“Mrs. Wilson didn’t invite me, Tina. As I’ve said several times, I’m just a regular student who was fortunate enough to help with the theater renovation. My relationship with Mrs. Wilson isn’t nearly as close as yours.”

So not receiving an invitation was perfectly normal.

“That’s impossible… I might have ruined Aunt Cynthia’s surprise,” Tina covered her mouth, trying to smooth over her words.

“It’s alright. Such parties belong to a different world than mine anyway,” Xia Xiaolan said while Tina felt extremely regretful. She had already decided that if Cynthia hadn’t invited Xia Xiaolan, she would secure an invitation for her. After all, now that Xia Xiaolan knew about it, wouldn’t she feel uncomfortable not receiving an invitation?

Watching Tina’s distress over her slip of the tongue, Xia Xiaolan felt guilty for a second. Was she going too far using this retreating-to-advance strategy to trick Tina into getting her an invitation?

Pan Baohua had caught on as well.

After leaving Tina’s house, Pan Baohua told Xia Xiaolan: “Zhang Jiandong has assigned more than five people to protect Tina. The security is very tight. Whatever Tina does in New York, whoever she meets, Zhang Jiandong knows about it immediately.”

“What if it’s just parental love?” Xia Xiaolan was trying to think positively. Maybe Zhang Jiandong was just an overprotective father, not a gang boss monitoring his daughter’s every move.

The Zhang family truly doted on Tina. Faan as her brother was like that, so having both a brother complex and a daughter complex wasn’t strange.

Pan Baohua frowned, “I’ll go check on that Xu kid again. Where did you say he works?”

“On Wall Street. There’s no weekend there; most people work seven days a week. Third Brother, you’re going to look for him?”

Pan Baohua insisted on calling Faan ‘that Xu kid.’

Xia Xiaolan thought visiting wouldn’t hurt, but she wasn’t sure if they could find Faan. She hadn’t specifically asked Tina about Faan’s exact workplace; Tina had volunteered that information.

Knowing the building but not the floor, Xia Xiaolan wasn’t sure if Pan Baohua could find him.

Pan Baohua seemed confident though.

Wall Street? So what?

He knew nothing about finance and couldn’t care less about this financial center.

“Just wait and see.”

Xia Xiaolan nodded, “Then I’ll just walk around Wall Street.”

She drove Pan Baohua to their destination, agreed on a meeting point, and he got out.

Pan Baohua stood out in the crowd, but he didn’t try to disguise himself. He just walked naturally, thinking if he didn’t act suspiciously, no one would stop him.

Xia Xiaolan didn’t interfere.

When her account had over a million dollars, she had thought about coming to this place several times.

If she could recall even slightly useful memories, that million dollars could yield significant profits.

But ultimately, Xia Xiaolan resisted the temptation. Money earned from real business felt secure; even if she lost, she’d know why. Gambling on Wall Street – how could she remember which stocks would rise or fall in 1986? It wasn’t about not being able to afford losing the money; it was about losing it without understanding why.

If she had been reborn in America, she might have tried her luck.

But with her foundation in China, wasn’t it better to earn money through her current business?

Besides, she no longer had over a million dollars in her account now. Half of it had become investments that Xu Jing and Ma Hai took back to Pengcheng. Those two were actively working, occasionally hitting obstacles, but generally progressing well.

Xia Xiaolan shifted her gaze and spotted a familiar figure:

“Oh?”

On Wall Street, she unexpectedly encountered Chen Qing again.

NYU’s Business School was nearby, so seeing Chen Qing wasn’t particularly strange.

Xia Xiaolan initially wanted to greet Chen Qing but hesitated, remembering the jealous Han Jin.

Chen Qing seemed somewhat dazed, veering off the sidewalk onto the street. A car nearly hit him, screeching to a halt as the driver stuck his head out, cursing.

Chen Qing remained in a stupor, standing motionless in the middle of the street, completely unresponsive to the driver’s abuse.

The driver kept honking furiously.

Presumably enraged, he shouted: “Yellow monkey, if you don’t move, I’m going to run you over!”

Had Chen Qing lost his mind?

Hearing the engine roar, Xia Xiaolan rushed forward and forcefully pulled Chen Qing away.

Chen Qing initially tried to resist but, upon recognizing Xia Xiaolan, suddenly lost all strength and let her drag him to the sidewalk.

Xia Xiaolan was angry too: “Chen Qing, what’s wrong with you? It’s like you were trying to get hit by that car!”

Had he lost his will to live?

Xia Xiaolan despised anyone who didn’t value their own life. To put it bluntly, if someone wanted to die, there were various ways to do it. Cowards should at least be discreet about it, and die quietly, why cause trouble for others?

Jumping from buildings might hurt passersby.

Getting hit by a car would also bring misfortune to the driver!

Xia Xiaolan spoke harshly, and Chen Qing mumbled: “It’s all over, Xiaolan, everything’s gone. I shouldn’t have been so careless…”

His words were jumbled; Xia Xiaolan couldn’t understand. She dragged Chen Qing to a nearby coffee shop, ordered him a coffee, and he clutched the cup for over ten minutes before speaking.

“I lost everything – my parents’ money, my grandfather’s money, my uncle’s family’s money.”

“Lost everything?!”

Looking around at their location on Wall Street, Chen Qing a business school student who had studied finance at the University of International Business and Economics, Xia Xiaolan understood everything.

This was Wall Street, where tragic stories like Chen Qing’s, losing everything, happened daily. Nothing unusual about it.

Chen Qing was just wandering around in a daze – some who lost everything jumped from building tops in despair, never to recover.

“How much did you lose?”

Chen Qing’s smile was more bitter than the coffee: “Ten thousand dollars.”

Xia Xiaolan drew in a sharp breath.

Ten thousand dollars wasn’t much for her.

But for Chen Qing, this would empty his entire family’s savings. His parents certainly couldn’t produce $10,000, Chen Wangda’s savings, and even Chen Qing’s uncle’s family – whom Xia Xiaolan had previously given the pork crackling business to-.

“You’ve gone mad! You asked your family for ten thousand dollars to trade stocks?”

Ten thousand dollars!

Only in recent years had farmers’ lives improved somewhat. Chen Wangda was the village chief, and the Chen family was considered well-off in Qi Jing Village.

But ten thousand dollars, equivalent to at least seventy or eighty thousand yuan, must have required the entire extended family’s help to gather… This money probably included savings from Chen’s family members who had gone to work in Pengcheng with her uncle Liu Yong.

“I was winning at first…”

Xia Xiaolan didn’t want to hear this. “Yes, you got lucky at first, thought you were some stock market genius, and confidently invested more money. What I want to know now is, what reason did you give your family to get this much money, and how did they manage to send it to America?”

In a small place like Anqing, there wasn’t even a black market for exchanging dollars!

Even if they went to the commercial city, how did a family of farmers manage to exchange $10,000?