Building Up Cash Reserves Again

The jump that night was small.

In the positions column, the unrealized profit had grown by only a short stretch of red digits.

Lu Chuan stared at the screen for a few seconds without moving.

Getting the direction right on the first trade didn't mean he could ride it all the way to the end. With crude oil, reversals were never in short supply.

As soon as news broke, some people rushed to buy. Once they were done, others sold hard. A few swings back and forth during a session could throw anyone unprepared straight off the ride.

He finished his cold tea and looked over the plan he had written on paper.

Stage one: test the direction with a small position.

Stage two: wait for the news to spread, then add to the position with the trend.

Stage three: take profits in batches, without gambling on the last bite.

Those were the only lines on the paper.

Simple, but enough.

Over the next few days, things began to move forward.

Foreign media followed up, the news kept spreading, and arguments on the forums grew fiercer.

Some said it was only a short-term spike that wouldn't last more than a few days; others said there would be trouble on the supply side and this move would be huge.

Lu Chuan didn't argue with anyone, and he didn't place orders based on other people's judgments.

His routine was fixed: read the news in the morning, watch how the news continued to develop during the day, and monitor the market at night, adding to or reducing his position at his own pace.

The market moved a little faster than he remembered.

One night, a surge on heavy volume sent the price shooting up.

The profit in his account jumped so quickly that even his breathing tightened. Lu Chuan put his hand on the mouse and first closed out a small portion,

locking in the first leg of profit before raising his stop-loss.

It wasn't that he didn't dare hold.

He needed to put himself in a safe position first.

Over the next few days, the swings grew noticeably larger.

Sometimes a single surge made it look as though the price would shoot straight into the sky, only for it to be smashed back down the next minute.

When the market heated up, it was easy to fall under the illusion that this opportunity had landed on his doorstep and he could make money however he traded. Lu Chuan refused to do that.

When the price reached a planned level, he trimmed his position.

When it returned near support, he bought a little more.

He held what he should hold and let go of what he should let go.

It wasn't as though his heart had never raced.

Especially when the night session was at its hottest, the numbers on the screen climbing in leaps and his unrealized profit multiplying along with them, his body still reacted first, even though he knew he had the overall direction right.

His palms grew hot, his back tightened, and his eyes clung to those jumping lines. It was hard to stay truly calm.

But whenever that happened, he forced himself to look at his plan first, not his emotions.

An opportunity was an opportunity.

Emotions were emotions.

Once the two got mixed together, trouble could easily follow.

On the fifth night, there was a fierce pullback during the session.

It came so fast that people in the group were already shouting that the market had peaked, while others cursed the news as fake.

A chunk of the handsome unrealized profit in his positions column was swallowed up.

Lu Chuan looked at the long bearish candlestick. He didn't rush to add to his position or cut it. Instead, he first confirmed that the news hadn't changed, nor had the event itself, and that the market's pullback was mostly a short-term stampede.

He waited more than ten minutes.

Only after the panic had subsided and the price had returned to his preset level did he put in the portion of the position he had held back.

After he placed that trade, another rally followed.

From that day on, the rhythm became clearer.

The market had finally stopped "guessing" and begun "accepting."

The news reached major financial media, and the discussion spread until even people who normally had nothing to do with such things began sharing it. By the time public attention had fully surged, the market had already made a major move. Lu Chuan knew the fattest part of the run had arrived.

He still didn't lose his head.

The closer it got to this point, the less he could afford to get carried away.

He broke his position into even smaller portions. Profits kept rolling in, and he kept taking some off the table first.

Only the money he had secured was his.

What floated on the screen was just numbers.

For half a month, he practically split his days into two.

During the day, he caught up on sleep, ate, and sorted through the news.

At night, he sat down in the study, turned on the lights and computer, watched the market, and took notes.

The study at Quiet Garden was well suited to this kind of work.

With the door closed, the sounds outside almost disappeared. The shadows of the trees by the window looked peaceful during the day, while at night, only a blurred outline remained.

Water sat on the desk, with several sheets covered in position sizes and prices beside it. The computer screen glowed, and he naturally settled into the work.

It wasn't as though greed had never surfaced along the way.

Once, the night market climbed so fast that his account profit suddenly jumped by a huge amount. Lu Chuan looked at the number, and a thought flashed through his mind: Hold a little longer, and maybe it'll double again.

As soon as the thought appeared, he pulled his hand back.

The trap he knew best from his previous life was the one he stepped into at times like this.

He had clearly already won, yet he always wanted to swallow the last bite too. The result was often not more profit, but giving back most of what he had made.

Lu Chuan got up and washed his face. When he returned, the first thing he did was close positions according to plan.

One trade.

Two trades.

Three trades.

His position grew smaller and smaller, and the available funds in his account grew thicker and thicker.

By the sixteenth day, the market had reached the hottest stretch he remembered. News was being pushed all day, the forums were plastered with screenshots, and even Manager Liu at the brokerage had sent him a message asking whether he was trading this move and reminding him to watch his risk controls.

Lu Chuan read it, replied with a thank-you, and went back to watching the market.

That afternoon, the price surged again.

Plenty of people were still shouting that it could go higher.

Lu Chuan, however, began closing out the last batch.

He remembered clearly that with a market move driven by an event like this, the real danger wasn't that it failed to take off, but that everyone thought it would keep going. Once it reached that point, the market was no longer driven by its original logic; too much emotion and too many buyers chasing the rise had crept in.

