The glass knocked against the table with a muffled clunk.
Looking at Huang Xueli's reddened eyes, Wang Xiaoliang felt the anguish he had been bottling up since Zhou Qiang's departure surge up too, as though it had found an outlet. So he wasn't the only one hurting. Huang Xueli, this man who always seemed cheerful and unconcerned about anything, had a hole in his heart at least as big as his own.
Neither of them spoke again. They simply drank and ate in silence.
Once his emotions had settled a little, Wang Xiaoliang spoke.
"Brother Huang, if Brother Qiang can't come back anytime soon, do you think there's a possibility of just the two of us working together?"
"Of course. Absolutely. It's just that we don't have much capital, so we don't have much room for error. We can start small and take it slowly."
"Wouldn't that affect your career prospects?"
"No. My thinking on this might differ from other people's. I think having some business assets of my own gives me the means to resist temptation in the future. As long as everything's reasonable and legal, and I don't use my authority to help the business, I don't think there'll be any major problem."
"To tell you the truth, the down payment on my apartment came from the money I made running Hongbin Tower with Zhou."
"Didn't Brother Qiang say he invited you, but you wouldn't join?" Wang Xiaoliang raised his voice in surprise.
Then he understood why. "Oh, he was protecting you. He was afraid I'd tell someone."
Huang Xueli nodded and smiled.
"Back then, Zhou was making a fortune in cross-border e-commerce and had a lot of taxes to pay. He could actually have avoided those taxes, but neither of us thought that was right. So I