Chen Wan resembled her, but their temperaments were entirely different. Where Song Qingmiao’s beauty was flamboyant and girlish by nature, in him those same inherited features had settled into something restrained, gentle, and composed.
Chen Wan walked over and pinched out her cigarette for her. “Move out, all right? If you don’t want to live with me, I’ll find you another place. A duplex, a villa—whatever you like.”
“As for him… I’ll think of something.”
This was not the first time Chen Wan had suggested it to her. Song Qingmiao’s emotions flared at once, her gaze filled with reproach and incomprehension. “Why should I leave? I won’t. If I don’t get what belongs to us, I might as well die here.”
Chen Wan was silent for a moment. Then he told her calmly, “Even if you die, he still won’t leave it to you.”
“Then we’ll take it ourselves.” Song Qingmiao grabbed Chen Wan’s hand. “Baby, Mommy only has you now. You have to do well.”
Chen Wan opened his mouth, then looked at this “young girl” who had never truly grown up and said nothing.
Song Qingmiao had never been able to swallow that grievance.
She had once been so glorious.
The millennium years had been her golden age—brilliant, sought-after, famous throughout Hai City.
At that time, Hai City was full of vivid, heavily beautiful women, but Song Qingmiao was a lotus petal from the heart of a Jiangnan lake. The men of high society had flocked to her like wolves scenting honey.
But she was like a jewel pinned to a man’s cuff: a symbol of wealth, fame, and power. Something to toy with, yes. Something to place in the family hall, no.
She could be passed from hand to hand. She could not be accepted into the household.
Men pursued her, yet looked down on her.
When the game of passing the flower stopped at Chen Bingxin, even the most beautiful woman became a joke.
Chen Wan, too, was an unacknowledged joke. It had taken three paternity tests before he was finally brought from a tenement on the outer Third Ring into the Chen residence amid the city’s swirling gossip.
Chen Wan had hidden his edge and managed everything painstakingly for so long precisely so that one day, he could leave this cage, this purgatory, completely. So he could openly, properly, and justifiably reach—if only a little—toward that person’s world.
Freedom and peace were luxuries. Chen Wan had dreamed of them since he was a child.
But Song Qingmiao wanted more.
She wanted money, name, profit—and the kind of glory that had once belonged to her in the millennium.
Chen Wan knew he could not give her that. But he also could not truly harden his heart, abandon Song Qingmiao, and take freedom for himself alone.
In the winter when he was eleven, he had burned with fever in the psychiatric hospital until he was delirious, his life hanging by a thread. It was Song Qingmiao who had stormed in with a pair of scissors and dragged him out.
Did Song Qingmiao love him?
Not very much.
But somewhat.
Not a lot.
Yet it was the only bit of love Chen Wan had ever had in this world, and so it was precious. He still wanted to cherish it.
After a long silence, Chen Wan asked, “How much money do you want? I can earn it.”
Song Qingmiao’s voice was soft, but very disdainful. “How much can you earn?” Then she suddenly leaned closer to him, mysterious and secretive. “Baby, Xie Jian has been asking me out lately.”
Chen Wan froze. A pulse jumped hard at his temple. His voice turned stern. “Don’t go.”
Song Qingmiao looked rather pleased, as if this proved she had not lost her charm with age. Chen Wan frowned. “Don’t go. He has a family. He isn’t genuinely pursuing you.”
Seeing her dismissive expression, Chen Wan continued patiently, “Rongxin’s board election is coming up. He only wants to sound you out and increase his shareholding.”
Xie Jian was a director at Rongxin. Decades ago, he had risen under Chen Bingxin’s hand.
Song Qingmiao had been beautifully foolish since she was young. Beauty without a mind to match it was often a disaster in itself. She complained coquettishly, “What does it matter whether he’s sincere? I’m not sincere either.”
“I’m only going to have a meal with him and see whether he has any way to help you enter Rongxin.”
“That’s even more unnecessary,” Chen Wan said firmly. “I’m not going to Rongxin. I have my own things to do.”
Song Qingmiao grew a little angry. “What things? You drift around all day doing nothing proper. Liao Zhihe held a celebration banquet two days ago for his promotion to general manager. You’ve been graduated for years, and you haven’t even entered the doors of a branch company. Mommy worries about you so much. At night I think about you and can’t sleep.”
