Chapter 49: Such a Grand Dream, Shattered by a Little Girl's Whim

Seven rivers run longitudinally from north to south through the old urban district of Wuzhou, and fourteen waterways cross horizontally from east to west.

In the ancient streets and alleys, the front doors face the street while the back doors open to the river; one might truly say that every household rests its pillows upon the water.

Wuzhou has successfully achieved a balance between its new and old urban districts, with the old city leaning toward the preservation and development of tourism.

Guanqian Street, renovated by the Lin Group, is bustling with a continuous stream of tourists regardless of the peak or off-peak seasons, becoming a textbook model for urban renewal across the country!

However, within the beautiful campus of Wuzhou Middle School, one could hardly perceive how fast the outside world was changing.

...

During the lunch break, Zhao Guangtao caught sight of Lin Cheng and Zhuang Shijing chatting animatedly in a corner from afar.

He carried his lunch tray over and squeezed himself between the two of them.

Zhuang Shijing was speaking eloquently: "The first time my mom met you was when the two of us got into a fight!"

With a sullen expression, Lin Cheng retorted, "Talk fewer nonsense, did I ever hit you?"

"Don't play dumb! There was going to be a parent-teacher meeting, and I was just doing my homework when you tugged my ponytail, untying it in one pull. So I chased after you. That was the exact scene my mom will remember for the rest of her life."

"Good grief! Back then my mom wasn't even angry; she just patiently retied my hair."

"Right at that moment, the teacher came over to complain, saying: 'Lin Cheng isn't being well-behaved! He's always bullying the girls!'"

"And your mom gave you a kick right in the backside! My mom hurried over to pull her back, saying all the while, 'Oh, children are just horsing around! Stop hitting him...'"

"What??" Zhao Guangtao asked, finding it hard to believe.

Giving Zhao Guangtao a look of utter disdain, Zhuang Shijing continued:

"That afternoon, after the parent-teacher meeting wrapped up, your mom told me: 'If Lin Cheng ever bullies you again, just tell the teacher to call me, and I'll beat the living daylights out of him...' For the next three years, the very first thing your mom said to me whenever she saw me was: 'Did he bully you again?! Ah哈哈哈..."

Zhuang Shijing laughed merrily. With her large eyes, long eyelashes, and the sunlight casting a glow on her fair face, she looked as cute as a ripe nectarine.

"Look at you laughing like a complete fool," Lin Cheng muttered, pulling out a tissue and slapping it squarely onto Zhao Guangtao's face. "Wipe your drool!"

Zhao Guangtao, whose skin was thicker than most, actually wiped his mouth and asked, "And then?"

"And then, um..."

At that moment, Lin Cheng's phone rang with a call from Tao Lu: "Hello?"

"Boss, an old courtyard house in Zongshan Court is up for its second auction. Do you want to take a look?"

Lin Cheng stood up, walked aside, and asked, "A courtyard? How big? What's the situation? Give me a brief rundown."

The owner of the courtyard was a retired teacher whose children had all gone to Guangdong Province to pursue their careers. To support her children in starting a business, the elderly woman had mortgaged the house, but unfortunately, the venture failed. Because it was an old courtyard, it had failed to sell twice at auction.

To think that Tao Lu had actually managed to find out the address of this courtyard!

One must know that judicial auction properties are completely different from regular second-hand homes; prospective buyers are not allowed to view the property prior to bidding.

It seemed Tao Lu's investigative work was exceptionally impressive!

Taking advantage of the lunch break, Lin Cheng quickly arranged to meet Tao Lu near Yunrui Bridge.

Passing through the ornamental flower gate, Lin Cheng greeted politely, "Granny, I'm here to look at the courtyard. I was wondering if it's available for rent?"

With properties involved in judicial auctions, one deeply fears malicious tenancies. Once a courtyard like this is leased out for a decade or eight years, it brings endless complications even if you successfully win the bid.

The retired teacher lowered her eyelids halfway, in no mood to pay attention to this puny little kid standing before her. After a long while, she finally spoke: "Eighteen thousand, not a penny less!"

Tao Lu blurted out anxiously, "Ah, that's so expensive! Even our office rent doesn't cost that much!"

The old teacher was taken aback; she had merely quoted an exorbitant price to quickly dismiss "this young couple."

Lin Cheng nodded. "It is a bit pricey. May I take a look around first?"

Walking into the courtyard, one could easily tell it had once belonged to a wealthy family:

There were lotus-leaf-shaped corbels, bracket sets, and cloud-patterned beams; interlocking wooden Dougong brackets were faintly visible between the beams; carvings adorned the windows and doors, though the heads of the human figures had all been cleanly hacked off.

These were the historical scars left behind by those turbulent years in the 1960s.

