◎ Cultivation ◎

The orders kept coming without pause; daily order volumes climbed higher each day. As her projections rose steadily upward, Gu Qiao had no choice but to postpone the Shanghai original-edition signing event.

Gu Qiao waited until every last product had come off the production line before booking her Shanghai itinerary. She informed Lin Haichuan of her plans.

A new property development was launching to the east. Lin Haichuan asked Gu Qiao if she wanted to buy in — the developer had seen him in a television drama and was specifically offering him a five percent discount. If Gu Qiao bought a unit, he could secure the same discount for her.

“You’ve made this much money — buy yourself two units. In business, no matter how much money passes through your hands, it’s still just passing through. Property you can actually hold onto.”

Gu Qiao told him she wasn’t considering buying property at the moment.

Lin Haichuan was beside himself with exasperation: “Business can go up or down. If you pour all your money back into the business and something goes wrong one day, you’ll be right back where you were three years ago… Trust me — if you have money, buy property. You can’t go wrong.” He had complained about Gu Qiao behind her back, called her a shameless profiteer more than once, but he couldn’t bear to watch someone work so hard to make money only to end up with nothing to show for it. When he read scripts with characters like that, he would want to reach into the page and shake them by the shoulders until they held on to what they’d earned.

He had once seen Gu Qiao surrounded by a crowd with nowhere to move and no way to do business. At the time he had been planning to demand more advertising fees from her — this profiteer had printed a photo of him in a pigskin leather jacket onto her *Huangdafa* car, driving it around the whole city as a rolling display for her leather jacket business. His classmates could see Gu Qiao’s leather jacket advertisements while sitting on the public bus. Being exploited to this degree, earning less than one yuan per day as her endorser — it was simply outrageous. That year, you could get a full body soaking of pigskin grease from the crush on the bus, with half the bus wearing leather jackets. The thought of how easily this profiteer made money had convinced him to assert his rightful interests.

But the day he stood in that hotel room and watched a room full of men corner Gu Qiao, she had been perfectly calm — not saying a word, just holding a tape recorder playing a pre-recorded explanation. She had apparently been blockaded long enough that she knew exactly what they’d say, so she’d simply recorded an explanation in advance to avoid having to repeat herself. The volume on the recorder was turned all the way up — louder than anything else in the room. Even so, the people blocking her showed no sign of leaving. Listening to that recording, Lin Haichuan felt nothing but pity for Gu Qiao.

He had changed his mind. The profiteer’s money wasn’t that easy to earn after all, and he did not ask her to raise his advertising fee.

Gu Qiao paid no attention to that, and simply asked: “How much more do you need?”

Lin Haichuan was still twenty thousand short, but he didn’t borrow money from women.

There was a new role on offer, with a decent fee, but when he read the script, he wasn’t particularly eager to take it — playing this kind of character would do real damage to his luminous image. The character was a man supported through university by a girl who worked in a factory, only to be set his sights on by an official’s daughter once he got to college and began wavering between the two women. His heart leaned toward the college classmate — they had things in common, he reasoned — but his conscience made it difficult for him to break up with the girl who had put him through school. The television drama being what it was, it took the idealized route: the factory girl turns out to be wonderfully kind-hearted, and graciously steps aside so the meant-to-be couple can be together.

Reading that part of the script, Lin Haichuan was furious. Only a fool would graciously step aside — why on earth would you make way for two insufferably self-pitying people? Make him pay back every cent.

The script reminded him of Gu Qiao’s ex-boyfriend. Gu Qiao was diligently earning her living, while her ex was studying abroad in America — wearing such a nice motorcycle jacket, with a manner that was clearly not that of someone willing to wash dishes to support himself. Who knew how much money he’d taken from Gu Qiao’s hands. The money this profiteer earned cent by cent, that man spent lavishly, doing the occasional bit of work for her with a face full of arrogance — nothing like Gu Qiao’s warmth. To live off a woman’s earnings so shamelessly and with such attitude — that was a certain kind of achievement. And when Gu Qiao had run into trouble, the man had vanished without a trace. Who knows whose tab he was running up by now.

He had no respect for any man who lived off a woman — let alone one who did it so shamelessly. Lin Haichuan genuinely couldn’t understand how Gu Qiao, sharp as she was in business, could be so blind in this particular area.

Lin Haichuan offered Gu Qiao a friendly word of advice: “If a man ever asks you for money, send him as far away as possible. Any man shameless enough to borrow money from a woman — every single one of them is beneath contempt. As for me — I would never, under any circumstances, borrow money from a woman.” He said this with great conviction, as though he were a benchmark for all men.

Gu Qiao listened to the end of Lin Haichuan’s theatrical declaration and suppressed a laugh.

She did not lend him money, but instead sat down with him to renegotiate and signed a new three-year contract. Looking over the terms, Lin Haichuan had no choice but to acknowledge that Gu Qiao was, in fact, a shameless profiteer. Still, the money did solve his immediate problem. He took it straight to the property sales office and signed the contract.

Gu Qiao took Xiao Tian from the shop along with her on the Shanghai business trip. Lin Haichuan laughed at Gu Qiao: “And you — making all this money, and still too stingy to buy yourself a first-class ticket.”

