Wen Qianyue smiled and nudged him before he finally snapped out of it.
He continued typing.
[@C Si Beichen! Show some initiative and send my daughter! Your sister! Some spending money!]
[Your sister Jiang Ci's account number: 6212003760068880765]
[Reply as soon as you see this!]
After bombarding Si Beichen, he seemed to turn into a completely different person as he messaged Jiang Ci.
[Sweetheart, it's getting late. Go to bed now, okay? Your brother has a special line of work, so he probably hasn't checked his phone.]
Jiang Ci realized that an old saying was right!
Birds of a feather flocked together.
She understood now. Everyone in her family had two faces!
They switched faces faster than turning a page, and changed their tune depending on who they were dealing with.
Jiang Ci behaved herself.
[Okay, Dad Si. You should get to bed early too. Good night.]
Si Jianhua: [Good night, sweetheart.]
Wen Qianyue refused to be outdone: [Good night, sweetheart.]
Jiang Ci: [...Good night.]
She was just about to put down her phone and sleep when, after a moment's thought, she picked it up again and sent one last message.
[@C Bro, send me a hundred million-ish extra in spending money.]
Her newly acquired brother was going to die before the natural disasters anyway. He might as well give her the money so she could stockpile more supplies.
She was just worried that this brother of hers would be too stingy to part with it.
Whatever. Time for bed. However much he gave her, it would still be a gain.
The China-Myanmar border.
Si Beichen had just returned to their base on the border after completing a special mission with his teammates.
By the time he had reported on the mission, finished a short meeting, washed up, and gotten ready for bed, it was already past four in the morning.
Only after lying down did he have time to check his phone.
The moment he switched it on, it started dinging nonstop.
That had never happened before.
Puzzled, he tapped his phone and opened the source of all the dinging.
A group chat named Happy Family popped up.
Si Beichen opened the chat and carefully read through it from top to bottom.
Finally, his gaze stopped on the last message.
[@C Bro, send me a hundred million-ish extra in spending money.]
Although he had never met this stepsister, his father had mentioned her countless times, praising her to the skies every single time.
His gaze settled on the word "Bro."
Having a little sister seemed pretty nice?
Giving his little sister spending money was certainly only right.
Si Beichen shifted his gaze to "a hundred million-ish."
He spent most of his time either training or carrying out missions, and he wasn't fond of surfing the internet. After thinking it over, he decided she must have meant a hundred million and made a typo.
Surely she couldn't mean just a little?
Then it was a hundred million.
Si Beichen was a little curious about what his brand-new little sister needed so much money for.
Still, he copied and pasted Jiang Ci's account number and casually transferred a hundred million to her.
Over all these years, he had hardly had anything to spend money on. His food, clothing, and accommodation were all free.
So his salary, bonuses, and annual dividends from the companies and businesses he had casually invested in had all sat untouched in his bank account.
Without his noticing, they had accumulated into a very large sum.
His little sister only wanted a hundred million.
Jiang Ci's plan was to train for two hours every morning, so she had set an alarm on her phone for 6:00 a.m.
When the alarm rang, Jiang Ci squinted as she reached for the phone on her nightstand and brought it in front of her face.
Keeping one eye tightly shut, she opened the other a sliver to look at the screen.
First, she turned off the alarm.
She rolled over, pulled the covers over her head, and tapped her unread messages.
[Si Beichen transferred RMB 100000000.00 to your savings account ending in 0765 at 04:39 on March 18. Current balance: RMB 4075280000.00.]
Still a little groggy, Jiang Ci squinted and counted:
Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions, ten millions... a hundred million?
She shook her head to wake herself up, rubbed her eyes, opened them both, and counted again.
Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions, ten millions, a hundred million.
Then she looked at the balance again: 4075280000.00.
Jiang Ci abruptly sat up in bed.
She remembered now. After she transferred a hundred million to the club's owner, Mr. Wang, her four billion had become 3.9 billion!
So a hundred million of the four billion she had now really had come from Si Beichen!
Damn! Filthy rich!
She liked this big-spending idiot of a brother!
From now on, Si Beichen was her real brother!
He might be a short-lived brother, but milking him for more before he died would count as benefiting the whole family.
Naturally, the first step in milking this cash cow was getting on good terms with him.
Jiang Ci opened the Happy Family group chat, tapped Si Beichen's profile picture, and sent him a friend request.
She waited a while, but he didn't accept. He probably wasn't checking his phone.
Jiang Ci didn't mind. She tossed her phone aside, got up, washed up, and started the new day's training.
After finishing two hours of training, showering, changing, and eating breakfast, she drove out.
This trip was to buy solid wood flooring. Today, she planned to lay the floors in the house inside her space.
She ordered two thousand square meters of solid wood flooring and asked them to deliver it to the suburban villa.
Driving ahead to lead the way, Jiang Ci went to the suburban villa along with the delivery truck.
She hadn't been here in a long time.
The security guards at the entrance still recognized her, and she got through without trouble.
Jiang Ci pulled open the garage's roller door.
It was completely empty inside, and she had the delivery workers unload all the solid wood flooring into the garage.
After the workers finished and left, Jiang Ci pulled the roller door back down.
She switched on the garage lights.
She put all the flooring into her space.
Taking out her keys, she opened a small door in the innermost corner of the garage.
Through that door was the villa's living room.
The three-story villa was decorated beautifully and cozily.
Traces of the life their family of three had once shared were still everywhere.
Jiang Ci closed every curtain in the three-story villa and locked every window tight.
The villa instantly became pitch-black. She couldn't even see her hand in front of her face.
She nodded in satisfaction. Good. That meant she hadn't missed any doors or windows.
Reassured, she entered her space.
She could only stay here for six hours before being kicked out.
Time was tight, so she had to work fast. She didn't know whether six hours would be enough to finish.
After all, this was her very first time doing anything like this.
The house already had flooring, but it was the same white as the walls, and she didn't like it.
She had bought click-lock solid wood flooring, which didn't look difficult to install.
Jiang Ci rolled up her sleeves and got to work.
Laying this click-lock flooring felt a bit like putting building blocks together.
The more she fitted together, the more addictive it became.
At first, Jiang Ci was a little clumsy. She had to study each plank before laying it, afraid of making a mistake and having to redo it.
Later, she got the hang of it, laying the flooring faster and faster and doing a very good job.
There was just one problem: she had to keep getting up to fetch planks.
When she was outside her space, she could use her mind to store and retrieve anything inside it.
But when she was inside the space herself, that no longer worked. She had to do everything by hand.
If only she could use her mind to retrieve things while inside the space too.
With just a little lift of her hand, a floorboard would appear right in it.
Ah, why was she always indulging in wishful thinking?
It took Jiang Ci a little over three hours to finish flooring all three bedrooms and both living areas, excluding the bathroom.
Not wanting to waste her limited time, she left the space as soon as she finished.