Chapter 01: Prologue - Prosperity Blooms Before Eyes for a Season

Crack... Bang—

Flames burned as electrical circuits crackled and sparked. When he crawled out of the overturned car, his vision was somewhat blurred.

The riverside park at night—the city's dense lights flickered like flames on the opposite shore, resembling a massive fortress floating on the water. That prosperous scene contrasted sharply with the park's remoteness and solitude on this side. He remembered that he'd overseen this park's development project more than ten years ago.

"It was a failed development..."

Wind blew past as he sighed, staggering toward those hazy water lights. Behind him, the car suddenly erupted in a massive explosion. Flames shot up and the heat wave swept over from behind as if to engulf him. The sound of helicopters came from the sky, followed by a bright beam of light illuminating his vision. Someone shouted from above. Vehicles pursuing from both sides of the park had arrived too—mostly police cars, all kinds of lights, complete chaos.

His head was still groggy and blood flowed down from his forehead. He wiped it away and tightened his windbreaker. On both sides of the river, hovercraft and speedboats swarmed in to prevent him from jumping into the water to escape.

"Really... I'm not some assassin..."

The dense encirclement by land, sea, and air made him feel somewhat irritated. His vision wasn't clear anymore, and he understood in his heart that there might not be much chance of luck this time. Cold wind blew past. What came to mind instead were some unimportant matters. This was the city where he'd grown up. Back then the city wasn't this nice. Standing on this side of the riverbank, you couldn't see the entire city's splendor, glorious as a palace, but it felt warm. This side of the riverbank was all dirt slopes too, a yellow dirt path. When going from home to school, he often rode his bicycle past here with several friends.

"In the future I'll build a park here, make it more beautiful, have tall buildings everywhere in the city, and we'll all live in them..."

He was still young then. After visiting the prosperous provincial capital, this was the grand ambition he'd set. What a spirited age that was. In the following twenty or thirty years, like a primitive man who'd just invented stone knives and axes, he'd forged ahead with astonishing courage, crossing countless dangerous obstacles that others couldn't imagine, establishing one of the world's premier financial empires. Sometimes when he thought about it, even he felt it was like a dream.

In others' eyes, he'd already become a financial giant who absolutely couldn't be defeated. He'd thought so too, yet when he returned to his hometown at this moment, he gradually understood—this park had failed after all.

Its original intention was to make everyone happy...

The failed development project could have been salvaged later. It just required investing large amounts of capital—for him now, this amount of money wasn't much—yet why had he never done it? When he'd still wanted to do it, it was because funds weren't abundant. Now, he'd deliberately bypassed it because there was no profit. Thinking about it now, many things he thought he remembered were actually forgotten. Many things he thought he'd forgotten were actually remembered again...

Those friends and companions from back then, the expectation of making the world better, the promises made, the roads traveled. He sat down on a stone bench by the riverbank. The lights were glaring, his emotions complex as he fumbled in his pockets. At a time like this, he really needed a cigarette, though he'd quit for a long time...

Someone handed him a cigarette.

The person wore a suit and gold-rimmed glasses, standing beside him. Actually, he knew who it was without looking up as he took the cigarette. The man with gold-rimmed glasses took out a lighter, shielding it from the wind with his hand, and lit it for him.

"I remembered things from before. We rode bicycles to school together from here—you, me, Qingyi, A-Kang, Ruoping... Qingyi died two years ago, right? I couldn't attend his funeral..." He took a drag, and when he exhaled, the cold wind immediately dispersed it. "How's Ruoping?"

"She has two children now, doing pretty well." The man with glasses sat down.

"Ah... you told me before, I almost forgot..." He thought for a moment, then smiled. "She was the prettiest among the girls. I remember I always had a crush on her, never dared to confess."

The man beside him was silent for a while, then also took out a lighter and lit a cigarette. "I knew you liked her. I confessed to her before you did, got rejected... She said she liked you."

"You never told me about this..."

"What could I do? Later we were all fighting for our futures. You forgot about her, and she couldn't keep waiting for you forever. You didn't confess, so she got married."

"Yeah, missed a lot of things..."

"You always strived for perfection."

"You know? When you reach the peak..." He thought for a moment, raised his hand to indicate a height. "When you reach the peak, you'll find that besides a moment of achievement, there's actually nothing. You'll always feel... regret... The path you're walking now might not be what you desperately wanted at the beginning..."

"Yeah." The man with glasses said.

After a moment of silence, he looked at the cigarette in his hand, already very short. "That deficit of over ten billion will be troublesome to handle. I knew months ago, already made a contingency plan, it's on my computer... Just didn't expect your reaction would be this intense. A change of leadership at the company can indeed shift the deficit onto some people's heads, makes things much easier. Modify the plan a bit, try not to affect too many people. After all, we've all fought together for so long."

"...I." The man beside him hesitated, as if wanting to explain something, but ultimately just said, "Sorry."

"It's nothing. We've come this far together, it's always been me standing in front. We're brothers, it's your turn to try... This setup is very good. The company is yours, it won't fall. Just... afterward, spend some money to properly develop this park area. I always wanted to do it, always thought I remembered, but when I did remember, I felt there was no rush, kept delaying it..."

"I told them that after this, you can still live well..."

"If you cut the grass without removing the roots, it grows back when spring winds blow. Letting the tiger return to the mountain..." He turned his head, his calm gaze carrying a kind of severity. "Who do you think you are?"

"As long as I'm alive, I'm a threat to you!" He paused, threw the cigarette butt on the ground and crushed it. "It's lonely at the top—walking to this point in this lifetime is enough. Even if I could start over, I'd want to start fresh, unburdened and clean. All that messy dirty business, the scheming... if I could do it again..."

He smiled and stood up. "If I could do it again, I think I would confess to her..."

Helicopters circled in the sky, boats sped across the water, vehicles surrounded the park on all sides. In the spotlight on the riverbank, the standing man suddenly drew a gun, pointing it at the man with glasses beside him. Seeing his action, the man with glasses also stood up at the same time, raising his hands and waving at the surrounding people: "Don't shoot—"

Gunfire erupted densely. Blood blossomed behind him. After a long while, he finally turned around and stared at the corpse lying in a pool of blood. He stood there dazed, took off his glasses, wiped them several times before putting them back on, and picked up the gun from the corpse's hand.

"I said don't shoot... There were no bullets..."

In the night wind, he murmured.

(End of Chapter)