Bro | Chapter 40

When Wei Qian and San Pang arrived at their destination, Lao Xiong had already spoken to people in advance. The friend who had introduced the project to them last time was waiting at the station holding a sign made from a piece of stiff cardboard cut off a shoebox.

This friend of Lao Xiong’s was originally named Li Goudan. After he grew up, he changed it himself to Li Fengya. He was an entrepreneur from a farming background, and in his early years he made his fortune as a construction foreman leading building crews. Lao Xiong had gotten to know him while dealing in tea.

Li Fengya’s sideline was trafficking local specialties all over the country. His main business, meanwhile, had two branches. On one side he did construction, and on the other he did demolition. Tear it down, then build it back up, a full one-stop service, all included.

Even so, most of what he earned was still basically hard-earned money. He had long envied those investors and developers, but unfortunately he couldn’t scrape together that much capital himself, so he began thinking of bringing other people in.

Unfortunately, when Lao Xiong came to look last time, he did not seem especially interested. Li Fengya had originally thought the matter was dead, but he had not expected there to be a turning point after all, so he came to receive them in high spirits.

Li Fengya was in his forties. He looked utterly unremarkable, dark and skinny, with sunken eyes. He was under one meter seventy tall, with a waistline under two chi one. At first glance, he looked like a blackened slab of beef jerky.

In the dead of winter, he still did not seem to mind the cold. He carried his coat in his hand and wore a designer shirt, its sleeves rolled up. Who knew how long it had been since it was last washed, it had been rubbed and wrinkled into something like a strip of dried pickled vegetable. The front hem was tucked into his waistband, while the back hem hung loose outside it. As he walked, it bobbed up and down with his cheerful steps, practically like he was wearing a butt flap.

People say clothes make the man and saddle the horse, but there really are some people in this world who, even draped in embroidered silks and jeweled robes, still only make others think they have tied a bamboo sleeping mat from home around themselves.

Wei Qian had already met him once, so he was not surprised. But San Pang had never seen such a shabby-looking rich man before. He was so startled that he secretly leaned over and muttered into Wei Qian’s ear, “Yo, what coal pit did this da-ge crawl out of?”

Wei Qian said, “Huang Shiren Pit Number One.”

San Pang wished he could sew his own mouth shut.

Since guests had come from afar, Li Fengya naturally had to entertain them. By the time they were at the table and three rounds of wine had gone by, after each side had shamelessly buttered the other up with things like “young talent” and “veteran strategist,” Li Fengya finally got to the point.

“Last time I was thinking too simply. Right now, besides us, there are several other parties eyeing this parcel too. I heard one of them even hired a foreign designer to do the planning. A dog growing horns and pretending to be foreign, and somehow they’ve made it look pretty convincing.”

San Pang hurriedly asked, “We’re both outsiders and don’t understand how deep the water is here. Do you think this thing is reliable?”

Li Fengya smacked his lips over a sip of liquor, shook his head, and sighed. “Hard to say.”

“How so?”

Li Fengya lowered his voice, dipped his chopsticks into the liquor, drew a line across the tabletop, craned his neck out, and said in an even lower voice, “Because I’ve had my eye on this matter the whole time, I’ve worked quite a few connections too. I won’t hide it from you two little brothers, I can get a word in over at the Land Bureau and at the municipal government. Of course, don’t go thinking your big brother here is somebody amazing. If I can get a word in, then of course other people can too. Without any connections, who would even dare set their sights on this, right? Director Zhou over at the Land Bureau used to be from the same hometown as me. I just drank with him a couple days ago, and we talked about it a little. Aiyaa, this matter is really hard to say now… You know that commercial street between those several plots, right?”

When the two of them nodded, Li Fengya continued, “That was invested in by a local company. Their boss is surnamed Zhang. This Zhang Laoban is our Party secretary’s cousin. Here’s how it stands now. The commercial street was built up bustling and thriving, but for some reason Zhang Laoban has his wires crossed. He only rents and won’t sell. He says it’s to preserve standards, that he can’t let the commercial street turn into a small-goods wholesale market. Well, now the standards are there, but the capital chain went snap and broke. A project worth over a hundred million got smashed into it, and even the loans have come due. Otherwise, would the residential plots around it ever be cheap enough for us? Impossible. Even now, every family is drooling as they wait. The premise is that everyone’s hoping that surnamed Zhang can’t come up with the money, so they can nibble on whatever leaks out through the gaps in his teeth. But if Zhang Laoban suddenly comes around, bang, sells off the commercial street, or gets new capital, then all our talk is for nothing.”

