That year, the capital was about to host the Olympics, Shencheng was on track to overtake the Pearl of the Orient, real estate had just produced a 26-year-old richest woman in the country, and the three titans of the internet were taking shape alongside a booming industry.
That year, the people of Yangcheng hadn't yet been strongly advised to accept water and electricity price hikes; terms like "slow employment" and "the younger elderly" hadn't been invented; the country still had 720 million rural residents, among whom 225 million migrant workers surged back and forth like the tide.
That June, a brief thunderstorm made the weather in Jinling even more muggy, and the sticky, humid air was all the more suited to the tearful romances of graduation season.
Yu Xing was jolted awake by a violent shaking. Before his eyes could adjust to the surrounding light, a pungent smell of alcohol hit his nostrils, stirring up familiar memories ahead of everything else.
"Senior Brother, your phone. Someone's calling you—twice already. You're about to shake the petri dishes in the incubator to death!"
Listening to the complaint beside his ear, Yu Xing stared for a good long while at the face that seemed vaguely familiar, his mind a blank chaos.
"What's wrong? Still half-asleep? Had a nightmare?" Zhong Zhiling waved a hand in front of him, looking strangely at his dazed senior brother.
Yu Xing let out a long breath, as if waking completely from an extremely long dream—relieved, yet also filled with lingering dread. Then, somewhat coming to his senses, he probed: "Zhao... Zhao Zhiling?"
Zhong Zhiling's face was full of question marks. After a few seconds of silence, he said, "Senior Brother, my surname is Zhong. Zhong Zhiling."
Yu Xing nodded. Close enough. Couldn't blame himself for not remembering—this guy had never kept in touch after leaving school.
Hmm...
There were two unlucky souls in this lab. The one in front of him was one. The other unlucky soul...
Yu Xing sighed in confusion. What could be worse than putting money into wealth management products right before the 2008 global financial crisis?
Something!
Managing money that included your relatives' savings!
He rubbed his face, still unable to fully distinguish reality from dream, only feeling a deep exhaustion and numbness still lodged in his heart—not just because of the wreckage of his investments, but because of everything that came after...
The financial crisis blew up. He dropped out of his first year of a master's in pathology. He searched in vain for the senior schoolmate rumored to be running a private fund in America. Being a doctor was no longer possible, so he figured internet companies made money faster, and after great difficulty got into LeEco—only to discover within a few years that business was going downhill, and the boss, sure enough, eventually ran off.
After leaving LeEco, he planned to gamble on an earlier-stage opportunity and joined a newly founded bike-sharing startup...
By the time he couldn't even get his own deposit back, he was already past thirty. After much deliberation, he went into a thriving industry and picked the industry leader Evergrande to sell apartments...
Not only selling—he bought too...
First studied medicine, never practiced it; then peddled TVs, met the guy who'd "return to China next week"; then shared in the sharing economy, deposits never refunded; then threw himself into real estate, achieved something, finally picked a promising development—and it never topped out...
Yu Xing sat stiffly in the lab chair. Having woken from the nightmare of bursting bubbles, he felt only a vast blankness.
Were his choices wrong?
Wasn't it supposed to be an ecosystem? Wasn't it supposed to be the capital wind? Wasn't it supposed to be "too big to fail"?
How did every single step land on a landmine?
Was it because he hadn't worked hard enough?
Up at dawn, asleep after dark—how much harder could a person work?
Yu Xing sighed deeply, remembering the interrogation from the eyebrow-pencil seller in his dream: Where is it expensive? Sometimes look for reasons in yourself—has your salary gone up all these years? Have you been working seriously?
He was already a congenital corporate-grunt saint body—how was he supposed to work any more seriously?!
"Senior Brother, what's wrong? Why do you keep sighing?" The unlucky soul Zhong Zhiling poked his head over and asked.
"Nothing. Had a nightmare. Dreamed a huge sum of money disappeared." Yu Xing shook his head and started scrolling through his phone contacts, planning to ask about his senior schoolmate in America.
"It's just a dream. Go wash your face." Zhong Zhiling consoled him.
Yu Xing dialed the number while saying gloomily, "The nightmare was too real. Really, like really real. Sigh, imagine how that feels."
