A Crushing Trade Record and a Background from the Capital

Xu Chengyuan had already raised his hand.

His fingertips had just touched the edge of the old bamboo curtain, ready to sweep it aside and leave this absurd private room for good.

"Fifteen million."

A voice came from behind him, neither loud nor soft.

Lu Chuan sat at the long table, holding the white porcelain teacup. He did not even turn his head.

Xu Chengyuan's movement came to an abrupt halt.

His hand froze in midair, his knuckles turning slightly white from the force of his grip.

Only the faint hum of the air conditioner vent remained in the room.

Xu Chengyuan's mind raced in that instant.

Fifteen million.

This was not a few hundred thousand in New Year's gift money, nor was it pocket money for some rich young master to play house with. These were real chips, enough to make a splash in the market and establish the base position of a standard private fund product.

Xu Chengyuan's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty.

He slowly lowered his hand, turned around, walked back to the table, pulled out the chair he had just occupied, and sat down.

He stared intently at Lu Chuan across from him, his breathing growing somewhat heavy.

"What exactly are you trying to do?"

Lu Chuan set down his teacup and turned to look at him.

"This crude oil report of yours was far too conservative."

"You used to be decisive, but now you're trading in fear."

The words pierced Xu Chengyuan to his core. His expression changed, and he forced himself to argue back.

"Crude oil isn't a one-way bet right now."

"Geopolitical disruptions are too severe, and the news is all over the place. Sentiment-driven and safe-haven trades are hitting the market in turns, and volatility will be extreme. If you aren't conservative at this stage, the drawdowns can kill you."

Xu Chengyuan clenched his back teeth, trying to bring the conversation back to the professional territory he knew best.

"My strategy isn't about settling for less profit. It's about surviving."

Lu Chuan looked at him, without the slightest ripple in his eyes.

"There's nothing wrong with that in itself."

"But your problem now isn't survival. You treated a stretch where you should have gone all out as if your life depended on playing it safe."

Lu Chuan folded his hands and placed them on the table.

"The real driving force behind this sudden shift in the Middle East isn't supply-side production cuts. It's the risk-averse sentiment of outside capital and a tacit short squeeze by several major oligarchs. The volatility over the past few days wasn't because the news was unclear."

"The major players were shaking out short-term trend followers."

Xu Chengyuan's brows knitted tightly together.

Lu Chuan continued without pause, his tone as steady as if he were recounting something that had happened long ago.

"Every time the price plunged through a support level, the buying support at the bottom held firm. Your report treated those pullbacks as warning signs and recommended reducing positions to avoid risk. But in fact, those were the best points to increase leverage."

"When the foreign media starts singing the same tune and playing up the spread of risk, that's when the real surge will begin."

"That stretch will move so fast that money on the sidelines won't get a chance to get in. By the time everyone realizes what's happening and prepares to chase the rally, it'll be time to close positions and pocket the profits."

Lu Chuan leaned back slightly and looked at Xu Chengyuan, who had been left completely dumbstruck.

"Your mind is still stuck in the shadow of figuring out how to plug the hole for your former employer. All you can see are drawdowns, not the trend."

Silence fell over the private room once again.

The aroma of tea rose with the steam.

Xu Chengyuan stared at the young man before him, a fine layer of sweat already beading on his forehead.

He was a professional trader, so he knew better than anyone how terrifying Lu Chuan's words were. This was no boilerplate a brokerage analyst could write. It was the blade work of real combat, honed by lying over the order book and breathing in the smell of blood.

But he still did not dare believe it all.

No matter how good it sounded, without being tested in live trading with real money, it was all empty talk.

Xu Chengyuan took a deep breath and was just about to speak.

But Lu Chuan had already taken out his phone.

He opened an app, brought up a screen, then slid the phone flat across the table to Xu Chengyuan.

"See for yourself."

Xu Chengyuan hesitated, but leaned forward and looked down at the screen.

It was the trade record for a futures account.

It was densely packed with every trade made in the account over the past half month and more.

The moment Xu Chengyuan's gaze fell on it, his pupils contracted sharply.

They were all long positions in crude oil.

He quickly scanned the entry times and price points.

The first test position was restrained.

The second addition came right at the lowest point of the fiercest intraday pullback a few days earlier. At that moment, people on foreign websites were still frantically calling for a drop, yet this account had placed its chips with precision at that very second.

Further down.

The market erupted, and the account began closing positions in batches.

There was no greed at the peak, and no panic during the volatility. The rhythm of the exits was like a precision machine running a set program, gnawing clean the fattest, safest portion of profit from the entire main upward wave.

Xu Chengyuan's hands began to tremble uncontrollably.

He was a top trader, and he knew all too well how much this trade record was worth. It was as though someone had planted the entire market's rhythm underfoot and ground it into the dirt.

He swiped sharply to the bottom of the page.

A number stood out in the initial equity field.

430,000.

And in the current total equity field.

39.1 million.

Xu Chengyuan's head buzzed, as though something had exploded inside it.

He braced both hands against the table, nearly knocking over the teacups, and stared hard at that long string of digits.

"Impossible..."

He muttered to himself, his voice trembling beyond control.

"How is this possible?"

A starting position of a few hundred thousand.

In a little over half a month.

It had snowballed to nearly forty million.

With a growth curve so close to a miracle, let alone an individual trader-even at his peak, with his entire team behind him, Xu Chengyuan would never have dared claim he could have done it so cleanly and decisively.

What terrifying nerves and what heaven-defying market judgment would that take?

Xu Chengyuan jerked his head up and looked at Lu Chuan sitting on the sofa as though he were a monster.

"Th-this was you?"

With an unchanged expression, Lu Chuan reached out, took back his phone, and casually switched off the screen.

"I just got lucky."

Lucky?

Xu Chengyuan felt his heart twitching. This kind of fully leveraged trading was dancing on the tip of a knife; a single second's mistake would have meant liquidation and a wiped-out account. How could it have been luck?

He finally understood why the young man before him had said the report was too conservative.

Because before this trade record, the professional analysis he had taken pride in was like a novice who had just started out talking strategy on paper.

The pride and wariness Xu Chengyuan had still been holding on to shattered at that moment.

He looked at Lu Chuan, and nothing but pure awe remained in his eyes.

He knew he had met a true god.

Lu Chuan saw Xu Chengyuan's utterly shattered expression and knew the moment was ripe.

He had finished crushing him on technical skill. Next, he needed to give Xu Chengyuan a complete, logical explanation: a background that could give him absolute security and confidence.

Without a reasonable explanation, the fact that an eighteen-year-old student could make trades like these would instead leave people feeling uneasy.

Lu Chuan picked up his teacup and took a gentle sip, his tone as casual as if he were chatting about everyday matters.

"My surname is Lu."

"I'm from the Capital."

He raised his eyes and looked at Xu Chengyuan across from him.

"I'm a first-year student at Jiangcheng University now."