San Pang said, “Then why doesn’t he sell?”

Li Fengya slapped his thigh. “Because he can’t get over it.”

San Pang said, “If he’s out of money, then he can find someone to cooperate with. With a background that strong, is there really no one willing to lend him money? Borrow some, then find a partner to invest with him, wouldn’t that settle it?”

Li Fengya gestured as he spoke. “No, Pang-ge, you still don’t get it. Put nicely, it’s that he temporarily can’t get his funds back. Put bluntly, his cash chain has already snapped. Ga beng, just like that, broken, dead as a doornail. Get it now?”

Li Fengya loved using onomatopoeia, as if it could increase his vocabulary. When he said “ga beng,” he sprayed a faceful of spit at San Pang.

San Pang wiped his face. From those heavy flecks of saliva, he keenly felt just how difficult and bitter it would be to take this thing down.

“No matter how much backing he has, he’s still private capital. And what are private businesses most afraid of? No money, my Pang-ge!”

After saying that, Li Fengya reached out, grabbed a huge pork knuckle off the table, and finished it in three bites. Then he wiped his mouth and said, “Let me put it plainly for you, that Zhang Laoban of ours has a bit of a sour temperament. I met him once. Aiyo, my old mother, the way he frowned and looked down on everyone from above, I thought he’d just gotten back from a business trip to the Southern Heavenly Gate. He looks down on local rich guys like us. Otherwise, would I have gone to all the trouble of coming to find you people from so far away?”

Only then did Wei Qian speak. “Li-ge, from what you’re saying, aside from selling off the commercial street he’s holding, he doesn’t have any other way?”

Li Fengya thought it over for a moment. “Not necessarily. If he really starts breaking ground and beginning construction, he might have trouble carrying it. But if he’s willing to lend out a shell and find someone to step forward in his place, package up a new project company, then use that project company’s name to set up the project, raise financing, take down this parcel, and then immediately resell it at a premium, that’s not impossible either. It could even bring back a big chunk of cash flow. It would just take longer. And besides… if it were me, I’d do it. But didn’t I tell you already what kind of person Zhang Laoban is? He might not be willing to do this sort of under-the-table thing.”

Wei Qian lowered his eyes and thought for a while. In the end, after discussing it with Li Fengya for a bit, the group decided to walk through the commercial street the next day and scout the nearby area.

That night, when he got back to the inn, Wei Qian took a bath with half-cool, half-lukewarm water and sobered himself up. Before he had even properly dried his hair, he dug out the project proposal he had written before and tore it up.

San Pang watched coldly from the side and immediately started gloating. “Different from what you expected, right? Dumbfounded, right? Out of ideas, right? If you ask me, we should just pack up and buy train tickets back tomorrow… Listen to that cough of yours, even your breathing is wheezing. Both your lung valves have fallen off and you’re leaking air.”

Wei Qian shot him a glance and began to suspect that Lao Xiong had sent San Pang along with him with entirely bad intentions.

San Pang played Zhu Bajie’s role to perfection. Every time he found a chance, he suggested dividing up the luggage and heading back to Gao Laozhuang, truly a first-rate weapon for shaking morale.

That bastard Lao Xiong, all simple and honest on the outside and monkey-shrewd inside, had probably already known about all this when he came last time. Maybe he had simply wanted Wei Qian to back off in the face of difficulties.

San Pang went on, “Qian’er, I think this thing is hopeless from the start. Even Lao Li, a local snake, has already tested how deep the water is. What else are you still trying to do? Don’t tell me you plan to send your San-ge here to seduce government officials. I’m telling you now, a gentleman may be killed but not humiliated.”

Wei Qian had finally managed to stop coughing, and he looked at San Pang painfully. “San-ge… cough cough, I’m begging you, have some shame.”

“Don’t slander me. My integrity is as everlasting as my fat,” San Pang said as he stood up and twisted his waist. “Fine, take your time thinking. I thought that roast chicken tonight was pretty good. Before our triumphant return to court, I’ve decided to wholesale a few more and bring them back for the kids to try.”

Wei Qian unfolded a planning map Li Fengya had gotten for him through the back door and spread it out on the bed. In a hoarse voice, he said, “If you want to go back, then go back by yourself. I’m not leaving anyway.”

San Pang plopped down on the edge of the bed. “You really won’t cry till you see the coffin, huh?”

Wei Qian said calmly, “Even if I see the coffin, I still won’t cry. What use is crying? It’s fine, I have a second plan.”

San Pang’s eyes lit up. “You’re pretty amazing, then. You already expected…”

Wei Qian said, “Just thought of it now.”

