The gifts Lu Congzhi had brought were two wallets. Neither bore a brand logo, but both had a wonderfully luxurious feel and distinctive designs. Zhou Ming’s was understated and elegant, while Wen Rui’s was fashionable and novel, its soft calfskin embossed with a pattern resembling volcanic lava.
“Do you like it?” Lu Congzhi tipped his chin toward Wen Rui.
Wen Rui stroked the leather and nodded. “Very much. Thank you.”
Lu Congzhi turned to Zhou Ming. “And you?”
“I like mine a lot, too.” Zhou Ming had already taken everything out of his old wallet and was transferring the contents one by one into the new one.
Song Xiuzhu and Lin Yuan, completely ignored, looked thoroughly displeased. They had always been the ones to exclude Lu Congzhi. They had never imagined that one day he would be the one shutting them out.
He had only been away on his internship for three weeks, yet he seemed to have become an entirely different person.
Satisfied with the response to his gifts, Lu Congzhi paid no further attention to anyone else. He gathered his toiletries, went into the bathroom, and took a cold shower. In the year 2000, the dormitory had neither air-conditioning nor a water heater. Fortunately, it was late September and still hot enough that there was no risk of catching a chill.
After his shower, he changed into another outfit: a close-fitting sleeveless knitted top and a pair of gray shorts.
Three weeks of feeding himself well had erased his earlier frailty. A beautiful layer of lean muscle now covered his body, and his pale skin was smooth and fine, like a piece of translucent, warm jade.
He lay on his bed answering text messages, one leg bent, the other draped over its knee, his pink-tinted toes swaying gently. His shorts rode far up, exposing the tops of his thighs, with the sensitive area between them faintly visible.
There wasn’t even any darkening of the skin there.
Wen Rui stole a glance, picked up his cup, and took a sip, only to scald his mouth on the freshly poured boiling water. He rubbed his brow, sighed helplessly, then lifted his bed curtain and hid behind it.
How had he never noticed before that sharing a dormitory with Lu Congzhi could be such an ordeal?
Once he had finished replying to his messages, Lu Congzhi took out a contract and read through it until he drifted off to sleep. The following afternoon, he told Yu Binbin to wait for him at the hotel while he went to meet a friend.
That friend was Li Yan. Across both his lifetimes, this would be their first meeting, even though he knew the Li Yan he was meeting today was only a stand-in.
“Brother Yan?” Carrying a travel bag, Lu Congzhi walked slowly toward the man waiting at the entrance to a residential compound.
The man was very young, in his twenties, with regular features and a refined manner. Rimless glasses rested on his nose, and his gaze was gentle and harmless. Yet with his jacket, briefcase, and ramrod-straight posture, he was plainly an elite professional from a government organization or state-owned enterprise.
“Lu Congzhi?” Li Yan looked him up and down and couldn’t help smiling.
Wen Rui had mentioned long ago that two of his dormmates happened to be students he sponsored. One was outstandingly handsome, composed, and excellent in every respect. The other was somewhat gloomy and never fit in.
If Li Yan had not seen the photograph of all six roommates and known that Song Xiuzhu was the one Wen Rui constantly praised, he would surely have mistaken the Lu Congzhi standing before him for that student.
The withdrawn young man he had imagined and this handsome young man, with his languid, faintly decadent air and inexplicable allure, could not have been more different.
Who would have thought President Wen could misjudge someone, too?
“Brother Yan! We finally get to meet.” Lu Congzhi strode forward openly and gave Li Yan a solid embrace.
Although Li Yan was merely his sponsor in name, every time Lu Congzhi encountered trouble, Li Yan had been the person who stepped forward to help resolve it. Lu Congzhi had to acknowledge that kindness.
Li Yan was not accustomed to such enthusiastic greetings. President Wen had called Lu Congzhi introverted, but he could not see the slightest trace of that.
Not content with a single hug, Lu Congzhi lifted him off the ground and spun him around, laughing heartily. He had wanted to do this for ages.
Li Yan felt helpless but also wanted to laugh. Even someone as used to the strict conventions of officialdom as he was could not help feeling touched and delighted by such an exuberant welcome.
“Put me down, quickly. I’m taking you to see a friend.”
“Who?”
“A student I used to sponsor.”
“Should we buy some fruit?”
“No need.”
They entered an aging corridor-style apartment building, where a damp, rotting smell hit them immediately. After climbing seven flights of stairs, a breathless Li Yan knocked on a heavily rusted iron door.
A little girl of twelve or thirteen appeared in the doorway. She was thinner than a reed, her sunken cheeks making her large eyes look even larger, yet those eyes held no light at all. They were utterly lifeless.