No one answered the call, and there was no sound beside him either.
Only after a moment did Zhong Zhiling's voice drift over, faint and hollow: "If I lost a huge sum of money, I'd jump off the building."
The hand Yu Xing had raised to keep dialing suddenly stopped. Oh. So that's why the guy left...
No wonder they never kept in touch afterward... because it really was impossible to reach him...
He didn't respond to that. He silently called three times—no answer. Instead, it was his mother, Chu Qiying, who hadn't gotten through earlier, calling again.
Yu Xing drew a deep breath. In a daze, he seemed to hear again his mother's brooding nagging from the dream: no matter how hard it was back then, he should have finished his master's degree; no matter what, he should have become a doctor...
"Mom..." Yu Xing answered the call with complicated feelings. The dream had been too real; his mother's deep regret still rang in his ears.
Chu Qiying was only making her usual call to her son, nothing special, but the moment she heard his tone she sensed something off and asked sharply, "What's wrong? Did something happen?"
Yu Xing was silent for two seconds, adjusted his mood, and sighed, "It's nothing. The cells in my petri dishes died. Have to start over."
"Then start over. Can't you redo it?" Chu Qiying said.
"Mm. Start over." Yu Xing's spirits lifted a little.
Chu Qiying could sense her son's low mood, so she cheerfully talked about things at home.
When Yu Xing heard his mother mention his aunt, who was looking for a place to live, he couldn't help cutting in: "Mom, does Auntie really have to live nearby? With her temper..."
"Your aunt's just like that. Living nearby, everyone can look out for each other a bit." Chu Qiying said, unbothered.
Yu Xing fell silent. This private fund run by the senior schoolmate had started last year, and it really had made money—and precisely because of that, everyone had invested even more this year.
Not only that. The senior schoolmate had kept his phone number and had been privately contacting each of them one by one, persuading them to put in more money.
The final result was...
The aunt who sold her home, the uncle who mortgaged his place, the grandfather who emptied his pockets... everyone working together to stage such a shattered little drama...
Yu Xing felt a wave of a headache. Mom, a financial storm is coming—maybe the relatives should stop getting in touch for a while...
But those words couldn't be said, couldn't be explained, and wouldn't help the current situation anyway.
He could only listen quietly and think about his circumstances.
After chatting about family matters for a while, Chu Qiying reminded her son to eat on time, and just before hanging up suddenly said, "Son, don't put too much pressure on yourself. If it really doesn't work out, come back and grow grapes with your uncle."
Yu Xing was about to agree when he suddenly froze. "Huh? Mom, you—haven't you always wanted me to be a doctor?"
Chu Qiying admitted it: "I did. That's what I wanted. You've studied so many years—it'd be a waste not to. But doctor-patient relations are so tense these days, and the pressure on doctors is heavy."
She continued matter-of-factly: "Of course I'd rather you be happy."
Yu Xing hadn't expected the regret his mother had dwelt on for all those years to take so light a turn and become a completely different answer.
His nose stung, and he couldn't speak.
Chu Qiying laughed again: "Look at your uncle. He grows his grapes all happy—even with the cold snap this year."
Yu Xing rubbed his face and sighed, "Mom, Uncle is probably only happy in front of you. At midnight at home, he secretly cries."
Chu Qiying was taken aback. Huh, that actually made some sense.
At this thought she couldn't sit still, and said hurriedly, "Son, take good care of yourself. I'm going to call your uncle right now—can't have him unable to grow grapes either!"
Yu Xing: "..."
Before he could say anything, the phone held only a busy tone.
Yu Xing shook his head and set down the phone. Who'd go grow grapes?
What was the point of growing grapes? Intercropping stunts grape seedling growth; next year's yield drops; uneven ground easily leads to stunted seedlings; grafting old trees for new stock affects the next year's flowering...
And he had actually, in the gaps between one financial blowup after another, authentically and disheveledly grown grapes with his uncle for a stretch...
Yu Xing failed for the fourth time to reach his senior schoolmate in America. He got up, walked out of the lab, and washed his face. For some reason—maybe numbness, maybe an inability to tell dream from reality—he felt, at this very moment, not so much rage as a strange calm.
