Super Rich: Starting the game by going back ten years to buy Bitcoin

"You're dead."

Four words. No exclamation marks, no emojis, just four clean and simple words, yet the murderous aura emanates from the screen.

Li Yichen flipped his phone over and placed it face down on the table.

My temples throbbed twice.

Liu Xiaoyu sat opposite him, unaware of his unusual behavior. She held her coffee cup, warming her hands against the sides, her head bowed.

"Yichen, it's really too late today."

She glanced at the clock on the coffee shop wall—9:03.

"Let's do it another day. I'll do it when I'm free—"

Before she could finish speaking, her phone rang in her pocket.

The ringing was jarring and stood out starkly in the quiet coffee shop.

Liu Xiaoyu took out her phone, glanced at the caller ID, and paused for half a second.

"My brother."

She gestured to Li Yichen to accept it.

"Feed? Brother."

The voice on the other end of the phone wasn't loud, but in the quiet shop, Li Yichen could hear it roughly even across a table.

"Xiaoyu, did Lao Zhao come to see you today?"

Liu Qiang.

I haven't heard this person's voice for six years, but that impatient air hasn't changed at all. Back when I ambushed him in the alley, he was exactly the same—getting straight to the point without uttering a single unnecessary word.

Liu Xiaoyu held her phone and leaned back in her chair.

"I came by. But I've already left."

There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone.

"Gone?" Liu Qiang's voice rose a beat. "What do you mean 'gone'? He took four or five people with him—are you alright?"

"It's okay. It's really okay."

Liu Xiaoyu ran her fingers along the rim of the cup, then glanced at Li Yichen. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but then closed it again.

"That money... has already been paid off."

There was a full three-second silence on the other end of the phone.

"Payed off?" Liu Qiang's voice rang out sharply. "Over nine million—who paid it off?"

"I'll tell you when I get back."

Liu Xiaoyu switched her phone to her other hand.

"Brother, I'll be back in a bit, don't worry."

"you--"

"It's over."

She hung up the phone and put it back in her pocket.

Li Yichen watched her put away her phone, a slight twitch at the corner of his mouth. He didn't ask her why she hadn't explained things clearly on the phone. He guessed she was afraid Liu Qiang would explode on the phone and press her for "who gave the money"—which would inevitably lead to his name being mentioned.

Given Liu Qiang's attitude towards him back then, once this name comes out, he won't have a moment's peace tonight.

Liu Xiaoyu stood up and pushed her chair towards the table.

"I have to go now."

Li Yichen stood up as well.

"I'll give you a ride. The car's downstairs."

Liu Xiaoyu shook her head.

"No need, I came by bike. I parked my electric scooter at the back entrance of the mall."

Li Yichen frowned.

At nine o'clock in the evening, a girl rode her electric scooter across most of the city—but judging from Liu Xiaoyu's appearance, she didn't seem like someone who could be persuaded. This stubbornness was exactly the same as it had been in high school.

"Then I'll walk you downstairs."

She had no chance to refuse. He had already taken a step.

The two left the coffee shop, crossed the atrium, and went up the descending escalator. There were far fewer people in the mall than before, and most shops had already started turning off their lights. The GG light boxes on both sides of the escalator were gradually moving upwards.

We arrived at the first floor.

Stepping out of the mall's back door, the air outside was stifling and carried the scorching smell of asphalt that had been baking in the sun all day.

The lights in the parking area were dim, sparsely illuminating a few electric scooters and bicycles. Liu Xiaoyu walked to the gray electric scooter in the corner, unlocked it, and took her helmet off the hook on the back seat.

She wasn't in a hurry to wear it.

Holding the helmet in his hands, he turned around and looked at Li Yichen.

The lights from the back entrance of the mall shone from behind her, casting a pale yellow hue around her silhouette. The neckline of her workwear skirt was flipped up by the wind.

She opened her mouth.

Then it closed again.

Open it again.

"Yichen".

"Um."

Liu Xiaoyu pinched the edge of the helmet twice with her fingers. Her fingernails scraped against the plastic shell, making a soft scratching sound.

"This time... you won't disappear again, will you?"

The last syllable of his voice trailed off. It wasn't a question, nor a test. It was someone who had been abandoned once, cutting off their own escape route before reaching out a second time.

Li Yichen looked at her.

A gust of wind blew in through the back door of the mall, causing a stray hair to flutter by her ear. Her tear-stained eyes reflected the dim yellow light of the parking lot, sparkling with a thin, almost imperceptible layer of panic.

The string in my heart was plucked again.

"Xiaoyu, don't worry."

He took both hands out of his pockets and placed them at his sides.

"I won't disappear again. Call me if you need anything."

Liu Xiaoyu's fingers stopped moving.

