Xu Ye was going to get an investment company off the ground one way or another. It was the goal he had set himself from the very start.

That evening’s private party had already gotten him on friendly terms with Zhao Ming. Once Zhao Ming had a foothold at his uncle’s company, Xu Ye intended to go over and take a look around — see how an investment company was structured and how it ran, and pick up some valuable experience.

The week or so that followed was fairly dull.

Xu Ye ran his three-point routine every day, chatted with Chen Qingqing in the evenings, and took a few liberties of the practical kind on weekends. All in all, fairly flat and uninteresting.

June — the last month of the second semester of freshman year — and it was time once again to “cram at the last possible minute.”

As the lecturers finished marking out the key points one by one, the students threw themselves straight into revision. Two people were exceptions.

One was Yang Fei. He had finally started simping.

He went to find Li Lulu every day now, whether he had a reason to or not. She hadn’t accepted him and hadn’t turned him down either — she seemed to be stringing him along. Yang Fei was up at first light every morning to go save her a seat in the library. Xu Ye had in fact dropped several hints, but whether the dumbass couldn’t take them or simply didn’t believe him, he still had a real thing for Li Lulu.

The other was Xu Ye. He had barely revised at the end of last year; this year he didn’t so much as open a book, and spent most of his time sitting at the computer watching the stock market.

At the end of May the index had come close to 5,000 at one point, but it hadn’t broken through.

Xu Ye had a feeling it would break 5,000 in the next few days, so he was following it especially closely now. He had already decided: the moment the index went past 5,000, he would pull the bulk of his money straight out of stocks and leave a small part of it in to buy the ones with real potential, like Moutai and BYD.

And then, on the eighth of June, at the three o’clock close, the index reached 5,131.

Xu Ye didn’t hesitate at all. He sold every stock on his watchlist. Most investors didn’t have Xu Ye’s ability to see the future, though; they still believed the bull run had further to go, and he had barely dumped them before somebody picked them up.

And in that moment, Xu Ye became a genuine multi-millionaire.

To be precise, his assets now came to 13.2 million yuan.

That same evening he called his father-in-law, Chen Hansong, to tell him the news. Chen Hansong was a little taken aback to hear that Xu Ye had sold out of everything. “You’ve sold the lot?”

“The lot.”

“What made you decide that all of a sudden?”

Xu Ye laughed. “It’s what I worked out from the start — the index hits five thousand, I sell.”

Hearing that, Chen Hansong pressed straight on. “So how much have you got now?”

“Thirteen million or so.”

“…”

Chen Hansong said nothing.

Mainly because the figure had stunned him.

He was a bank president, true enough, but his own salary ran between six hundred thousand and eight hundred thousand a year. He had never imagined that Xu Ye, still a poor boy with nothing last year, would turn himself into a multi-millionaire in a year.

And the thing that mattered most — he wasn’t even twenty yet!

It was right then that Chen Hansong suddenly remembered the bet the two of them had made. They had agreed that if Xu Ye turned five million into fifty million in three years, he could have Chen Hansong do any one thing he wanted.

Chen Hansong had treated that bet as a joke all along. But now…

“Uncle, I’m going to go — I want to call Qingqing.”

“Mm.”

The call ended.

Xu Ye sent Chen Qingqing a video call almost immediately.

She picked up just as quickly. She was sitting up at the head of her bed in pale blue pajamas, the Doraemon Xu Ye had given her last year in her arms, and she sounded a little surprised. “Why so early today?”

Xu Ye laughed. “Let me tell you something. Your man’s made it.”

Chen Qingqing: “What?”

Xu Ye: “I’m rich now.”

Xu Ye: “Let’s go for Japanese food this weekend.”

Chen Qingqing: “Why Japanese food all of a sudden?”

Xu Ye was of course not about to tell Chen Qingqing why he wanted Japanese food. The more authentic restaurants seated you on tatami, and eating in one of those meant taking your shoes off, and then he could…

Xu Ye: “Heh heh. Mainly because I’ve never had it.”

There was no way Chen Qingqing could have guessed at any of Xu Ye’s little schemes. Hearing him put it that way, she agreed at once. “All right. Whatever you say.”

