Master Qiu had no intention of explaining further to Chai Hai, only instructing him to take away the items on the table.

The jade items were precious. Chai Hai carved holes in foam padding, carefully packed each piece including the vases, and left the village house carrying two large wicker cases.

Life in the countryside was very peaceful. After a few dog barks echoed through the village, complete silence returned.

No mansion.

No luxury cars.

Not even many modern appliances.

While Chai Hai said Du Zhaohui had issues, if Du Zhaohui knew someone with vast wealth chose to live such an ascetic life, he would likewise say Master Qiu had issues!

The night deepened.

Master Qiu lay on his hard bed, breathing softly. Moonlight shone through the half-open window onto his face, revealing his eyes were open.

He wasn’t sleeping at all.

This wasn’t unusual – when someone managed a business that couldn’t afford mistakes and was responsible for their subordinates, their thoughts naturally ran deeper than ordinary people’s.

While Chai Hai worried that the Du family wanted to interfere with the antiques business due to misunderstanding, Master Qiu saw more clearly than Chai Hai. The Du family currently wanted nothing more than to shed those shadowy businesses – why would they get involved in antiques?

Which was more profitable – selling antiques or developing and speculating in real estate?

Du Chengrong wasn’t a fool.

Neither was Master Qiu.

Everyone in this world has their troubles, unrelated to money. Poor people are worried about their three daily meals. Once they could eat their fill, they wanted clothes, then housing, then cars, then new wives… Master Qiu’s troubles had nothing to do with these things. These were poor people’s troubles that money could solve, but his troubles couldn’t be solved by money alone.

“Ah…”

Who knows what Master Qiu thought of as he sighed at the moon, forcing himself to close his eyes.

People need rest. Without basic sleep, they’re like constantly burning candles – they’ll quickly burn out.

…

While it was night in Hong Kong, it was already the next morning in New York.

On her first day reporting to GMP’s New York office, Xia Xiaolan left early but still almost arrived late. She had underestimated how terrible New York’s morning rush hour was – the traffic jams were no less severe than in major Chinese cities thirty years later.

Arriving at GMP’s office just in time, she watched helplessly as the elevator doors closed in her face. Xia Xiaolan was so frustrated she wanted to scratch the walls.

“Wasn’t that Matthew?”

Before the elevator doors closed, she saw Matthew Carlton inside. Had he not heard her call to wait?

How petty and childish!

Just arrived at GMP, and Matthew was already treating her as competition. Xia Xiaolan frantically pressed the button for another elevator, caught between laughter and tears. If he wanted to win against her, fine, but he could be more upfront about it. Why resort to such petty tricks?

Did he think making her late on her first day would make him look better by comparison?

This small delay nearly made her late to the office. New York not only had rush hour traffic but also elevator rush hour, with white-collar workers clutching coffee and bags hurrying into various office buildings.

Xia Xiaolan was rushing, but so was everyone else. No one would let her take the elevator first just because she was pretty.

Pretty?

Looking around, how many unattractive people would you find in such office buildings?

Looks were thirty percent natural and seventy percent grooming – with money to spend on oneself, no one would look too bad.

Besides, everyone was too rushed, thinking about not being late for work, yesterday’s unfinished tasks, today’s problems – no one had time to appreciate beauty.

Xia Xiaolan arrived at the office slightly out of breath:

“I’m the intern from Cornell University, I—”

The receptionist, busy with phone calls, pointed her inside. The day had barely begun, but GMP’s New York office was already in battle mode. Matthew, who had arrived earlier than Xia Xiaolan, wore a suit specially prepared for the internship and smiled like a gentle sheep – Matthew was obediently listening to a woman in her thirties as Xia Xiaolan hurried forward.

“Hello.”

“You’re the other intern?”

The woman glanced at her watch, saw there was still one minute until the appointed time, and said nothing.

As long as she wasn’t late, what difference did it make arriving one minute or five minutes early? The woman wouldn’t treat Matthew differently just because his smile made him look like a handsome sheep.

No matter how handsome, a sheep was still a sheep, and GMP wasn’t a pasture!

“I’ll show you around the office. For these two months, I’ll be responsible for both of you. You can call me Grey.”

Grey was truly straightforward – no need to guess her thoughts as she meant exactly what she said. After quickly showing Xia Xiaolan and Matthew around, she handed each of them a sheet:

“Your work schedule for this week.”

Grey’s handling of interns was rough and simple. She had no intention of coddling them like children. GMP didn’t even want two interns, but since Foster and P&W had taken interns, GMP had no choice.

So what to do?

Pile work on the interns – with a little thought, there were always plenty of miscellaneous tasks waiting to be done in the office.

Xia Xiaolan and Matthew looked at each other.

“Senior Carlton, GMP has no intention of letting us participate in projects, at least not now. We’re both doing office miscellaneous work, so next time you don’t need to run so fast in the elevator, right?”

Matthew looked at his list – tasks that were both trivial and time-consuming. It would be an achievement just to complete these tasks in a week, let alone have the energy for anything else.

Grey hadn’t introduced them to anyone either. Two Cornell undergraduates didn’t warrant the entire office stopping work to welcome them—

“Xia, you misunderstand me. When I saw you, it was already too late, the elevator doors closed too quickly! Let’s look at the list – there’s a lot of work here that requires us to collaborate. You don’t want to spend two months at GMP just printing documents and buying coffee, right? We should cooperate, try to join the Wilson Hotel project… whether we collaborate or not is up to you.”

Matthew put away his sheep smile, looking notably more sincere.

This person was quite good at adapting – initially afraid Xia Xiaolan would steal his spotlight, but upon discovering GMP didn’t take either of them seriously, he switched to wanting to team up with her to try changing GMP’s impression of them as interns.

Xia Xiaolan wasn’t angry at all, nor did she rebuke Matthew.

When Matthew extended his hand, she quickly shook it.

This was the workplace, where people changed faces faster than turning pages. She had seen plenty who acted submissive one moment and domineering the next. Matthew was still nowhere near that level, still showing student-like naivety.

Xia Xiaolan smiled even more sincerely than Matthew, “We need to do well with the work Grey assigned. It’s not like they’re keeping one and letting the other go, so why should we compete? We should work together to change Ms. Grey’s opinion of us.”

Grey wasn’t even a senior architect, still relatively new to GMP.

But she had full authority over two interns.

Trying to bypass Grey to get involved in the Wilson Hotel project was pure fantasy. It was more realistic for them to work together to win over Ms. Grey. Of course, Xia Xiaolan wasn’t naive – with Matthew’s “prior record” of being calculating, she wouldn’t fully trust anything he said!

Win over Ms. Grey while staying wary of Matthew’s potential betrayal – this was how Xia Xiaolan’s internship at GMP began.