He had no intention of playing along.

When he closed the last trade, the numbers on the screen held still for a few seconds.

Lu Chuan didn't lean back immediately.

He first went through the transaction records from beginning to end, confirming that every trade had settled properly, then looked at the total profit and loss.

Net profit: thirty-nine million.

Very close to forty million.

The study was almost unnaturally quiet.

Even the sound of the air conditioner seemed a layer farther away.

Lu Chuan sat in his chair, staring at the number for a long time without any obvious expression on his face.

It wasn't that he wasn't excited. The feeling didn't rush to his head first; instead, it settled into his body. His shoulders gradually relaxed, his back stopped tensing, and he seemed at last to step down from a bowstring drawn to its limit.

This trade had worked.

Not because he had been bolder than anyone else, or because his gamble had paid off.

It was because he had finally stopped treating money as he had in his previous life: as a pass, a costume, a shell he had to put on.

This time, he had made the money himself, trade by trade, at his own pace.

Now that he had made it, he didn't need anyone to praise him or look at him, much less use it to trade for someone calling him "Young Master Lu."

Lu Chuan leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them again, he picked up his phone and opened the banking app.

His balance had grown thick again.

The string of digits stretched a long way and looked solid.

He had a house.

He had a car.

His cash reserves were thick again too.

At that moment, money finally began to feel like a foundation rather than a costume.

In his previous life, his balance was what he feared looking at most, because every time he saw it, he was reminded that the money he had spent had left him with practically nothing.

A watch could be taken off, a car could be returned, and once the gathering broke up, the people scattered too.

Now it was different.

Quiet Garden was there, the Continental was there, and the cash in his account was there too. Each had its own place; they weren't props for the same performance.

Lu Chuan put down his phone. The first thing he did was not celebrate or spend more on himself, but allocate the money again.

Set aside a stable amount for the loan and daily expenses.

Set aside money for what he would do later.

Then set aside a separate buffer.

As for the rest, he would see how to put it to work.

The thicker his funds, the steadier he needed to be.

Only after finishing that did Lu Chuan close the computer, get up, and look around the study.

After more than half a month of watching the market, the sheets covered in numbers on the desk had been pressed into wrinkles.

Empty mineral-water bottles and two pens nearly out of ink lay beside them. He had turned the once spotless long desk into a temporary battlefield.

Now, the battle was over.

The next morning, Lu Chuan drove back to the short-term rental.

As he pushed the door open, the stale smell of an old house hit him.

The fan, the wooden table with its peeling paint, the yellowed curtains, and the water stains in the corner were all just as they had been when he woke up in Chapter 2. But standing here again felt completely different.

This place was like a shell.

It was also a starting point.

Lu Chuan slowly walked around the room, then opened the wardrobe and pulled out all the clothes he had once nearly used to put on a show of respectability. Fake brands, oversized logos, strange cuts, and garish colors. In his previous life, he would have thought wearing them made him look confident. Now, they looked cheap and nothing more.

He didn't hesitate. He stuffed them straight into a bag.

There was also the messy pile of printed guides on the desk: outfits for rich second-generation heirs, cocktail-party etiquette, introductions to luxury watches, and the stories behind luxury car brands. Stacked sheet upon sheet, they looked ridiculous.

He threw them all out.

There was an old box in the drawer containing a few accessories he had deliberately bought to keep up appearances. Lu Chuan looked down at it for two seconds, closed it, and tossed it into the garbage bag.

The room wasn't large to begin with, and once he cleared things out, it quickly became empty.

It was as though he had casually cleared away the last traces of his previous life along with them.

Lu Chuan took nothing with him.

He went downstairs and opened the car door. After one last look back at the old building, he lingered no longer and drove straight to Quiet Garden.

The security guard saw the license plate, checked his information, and quickly let him through.

The car entered the underground garage. The moment he parked in his own space, Lu Chuan sat motionless in the driver's seat and first looked at the quiet wall ahead.

He had a parking space.

He had a home too.

Now it truly felt as though he had landed on solid ground.

He carried his luggage upstairs and opened the door.

The house was quiet.

The curtains were half open, and afternoon light fell into the living room, illuminating the clean floor. The furniture was still there, and the calligraphy and old objects Fang Zhiyuan had left behind were still in their places, as though the house had been waiting for someone to come home.

Lu Chuan first put down his luggage, then went to the kitchen to boil water.

Once it boiled, he made himself a cup of tea and carried it around the living room.

The sofa, the long desk, the study, the place by the window-every spot felt a layer closer than it had when he first viewed the house. He hadn't just "taken a liking to it"; he had "moved in."

That feeling was even stronger at night, when all the lights were on.

The light in the living room wasn't harsh, steam rose from the teacup, and outside the window there were only the shadows of trees and a few distant headlights. Lu Chuan sat on the sofa with his tea beside him, doing nothing, just sitting quietly for a while.

For the first time.

He truly felt comfortable.

It wasn't respectability put on for show.

It was a feeling of being grounded.

Early the next morning, his phone vibrated.

The school had sent a notice about registration for the new semester, reminding him to arrive on time in three days to complete the formalities.

Lu Chuan leaned back on the sofa, looked at the message, and smiled faintly.

Tomorrow he would contact Uncle Fang and pay the remaining balance on Quiet Garden in full. The day after that, he would buy clothes and dorm supplies.

"This time, I'll go to school like a normal person."