After his shower, Wei Yi came out, rubbing his hair dry with a towel.
Chen Xinyi had already changed into a fresh outfit. She had tucked a white shirt into her cropped trousers and redone her hair. The whole person had switched from her lazy-at-home mode to a sharp, capable one.
She sat on the sofa with a cup of warm water in her hands. When she saw him come out, she held it out to him.
“From now on, no more getting up so early for morning exercise. Not before seven.”
Wei Yi took the cup and gulped down half of it.
“Wait, no.” Chen Xinyi took back what she’d said, frowning as she corrected herself. “You’re so young—you need to catch up on sleep. Morning exercise, my foot. Sleep until you wake up naturally.”
“Got it, sis.”
Chen Xinyi gave him a suspicious look. She probably thought he’d agreed too readily; it wasn’t like him.
They had breakfast at Old Yang’s, by the entrance to the residential complex.
The place had a modest storefront, with plastic tables and chairs spilling out from inside onto the sidewalk. The soy milk was freshly ground, the fried dough sticks freshly fried, and the steamers were stacked high, sending up clouds of white vapor. The three of them took a table toward the back, and Chen Xinyi ordered a heap of food:
Three bowls of soy milk, four fried dough sticks, two baskets of soup dumplings, and two bowls of tofu pudding—one sweet for Wei Yi, and one savory for herself.
“I have two periods of administrative law this morning and one period of international economic law this afternoon,” Chen Xinyi said to Lin Siyan as she tore apart a fried dough stick. “Are you taking private international law today too?”
“This afternoon.” Lin Siyan picked up a soup dumpling, dipped it in vinegar, then carefully bit a small opening into it and blew on it.
Wei Yi ate his fried dough stick with his head down, but his mind was racing.
Bike-sharing.
He knew this industry all too well from his previous life.
During the second semester of his freshman year, his older sister had urged him to find a work-study job.
Chen Xinyi’s reasoning was simple: if you didn’t need money, that was all the more reason to go out and get some experience. She wasn’t expecting him to earn anything; he should just pick a “promising project” and build up experience and a work history.
He was very obedient. His first work-study job was as a promotional representative for OFO’s Yellow Bikes on the Lianda campus.
At the time, OFO had just gotten started at Peking University and was in desperate need of ground promotion staff as it expanded to other universities.
Wei Yi was a Lianda student, and he had a sister who was so shrewd it was almost unbelievable. With her advice behind him, he worked his way up from promotional representative to supervisor of a small district.
If Chen Xinyi hadn’t thought he was too busy and made him quit during his Senior Year, he might have made it into OFO’s middle management.
Later, after graduating and successfully passing the civil service examination, he joined the Subdistrict Office, but his connection to bike-sharing didn’t end there.
Illegal parking, obstruction of sidewalks, deposits that couldn’t be refunded, bikes dumped into rivers—he’d handled countless complaints about these things.
While dealing with those issues, he’d cursed these companies every day for acting like they had no decency. He’d never imagined that after getting a second chance at life, he’d actually feel like jumping into the industry himself.
He remembered the entire timeline clearly.
In April 2014, OFO got its start at Peking University. It began as a campus bike-sharing platform with just a few hundred bikes, all circulating within the university.
In 2015, Mobike was founded.
In 2016, the two companies began raising money like crazy, burning cash to flood the streets with bikes. Red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, and purple bikes turned sidewalks across the country into color palettes.
2017 was the peak. Both companies were valued at over ten billion, and the pigs riding the wave flew higher than rockets.
In 2018, things started to crash. The funding dried up, customers rushed to withdraw their deposits, the founders were placed under spending restrictions, and the whole industry became a complete mess.
The industry’s end was an utter disaster.
But there was a lot of money to be made in the years leading up to it.
As long as he pocketed his money and got out before the bubble burst, multiplying his capital dozens or even hundreds of times was perfectly possible.
He had two hundred thousand yuan now.
The World Cup had only just begun. There were sixty-four matches, and he remembered the scores of at least thirty-odd of them.
He didn’t need to bet on every match. A dozen or so with high odds would be enough. Conservatively, by the end of the World Cup, his account balance could grow to over ten million.
Tens of millions, in 2014.
With that as his startup capital, he could enter the shared-bike industry not as a follower, but as a pioneer.
The more Wei Yi thought about it, the more excited he got. He stuck his fried dough stick into his bowl of soy milk and forgot to pull it out, leaving half of it soaking.
He also knew exactly what advantages he had in this industry.
He knew which cities were essential battlegrounds. He knew where the limits of government regulation lay, which pitfalls to avoid, and when to get out.
He remembered all the mistakes OFO had made early on: blindly flooding the streets with bikes and letting maintenance costs spiral out of control; misusing deposits and triggering the risk of a run; following the crowd into third- and fourth-tier cities, where the bikes were stolen en masse and sold for scrap.
If he were in charge now, he was confident he could avoid every one of those pitfalls.
Then there was the team.