He froze for half a second.

Then, the corners of his mouth turned up.

It wasn't a loud laugh. It was a very small smile, but the sense of peace that seeped from the very core of his being was impossible to hide.

Li Yichen scratched the back of his head.

"By the way—are you free tomorrow? I'd like to treat you to dinner."

Liu Xiaoyu's eyes lit up.

"I get off work at six o'clock tomorrow."

He answered quickly. So quickly that Li Yichen didn't even have time to say, "If it's inconvenient, then—".

"Okay." He nodded. "I'll pick you up here at six o'clock tomorrow."

Liu Xiaoyu fastened her helmet; the buckle clicked, and she fiddled with it for a couple of seconds before finally securing it. Her fingers were trembling violently—not from the cold, but from her racing heart.

She hopped on the electric scooter and twisted the throttle.

The car slid two meters, and she turned around again.

Through the helmet visor, his eyes were curved.

"See you tomorrow."

The electric scooter's taillights cast a red line in the night, rounding the parking lot exit barrier and merging into the scattered traffic on the road, growing smaller and smaller, farther and farther away.

It's out of sight.

Li Yichen stood still and stared in that direction for two seconds.

Then he turned around and walked towards the entrance to the underground parking garage.

My pace slowed considerably compared to before. It wasn't from fatigue, but from having too much on my mind; my legs couldn't keep up with my train of thought.

Liu Xiaoyu. Xiao Yuqing.

One is an old wound that has been stuck in the bone for six years and can't be pulled out; the other is a new mark that was just branded on yesterday.

Neither of them could be pushed away.

I'm sorry to both of them.

He walked down to the B2 level of the underground parking garage and saw Zhou Lan's van parked at the corner from afar. The interior lights were on, casting a warm yellow glow through the windows.

He walked over and opened the back door.

Xiao Yuqing sat in the back seat by the window.

His back was ramrod straight. His legs were together. His hands rested on his knees, his fingers motionless.

She didn't look at him.

He stared intently at the back of the front seat, not blinking.

Li Yichen bent down, got into the car, and closed the door.

The sound of the door closing echoed muffledly in the underground parking garage.

He felt it even before he buckled up his seatbelt—the temperature in the back seat was more than ten degrees lower than outside.

It's not a problem with the air conditioner.

Xiao Yuqing turned her face towards her.

Those eyes were staring straight at him.

"Who is that woman?"

The four words came straight to the point, crisp and clean, without a single wasted word.

Li Yichen's hand hovered over the seatbelt buckle.

to be frank.

This time, I have to tell the truth.

Just now, in front of Liu Xiaoyu, he referred to Xiao Yuqing as a "college classmate." He's already told one lie. If he were to fabricate Liu Xiaoyu's identity in front of Xiao Yuqing as well, this whole thing would fall apart sooner or later.

My high school girlfriend.

The back seat fell silent.

Zhou Lan, seated in the driver's seat, rested her hands on the steering wheel, completely still. Her ears were perked up, but she seemed almost invisible. At times like this, her professionalism was at its most precise—she breathed barely, didn't even adjust her posture, as if afraid of making the slightest sound from the chair.

Xiao Yuqing twitched her fingers on her knee.

"High school?"

"Hmm." Li Yichen fastened his seatbelt and leaned back in his seat. "We were together for over two years. Then we broke up, and we haven't been in touch for five or six years. It was a coincidence that we bumped into each other at the mall tonight."

Xiao Yuqing didn't ask "why they broke up".

She asked another question.

"So what were you doing up there for the past hour while I was down?"

One hour.

She waited in the car for a full hour.

Li Yichen recounted the whole story. The Liu family ran a trading company, which went bankrupt three years ago. The old man passed away, and the siblings came to Shanghai to work and pay off their debts. They had only managed to pay off 550,000 yuan of the 10 million yuan debt after three years. Tonight, the creditors came to the mall, forcing Liu Xiaoyu to sell her house to repay the debt.

Xiao Yuqing remained silent while he spoke.

After he finished speaking, the car fell silent for a few seconds.

"So you paid it off for her?"

"Hmm. Nine million four hundred and fifty thousand."

Xiao Yuqing tugged at the hem of her skirt with her fingers.

Nine million four hundred and fifty thousand. When he transferred two million to her yesterday, she felt like the sky had fallen. Today, this guy threw another nine million four hundred and fifty thousand out—to his ex-girlfriend.

But she didn't dwell on that number.

Her mind raced ahead of her emotions, and she went through the whole story first. The Liu family's misfortune—from a trading company worth hundreds of millions to collapse overnight, the death of their father, and the two siblings carrying a debt of ten million working in a big city as sales assistants, earning five or six thousand a month, and only paying off a fraction of it after three years.