When she saw Li Yan, the girl managed a strained smile. “Brother Li, please come in.”
Li Yan introduced Lu Congzhi. “This is Brother Lu Congzhi, my friend. We’ve come to see how you’re doing.”
The girl thanked them repeatedly and ushered them inside, hurriedly clearing piles of cardboard from a battered sofa. Glue, scissors, labels, and other supplies lay on the coffee table.
Lu Congzhi had survived hard times himself. One glance told him that the girl made a living gluing cardboard boxes together.
“Brother Yan?” He glanced at Li Yan.
Li Yan pressed a hand downward, telling him to be quiet. After sitting down, he asked the girl, “Tiantian, where’s your brother?”
The girl pointed to the bedroom opposite. “My brother’s asleep.”
Li Yan went on, “May I take Brother Lu inside to see him?”
The girl looked anxious. “My brother gets angry and yells if someone wakes him.”
“It’s all right. We’ll just take a quiet look.”
“Okay, then.”
The girl carefully opened the bedroom door and tilted her head to beckon them in. Li Yan pulled Lu Congzhi into the bedroom, tiptoed closer, and held his breath as he took a look.
A young man who had lost both legs lay on a filthy bed, so emaciated he was little more than skin and bones. Even in sleep, his sallow face carried a violent bitterness. Around his bed lay cardboard boxes he had cut to pieces, while a smashed bottle of glue had left a sticky mess on the wall.
This was the scene of abuse. To vent his despair, the young man had been wantonly destroying his sister’s means of earning a living.
Anger flashed across Li Yan’s face before he quickly suppressed it. He glanced at Lu Congzhi.
Lu Congzhi nodded and quietly withdrew from the bedroom.
“Tiantian, you’ve had such a hard time.” Li Yan sat down in the living room and sighed.
Li Tiantian merely smiled bitterly, her eyes dim and gray. That was what happened when someone lost all hope in life. Li Yan could offer no comfort, for he knew that no matter how much assistance she received, as long as Li Hao lived, Li Tiantian would never escape her circumstances.
After asking about her schooling and daily life and offering a few encouraging words, Li Yan took out an envelope of money and forcibly tucked it into Li Tiantian’s schoolbag. Then he and Lu Congzhi practically fled. Despair was contagious; he felt profoundly uncomfortable every time he visited.
There was good reason President Wen never met the people he helped in person. Of course, becoming roommates with Song Xiuzhu and Lu Congzhi had been purely coincidental.
Lu Congzhi had already guessed why Li Yan had brought him to see Li Hao, but he asked anyway, pretending ignorance. “Brother Yan, what’s their story?”
Li Yan settled onto a stone bench outside the apartment building and patted the empty space beside him. “Let’s take our time talking.”
Lu Congzhi sat down, looking ready to listen attentively.
Li Yan sighed. “Li Hao used to be an excellent student, ambitious and hardworking. But after entering university, he started mixing with rich kids and his personality changed. If they bought luxury goods, so did he. If they spent their days eating, drinking, and having fun, he joined in their excesses. He couldn’t afford that lifestyle, so he could only trick money out of me. Eight hundred yuan a month wasn’t enough for him. He asked me for three thousand.”
That familiar sum of three thousand yuan struck a sensitive nerve in Lu Congzhi. He suddenly understood. “Brother Yan, did you think I was going astray, too, when I asked to borrow three thousand from you?”
Li Yan waved a hand. “Little Lu, hear me out. Of course I wasn’t going to give Li Hao money just because he demanded it. But I was busy at the time and had no chance to investigate. By the time I went to see him, I discovered he’d sold the apartment his parents left him just to buy luxury goods. He squandered the hundreds of thousands he got for it and even ran up sixty thousand yuan in debts to loan sharks. When the debt collectors came, he fled on a motorcycle, struck and killed someone along the road, and broke both his legs in the crash. I helped rent the apartment where he and his sister live now, but I couldn’t possibly pay off his loan-shark debts. He had to sell his luxury possessions to settle those. As for the 250,000 yuan in compensation for the person he killed, all of that burden has fallen on his younger sister. Isn’t it tragic?”
Lu Congzhi nodded. “It is.”
Li Yan stared straight at him. “Little Lu, don’t follow in his footsteps. You used to be so frugal. Why have you started indulging yourself, too? The belt around your waist must have cost at least four or five thousand yuan, right? I see Li Hao’s shadow in you, and I’m genuinely worried. Your academic counselor called me yesterday and expressed the same concern, which is why I asked to see you today.”