A prospective college student who’d just finished the Gaokao saying he wanted to start a bike-sharing business wouldn’t exactly be taken seriously. But he could find a partner.
Uncle Zhou’s daughter, Zhou Min—Auntie Zhou.
In his previous life, Auntie Zhou had invested in bike-sharing. She should be interested this time around too.
Besides, Zhou Min worked in investment and had extensive connections and resources. With her on the team, fundraising and expansion would go much more smoothly.
And then there was…
Wei Yi glanced up at Chen Xinyi across the table, who was discussing administrative law cases with Lin Siyan.
His older sister.
With her abilities, combined with his foresight…
Wei Yi hardly dared think about it.
“What are you spacing out for? Your fried dough stick’s gone soggy.”
Chen Xinyi tapped the rim of his bowl with her chopsticks. A clear chink rang out.
Wei Yi snapped back to himself and looked down. Half his fried dough stick had soaked into a lump of mush in the soy milk.
He gave an awkward smile, scooped it up, and swallowed it in one go.
Chen Xinyi didn’t smile. Instead, she leaned a little closer and stared into Wei Yi’s eyes. There was none of the usual sweetness in those peach-blossom eyes; instead, she looked almost like she was interrogating a suspect.
“Are you hiding something from me?”
Wei Yi’s heart tightened.
“Ever since I saw you yesterday, and again this morning, I’ve felt that something’s off.”
Chen Xinyi slowly traced the edge of the vinegar dish with the tip of her chopsticks. “You keep avoiding my gaze.”
His sister’s instincts were damn sharp.
“No, it’s just…” Wei Yi’s mind raced. “It’s my first time in Yanjing, so I’m not used to it yet.”
Chen Xinyi looked unconvinced, but didn’t press him. She placed a soup dumpling in his bowl, her tone shifting back to its usual “I’m in charge” setting.
“I might be busy today. When I have time tonight or tomorrow, I’ll take you around Wangfujing. Stay home and catch up on sleep during the day. Don’t go wandering around.”
“Got it, sis.”
Lin Siyan quietly drank her soy milk beside them.
When Wei Yi answered, “Got it, sis,” her gaze shifted between him and Chen Xinyi, then fell back to the tofu pudding in her bowl.
After breakfast, Chen Xinyi and Lin Siyan were heading to Renmin University for class.
The X5 was parked by the roadside at the entrance to the residential complex. Before opening the driver’s door, Chen Xinyi turned back to remind him once more:
“Catch up on sleep! Don’t go running around!”
Wei Yi watched the two of them get into the car.
Before getting into the passenger seat, Lin Siyan looked back at him. Her lips moved, as though she wanted to say something, but she didn’t.
The doors closed, and the X5 slipped into the morning rush-hour traffic.
He stood there, and suddenly a line from his previous life flashed through his mind—Lin Siyan lying in the Delivery Room:
“I gave birth to his child. You promised me that in this life, you wouldn’t send me away.”
Her face had been pale then as she smiled at Chen Xinyi, her eyes filled with Chen Xinyi’s reflection.
Now that he had a second chance at life, Wei Yi could read more into Lin Siyan’s little gestures.
From beginning to end, this woman had been shaped around his older sister.
At most, he was just the rope between them.
Back in apartment 1203, Wei Yi locked the door from the inside.
He opened the Lenovo laptop.
Chen Xinyi had bought it during her freshman year, then replaced it after only a year and given him the old one.
He connected to the internet, opened a browser, and searched some keywords.
“Peking University student bicycle startup,” “OFO,” “bike-sharing.”
There wasn’t much information, but he found a few results.
A few Peking University students had set up a bike-sharing platform on campus. They had only a few hundred bikes, and operated solely within Peking University.
The project’s founder was named Dai Wei, from the Guanghua School of Management.
At this point, OFO was still just a small campus project. Even its official name was still written in lowercase letters.
Wei Yi leaned back in his chair and suddenly felt the thrill of having a god’s-eye view.
You’re still figuring things out. I already know how it ends.
He opened a blank document and typed a few lines.
Stage one: build up capital during the World Cup. Target: 10 million+.
Stage two: before the World Cup ended, once he had finalized his university choices and received his acceptance letter, launch it as a student entrepreneurship project.
Stage three: after the university term began, officially register a company and start with the campus market.
Stage four: after scaling up, bring in capital and find investors like Zhou Min to finance expansion.
Stage five: in 2016–2017, find the right moment to cash out and exit.
After finishing all that, sleepiness finally washed over him. The debt from staying up all night had to be repaid eventually.
Wei Yi closed the laptop and collapsed onto the bed.
Before closing his eyes, he picked up his phone and checked it.
Zhifubao balance: 202,700.
This was the starting point.
A month from now, this number needed to multiply several dozen times over.
He couldn’t let that mysterious Internal Martial Arts practice lapse either.
By then, with money in his pocket and strength in his body, he’d be able to face his older sister without feeling flustered.