She could imagine such a life.

Her own father was also lying in the hospital. She also stopped people on the street to conduct interviews, broadcasting for ten hours a day, earning 20,000 yuan a month. She knew what it felt like to be overwhelmed by money.

Liu Xiaoyu's experience was much harsher than hers.

Xiao Yuqing leaned against the car window, turning her head to look out.

The underground parking garage lights cast a pale, lifeless glow, and the rows of parked cars looked like silent boxes.

"She's had a tough time."

This statement was light and airy, revealing no particular emotion.

Li Yichen did not respond.

Because that's not what Xiao Yuqing really wanted to ask.

really.

"You didn't have a girlfriend during your four years of university." Xiao Yuqing's face was still turned towards the car window. "Is it because of her?"

Li Yichen rested his hand on his knee and rubbed his thumb along the seam of his pants.

He gave a wry smile.

A short hum that came out of the nose.

They didn't say anything.

But that one sound was enough.

Xiao Yuqing paused for a moment on the button on the car window.

Her mouth opened slightly.

There's something I'm already thinking—"You should see her as little as possible in the future."

The thought crossed her mind, but she stopped herself from repeating it.

What is her identity?

girlfriend?

Just now, while we were eating at Tai'an Gate, Li Yichen said to Zhang Guodong, "My girlfriend is Xiao Yuqing." But that was just a polite way of addressing her.

Actually?

She was his kept woman.

He gave her two million, and she accepted. She stayed in his hotels, wore clothes he bought, and ate meals he treated her to.

In this kind of relationship, what makes you think you can ask a man to "not have any contact with his ex-girlfriend"?

The words that were on the tip of my tongue were swallowed back down.

My throat feels dry and sore from swallowing.

"Take me back."

Li Yichen turned his head and glanced at her.

Xiao Yuqing's face was still turned towards the car window. Her expression was unclear. But the reflection in the window showed her chin tucked tightly and her lips pressed into a thin line.

He didn't ask any further questions.

Zhou Lan, who was in the front row, finally moved.

"Take Miss Xiao there—"

"My home," Xiao Yuqing gave an address. It was an old-style residential building next to the bus stop in the old town area.

Zhou Lan nodded and started the car.

The car drove out of the underground parking garage and merged into the nighttime traffic.

In the back seat, the two people were about a fist's width apart.

No one spoke.

The streetlights outside the car window receded one by one, casting shadows on Xiao Yuqing's profile, one bright and one dark.

Twenty minutes later, the car stopped.

Xiao Yuqing opened the car door and put one foot on the ground.

She turned and glanced at Li Yichen.

That glance was so quick that Li Yichen only had time to catch a blurry outline—a floral sundress, long, flowing hair, and a pair of unchanging eyes.

"Good night."

The car door closed.

A figure in a floral dress walked through the halo of light under the streetlights and into the unit door of the old residential building.

The sound of the door closing was muffled, and it came through the car window, sounding muffled.

Li Yichen leaned back in the seat, staring at the closed door.

My head hurts.

It hurts.

The pain started at my temples and went all the way to the back of my head.

Sometimes, being a "scumbag" isn't something everyone can do.

"Back to the hotel."

Zhou Lan didn't turn around, but turned the steering wheel and the car rejoined the traffic.

In the rearview mirror, the old residential building grew smaller and smaller until it shrank into a blurry dot of light in the night.

Forty minutes later.

The door to the presidential suite was closed.

Li Yichen threw his coat on the sofa and collapsed onto the bed.

The bright white light from the ceiling made him squint.

He took out his phone.

Xiao Yuqing opened the chat window—the last message still contained those four words.

"You're dead."

His thumb hovered above the input box.

I typed three words, then deleted them. I typed five more, then deleted them again.

Finally, I locked the screen and tossed the phone next to my pillow.

Forget it. Nothing I say today will be right. Let her cool off. I'll think of something tomorrow.

He rolled over, facing the ceiling, with his hands behind his head.

The images flashed through his mind frame by frame—Liu Xiaoyu's taillights as she rode her electric scooter out of the parking lot, Xiao Yuqing's glance back before closing the car door, and the small print at the bottom of the system panel that he hadn't yet clicked on.

[Wealth Gift Pack x5 (Unopened)]

Five gift packs.

He sat up.

Correct.

I almost forgot about the important matter.

I'm back at the hotel now. The door is closed. There's no sound of construction workers drilling, and no chauffeur waiting about ten steps away.

Just right.

Li Yichen brought up the system panel, slid his finger to the bottom, and stopped at that line of text.

[Should I open the wealth gift pack? (5/5)]

His thumb hovered above the word "open".

My heart skipped a beat.

Press down.