Chapter 10: All In Again

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Ding-dong~

The doorbell suddenly rang.

“Who is it?” Zhang Qian put on her bathrobe and tugged up her fishnet stockings, concealing the marks left by the tearing.

“I’m here to inspect the room.” Lu Liang grinned, slapped her thigh, and went to open the door.

The late-night food he had ordered had arrived. After drinking and then working up another appetite, he was feeling a little hungry.

The waiter was clearly experienced. Eyes lowered, he pushed the cart forward without looking to either side.

There was a steaming pot of seafood congee, along with several plates of exquisite side dishes.

“Mr. Lu, please enjoy your meal.”

After the waiter left, Zhang Qian came over on her long legs, her body swaying as she twisted her waist, every frown and smile radiating irresistible charm.

When she sat down at the table, she seemed almost like another dish. She filled half a bowl of congee, scooped up a spoonful, and gently blew away the heat.

“Good brother, ah, open wide. Let me feed you.”

The market looks promising. It’s worth buying.

That alone was not enough information. She wanted to know more—at what price to buy, and at what price to sell.

But she had overestimated herself and underestimated Lu Liang.

Lu Liang had been married once before. He was willing to reveal a little information only because he wanted to maintain this relationship. He was not carried away by lust, however, and would never let everything slip.

Even after Zhang Qian was “devoured” once again, she still failed to pry anything more useful out of him.

As the night deepened, the battle finally ended.

The bathrobes strewn across the carpet and the fishnet stockings torn open with gaping holes all testified to the ferocity of the encounter.

“You bad man… How long has it been since your wife let you release all that?” Zhang Qian was drenched in sweat, several strands of hair clinging to her cheeks, a lingering flush still coloring her face.

The previous year, when she had bought her home, she had spent more than two weeks choosing it, viewing more than a dozen properties before finally finding the harbor she wanted.

During that time, she had also shared coffee with Lu Liang several times and spoken with him on numerous occasions. She had known for a long while that he was a married man.

Yet Lu Liang had been astonishingly vigorous, practically like a bull, comparable even to a young man in his early twenties.

“We divorced a long time ago.”

Lu Liang sat at the head of the bed and lit a cigarette afterward.

“Really?” Zhang Qian suddenly thought of something and muttered resentfully, “Men are all scoundrels.”

Most people would assume that someone divorced because he had money, rather than that he had gained his wealth because of the divorce.

“What are you imagining?” Lu Liang stubbed out his cigarette, slipped back beneath the covers, and reached around Zhang Qian from behind. Their skin pressed together as they felt each other’s warmth.

Taking her hand, he toyed with her manicured nails and sighed.

“I’m the one who was abandoned.”

Saying it now no longer felt the way it had at first. To him, the divorce had come to feel more like liberation.

“How could that be?” Zhang Qian did not believe him.

Lu Liang had money, a decent appearance, a good temperament, and extraordinary stamina. In her mind, he possessed all four essential elements of happiness. How could a man like that have ended up divorced?

“The story of a child without a mother is a long one.”

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“You have a child?”

“That was only a metaphor.”

“The night is still young. Why don’t you tell me about it?”

“It all began during the New Year holiday…”

“Hey, wait. How did you fall asleep?”

Zhang Qian waited for quite some time before turning her head and discovering that Lu Liang had already closed his eyes, apparently asleep.

“If you don’t want to tell me, then just say so. Why pretend to be asleep?”

She muttered a few more words and adjusted her sleeping position slightly. Before long, she too fell into a deep sleep.

A smile tugged at the corners of Lu Liang’s mouth. He opened his eyes, placed his palm over her breast, then closed his eyes again.

…

At nine in the morning, the shrill alarm echoed through the room.

Lu Liang rubbed his eyes. The woman beside him had already disappeared, leaving only a few pale red strands of hair on the white pillow.

A faint splashing came from the bathroom.

Zhang Qian walked out wearing ordinary clothes. Her tight yoga pants accentuated the graceful curves of her hips.

She had clearly trained for it; otherwise, they could never have been so firm and shapely.

Lu Liang had already verified the quality of that touch—and how much impact those curves could absorb—the previous night.

He looked over.

“Leaving?”

“I have a yoga class. If I don’t go now, I’ll be late.” Zhang Qian came to the bedside and gave Lu Liang a fragrant kiss. “Bye-bye.”

“Bye-bye~”

Lu Liang did not try to stop her. He knew Zhang Qian would come looking for him again, and that she would be even more proactive next time.

At nine ten, another alarm went off.

Lu Liang turned off the remaining timed alarms. He had set them all the night before in case he overslept.

