advantage was that transportation costs and losses would be reduced later on. She could also directly set up a production line in each country specifically for products that suited the tastes of that country, avoiding the need for one production line to produce several different flavors of food, which would affect efficiency.
After Ding Yun reorganized the group's senior management.
She began to focus on overseas expansion.
And officially launched tests and decentralization of power.
Ding Yun planned to delegate her powers one by one to the management personnel who had followed her for the past decade or so and had not made any significant mistakes, after they passed her tests. She would also grant them appropriate share dividends, etc., to ease her own burden.
Most importantly, the company had grown to this scale.
It was no longer suitable for sole proprietorship.
And she was unmarried and had no descendants, so why should she make herself so tired? By distributing shares to the core management personnel of the company, they would naturally treat the company as their own and manage it with all their might.
The testing and the company's new overseas layout took another half a year of Ding Yun's time to basically complete.
To allow herself to completely relax next year, at the beginning of the new century, and have time to complete the ten thousand dishes owed to the space, Ding Yun specifically rushed to complete a batch of new promotions at the year-end annual meeting in the end of '99. She also took out 30% of the company's shares as rewards.
At the same time, she relinquished the position of president.
She handed it over to Jiang Kaiyun, who received 5% of the shares.
He was the most capable person she had encountered over the years. His future vision and the group's future development strategy also aligned with Ding Yun's thoughts, which was why Ding Yun specifically gave him more shares and promoted him to president.
This was undoubtedly a testament to her belief in his ability to lead the group further, rather than letting the company collapse.
Then, Ding Yun cheerfully left the group.
She returned to the small county where she was born and to the shop left to her by her great-grandfather. After a slight renovation, she converted the shop into a private kitchen restaurant.
It was a private kitchen restaurant where customers couldn't order dishes.
Meaning, whatever she cooked that day, the guests would eat.
As for the reason, it wasn't that Ding Yun was deliberately putting on airs. The main reason she opened this private kitchen was that she thought about cooking dishes for the space. Making one dish was the same amount of effort as making two or three dishes. It was better to make a larger batch at once, submit one portion to the space, and eat or sell the rest.
It also served as a way to pass the time.
Moreover, it was reasonable for a boss worth billions to personally cook for others and not allow them to choose!
She wasn't relying on this to make money. If she couldn't do as she pleased, she might as well not open the business.
As for the business.
Even without Ding Yun's deliberate promotion, how could the culinary god-level skills recognized by the space be bad? Anyone who tasted her dishes found them excellent.
Therefore, the business naturally wouldn't be too bad.
If Ding Yun hadn't set a limit on the number of portions sold daily at the beginning of opening the shop, she would have been overwhelmed.
And this current lifestyle, where the shop was only open for a few hours a day and she had the rest of the time to herself, suited Ding Yun perfectly. For many years afterward, until Ding Yun's death, she rarely left her hometown.
Even after she completed the ten thousand dishes and paid off her debt, she was still reluctant to travel around casually.
The few times she left were only because the group encountered problems, faced strong competitors, or had issues with internal development strategies.
Only then would she leave her hometown and return to the group.
However, no matter what problems the group encountered, as long as she returned, she would resolve them within half a year. Therefore, she was also known as the stabilizing force of the group.