Return to 88: Starting from Marrying My Sister-in-law

The intense afternoon sun in Singapore casts dappled, slightly soft shadows on the floor through the UV-protective coating on the floor-to-ceiling windows of the garden villa.

The air conditioner hummed softly, maintaining the coolness of the room, but it couldn't dispel the intense emotions and subtle awkwardness that filled the air, born from the long-awaited reunion.

Du Yuanyuan stood in the center of the living room, looking travel-worn, her gaze fixed on her daughter, Xu Siqi, who hurried out from the inner room upon hearing the noise.

After not seeing her for several years, her daughter seemed to have lost some weight, and her brows showed more of the gentle grace of a mother, but she couldn't hide a trace of fatigue.

Du Yuanyuan's eyes instantly reddened, her lips trembled slightly, and a thousand words stuck in her throat.

"Mom!" Xu Siqi's voice was choked with sobs as she rushed forward and hugged her mother tightly.

Du Yuanyuan's body stiffened slightly at first, then she hugged her daughter tightly. The longing, worry, guilt, and the barriers that had been suppressed for so long, which she had deliberately avoided, all turned into hot tears at this moment, silently soaking their shoulders.

They simply embraced tightly, as if trying to meld each other into their own bodies. There were no explanations, no questions. The iceberg that had stood between mother and daughter seemed to have melted away in the torrent of tears, and neither of them tried to touch it again.

After a long while, his emotions calmed down a bit.

Xu Siqi wiped away her tears, a bright smile blooming on her face, her eyes glistening with tears. She eagerly took her mother's hand and led her to the corner of the living room.

There, a Filipino maid was carefully holding a sleeping baby.

“Mom, look at her.” Xu Siqi’s voice was very low, full of maternal pride and tenderness. She gently touched the baby’s pink cheeks. “Does she look like me? Isn’t she cute? Look at her eyebrows and eyes… Feifei, Feifei? Wake up and look, who’s here to see you? It’s Grandma.”

The baby smacked its lips in its sleep but did not wake up.

"Feifei?" Du Yuanyuan repeated the name, her gaze falling on her little granddaughter's face, her eyes filled with complex emotions, including the affection of first meeting and scrutiny. "Could it be from the poem 'Gathering Ferns' in the Book of Songs?"

"Ok!"

Xu Siqi nodded vigorously, her eyes shining, and said, "'When I left, the willows were swaying; now I return, the rain and snow are falling.' Mom, her name is Lu Feifei, isn't it nice?"

"Lu Feifei..." Du Yuanyuan murmured softly, lifting her gaze from the baby's face, passing over her daughter's expectant eyes, and finally landing on Lu Yang, who stood silently a few steps away, observing everything with a calm expression!

"Last name is Lu?"

Her tone was soft, with an indescribable pause, and the question at the end was almost inaudible. But the subtle change that flashed in the depths of her eyes clearly showed that she had some reservations about the surname "Lu" instead of the "Xu" or "Du" she had hoped for.

However, she quickly suppressed this emotion, turned her gaze back to her granddaughter's face, and forced a smile, "It sounds nice, it's a good name, all your schooling hasn't been in vain."

My daughter is a talented woman.

But the story being performed now isn't a tale of talented scholars and beautiful women.

Someone may be rich, with more money than they can spend, but they may not be culturally competent.

Du Yuanyuan thought to herself.

She admitted that she had underestimated the young man behind her, but he was inferior to her daughter in at least one aspect: culture. Her family were all well-educated intellectuals, while this young man, apart from being rich, good at business, and riding the wave of the times, was nothing special. For example, when it came to naming the child, didn't she still have to rely on her daughter?
Lu Yang took in Du Yuanyuan's subtle changes in expression, but remained expressionless.

He knew that his cheap mother-in-law was always proud and arrogant, and had a strong desire to control her daughter. In her eyes, the fact that her granddaughter did not take her mother's surname was probably another example of the Lu family "taking an inch and wanting a mile".

However, he was even clearer about the core purpose of Du Yuanyuan's trip.

Sure enough, after awkwardly playing with her sleeping granddaughter for a while and chatting with her daughter about everyday things, Du Yuanyuan finally turned her complex gaze, filled with scrutiny, inquiry, and a deliberately restrained politeness, to Lu Yang.

Having resigned from her public office, she now resembles a professional manager seeking a new beginning, a job seeker drawn by the multi-million dollar entertainment company manager position promised by Lu Yang himself.

At her age, money is certainly important, but what she can't let go of is the sense of control and influence that comes with wealth and power, and these are precisely the things that the young man in front of her can give her.

Based on my initial conversation with my daughter.

She already knew that her daughter was doing very well here. Not only did she live in the mansion in front of her, but the property rights of the mansion were also registered in her daughter's name. She even learned from her daughter that the entertainment company she was going to register for tens of millions of US dollars had been promised to be passed on to her granddaughter Lu Feifei in the future. As long as the little girl came of age, she could inherit the money according to the procedure and have more money than she could spend in her lifetime.