It was Friday, the final trading day of the week. He needed to buy shares of Chinese Online at the earliest possible moment.

“The market has been behaving strangely these past few days.”

Wearing his bathrobe and smoking a cigarette, Lu Liang went into the living room and kept a close eye on the stock market.

He noticed that Chinese Online’s price movements looked very much like a major player quietly building a position at a low level and accumulating shares, with a surge potentially imminent.

Daring not to hesitate for fear of missing the opportunity, Lu Liang began buying small lots the moment the market opened.

The opening price was 17.93 yuan. The stock rose 0.89 percent that day. One lot consisted of one hundred shares and was worth 1,793 yuan.

At first, Lu Liang bought only a dozen lots at a time, then several dozen, worried that the major player might notice this “rat stealing oil.”

Later, he realized that his concern had been entirely unnecessary. Chinese Online had a market capitalization of twelve billion yuan, with 2.42 billion yuan worth of shares in public circulation.

Though the more than ten million yuan he held was not insignificant, at most it was merely a somewhat larger stone in the ocean.

The major player set a suppression line at 18.00 yuan, creating the illusion that strong resistance lay above and that the price could not break through.

Lu Liang set his buying line at 17.90 yuan. Whenever an upward breakout failed, he could absorb a large number of shares.

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Having read quite a few books recently, Lu Liang now understood the mentality of retail investors to some extent. Whenever an attempt to break upward failed, some retail investors would conclude that a breakout was hopeless and sell their shares or cut their losses.

Lu Liang could play the role of the buyer waiting to take their shares, accepting their holdings at a relatively normal price without pushing the stock higher.

Of course, being the buyer was merely wishful thinking on his part. With only tens of millions in capital, he was nowhere near qualified to serve as the supporting floor for a stock with a ten-billion-yuan market capitalization.

At 9:45 a.m., thirty minutes after the opening and thirty minutes before the close were the most active trading periods of the day.

Chinese Online failed in its second attempt to break through 18 yuan.

The retail investors holding large positions completely lost confidence. Unwilling to miss the broader market’s rally, they began selling along with the crowd.

Over the previous four trading days, the broader market had risen 395 points and firmly established itself above 4,700, achieving an astonishing gain of 8.75 percent. The total market capitalization of the main board had soared by 750 billion yuan.

By contrast, Chinese Online had risen only 5.52 percent over the past four days, and two of those days had seen a slow decline.

A stock that could not even outperform the broader market had driven its shareholders to the brink. They were unwilling to endure any more torment.

“The market’s been doing so well lately. I could have bought anything. Why did I buy this piece of garbage?”

“Even if you can’t compare with the demon king Storm, couldn’t you at least keep pace with Meiyan during the same period?”

“I actually had hopes for you, you piece of trash. Go eat dirt.”

“Goodbye. No, never again…”

A crowd of retail investors cursed as they cashed out and left the market.

Almost instantly, new messages began popping up nonstop in Lu Liang’s brokerage account. New orders were being executed.

Within the space of a few breaths, his tens of millions in capital had been completely spent. His holdings reached 588,800 shares, with 4.804 yuan remaining available and his position at 99.9 percent.

Lu Liang was fully invested once again.

At the same time, Zhang Qian was watching the same stock on her taxi ride home.

As a striver in Shanghai, she had opened her own brokerage account long ago and had even activated the southbound trading channel.

She was timid, however, and usually bought only funds. With the market performing well over the past six months, she had earned more than eighty thousand yuan.

“Is this reliable? Why are all the other stocks so red while this one is completely green?”

Zhang Qian stared blankly at Chinese Online.

Just moments earlier, the buying support at 17.90 yuan, which had been holding in a tug-of-war, suddenly vanished, causing the stock price to plunge.

The broader market rose another 1.2 percent that day, with thousands of stocks in the red. Only sixty-five stocks remained green, and Chinese Online was one of them.

The stock fell 2.2 percent that day, closing at 17.46 yuan. The discussion boards were filled with despair, and countless investors were cursing furiously.

“I’ll trust you this once. If I lose money, next time I’ll make you book me the biggest package and open five bottles of Ace of Spades to make it up to me.”

Zhang Qian hesitated for a long time. More than anything, she kept thinking about having given herself to him the previous night. If she ignored the so-called insider information, she felt she would be losing out no matter what.

She withdrew the 580,000 yuan she had invested in funds and used the 80,000 yuan in profits to buy Chinese Online, acquiring 4,500 shares.

She was being very cautious. She did not want to put all her eggs in one basket. If both the stock and the fund lost money, it would break her heart.

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