“Is there anything else you want to say to me?” Zhang Moyun asked.

Zhang Jingchan pulled out a USB drive from his pocket—one he had stayed up all night at an internet café to make. Li Weiyi took it and inserted it into Zhang Moyun’s computer, saying, “Dad, I’ve created another proposal. I poured my heart and soul into it, exhausting all my intelligence. I’ll help you one more time. This is also the last chance for you and Fu Ming.”

Zhang Moyun was slightly stunned. “What other solution could you possibly have? Do you know how much debt the company has now?”

“I don’t know. Either way, with compound interest, you’ll end up owing a total of 1 billion,” Li Weiyi said.

Now Zhang Moyun’s expression truly changed.

“We have a way to save you.” Li Weiyi glanced at Zhang Jingchan and said, “This is your son. He’s combed through countless market data and materials to dig up this one narrow escape route that will let you break free. However, yesterday I struggled with those criminals and injured my throat, and my spirits aren’t good either. This proposal—he helped me with it. He’s very intelligent. What he says is the same as what I would say.”

Zhang Jingchan glanced at her, but she didn’t look at him. Her expression was resolute.

Zhang Moyun said, “Her? She’s still a high school student.”

Zhang Jingchan stood up. “So what if she’s a high school student? She understands better than you.”

Zhang Moyun was speechless.

Zhang Jingchan walked to the computer. Li Weiyi yielded her seat to him. He glanced at his father. “Move over.” Zhang Moyun was so exasperated he actually laughed. This young lady had an even fiercer temperament than his son. Yet that strange sense of familiarity surged through his heart once again.

Li Weiyi dragged over two chairs, arranging them so Zhang Jingchan sat in the middle with her and Zhang Moyun on either side.

Zhang Jingchan’s presentation style was nothing like Li Weiyi’s dramatic and emotionally charged approach. He opened the PowerPoint, and the first slide showed news about this year’s reduced soybean production in the Americas. All of this information he had searched for on domestic and international websites this year.

The subsequent content covered soybean futures’ gains so far this year, major investors’ positions, market expectations, investment returns, and so on. Some information he had found online; some he had fabricated by reverse-engineering future facts—Zhang Moyun had some understanding of finance, though he wasn’t an expert.

But Zhang Moyun quickly grasped the point. “You want me to buy soybean futures?”

Zhang Jingchan and Li Weiyi both nodded. Zhang Jingchan said, “I… Ah Chan has communicated with friends abroad who work in finance. They’re very capable and have already made tens of millions of US dollars on this soybean wave. Unlike mainstream investment markets that are bearish, they remain bullish. Their conclusion is that in the next one to two weeks, soybeans will experience a decline—a market adjustment and turnover. When it drops by 300 points, we can enter. Then we hold the position until early September. During that period, no matter whether it rises or falls, we must remain calm and not move. When the time comes, no matter how much pressure there is, you must withstand it. They expect the peak to be around 4,400. By early September, news of the next wave of abundant soybean harvests will also arrive, and the market will plummet. So when the market rises to 4,300, we sell.”

Zhang Moyun’s brow furrowed tightly. He took the mouse and carefully examined the data, asking, “Ah Chan, are your foreign friends’ predictions reliable? I see that soybean prices are already very high. According to this data, many famous brokerages are shorting.”

Li Weiyi remained silent. Zhang Jingchan leaned back against his chair, his head tilted slightly. His fingers tapped on the desk a few times as he said, “If the mainstream market were always right, there wouldn’t be so many people going bankrupt, nor would we have this opportunity to win big with a small bet. There are large funds secretly going long; they’re just not doing it openly.”

Zhang Moyun’s spirits lifted. Father and son were aligned on this point—both had wolfish, adventurous blood flowing in their bones. Zhang Jingchan’s explanation struck exactly the right chord with him. He studied the proposal carefully for a while longer before asking, “How much capital do I need to raise?”

“Ninety million.”

Zhang Moyun fell silent. Given Fu Ming’s current situation, scraping together another 90 million would drain the last breath of life from the company.

Fu Ming wouldn’t collapse at year’s end—it would collapse right now.

