After parting ways with Guo Shuai at the intersection, Chen Fan rode home alone.
Chen Fan's home was in a nearby town.
It was quite far from school, a small, single-story house his family had built in the village.
He pushed open the weathered black courtyard gate, and the familiar little courtyard was the first thing he saw.
The courtyard was small but kept very clean.
Chen Fan's parents were both hardworking. They had set aside a small vegetable patch in the courtyard, filled with eggplants, tomatoes, green beans, and other vegetables.
After parking his bicycle, Chen Fan stepped inside.
"Mom, Dad, I'm home."
"You're back, Fan! Go wash your hands and get ready for dinner."
His mother, Li Jinqiu, poked her head out of the kitchen to one side and called to him.
At the sight of that familiar face, Chen Fan's eyes reddened. He almost burst into tears right there.
Chen Fan's parents were ordinary workers. His father, Chen Jianye, worked at a ceramics factory, while his mother, Li Jinqiu, worked at a power plant.
Perhaps because of his work, Chen Fan's father had fallen seriously ill and died in his fifties in his previous life.
His mother had fallen ill from grief and passed away three years after his father.
Neither of them had ever really gotten to enjoy the life their son could have given them.
Unable to hold back his emotions, Chen Fan rushed over and hugged his mother from behind.
"Mom, I missed you."
"Oh, you silly boy. What's gotten into you now?"
Li Jinqiu smiled and patted his hands.
"Let go, let go. I'm cooking. Be careful, or the hot oil will splash on you."
"Go wash your hands. This dish is almost ready."
"Okay!"
Chen Fan turned away and secretly wiped his tears. He went outside and splashed cold water over his face, washing away the tears while he was at it.
"Mom, where's Dad?"
"He's working overtime at the factory tonight. He should be back soon."
His mother's voice drifted out of the kitchen as Chen Fan surveyed the house, his face full of nostalgia.
The old house was actually quite small, with only about seventy square meters of floor space.
It had two bedrooms and a living room. His parents shared one bedroom, and Chen Fan slept in the other.
An old-fashioned wooden cupboard painted red stood in the living room between them.
A bulky, old twenty-one-inch color television sat on top of it.
It was practically the only valuable possession in the house.
There was no sofa, only a few wooden chairs with peeling paint.
A low, square wooden table stood in the middle of the living room.
A large, cracked ceramic tile his father had brought home from the factory covered the tabletop. This was their dining table.
Chen Fan walked into his bedroom. Looking at the little room of less than ten square meters, he found everything so familiar, so full of memories.
The bedroom held a single bed and a wardrobe, with a desk beside the window on the right.
A sheet of clear glass covered the desk, with photographs tucked beneath it. Apart from a few family pictures, they were all photos of Chen Fan at different ages.
The family's only standing electric fan sat in a corner.
There was nothing else.
Yet Chen Fan had slept in this simple little house for more than ten years.
That evening, his father returned from work, and the family sat down to dinner together.
As his parents talked about how well someone else's child was doing, Chen Fan couldn't help speaking up.
"Dad, Mom, I'm planning to get into a first-tier university this year, so you two will have something to celebrate too."
Chen Jianye glanced at his son and said unhurriedly,
"A first-tier university? I'd be thanking my lucky stars if you got into a second-tier one."
Li Jinqiu smiled reassuringly. "Fan, don't put too much pressure on yourself. Your dad and I don't expect that much. Just do your best on the college entrance exam."
"Whether you get in or not, we won't blame you."
Chen Fan looked deflated.
Apparently, his parents had no confidence in him at all.
"Dad, how much money do we have left?"
"Why are you asking?"
"Just curious."
Chen Jianye took a sip of liquor. "Ask your mother about that. I'm not sure."
Li Jinqiu thought for a moment. "I think we have a little over twenty thousand altogether. Twenty-seven thousand, probably."
"Neither of our factories has been doing well these past couple of years. Your dad's factory still owes him two months' wages."