San Pang silently sized him up for a moment. “Qian’er, what I just can’t understand is this. Before we got on the train, you were like this. On the train, you were like this. After getting here and understanding the situation, you’re still like this. Where does all your confidence come from? On what basis do you think you can definitely take this down?”

Wei Qian raised his head. Because of his illness and lack of rest, there were faint blood vessels in his eyes, and his gaze was heavy. Even though after all those years it still carried a trace of hidden gloom, the core of it was steady and completely undistracted.

“To repel external threats, you have to settle internal matters first,” Wei Qian said. “My energy is limited. Once I’ve decided to do something, if I still keep doubting it and wavering over it again and again, then I really won’t get anything done all day long. I don’t know what basis I have either, but I’ve already decided to do it. With that as the premise, I don’t think about anything else.”

San Pang grew serious too and asked him, “Then what if you fail?”

Wei Qian calmly shook his head. “I don’t consider that.”

San Pang got anxious. “How can you not consider that? Isn’t that just messing around? Before coming here, did you ever think about this Zhang Laoban? There are always things you won’t think of. If you refuse to think about anything, don’t you think you’re being too rash?”

Wei Qian smiled at him. “Temporary failure is not failure, it’s just an accident. Soldiers come, I block them. Water comes, I dam it. Even if there is an accident, what I need to think about is only how to make up for the losses and use the opportunities the accident brings. Nothing else.”

San Pang was finally convinced by that bizarre, almost cult-like spiritual realm of his. Resigned to fate, he temporarily bid farewell to his beloved roast chicken and went to the other bed to lie there like a corpse.

Wei Qian and the others had already been gone for several days, and Wei Zhiyuan had finally gone on break, which meant the Spring Festival had arrived.

With big brother absent this Spring Festival, the whole family passed it in a flat and joyless way.

Only when the New Year bells rang did a call from Wei Qian finally come home. But the sound of firecrackers exploding all around like bunkers being blasted meant that Wei Zhiyuan could not even clearly hear when he had said he would be coming home.

After hanging up, the boy began to seriously think about the rough road his love life was destined to take.

Wei Zhiyuan knew that his feelings were too shocking and too far outside convention. No one could hear of them for the first time and calmly accept them… least of all someone like big brother.

Wei Zhiyuan had in fact considered this before. If he let slip even a hint of inclination, would big brother, out of concern for his feelings, force himself to understand a little, tolerate a little, and then gradually get used to it?

That would be a long and drawn-out tug-of-war, and Wei Zhiyuan had no confidence that he would succeed.

When it came to a young person’s heart, people always became more melancholy and hesitant without even meaning to, not to mention this doomed, sunless secret crush.

In this regard, Wei Zhiyuan was rarely lacking in confidence. He did not know, and did not want to know, whether big brother would treat him the same way he treated Xiao Bao, willing to back down again and again for his sake, to the point of having no bottom line at all.

What if he simply thought he had gone crazy?

What if he felt that this was so disgusting that it lay beyond the bounds of what he could accept or yield on?

A tremendous bang sounded as a huge firework exploded in the sky. The private cars downstairs began shrieking in alarm from the fright. Wei Zhiyuan’s ears rang from the blast, and he could not help turning his head slightly, rejecting that line of thought.

He could not accept Wei Qian becoming no different from a stranger to him. The moment he thought of that, the fear he had carried since childhood, that constant fear of being abandoned, would once again drown him.

He had to proceed in a way that was safe, gentle, and effective.

Wei Zhiyuan did not know how much time he still had. He believed that what he needed first was to create an environment that would work by gradual influence, like a spider weaving its web. First there had to be a broad framework, and only after that could he proceed step by step.

Besides that, he felt he also needed a teammate.

Wei Zhiyuan shifted his gaze to Grandma Song, who had already fallen asleep against the sofa who knew how many times over. A moment later, he skipped past her. She would be even harder to persuade than big brother, and just explaining the whole matter clearly to her would probably be painful enough.

At last, Wei Zhiyuan’s gaze fell on Xiao Bao.

How could he, without drawing attention, find some way to get her to find some way to stand on his side?

With Wei Qian gone, he had even missed registration for the beginning of his final semester. It was Wei Zhiyuan who took his student ID to the school and completed registration in his place.

During that time, Wei Zhiyuan looked as if he had come down with some kind of mental illness. The house became piled full of all kinds of abstruse and difficult books, materials, and literary works. Their subjects included philosophy, psychology, sociology, and even certain kinds of curious art.