Liao Zhihe was the nephew of Liao Liu from the second household.
Rongxin had once been Chen Bingxin’s one-man kingdom. Later, after he underwent two heart bypass surgeries, power slipped from his hands and was divided mainly between Cao Zhi of the first household and Sui Yu of the third.
Liao Liu of the second household clung to Cao Zhi to get her share of the spoils. Every household disliked Song Qingmiao for being young, beautiful, and of improper origins, so they joined together to suppress her.
The legitimate young masters and young ladies of the family, along with the children and nephews from outside households, fought fiercely for power inside Rongxin.
Chen Wan always stayed outside it.
But he had never dared tell Song Qingmiao the details. Otherwise, those assets would very quickly be taken by her to a casino or a card table and squandered clean.
Chen Wan helped her straighten the jewelry boxes that had been rummaged through and left in a mess, then closed them one by one. He cleaned the cigarette butts out of the ashtray and opened the window to air out the room.
“You don’t need to worry about me. The most important thing is that you live well your—”
Someone knocked on the door.
“Fourth Madam, Master says to come down for dinner.”
Song Qingmiao and Chen Wan looked at each other. Both fell silent.
Chen Wan lowered his voice. “All right.”
By the time the two of them went downstairs, everyone had already begun eating the appetizer course.
Chen Wan took an inconspicuous seat at the very end of the table. Only when he saw the servants bringing over iced rice noodles and old duck soup with lotus root did he remember that today was the Hungry Ghost Festival.
The fourteenth day of the seventh lunar month was also called Ghost Festival. People in Hai City were especially fond of boiling soup on this day. Duck soup was made because the word for “duck” sounded like “to suppress,” carrying the meaning of suppressing ghosts during the festival.
Here, this traditional holiday—one that was not especially famous nationwide—was treated as more important than Mid-Autumn Festival.
People who made their living in business believed in feng shui to some degree.
On the wall hung offerings to the Eight-Faced God and the Sea Goddess, incense burning without interruption. The willow-wood cabinets, the dark, heavy floral carpet, and the green vines crawling up the windows made the dining room feel gloomy and oppressive, enough to ruin one’s appetite.
The several households gathered around the round table like a version of The Last Supper, painted in somber tones. The lightning and thunder at the tail end of the typhoon illuminated the details of every face.
Each person harbored their own thoughts, yet the table remained full of easy laughter and conversation. They spoke of nothing more than Hai City’s recent politics, economy, stocks, and horse races, flattering one another while secretly comparing themselves against each other.
Almost all the younger generation had gone abroad to study, then returned and entered Rongxin directly. Back then, Chen Wan had received better offers than many of them, but he had not been able to leave. He stayed in Hai City and studied at the University of Science and Technology instead.
Later, he had been guaranteed a place in graduate school too, but he did not attend. Chen Wan did not have that much time. He needed to walk out of the ivory tower and into the arena of wealth and influence as quickly as possible.
His peers now spoke eloquently in front of Chen Bingxin about several of Rongxin’s projects, every one of them looking as though they were finally able to display their talents. The wives of the second and third households basked in reflected glory. Song Qingmiao’s expression was very poor. She turned the bracelet on her wrist and drank her bird’s nest soup.
Chen Wan calmly ate the plate of salad in front of him, unruffled.
He had no interest in the Chen family’s cake. In fact, he was afraid of getting blood on his hands from touching it.
The current economy was sluggish. Hai City’s urban development map was contracting, and land-grant policies were no longer nearly as loose as before. The real-estate industry that had burned so hot a few years ago was approaching saturation. Rongxin had always relied on traditional industries as its pillar of profit, using land expansion as poison to quench thirst. Its family-style management was rotten and outdated, and it had never thought of transforming its industrial structure.
If those projects did not end up unfinished ruins, it would already count as divine mercy.
After leaving the University of Science and Technology, Chen Wan had set his sights on energy technology, a field few had yet entered. The economic landscape was changing drastically. In the future, it would certainly be a war over resources.
Reality proved that he had gambled accurately.
The overseas students who once carried diplomas from elite universities were now being laid off by investment banks and real-estate companies one after another. Meanwhile, Chen Wan, who had stayed at the University of Science and Technology, had founded Kexiang Technology, which now carried considerable market value.