Chen Fan immediately proposed, "Dad, let's sell this old house, then use that money and the twenty-seven thousand to buy an apartment in the city."
Chen Fan remembered that housing in Luo City had cost only a little over nine hundred yuan per square meter in 2000.
A hundred-square-meter apartment would cost less than a hundred thousand yuan.
They could use the twenty-odd thousand for a down payment, live there for a few years, then sell it for more than ten times what they had paid.
Was there any better investment than that?
Chen Fan was happily working out his plans.
But his parents exchanged a worried look.
"This boy... has studying addled his brain?"
"An apartment? Do you know how much apartments cost these days?"
"The prices are outrageous!"
"When the deputy director at our factory bought his apartment, it cost him over a hundred thousand. Then he sold it after living there for less than two years."
Chen Fan's interest was immediately piqued.
"Why did he sell it?"
"Why?"
Chen Jianye set down his glass and glanced at his son.
"Because housing prices are too high, of course."
"He sold while prices were high and rented a place to live. Once prices drop, he'll buy it back cheap. He'll save tens of thousands."
"Now that's a truly smart man. How else do you think he became deputy director?"
Chen Fan: "..."
"We're saving that money for you to find a job and get married after you graduate."
"Why would we buy a house for no reason? You'd have to have been kicked in the head by a donkey to buy one at a time like this."
That night, Chen Fan lay in bed, tossing and turning, unable to sleep.
It looked like convincing his parents to buy a home was out of the question for now.
Now that he had been reborn, he was determined to start a business and make money.
In his previous life, Chen Fan had always felt he had let Su Ruochu down.
So in this life, he had to make it up to her properly.
He would build a new business empire, with Su Ruochu beside him to witness it all and enjoy it all.
Since he couldn't get anywhere through his parents, he would have to rely on himself.
Lying in bed, Chen Fan considered how he could start a business and earn his first pot of gold.
Honestly, his only advantage as someone who had been reborn was his knowledge of the future.
But that alone was enough.
He was a time traveler who knew how the next twenty-odd years would unfold.
Chen Fan knew every policy, the country's development plans, officials' promotions, waves of entrepreneurship...
In truth, someone who had been reborn had only a handful of ways to make money quickly.
Buying property, buying mines, stocks...
Chen Fan remembered that in 2000, homes in both Puxi and Shenzhen had cost only a little over four thousand yuan per square meter.
This was also the perfect time to buy shares in Maozi, Tencent, Baidu, and Taobao.
Any one of those would earn Chen Fan a fortune in the future, as long as he got in early.
Of course, there was an even better option further down the line.
Buying Bitcoin.
Chen Fan remembered that it had apparently been created in 2009.
When it first appeared, each coin had cost less than one US cent. In other words, six or seven yuan could buy over a thousand bitcoins.
By 2021, Bitcoin had peaked at nearly seventy thousand US dollars per coin.
If he planned ahead and stockpiled several million bitcoins...
Then timed it right and sold them at their peak in 2021...
His wealth would truly become a string of numbers too long to count.
But all these things, whether buying property, mines, or stocks, required a substantial amount of starting capital.
Right now, all he had to his name was a little over ten yuan in pocket money.
"Sigh. I can see it, but I can't reach it. What torture."
"Looks like I still need to find a way to get my initial seed money."
Chen Fan shook his head and sighed, setting the matter aside for now.
His first pot of gold could wait. There was something more important to him right now.
The college entrance exam was almost here. He had to get into the same university as Su Ruochu.
He remembered that this year's exam questions had been exceptionally difficult.
Math, physics, and chemistry in particular had been hellishly hard, leaving countless students wailing as they came out of the exam halls.
The cutoff scores that year hadn't been high, either.
The first-tier cutoff had been only 535, and Cloudsea University's admission cutoff had apparently been 553.
And Cloudsea University was where Su Ruochu had gone in his previous life.
In the darkness, Chen Fan lay in bed, his eyes burning with determination.
"553... I have to get it!"
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