The first courtyard section housed the old teacher's ground-floor living quarters, followed by the second section: brick-veneered exterior walls, raised stone bases, and wooden pillar foundations resting on staddle stones...

The main building stood two stories tall, comprising three main bays flanked by two wing rooms; this was where the children had lived after getting married.

Behind the main building lay a smaller courtyard, separated from another household.

The property rights for courtyards of this type are notoriously complex because, shortly after the liberation, most of these residences were sealed up and turned into communal living spaces shared by multiple ordinary families, bearing a strong resemblance to the seventy-two tenants.

Fortunately, this particular small courtyard was clearly demarcated by the court, with all titles registered under the old woman's name.

After inspecting the courtyard, Lin Cheng exchanged polite farewells with the old woman and quickly hopped back onto Tao Lu's Indian Motorcycle to return to school.

Without pausing for breath, Tao Lu rushed over to the auction company to deposit the security bond, then headed straight to the archives center to verify whether the courtyard had been subjected to any consecutive seizure orders by other courts.

The second round of the auction had already slashed the price by 50%!

The opening bid was six hundred thousand!

Tao Lu ultimately secured it for seven hundred and ten thousand.

Within less than ten years, this courtyard would appreciate in value to tens of millions.

Under Lin Cheng's guidance, Tao Lu hastily applied for a mortgage loan—just as Lin Cheng had predicted: mortgaged at a market value of 1.4 million, she successfully pulled out a staggering loan of 700,000! Tao Lu felt so light on her feet she practically floated as she walked.

Recently, Cherry Media had been exceptionally busy. On one hand, Chen Yan was preparing the sample DM magazine issues for client preview; on the other, he was directing staff to guide clients through the rented printing workshop to observe the production process.

This twenty-eight-year-old young man seemed to have welcomed a new lease on life.

Pouring every ounce of his passion into his work, he seamlessly switched back and forth between being a senior high school homeroom teacher and an entrepreneurial boss.

Among Cherry Media's clients was one of his former high school classmates who now ran a Chinese restaurant and found Chen Yan's new role endlessly fascinating:

"I'm telling you, buddy, if you can resign, why not come work together with me on this? Is the stuff you're doing actually profitable?"

Chen Yan chuckled, "This isn't my company, I'm just working for a boss too. You focus on your own business; my energy is limited, my friend!"

"Let me tell you something, a gift manufacturing plant under Zhongmenda is struggling and about to go under. If you take it over and do something else, it'll be a lot more reliable than whatever you're messing with! That's real industry right there—something you can actually see and touch!"

During evening self-study, Lin Cheng fell asleep and dreamed of a vast plain. Banners fluttered thickly across the landscape, and sturdy horses galloped past. A river cut through the plain, ending at towering rock cliffs where ten thousand rays of dawn light pierced blindingly upward from the other side, resembling a scene straight out of Greek mythology.

He felt a strong gale blowing past his ears—a fierce, roaring wind!

Unconsciously, his eyes fluttered slightly, and he caught sight of a fair, tender, chubby, and soft cheek.

What the hell!

"You fool! Are you the one blowing on me? You blew all my mighty armies away!" Lin Cheng muttered sleepily.

Zhuang Shijing giggled musically and pointed toward the classroom doorway.

Following her gaze, Lin Cheng looked over and saw Chen Yan standing there, looking at him.

Chen Yan had come to tell Lin Cheng about the gift manufacturing plant recommended by his classmate.

This Zhongmenda Group was a colossal entity!

Although its name sounded like a foreign enterprise, it possessed deeply rooted domestic credentials. Having been established for only twenty years, it had already grown into an aircraft-carrier-sized mega-group.

(It was a giant enterprise directly managed by the state: a subsidiary group of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission / Sino-Machinery Group.)

Zhongmenda engaged in the entire industrial chain, spanning trade, services, engineering, investment, manufacturing, and the service sector... On the surface, it ranked 240th among global enterprises.

The sheer comprehensiveness of its operations was enough to make one's head spin.

It built ships and operated maritime shipping.

It undertook environmental engineering and developed clean energy—from water supply projects and hydroelectric power stations all the way to complete power transmission and transformation systems.

And that wasn't even all. As an invisible capital investment platform, the trade commodities it dabbled in ranged from petroleum and steel to timber and wool!

In terms of electromechanical import and export, it handled aviation products and manufactured auto parts as well.

Its power division spanned everything from landscaping agricultural machinery to various power-generating units.

Despite keeping such a low profile while ranking 240th globally, this full-industrial-chain enterprise also maintained divisions in apparel, education, scientific research, medical care, and smart home appliances...

State-owned and central enterprises of this caliber could stir up international situations at the highest level while touching the deepest capillaries at the grassroots level. To call it the lifeblood of the nation would be no exaggeration whatsoever.