"Think about it. What kind of person could raise three people that 'pure'?"
"Pure?" Wang Xiaoliang was even more confused. "Qingyu and Qishan, sure, they're pure. But Liu Xinyu... how does he count as pure? He's shrewder than a monkey, scheming from head to toe."
"He's purely worldly."
"Think about it. If someone can take one thing to its utmost extreme, that in itself is a kind of purity. And Liu Xinyu? His purity lies in social dealings and the mundane world. He's taken 'worldliness' to its utmost extreme, done it as well as it can be done."
"Anything else?"
"Yes." The smile on Zhou Qiang's face slowly faded, his expression turning somewhat complicated. "I finally understand what it truly means to be rich."
This topic interested Wang Xiaoliang even more.
"When I was collecting scrap to pay for living expenses and tuition, I thought every day about what I'd do once I became rich."
"What would you do?"
"Eat braised pork belly whenever and wherever I wanted. And order three portions, without worrying that I'd be reluctant to finish the last of it."
Wang Xiaoliang couldn't help laughing. That thought was all too real.
He remembered the Sichuan restaurant where Zhou Qiang had first treated him to a meal, that greasy little place where a portion of braised pork belly cost only twenty yuan.
"But later, once I'd earned the money, I found that braised pork belly didn't taste as good as it used to." Zhou Qiang sighed. "Back then, I thought maybe my dream wasn't to eat braised pork belly whenever I wanted, but to make more money."
"It wasn't until I came to Liu Xinyu's wedding this time that I finally thought it all through. Everything I'd thought before was wrong."
"For truly wealthy people like the