…

This was the moment Xu Ye pulled his first real windfall out of the stock market.

Over in Jiangzhou.

Pei Youwei’s factory had started turning a profit as well. Since that first spike the store’s sales had been climbing steadily, and on a good day now it could move five or six hundred pieces at an average price of around a hundred yuan each. At a twenty percent gross margin that worked out at a projected three hundred thousand-odd a month, or at least two hundred thousand once assorted costs came off.

That was worlds better than the bar had ever been, and these days, apart from sleeping, Pei Youwei spent essentially all her time at the factory.

The swimwear had come off the line as finished garments at the start of June and was now in mass production, and today was the day it went live on the store.

Pei Youwei sat at the computer refreshing the store’s backend figures over and over, looking extremely tense.

Pei Youwei was still absorbed in the screen when somebody knocked and pushed the office door open. A solidly built middle-aged man walked in, looked around once, and said straight out, “Youwei. Come home and have dinner with your brother.”

Only then did Pei Youwei glance up at him, and she answered immediately. “Go back on your own, brother. I don’t have time today.”

The man was Pei Youwei’s elder brother, Pei Jianhua.

Hearing that answer, Pei Jianhua felt genuinely helpless. Back when this sister of his was running the bar she would at least come home to their parents’ place for a meal every now and then; since she had set the factory up, he could count on his fingers the number of times she’d been home.

He sighed, stepped forward, and said, very firmly, “I’ve heard it all from your assistant. You eat takeout at the factory every single day and you’re often working late until eleven or twelve at night. Keep that up and your body will give out on you sooner or later. Be sensible. Come back with me.”

“Brother, today really is impossible. Tomorrow — I’ll definitely come home tomorrow, all right?”

Pei Jianhua glanced at his sister’s screen. He had known for a long time, in fact, that she was in the lingerie business; he had simply gone on pretending he didn’t, and had never told the family. Today, though, he couldn’t hold it in. “Youwei. A woman like you — of all the things you could be doing, why this one? If the family ever finds out, how am I supposed to explain it for you?”

“Explain what? I’m not doing anything illegal. Brother — do you know how much I made last month?”

“How much?”

“Over a hundred and seventy thousand,” Pei Youwei said cheerfully.

Hearing it, Pei Jianhua really was startled. He genuinely hadn’t expected his sister to be making that kind of money this fast.

Half-believing her, Pei Jianhua said, “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious.”

“Then—” Pei Jianhua was about to press on when the phone lying on Pei Youwei’s desk suddenly went off. She picked it up, glanced at it, and got straight to her feet, pushing him toward the door as she went. “Go on home, brother. I really do have something going on today. I’ll definitely be home for dinner tomorrow.”

“If you’re not home tomorrow, I’ll tie you up and carry you back.”

“I know, I know.”

Once she had pushed her brother out of the office, Pei Youwei went straight back to her seat and picked up the video call from Xu Ye.

Outside, Pei Jianhua paused in the doorway for a moment, then beckoned Zhang Xiaonuan over to the corner by the stairs and lowered his voice. “Xiaonuan. I know you’ve been with my sister a long time. Let me ask you something — what actually made her suddenly switch trades and take this up?”

Zhang Xiaonuan answered honestly. “Somebody suggested it to the boss last year, and the bar had been losing money the whole time, so the boss just…”

“Apart from my sister, does the factory have any other partners now?”

“There’s one.”

“A man?”

“Mm.”

That got Pei Jianhua’s interest, and he pressed straight on. “What kind of prospects does he have?”

Zhang Xiaonuan didn’t quite catch his meaning. Xu Ye’s face surfaced in her mind, and she answered quickly, “Very good prospects. He’s tall, he’s good-looking, and he’s really funny.”

“Good. That’s all I needed. Don’t tell your boss I asked you about any of this.”

“Oh.”

Pei Jianhua left the factory looking delighted, and on the drive home he couldn’t help calling his father at home:

“Hello? Dad, I’ve got good news for you. Youwei looks like she’s seeing someone…”

(End of Chapter 241)