Lu Congzhi shook his head. “Brother Yan, you’ve misunderstood. I’m not indulging myself.”
Li Yan frowned. “But your spending has already exceeded what you can afford. Little Lu, you have to work hard and learn to endure hardship! I’m not saying this to glorify suffering. But you have to understand that most people are born into a world where they have no choice but to face it. Those born into wealth will always be a tiny handful at the top of the pyramid. They say suffering shouldn’t be glorified because they have no idea what suffering actually is. Suffering means poverty, helplessness, and having no way forward. If you don’t face it, live with it, and then learn to fight it, you’ll rot in that pit. First the bitter, then the sweet, or first the sweet, then the bitter: you’re clever enough to know which to choose. Anyone urging you to live for pleasure, squander your youth, and give up on making something of yourself is either stupid or malicious. Don’t let them influence you.”
There was genuine concern and earnest counsel in every word. Lu Congzhi was not someone who failed to appreciate kindness.
But he slowly shook his head and laughed lightly. “Brother Yan, you’ve really misunderstood. My spending matches what I can afford. You appeared when I was at my lowest and helped me enormously. I’ll never forget it as long as I live. You’ve shared your life experience with me, and I want to share an important moment of my life with you. Come on, Brother Yan. Let me show you what I’m working on now.”
Li Yan was baffled.
Lu Congzhi rose and offered him a hand.
They arrived at a five-star hotel and made their way toward the banquet hall on the third floor. Along the way, Lu Congzhi found an empty room and changed into the bespoke suit he had prepared in advance.
Li Yan stared at him in astonishment.
Dressed casually, Lu Congzhi was youthful and bright, his laughter unrestrained. In a suit, he became distant and aloof, seeming to look down on everyone around him. As he adjusted his tie, his narrow eyes lowered without settling on anyone, as though he had grown weary of everything in his surroundings. His long eyelashes had not the slightest upward curl. They fell like curtains over the dark, ineffable secrets in his eyes.
Th-this was a complete transformation! Who had said Lu Congzhi was ordinary? Even a treasured young master shaped by the gold and silver of a great aristocratic family could hardly look better than this.
Li Yan’s eyes widened slightly.
Lu Congzhi curved his lips in a teasing smile, and that lofty, icy air immediately vanished.
“Brother Yan, even if you hadn’t contacted me, I would have invited you today. You have to witness my moment of glory, because without you, I wouldn’t be where I am.”
Still somewhat dazed, Li Yan followed Lu Congzhi into the splendid banquet hall. There he saw the president of Naike Group’s Hua Nation division, senior officials from the Ministry of Commerce, the provincial Party secretary of Dongguang, and numerous influential figures whose faces he recognized.
These people surrounded Lu Congzhi, listened when he spoke, chatted and laughed with him, and raised their glasses in his honor.
Li Yan was not in the industry. Before he knew it, he had been squeezed into a corner.
Only after asking around did he learn that today was the signing ceremony between Naike Group and Jinlong Company. Naike was making an enormous overseas investment of 800 million yuan to build what was intended to be the biggest footwear and apparel manufacturing plant in Asia, perhaps even the world. The Dongguang provincial government was providing five hundred mu of commercial land free of charge, and the central government had decided to give the project priority support. What an extraordinary undertaking!
Even more astonishing was the fact that Jinlong had previously specialized in counterfeits, especially imitation Naike products, inflicting enormous financial losses on Naike’s headquarters.
On the eve of Hua Nation’s expected accession to the World Trade Organization, as 2001 approached, Jinlong had gone from the counterfeit ranks into the legitimate army, an incredible reversal of fortune. Otherwise, the company’s owner might have faced bankruptcy and liquidation, or even arrest and imprisonment.
The person who had brought about this miracle was none other than Lu Congzhi. He stood among so many important figures, neither servile nor arrogant, dazzling in his brilliance. Material desires had never controlled him. He had relied entirely on his own abilities to take complete, absolute command of his destiny.
Li Yan had always considered President Wen one of the most outstanding young talents around. But watching Lu Congzhi draw everyone’s eyes at this moment, he finally understood what it meant to be a true favored son of heaven.
President Wen’s achievements rested on the support of a powerful family. Lu Congzhi had nothing.
So had bringing Lu Congzhi to visit Li Hao and lecturing him about fighting hardship been nothing but a joke? The more Li Yan thought about it, the redder his cheeks became. He hurried out of the banquet hall, found a quiet corner, and called Wen Rui.
“President Wen, come to the banquet hall on the third floor of the Bulgari Hotel in the southern district, right now. I think you need to see with your own eyes what Lu Congzhi has been doing out here.”