Chapter 8: Two Million Arrives—"Foresight" Registered
1281 Words
Zhang Tianyou left the noise of University Town behind.
He didn't look back.
But Su Xin'er's face—that stubborn, gentle face—and the fragile curve of her shoulders as she nibbled that dry bread crust—these were already seared into him. Branded on the soft tissue behind his eyes.
This image was both his weakness and his armor.
It reminded him of who he'd been last time: a man who watched her drown and couldn't even throw a rope.
It also drove him forward: become someone who can protect her. Fast. Before this life repeats the last.
He didn't return to the villa.
That so-called home had been more prison than shelter for three years. He found the cheapest chain hotel in the city center and checked in.
The room was tiny. Dingy. The air carried that particular chemical sweetness of industrial disinfectant attempting to mask mildew.
Compared to the Wangs' cavernous, spotless mansion, this was practically a slum.
Zhang Tianyou slept more soundly than he had in three years.
No Wang Wanru's glacial stare. No Wang Jianguo's contemptuous tirades. No suffocating awareness of living on borrowed space, borrowed tolerance, borrowed life.
Here, he was just Zhang Tianyou.
A man with two million in seed capital and a script for the future.
A man with vengeance to collect.
He spent the next morning in his hotel room, not venturing out. His battered laptop screen glowed as he tore through mountains of financial news and industry reports—consuming, digesting, synthesizing.
Last life, he'd been dismissed as a worthless live-in son-in-law. But the mind he'd built across twenty-plus years in the financial markets hadn't rusted. If anything, rebirth had sharpened it. His business instincts, his analytical reflexes—they were keener now. More certain.
He was waiting.
The offshore broker required settlement time for funds. T+1, cross-border.
Seconds accumulated into minutes. Minutes into hours.
1:59 PM.
Zhang Tianyou shut the laptop. Rose. Stretched shoulders tight from prolonged stillness.
He moved to the window. Below, the city's arteries pulsed with cars, delivery bikes, pedestrians flowing in all directions. His gaze was quiet. Almost serene.
Vzzzt.
His pocket vibrated.
Bank notification.
[Respected Customer, your savings account ending xxxx has received an international transfer of 2,015,430.50 RMB. Current balance: 2,118,883.28 RMB.]
He stared at the familiar string of digits.
His mouth curved—not a smile, exactly. Something cooler. More deliberate.
Two million. Arrived.
Not euphoria. Not exhilaration.
The satisfaction of a craftsman finally gripping his preferred tool.
Now: dismantling. Reconstruction.
He changed into clothes purchased that morning from a street stall. Shirt and trousers, combined value: under two hundred yuan. Walked out.
Thirty minutes later, he stood in the Haicheng Administration for Market Regulation.
Queue ticket. Forms. The slow procession of numbered windows.
Around him, other first-time founders vibrated with visible anxiety and hope. Futures balanced on stamped forms.
Zhang Tianyou waited with the equanimity of a man applying for a library card.
"Next—A037. Zhang Tianyou."
He approached the counter. Slid his prepared documents through the opening.
The clerk was a middle-aged woman with reading glasses perched on her nose. She reviewed the materials with practiced efficiency.
"Company name?" Routine question. She didn't look up.
Zhang Tianyou regarded the blank space on the form.
" Foresight. "
She glanced up. "Foresight? As in... foresight, foresight?"
"Yes."
"Foresight Capital Management, Limited..." She tapped keys, checked the registry. No duplication. The stamp came down with a soft thump .
Approved.
He emerged from the administrative building into afternoon sunlight.
The warmth hit his face. And something inside him—something he'd kept carefully, deliberately still— moved .
His heartbeat, for the first time that day, accelerated.
[Foresight...]
[To see ahead. To anticipate.]
[This is my edge. My only edge. But it's enough.]
[This is my declaration of war—against Zhou Minghao, against everyone who took everything from me last time.]
[From today, I am no longer the Wang family's kept man.]
[I am Zhang Tianyou. Founder of Foresight Capital.]
One hundred kilometers away, on the top floor of Wang Group headquarters, the air had frozen solid.
Wang Wanru sat immobile behind her vast rosewood desk, staring at the document before her.
It was an emergency analysis report on Jinke Corporation's stock price anomaly—prepared personally by her chief assistant. Cold data. Precise terminology. Surgical professionalism.
If yesterday's direct witnessing had cracked her understanding of Zhang Tianyou—
This report was the sledgehammer that shattered everything she'd believed for twenty-eight years.
Page One.
A price chart. The terrifying inverted V—limit up to limit down, that cliff-edge plunge. Even in static print, the image bled desperation.
The report chronologized every critical second.
[09:55:03]: Major financial media simultaneously release positive news: "Jinke Corporation Achieves Technological Breakthrough."
[10:00:00]: Market opens. Share price spikes vertically within three seconds.
[10:09:32]: Share price hits +10% limit up.
Wang Wanru's fingertip traced these timestamps. Her skin crawled.
Exactly as she'd heard it from Zhang Tianyou's thoughts. Not a second's deviation.
Page Two.
Short-seller analysis.
[...Post-market data obtained through specialized channels indicates the largest short position originated from an online brokerage registered in the Cayman Islands.]
[Position opened: 10:09:02—thirty seconds before limit-up peak.]
[Entry price: day's absolute high.]
[Capital deployed: approximately two million RMB. Maximum leverage (20x) authorized by brokerage.]
[Position closed: 14:01:05—five seconds after limit-down triggered.]
Conclusion (bolded's hand):
[This operation's timing precision and strategic ruthlessness exceed any reasonable framework of market analysis or conventional insider trading. The trader operated with what can only be described as omniscient foreknowledge of the entire event sequence. No comparable precedent exists in modern financial history.]
Omniscient foreknowledge.
Wang Wanru stared at those two words. Her blood had abandoned her extremities, retreating to some deep, defensive core.
She finally understood.
Not a madman.
Not delusional.
A prophet .
A living, breathing man who could see the future —who stood before her every day, slept in her house, ate at her table—and she'd dismissed him as furniture.
Three years. Three years she'd treated him as an object. A tool for social convenience. A shield against gossip and her parents' matchmaking.
She'd never asked his birthday. Never learned what he liked to eat. Never cared to know anything about him.
She thought she held all the power.
Now she understood: in his eyes, she wasn't even a worthy opponent.
Beneath that numb, accommodating exterior, he'd been silently judging her. Her family. Their entire doomed trajectory.
"Your left brow arch is 0.1 millimeters higher than your right." A petty observation—or a demonstration of his omniscience?
"The Star project's cash flow will snap." A curse—or a warning she'd been too arrogant to hear?
"He'll discard you like trash." A prophecy—or simply the future, read aloud?
All of it connected now. A web of futures, woven by one man.
And she—Wang Wanru, the ice queen, the untouchable heiress—was caught in its center, struggling.
Knock.
Her assistant entered, expression complicated, holding a manila envelope.
"President Wang. This arrived an hour ago." A pause. "Zhang Tianyou's company registration filing. From the administration bureau."
Wang Wanru accepted the envelope with numb fingers.
Extracted the contents.
A4 paper. Bold Song font. The characters entered her retina like hot iron.
FORESIGHT CAPITAL MANAGEMENT, LIMITED
Legal Representative: Zhang Tianyou
Foresight.
Her lips shaped the word silently.
Cold climbed her spine, vertebra by vertebra.
She finally understood.
That divorce agreement—the one she'd shredded with her own hands, in her panic to keep him close—
She hadn't been saving her marriage.
She'd torn up her only ticket out of this nightmare.
- Writer