What's there to worry about?

So what if we don't have that piece of paper?
The arrogance and condescension that once characterized them now seemed quite fragile under Lu Yang's massive financial offensive.

Lu Yang met her gaze with a calm expression.

He understood her needs and didn't intend to make things difficult for her at this time and place, after all, she was Siqi's mother.

But deep down, he never liked Du Yuanyuan's overly realistic and calculating way of doing things.

He didn't say much, only nodded slightly, his tone calm but carrying an undeniable certainty: "What I promised you, Auntie, has been arranged. The company registration is complete, and all the funds are in place. The relevant documents and legal agreements will be delivered later. You and your daughter can have a good talk."

Having said that, he didn't linger, turned around and walked towards the study, leaving the space entirely to the mother and daughter who had just "reconciled."

Almost at the same moment Lu Yang's figure disappeared behind the study door, the latest technological feature on the living room wall, the small LCD TV screen, which was originally playing local Singapore news, was abruptly switched.

The logo of major global financial media outlets.

Bloomberg.

Reuters.

CNBC, etc...

As if receiving a unified command, a bombshell announcement from Shenzhen, China, was delivered to the world with a bold, eye-catching headline and a rapid broadcast:
[Century Group invests heavily to support the Hong Kong government! Mainland tycoon Lu Yang spends a whopping US$30 billion to challenge George Soros!]

[Century Group Announcement: Precisely targeting Microsoft yielded over $10 billion in profits; $30 billion in reserves are ready to support Hong Kong stocks!]

[A Mysterious Eastern Force Enters the Scene? Where Did the Billion-Dollar Profit Come From? 3 Billion vs. 100 Billion Yuan in Speculative Capital: A Mantis Trying to Stop a Chariot or a Fatal Blow?] Bloomberg's analysis of Lu Yang's "Microsoft Attack" is considered a stroke of genius, questioning the source of his funds and his timing!

Reuters focuses on the "$30 billion market support declaration," emphasizing its symbolic significance and enormous risks in the current panicked market!
CNBC interviewed a white analyst to discuss whether this represents the formal and high-profile intervention of mainland Chinese capital in Hong Kong's financial defense, and the possible chain reaction it could trigger, with a hint of the great power threat theory in the conversation.

The Singapore English news channel, which relayed these international news reports, went so far as to dub Lu Yang the "Warren Buffett of the East." In addition, it detailed the Century Group's eight-inch wafer fab project in Singapore's semiconductor industrial park, a joint investment with the Singapore government, with already secured funding reaching a staggering US$800 million… At the end, the host affectionately referred to Lu Yang as a good friend of the people of Singapore…

As Du Yuanyuan looked at the words "Billion-dollar profit", "Billion-dollar market support", "Stock God Lu Yang", and "Eastern Buffett" on the screen, and recalled how Lu Yang had casually mentioned "funds in place" just now, the shock she felt was far greater than when she saw her granddaughter.

For the first time, she directly felt the wealth empire controlled by this cheap son-in-law and the power to manipulate events. The promise of being a "ten million dollar agent" seemed incredibly real and tempting at this moment, making her mindset in front of Lu Yang more complicated and restrained.

"Mom? What's wrong with you?"

Xu Siqi noticed her mother's unusual behavior and followed her gaze to the screen. The English broadcast of financial news and the scrolling subtitles left her somewhat bewildered, but the astronomical figures and Lu Yang's name were crystal clear to her.

She instinctively felt proud of Lu Yang.

He straightened his chest.

Du Yuanyuan opened her mouth, but a thousand thoughts were stuck in her throat.

Shock, apprehension, and a hint of indescribable awe finally coalesced into a complex sigh. She forced a smile, but her gaze involuntarily drifted toward the tightly closed study door.

Resentment over surnames and calculations of interests were forcibly pushed into the deeper corners of the heart in the face of absolute overwhelming power.

After regaining her composure from the shock, Du Yuanyuan began to have a deeper conversation with her daughter, turning her attention to the matter of the "million-dollar agent." She was determined to protect this company, which had already reached the level of tens of millions of dollars at the beginning of its business, for her daughter—no, for her granddaughter.

Inside, heavy curtains blocked out the scorching Singapore afternoon sun, leaving only the soft blue light from multiple high-definition screens, outlining Lu Yang's tall and serene profile.

He didn't sit down at all; instead, he stood with his back to the door, like a general strategizing in the wings, his hawk-like gaze fixed on the monitor in front of him, which was constantly changing images.