Grandma Song could not read. Whenever she saw thick, weighty books, she was filled with awe. Every time she noticed Wei Zhiyuan wearing his lightly corrective glasses and turning pages, she would even tiptoe when passing by him.

Xiao Bao, however, felt that her little brother was a bit abnormal. Among a bunch of teenagers, any teenager who did not play football or fool around during time that was not spent on homework seemed a little abnormal. Even when they passed around extracurricular books, what they passed around was martial arts, fantasy, comics, romance, and things of that sort. Nobody read this kind of stuff.

Xiao Bao thought he was too gloomy. It just so happened that in Chinese class that semester they were doing selected readings from the works of the poet who had lain on the tracks. After reading them, Xiao Bao was scared out of her wits and became more and more convinced that Wei Zhiyuan showed signs of being liable to do something desperate at any time.

She first told Grandma, but Grandma did not believe that nonsense of hers. Grandma thought Xiao Bao herself was lazy, did not study, and therefore could not stand seeing other people study either.

For the first time, Song Xiaobao began looking forward to big brother hurrying back.

It was not until the sunny days of March that Wei Qian finally returned.

At the end of the first lunar month, when Wei Qian laid several agreements out in a row in front of Lao Xiong, Lao Xiong’s expression fully demonstrated what it meant to be “stunned speechless.”

The moment Wei Qian walked through that commercial street once, he immediately had a clear idea in his heart.

He began carrying out investigations at top speed and doing market positioning. At the same time, he gave Li Fengya a difficult task, he told him that he absolutely had to make contact with Zhang Laoban.

This worried Li Fengya sick. He truly had no desire to deal with someone as high-end and Westernized as Zhang Laoban.

During the New Year period, he had worried enough to lose a handful of hair. Who knew that at just such a moment, “Heaven” would hand him an opportunity.

Zhang Laoban’s son was in middle school. The local atmosphere was rather fierce, and middle-school boys often only needed one disagreement before clawing and fighting on the roadside. When Li Fengya saw the boy, he was being surrounded by seven or eight little hooligans.

Li Fengya had not forgotten his roots after getting rich. During holidays and festivals he still liked drinking and eating meat together with his migrant-worker brothers. At the time there were several half-tipsy men with him. But street fights among little hoodlums were something people like them had long since gotten used to. At Li Fengya’s age, he was no longer the type to let out a roar at the sight of injustice. He had originally intended to pass by as though he saw nothing.

Who knew that just then, that brainless victim loudly announced his own identity. “My dad is a big boss, and my cousin-uncle is an official! Believe it or not, I’ll get you all killed!”

Wei Qian had been putting pressure on Li Fengya every day to make contact with Zhang Laoban. The enormous pressure had nearly driven Li Fengya into neurasthenia already. Since he had already been dwelling on Zhang Laoban this whole time, the moment he heard those words, he instinctively stopped.

The migrant-worker brothers stopped with him and craned their necks to look.

Lao Li considered it for a moment, then pointed a hand and said, “It’s New Year, what are you all doing? Make them stop fighting!”

At his order, even though nobody actually moved, the little hooligans were already frightened by that lineup. They exchanged glances, gave a whistle, and ran.

Lao Li put on a kindly face, pulled the “victim” up, and asked him a few questions. Damn if it was not the case that someone had handed him a pillow the moment he closed his eyes. This thick-headed brat was actually Zhang Laoban’s precious son.

That little bastard jumped up, slapped the dirt off his backside, and with a blankly bold look slung an arm around Lao Li’s shoulder. With absolutely no sense of seniority, he said, “Bro, thanks! From now on, you’re my big brother. If anything happens, I’ll look after you!”

Li Fengya thought to himself, This little brat must be missing a screw.

But outwardly he burst into laughter and said in grand heroic style, “It’s nothing, it’s all fate!”

When San Pang heard about it afterward, he sighed to Wei Qian, “That bastard Lao Li’s got some real skills. He knows how to handle things and he’s lucky too. A lucky general.”

Wei Qian’s voice had been made terribly hoarse by his own coughing, but that did nothing to prevent him from giving San Pang a deep and unreadable sneer. He said, “I hired those little brats who were doing the beating.”

San Pang: “…”

To avoid seeming too deliberate if they showed up in person, it was always Lao Li who dealt with Zhang Laoban’s side.

And those crooked little tricks were only seasoning. What truly moved Zhang Laoban was a framework agreement submitted in Lao Li’s name.

On the surface, that agreement was between Lao Li and Zhang Laoban. Lao Li would invest capital in exchange for a 25 percent share, and at the same time it stipulated that he would monopolize the upstream and downstream construction work. Zhang Laoban, as the ostensible major shareholder, would take the remaining shares and be responsible for handling the overall operation of the entire project.