Kexiang was a small temple, but its profits were high. Chen Wan had insisted on registering himself as a silent partner. His senior partner said he was pretending to be a pig to eat the tiger, quietly making a fortune without a sound.
Chen Wan had only smiled. “Isn’t it good that I’m giving you money?”
Money was not the most important thing.
The important thing was that he had truly chiseled open a crack into that person’s world.
It was not large, but it was still a ladder to heaven he had built with his own hands, brick by brick, from nothing.
Chen Wan lowered his head and drank his soup.
Song Qingmiao was dissatisfied with how utterly invisible he made himself and kept sending him looks. Chen Wan still lowered his head and continued eating.
“…”
Song Qingmiao felt even the bird’s nest soup clogging her throat.
When someone mentioned Zhao Shengge, his return to the country being an event that had shaken Hai City, Chen Wan’s movement of drinking soup slowed slightly.
Chen Yu, the eldest son of the first household, said that whether it was a welcome-home dinner hosted by the Zhao family or by Zhao Shengge’s friends and business partners, Rongxin had never received an invitation. He asked his father, Chen Bingxin, whether they should have someone make an introduction.
Chen Bingxin’s expression was not very pleasant.
In Hai City, he could still be considered a senior figure with a name and standing.
He was several generations older than Zhao Shengge, but he did not dare say Zhao Shengge was in the wrong. He could only vent his anger on his eldest son. “Do I still need to teach you these things?”
Chen Yu hurriedly agreed, while feeling wronged in his heart. Zhao Shengge—was he someone they could simply approach just because they wanted to?
By rough count, there had already been around a dozen such gatherings, large and small. Zhao Shengge had shown his face at less than a tenth of them.
Chen Jin from the second household was always good at reading the old man’s mind. With a strange laugh, he said, “The crown prince has spent years dealing with U.S. dollars. Maybe he doesn’t look down on this tiny patch of Hai City anymore.”
Otherwise, he would not be putting on airs even more absurdly than before.
Chen Bingxin knocked his cane against the floor in a show of warning. “What nonsense.”
Chen Jin was not afraid. He merely fell silent. The second wife smiled and ladled half a bowl of soup for her son.
The second wife’s brother, Chen Jin’s maternal uncle Liao Quan, had always been the best at smoothing things over. He laughed amiably. “No matter what he’s been dealing with, however capable he is, he still has to marry and put down roots in Hai City. I heard a little something from Minglong. In my view, it isn’t only Rongxin that should seize the opportunity. The young ladies should put some thought into it too. If one of them truly wins the prize, that would be far more than merely making connections.”
At that, the daughters of the various households all lowered their heads shyly, though the sparkle in their eyes and brows could not hide their hopes.
They might not truly covet anything from the Zhao family. Zhao Shengge’s face alone was enough to give every young woman in the city sweet dreams.
Chen Bingxin’s expression loosened somewhat. Perhaps he felt that with so many daughters in his family, each beautiful as a flower, surely it was not impossible for at least one of them to have hope.
The maternal grand-uncle from the first household could not bear seeing Liao Quan sell such cleverness so smoothly. “Isn’t it too early to say that, Mr. Liao? There’s still the Xu family ahead.”
The rumored Miss Xu, said to have an engagement with Zhao Shengge.
Chen Bingxin did not want to listen to the two of them clash. He also wanted to preserve that tiny hope he had granted himself, so he said to the grand-uncle, “Xingyong, what man has only one woman?”
No one at the table thought there was anything strange about this statement.
Chen Wan set down his spoon.
The long handle struck the porcelain bowl with a clear ding. He picked up his napkin and wiped his lips.
The half bowl of old duck soup he had just drunk seemed to turn sour in his stomach. Even after several mouthfuls of tea, it still felt difficult to endure. Yet he could not leave the table. If he did, the idle people here would turn their verbal knives on Song Qingmiao instead.
Using Song Qingmiao to control Chen Wan was something everyone in this house knew how to do, and everyone enjoyed doing it.
After hearing Chen Bingxin speak, the people at the table—men and women, old and young alike—all felt they had a future to look forward to. Laughter returned to the room, and everyone cheerfully resumed eating and drinking.