A screen scrolled through headlines from major global financial media outlets, including Bloomberg, Reuters, and CNBC. Headlines such as "Lu Yang Attacks Microsoft," "Mysterious Eastern Capital Makes a High-Profile Entry," and "$30 Billion Challenges a Hundred Billion Short Seller" flooded the screen, with a cacophony of voices—questioning, amazement, analysis, and pessimism—forming a noisy information tsunami.

On another screen, the real-time fluctuations of major global market indices were displayed, with particular focus on the Hang Seng Index in Hong Kong, which had just finished trading. In the last few minutes before the close, it seemed to have been injected with a shot of adrenaline by this explosive announcement that had spread globally, pulling it out of the mire of a deep decline with a steep upward tail line, leaving a symbolic "V" shaped angle. Trading volume surged in the final moments of the day.

A barely perceptible, cold smile curved Lu Yang's lips.

This is just the beginning.

The actors are in place, the show is about to begin, and now it's just a matter of waiting to see how everyone reacts. And this show is likely to go on for a very, very long time…

Port city.

Victoria Peak, Repulse Bay.

Almost simultaneously, an urgent financial briefing was delivered to Li Ka-shing's study.

He put down the purple clay teapot in his hand, took the report, and his gaze swept over keywords such as "Lu Yang", "30 billion US dollars" and "showing his sword against Soros". His deep eyes suddenly sharpened, and he stared for a long time at the photo on the briefing that was too young but had a sharp edge.

Meanwhile, on the top floor of PCCW's headquarters in the heart of Central, a private cocktail party was underway.

The high-spirited "Little Superman" Li Zekai held his wine glass, listening to his trusted aide report the sensational news in a low voice. He was slightly taken aback at first, then, as if he had heard some absurd joke, a sneer spread across his face.

"Ha!" He chuckled, drawing sidelong glances from several well-dressed business tycoons around him.

Swirl the amber liquid in the glass.

Little Superman's voice wasn't loud, but it was enough for his close circle to hear clearly: "Thirty billion? US dollars? This Lu guy has some big money to spare, some big talk! Is he making a movie for Beijing? Soros' Quantum Fund, plus those international financial giants, with leverage, can easily handle hundreds of billions of US dollars. His little bit of money, thrown into the whirlpool of Hong Kong, wouldn't even make a sound! A nouveau riche is a nouveau riche. He thinks he's Warren Buffett just because he made a fortune on Microsoft? How naive!"

The contempt and disdain in his tone were palpable.

The few people around him who echoed him let out low chuckles.

The old Superman put down the briefing, took off his reading glasses, and rubbed his temples.

He picked up the intercom on the table, his voice steady and authoritative: "Call Victor over."

A moment later, Li Zeju stood respectfully in front of his father's desk.

Li Ka-shing pushed the briefing in front of him, emphasizing Lu Yang's name and the glaring number "30 billion" with his finger.

Did you see today's headlines?

The old man's voice wasn't loud, "Your younger brother was outside just now, probably laughing at people again for 'showing off' and 'overestimating themselves'."

Li Zeju did not answer immediately, but carefully observed his father's expression.

The old Superman slowly got up, walked to the huge floor-to-ceiling window, and looked down at the dazzling yet turbulent night view of Victoria Harbour.

"That's where he falls short of you; his judgment of people and things is far too superficial!"

The old man turned around, his eyes piercing. "Lu Yang, this man, managed to snatch a billion dollars in profit from Microsoft, a feat that his vision, timing, and audacity are beyond the reach of ordinary nouveau riche. Now, with Hong Kong in turmoil and international financial giants pressing in, he has chosen this critical juncture to announce, as a private company, a huge amount of money to support the Hong Kong government... Do you think he's just doing this for show? For that little bit of fame?"

He paused for a moment, letting the weight of his words settle. "No. This is a 'show of force'! It's a clear 'statement'! If there weren't deeper confidence and tacit understanding behind it, if there weren't accurate judgments about the overall situation, would he be so 'reckless'? Three billion US dollars is real money, throwing it down is an attitude, it's power! Enough to temporarily boost confidence and stir up a murky pool."

The elder Superman walked back to the table, looking directly at his eldest son: "Victor, remember, in the business world, judge people by their actions, not their intentions! Regardless of Lu Yang's inner thoughts, what he's doing now is standing on the side of the Hong Kong government, on the side of the nation's will. This 'action,' this sense of responsibility, is enough to earn him unprecedented prestige and political capital in Hong Kong and in the government! This man, after this battle, has truly become a force to be reckoned with; he's no longer someone to be underestimated."

His voice lowered, carrying a deep admonition: "Instead of vainly despising and mocking him like your brother, you should think carefully about whether our Li family should compete or cooperate with such a 'Eastern Buffett' who stirs up trouble, wields substantial wealth, and has a clear stance. He's made this move; how should we respond?" The air in the study was heavy, and the night view of Hong Kong outside the window seemed to be brewing an even fiercer storm. (End of Chapter)