The thing was what it was. It had already happened, so think about how to solve it.
He looked at himself in the mirror, still remembering how panic-stricken he'd been when the financial crisis first hit. But now... perhaps because there might be something to fall back on.
Worst case, he'd endure a few years of wreckage—buying coins could fill the hole.
After the initial shock, Yu Xing had been thinking constantly about how to respond. Finishing grad school and working was too slow. Flipping property required capital he didn't have, and was too far to put out a nearby fire. As for the lottery—forget remembering numbers; even if he bought by the numbers, the grand prize would probably be clever enough to land somewhere else...
So how to deal with this fire burning right at his brow?
The senior schoolmate's phone didn't go through, but even if it did, how would he get money out of a closed-end fund?
There were only three months until September 15, the day of the financial crisis's monstrous waves. How could he plug a five-million hole for young and old in that little time?
Yu Xing frowned deeply, as if once again feeling the great wave of the era rolling in, and touching the dust of immense weight drifting down from above.
Thoughts churned—about the present and the future, about his mother's nagging, and about a feeling that matched hers.
Didn't he himself wish for her happiness?
Yu Xing's tangled thoughts gradually cooled, and he suddenly thought of his former bosses. Though their endings were bad, they had each been, for a time, men of the hour.
He murmured to himself: "If it were Jia the Accountant, Boss Dai, or Xu the Belt—think, what would they do?"
"Who are they? What do they do?" Zhong Zhiling, just back from borrowing a book from the lab next door, had come to wash his hands too. Hearing his senior brother's muttering, he asked casually.
Yu Xing looked at this unlucky soul, noticed the book at his side, and said in a way a senior brother could be understood, in a low, eerie voice: "They, ah, are the true forms of my martial soul."
"What the heck, why'd you manifest your true form at me?" Zhong Zhiling gave a "heh" and laughed, "Come on, let's go eat."
Yu Xing shook his head, without any appetite at all, and fobbed off this soon-to-be junior brother with work in the lab.
Zhong Zhiling was a guaranteed-admission grad student; technically he wouldn't be a first-year until autumn, and he was just getting familiar with the place early.
Watching his junior brother's light, quick departing figure, then thinking of his present circumstances and the "future" he once lived through, Yu Xing couldn't help letting out a long sigh.
He too had climbed all this way by staring at the famous quotes on the classroom walls: "Books are the ladder of human progress." "Nothing is impossible to a willing heart." "The sword's edge comes from grinding; the plum blossom's fragrance from bitter cold"...
How did it... how did it go off track?
What was wrong with this world?
What's wrong with one more formerly-poor guy getting rich?
Yu Xing walked slowly back to the lab. Just as he was about to sit down, he received a callback from his senior schoolmate in America, Yu Xuhui.
He was about to pick up—planning to warn the man of the financial risk and try to get back the invested money—when a thought flashed through his mind like lightning.
Had this money actually been put into the private fund by this senior schoolmate at all?
For more than a decade in the dream, Yu Xing had never doubted this question. On one hand he'd tried to recover the losses; on the other, he'd felt this tide of the era was simply bad luck. Although the senior schoolmate never returned to China afterward, in a sense he was a victim too.
Yet at this very moment, the audacious flair of his former bosses flashed through Yu Xing's mind...
Suddenly, he no longer shrank from suspecting his good senior schoolmate of the very worst.
Without dwelling further, Yu Xing answered the call—and recorded it.
"Yu Xing, what is it?" Yu Xuhui said from America. "It's still early morning here in New York."
Yu Xing suppressed the surging suspicion in his heart and spoke in an anxious voice: "Hui-ge, Hui-ge, my uncle was just diagnosed with a rare disease and urgently needs a huge sum for treatment! The money in that fund has to be withdrawn!"
Yu Xuhui was startled and asked with concern: "So sudden? What rare disease does your uncle have?"
Yu Xing was trained in medicine; the answer spun straight out of his mouth: "X-linked adrenoleukodystrophy!"
Yu Xuhui mulled over the name of the disease and said thoughtfully: "Kidney trouble?"