But Zhang Laoban had no money. So this was where an invisible third-party shareholder was introduced. Only then did Li Fengya introduce Wei Qian and the others to Zhang Laoban. Wei Qian and Zhang Laoban signed a second agreement, tying themselves to Zhang Laoban’s side under the overall framework agreement for the project. Lao Xiong, as the actual unnamed shareholder, would provide the money. Zhang Laoban, as the registered nominal shareholder, would take full responsibility for operating the entire project, including acquiring the land, handling procedures, and sales, and in the end he would enjoy a 15 percent dividend right.

Zhang Laoban and his people were pulling off a classic empty-handed wolf-snaring trick, playing a round of what was at the time a highly cutting-edge “light asset” concept. It reduced the risks, and what attracted Zhang Laoban most of all was that it would allow him to turn the surrounding residential development and the commercial street into a single whole.

The reason he had refused no matter what to sell the commercial street was that he wanted to create exactly this kind of landmark, branded thing. Zhang Laoban was an ill-timed idealist. He had dreamed all along of digging out a piece of land in the city center and creating a whole district of his own there, buildings with a strong personal style like a kingdom of his own. Unfortunately, he had polished things too finely and meticulously, which was what dragged the timeline on the previous project out too long and ultimately caused the capital chain to break.

To let him operate it himself was, in Zhang Laoban’s view, far more thrilling than using connections to get hold of a parcel of land and collect a premium on it.

He and Wei Qian hit it off immediately, and by the end of the month they had already secured the land-use agreement. During that period, Wei Qian and San Pang were not idle either. Making use of the bridge that was Zhang Laoban, they paved every relationship and avenue with liquor bottles. On average they drank two or three times a day, and every night when they got back to the guesthouse, the very first thing they did was vomit until they felt half dead.

At the same time, they followed Zhang Laoban around on the preliminary work, watched the planning, got up in the middle of the night to study stacks upon stacks of legal provisions, drafted all kinds of agreements, sent them to specialists for review, and revised all manner of projections and cash flow plans again and again. When the discarded drafts were printed out and stacked together, they stood more than two feet high.

Following a workaholic like Wei Qian, even San Pang’s layer of fat, which he claimed was as everlasting as his virtue, lost ten jin in a single month, and his belt had to be tightened one notch further.

Lao Xiong had never expected that with thirty million, these two kids would actually gnaw the thing down alive.

Wei Qian had originally wanted to stay all the way through until the project began pre-sales and large amounts of capital flowed back in. After all, there were no classes in the second half of senior year anyway, so showing his face when it came time to hand in his thesis and defend it would have been enough. But in the end, before he could win the campaign, he fell first. That dead fatso’s words had become an omen. His lungs really did start leaking. After coughing all winter, to no one’s surprise he developed pneumonia.

In the end, Lao Xiong personally came and hauled him back, then dumped him at home to recover.

Wei Qian came home looking like an African refugee, and Grandma Song seized the chance to make a huge fuss over him, feeding him stewed chicken for three days straight until the sight of a clay pot alone made him nauseous.

This time when he came home, he instinctively felt that something was off with Wei Zhiyuan. Yet at first glance the boy still looked just as sensible and hardworking as before, and Wei Qian could not say exactly what was wrong.

By the weekend, Wei Zhiyuan guessed that his hidden accomplice Song Xiaobao was going to report the situation to big brother, so he went out early as usual for extra lessons and left Xiao Bao the chance to perform.

Song Xiaobao truly did not fail expectations. She had been bottling things up for a long time already. The moment Wei Zhiyuan went out, she secretly ran over to Wei Qian and said, “Er-ge might be getting autism and going shut-in.”

“…,” said Wei Qian. “Why don’t you just go watch cartoons.”

“It’s true!” Song Xiaobao swore to heaven. “I’m not lying to you! If you don’t believe me, go look in his room!”

Wei Qian said, “How old is he already? He’s still going shut-in? Just because he doesn’t want to pay attention to you, that means he’s autism? I can’t be bothered with you either.”

Song Xiaobao had arranged with Xiong-saozi to go learn dancing at her place that weekend, so it would not delay her long. When she saw that big brother was not taking her seriously at all, she jumped up, grabbed Wei Qian, and half-dragged, half-shoved him all the way to Wei Zhiyuan’s door. Twisting the knob open, she said, “Look for yourself then! I’m not telling you anymore. So annoying. I’m leaving.”