Lin Haichuan found sitting alone in first class deeply unrewarding, so he asked Gu Qiao to refund him the price difference and they would both fly economy together. His original plan had been to talk to Gu Qiao about his new property purchase on the flight. But with someone from Gu Qiao’s shop present, opening with talk of property price fluctuations would make him seem terribly crass. Someone on the plane might recognize him. He had no choice but to close his eyes and rest.

Worried about drawing too much attention, Lin Haichuan had put on a hat and sunglasses.

It was Xiao Tian’s first time on a plane. She wasn’t sure how to fasten her seatbelt and felt a little embarrassed. Gu Qiao buckled it for her, then smiled and told Xiao Tian about her own first time: “My first flight to Guangzhou — I thought drinks on the plane cost extra. When the flight attendant asked what I’d like, I said I didn’t want anything. The moment I realized the drinks were free, I immediately called her back and asked for an orange juice. Because it was an unexpected treat, drinking it felt wonderful — like getting away with something.”

Lin Haichuan lay there with his eyes closed, listening to Gu Qiao talk. If it were him, he would never turn his own clueless past into a story to tell for a laugh. This person really was something.

When the flight attendants came around with drinks, one of them recognized Lin Haichuan. He promptly put on a courteous smile, projecting his approachable side.

Gu Qiao sipped her orange juice and said to Xiao Tian with a smile: “Because I was prepared this time, there was a little less surprise — so it wasn’t quite as delightful as that first time.”

Lin Haichuan was genuinely perplexed. What kind of person was this, who could be so cheerful recounting her own lack of exposure to the world? You would never be able to tell any of it just from looking at her.

It was like a cicada shedding its shell. Gu Qiao seemed to have shed an old version of herself. The first time he’d met her, she still had some of the roundness of youth left in her face. He never would have imagined that this girl was about to hire him to shoot an advertisement.

When he saw that the car waiting to pick them up at the airport was a Cadillac, Lin Haichuan was quietly impressed. Gu Qiao had really made money this time. Back in the day, Gu Qiao would have gone straight for a Fiat at the airport — that sad little car cost even less than a Xiali. He had almost suspected, at the time, that half of Gu Qiao’s money was simply what she’d saved by not spending. It was unexpected to be treated with such importance today — she’d even arranged a car like this to come fetch her.

In fact, this had not been part of Gu Qiao’s plan at all. She had told Luo Peiyin there was absolutely no need to come pick her up — she could perfectly well take a taxi to the hotel.

If the Cadillac arriving to collect them had registered as a surprise level of 1 for Lin Haichuan, then the sight of who was driving it registered as a 100.

Without even removing his sunglasses, Lin Haichuan recognized the man who had taken photographs alongside Gu Qiao all those years ago — now wearing a cashmere overcoat with considerable style. Lin Haichuan almost found himself admiring Gu Qiao. Because of that admiration, he felt a kind of kindred connection to her.

Gu Qiao may have had questionable judgment in matters of the heart, but she had exceptional instincts in business. Back when this man had been by her side, Gu Qiao had never let her romantic feelings cloud her judgment and use him to shoot advertisements — she had specifically paid advertising fees to hire him, Lin Haichuan, instead. *With that kind of clear-headedness,* he told himself inwardly, *no wonder she’s making money.*

But he had clearly heard Gu Qiao say they had broken up — so what was happening today, with him suddenly showing up at the airport to receive her? Now that she was about to make money again, had he come crawling back? And that Cadillac — where had it come from? Lin Haichuan had a fondness for writing character sketches in his head and loved analyzing psychological motivations when reading scripts. He found himself speculating inwardly, casting glances at the man in the cashmere overcoat from the corner of his eye.

Times had changed. Lin Haichuan prided himself on having built a certain degree of fame, and was no longer the man who had posed for an entire afternoon of advertisements and walked away with only three hundred yuan. But this man barely glanced up at him — seemingly without recognizing him — before taking Gu Qiao’s suitcase and loading it into the trunk.

Gu Qiao made the introductions. For Lin Haichuan, she piled on modifiers: “excellent,” “very popular,” and various other compliments. These additions appeared to produce no visible change in the Cadillac driver’s expression — his response was polite and distant. When introducing Luo Peiyin, the only modifier Gu Qiao used was: “My boyfriend.”

Lin Haichuan wasn’t particularly startled by this introduction — Gu Qiao’s eyes had already given her away earlier. As a skilled actor, he was attuned enough to read other people’s emotions for that much. He registered several question marks in his mind, followed by a number of exclamation points. He finally understood the phrase *winning at business, losing at love*. Gu Qiao had come full circle, rebuilt her fortune by her own hands — and still fallen back into the same man’s trap.

Gu Qiao settled into the front passenger seat. Lin Haichuan sat in the back, shaking his head in exasperation inwardly. She was, however one looked at it, a successful woman now — couldn’t she at least learn something from experience?

Xiao Tian was quite fond of the roles Lin Haichuan had played before, and had always found his manner effortlessly stylish. But with someone else in the same frame for comparison, her idol’s style took on a slightly studied quality.

Lin Haichuan smiled and brought up the script he was currently reading. Gu Qiao was initially baffled — she couldn’t see any connection between the character in his script and herself.

“From this script, I’ve arrived at a conclusion. Do you know what happens when a woman cultivates a man?”

Xiao Tian expressed maximum curiosity at her idol’s question: “What do you think happens?”

“When a woman cultivates a man, there is only one outcome: she turns him into someone else’s man.”

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