And as Fu Ming’s helmsman, he would immediately face pressure from all sides, internal and external. It could truly be said he would be defying universal condemnation. Whether he could even hold out until September to sell was uncertain.

Moreover, what they were putting in was 90 million. If they gambled and lost, with ten times leverage…

Li Weiyi saw his expression shifting between light and dark and was about to persuade him, but she noticed Zhang Jingchan simply sitting quietly, staring at Zhang Moyun. Even knowing this was a guaranteed win, he refused to offer more words of reassurance.

Li Weiyi suddenly understood. He wanted to see his father trust him—trust him no matter how great the risk.

So she too fell silent.

Zhang Moyun’s voice was extremely hoarse. “Ah Chan, Weiyi, have you calculated how much debt I would carry if we lose this gamble?”

Neither of them spoke.

Zhang Moyun murmured, “Nineteen, twenty… nearly twenty—hundred million! Have you seen people who went bankrupt in debt? They’re like rats crossing the street—everyone shouts to strike them down. No one will ever trust them again; no one will cooperate with them. Even if they’re still capable, they won’t get another chance. I would carry this debt, living in humiliation and incompetence until I die of old age. For the rest of this life, there would be no possibility of recovery.”

Li Weiyi remained silent.

Zhang Jingchan suddenly laughed lowly. He raised his head, his gaze ice-cold.

He asked, “Have you seen those people whose families were destroyed and who became destitute and homeless because of bankrupt entrepreneurs like you? Right now, quite a few relatives and friends have invested money with you, with Fu Ming, haven’t they? Your eldest aunt, second aunt, second uncle, Uncle Li, Xu Yi… they’ve all invested, haven’t they?”

Zhang Moyun didn’t speak—tacit acknowledgment.

“Perhaps it’s only a few million, a few hundred thousand—nothing much to you. But this is their life savings, accumulated over most of their lives or even their entire lives. Besides relatives and friends, there are also upstream and downstream suppliers—those small factories that have always relied on Fu Ming to survive. If they can’t get their payments, they can’t survive. The several thousand workers at the construction sites have worked for a year. Some of them are very poor and depend on this money to live. By the end of this year, none of them will receive their wages.

“Have you ever seen someone jump from a building? Have you seen elderly, weak, women, and children holding bright red banners, crying until they fainted at Fu Ming’s entrance? Have you seen those workers guarding the construction site in the dead of winter, refusing to go home for New Year, still fantasizing that someone will help them recover their wages?

“When you go bankrupt and liquidate, you can’t take flights, you can’t stay in good hotels. You can only earn three or four thousand yuan a month, barely maintaining your life. You huddle in a small rented room, constantly changing residences several times, and you can vanish from the human world, dodging all the blame and insults. But me… but what about your son and wife? Can they escape? Everyone knows Zhang Jingchan is the son of a deadbeat. Those workers cry to him, hit him, curse him. The bankrupt small factory owners jump from buildings in front of his mother, terrifying her so much she cries every night having nightmares… All those people who used to be the best at boasting and flattering have become sharp-tongued, bitter creditors and enemies, each one wishing they could bite a piece of flesh from mother and son. From then on, they have no family and no friends—only creditors everywhere.

“What does it matter that you live in wretchedness until you finally commit suicide in old age? Once you’re dead, everything’s settled. But what about these people’s lives? It’s not just one person, two people. It’s not just your wife and son. It’s thousands upon thousands of people! Their lives are ruined by you—because of your earlier frenzied expansion, your ambition, your greed. All the decisions were made by you!

“Now that things have reached this point, you’re still worried about whether you can recover? Carrying 1 billion in debt or 2 billion—it’s the same burden. I’m now giving you an opportunity—an opportunistic, completely dishonorable chance that will let you luckily pay off all your debts. An opportunity that means you won’t have to feel ashamed toward so many people’s lives! That will let your son and wife live with dignity too. They won’t have to be humiliated because of you, won’t have to suffer because of you, won’t have to… with you…”

Zhang Jingchan stopped speaking, slowly finishing the last two words in his heart: “…separate.”