Yu Xing explained on his uncle's behalf, adding a note of tears to his voice this time: "It's mainly a gene mutation, a problem with the white matter of the brain. Xu-ge, this really needs a large sum of money—a life is at stake. No more wealth management with that fund for now!"
"Yes, treatment—treatment is a must. Yu Xing, don't panic." Yu Xuhui said seriously, "You said it's a rare disease. New York's medical standards are very high. Let me first ask around about treatment options for this disease."
Yu Xing cursed inwardly. So he just won't mention the money, huh?
He kept the sobbing tone: "Hui-ge, we're already looking for the best doctors in the country. You know I studied medicine. My uncle would be better treated here in China. What we lack right now is money!"
"Yu Xing, you know the fund is closed-end. This money can't be redeemed right now." Yu Xuhui said with a troubled air, "How about this: have your uncle start treatment first, and I'll help raise money on my end too. When the lock-up period ends, the money gets redeemed immediately."
Seeing him dodge, Yu Xing made a demand: "Hui-ge, my situation is special. Give me the fund director's contact info. I'll call and talk."
Yu Xuhui's tone grew a bit more serious: "Yu Xing, what I just said is the fund's rule. What's our relationship? Whatever I can mediate for you, I will."
Yu Xing pressed: "Hui-ge, which state is your fund registered in? Maybe there are different redemption rules."
Yu Xuhui was silent for a moment, then suddenly laughed: "Yu Xing, what do you mean? Should I be happy?"
Yu Xing asked, puzzled: "What do you mean, what do I mean? What are you happy about?"
"I'm happy your uncle isn't really sick." Yu Xuhui thought this to himself, but said with certainty, probing, "You're uneasy about our GK fund, aren't you? Been reading more media nonsense? Didn't the money from early last year get redeemed by year's end? Yu Xing, you should learn to appreciate what you have. Without my internal recommendation, your family's money couldn't even have gotten in."
Listening to that voice with its faintly amused smile, Yu Xing's heart sank. The money was probably not coming back. New York was beyond his reach—and in fact, not only had Yu Xuhui vanished after the financial crisis, his whole family had already gone abroad by now.
Viewed now, this looked even more like an unremarkable fundraising scam.
Yu Xing was quiet for a few seconds, then said slowly: "Hui-ge, did you actually put the money into the fund? Or has it been a Ponzi scheme from the start?"
Borrowing new to repay old, robbing Peter to pay Paul—the scheme's name came from an Italian a century ago named Charles Ponzi, but its lure of high returns has kept the trick alive through the ages.
Before the year was out, Madoff—of Buffett-level renown, whose fraud exceeded sixty-five billion dollars—would be clapped into irons, the largest financial fraud in history. And yet his scheme was exactly this same trick.
Likewise, what made the scheme unsustainable was the withdrawal of as much as seven billion dollars by institutional clients after the financial crisis.
The call wasn't hung up, but no sound came for a long, long time.
The answer was obvious enough.
After a long while, Yu Xuhui's voice came through the phone with a question: "Yu Xing, why would you have such a doubt?"
Yu Xing didn't answer. At this moment he couldn't even be bothered to press, couldn't be bothered to hear the admission from the man's own mouth. Instead he asked: "Hui-ge, how did you guess my uncle isn't sick?"
"Not natural enough." Yu Xuhui said dismissively, "Yu Xing, you still need practice."
Yu Xing's mood—numbness or calm, hard to say—suddenly cracked. A surge of malice made his temples throb, but his voice stayed level, only humbly accepting the advice: "Understood, Hui-ge. I'll come find you."
"New York welcomes you." Yu Xuhui answered with one last line and ended the call.
Yu Xing set down his phone, thinking over the conversation, over his good senior schoolmate's lofty appraisal, and unconsciously narrowed his eyes. Did people really have to eat people?
New book, please try to keep up with the daily reads—it affects future recommendations, and it's pretty important... Once I go premium, I'll make it up with mass updates.
My chapters are usually four to five thousand words, so I won't split them into 2k chapters. Update time is set for 5 p.m.—I'll do my best not to be this book's 11:59 midnight watchman.