Chapter 63, Part Two

In the evening, the shop was bustling with people. Outside, neon lights shone brilliantly and traffic flowed endlessly, marking the peak hour of daily pedestrian traffic on the walking street. The entire shop stayed busy until around eight or nine at night before closing up. After nine, as preparations for closing began, the crowd inside thinned out.

Zhao Hairui, Zhang Yuqin, and the others were all very happy to have opened a shop here. Because it was close to the pedestrian street, there were many commercial shops nearby to explore. It was extremely lively both day and night, boasting not only a night market but also a night school nearby.

Lin Xuexia had set up early, middle, and late shifts, with the shop staff taking turns on duty. She also hired hourly workers to clear plates, wipe tables, and wash dishes during peak hours.

Generally, Lin Xuexia did not stay at the shop in the evenings. Fu Wei would drive over to pick her up and take her back. He now drove a white imported second-hand van, a vehicle that had trickled in from Qiongzhou Island. Without the import tax, the price was cheap—thirty-one thousand yuan for a vehicle that could carry passengers and haul cargo alike.

Lin Xuexia also wanted to buy a van for the shop, as having a vehicle was always more convenient. If she weren't pregnant, Lin Xuexia would have liked to get a driver's license herself.

Nowadays, their shop consumed several hundred catties of meat a day, with total ingredients exceeding a thousand catties. When buying meat now, she went directly to partner with a breeding farm in the city to ensure she got the freshest supplies.

January weather was cold, and people on the street wore cotton-padded jackets and overcoats. Fearing she might fall ill, Fu Wei wrapped her up snugly every day. However, the weather here alternated between hot and cold; during the bright midday sun, wearing a single layer of clothing didn't feel cold at all, but the nights were biting and freezing.

Coming out of the shop, Fu Wei wrapped a scarf around her neck, and the two went to browse the department store. They bought a set consisting of a color TV, a sound system, and two microphones for the home, which cost nearly five thousand yuan.

Fu Wei loaded the items into the trunk. The moment Zhong Xiangdong laid eyes on those two microphones, his eyes lit up instantly. Back when he was a speculator trading goods between the north and south, he had dabbled in quite a few cassette tapes and videotapes, and his daily hobby was listening to music and humming little tunes.

According to his own boastful claims, he could hum a couple of bars of any song.

"Hurry back and get it set up! Your Master Dong here will come over to your two places every single day to belt out a song!"

Fu Wei was particularly dismissive of him: "Watch out for the neighbors reporting you for disturbing the peace with your pig-slaughtering shrieks."

"Old Wei, you're just jealous, pure and simple jealousy. How many pretty young things do you think your big brother here used to sing love songs with? Can you do that? Can you do that? The most you can sing is *Unity is Strength*..."

Lin Xuexia smiled as she listened to them talk, subconsciously touching her belly. By this time, she was nearly three months pregnant. Her belly was not yet noticeably protruding, but she could already feel a slight swell, though she couldn't tell if it was just bloating or if the baby was growing.

In a little over half a month, it would be the Lunar New Year. Lin Xuexia and Fu Wei, husband and wife, were getting ready to celebrate the New Year with some lively festivities, adding a color TV and sound system to their home so friends and family could gather and sing together.

Singing and dancing were all the rage right now. The dance halls outside were bustling, and she had heard that hotels and guesthouses in other places had newly opened karaoke rooms specially for guests to sing and entertain themselves.

In a few more years, these karaoke rooms would blossom everywhere, becoming a popular way for many people to dine and socialize.

"Sister-in-law, hurry up and get in the car. Let's go back and try it out," Zhong Xiangdong urged and coaxed.

Even though his singing wasn't much to write home about, he genuinely loved to sing and got excited the moment he saw a microphone.

Sitting in the back, Lin Xuexia said, "It's too late to go back now, it's not appropriate. We'll try it tomorrow."

Tomorrow was Lin Yuxia's day off, and she had invited her two younger sisters and their mother over to the house to play. Fu Wei had also invited a few friends to gather and liven things up.

Upon returning home and heading up to the third floor, Fu Wei, Zhong Xiangdong, and the others set up the color TV and completed the debugging. Zhong Xiangdong couldn't wait to sing a song, but before he even finished, Fu Wei chased him downstairs, saying, "If you sing another note, I'm going to worry about the windows shattering."

Zhong Xiangdong and the others left. Lin Xuexia sat on the soft leather sofa, picked up a blanket from the side to drape over herself, and looked at the color TV in front of her with a slight pang of regret. If it weren't for the recent grand opening and the high profits, she really wouldn't have had the heart to buy it. A whole day's income had just been spent like that.

After spending the money, she thought about it—it was merely one day's profit for the shop anyway, nothing to fret over, and her mind felt much more at ease.

To Lin Xuexia, buying a color TV right now was actually a losing proposition. Although inflation would rage fiercely over the next few years, while the prices of various living necessities rose rapidly, the prices of color TVs and refrigerators didn't increase by all that much.

Back when everyone's wages were a few dozen yuan, these color TVs sold for a few thousand; when everyone's incomes reached the thousands, these color TVs still sold for a few thousand... By the new millennium, ordinary households all had color TVs, refrigerators, and VCD players.

In just another year, they would enter the 1990s, an era of soaring prosperity and economic takeoff. Lin Xuexia remembered that people's wages rose very quickly back then. If you saved money in the bank, the annual interest rate could reach ten points, but just letting money sit dead in the bank was foolish, as the interest earned might not keep pace with the following year's wage increases.

Therefore, many employees at this time didn't save money; they spent as much as they made, at most saving up to buy major household appliances.

"Buy early, enjoy early," Lin Xuexia told herself. Right now, neither she nor Fu Wei had much cash on hand. Although they could earn tens of thousands every month, they were also planning to build a house, and their expenses in the coming months wouldn't be small.

Fu Wei planned to take on a major project after the New Year. In their line of work, starting out inevitably meant advancing one's own capital, and many contracting foreheads also had to borrow from all over to finance projects. Thanks to their high earnings now, these amounts weren't much to sneeze at, but project payments were often dragged out and tangled up, making them very difficult to collect.

The more projects one had on hand, the more capital needed to be advanced. If cash flow problems arose, it would become extremely dangerous.

"What? Does it hurt? Boss Lin?" Fu Wei smiled as he placed the remote control on the coffee table. He came over to sit beside Lin Xuexia and pulled her into his arms.

With the addition of the color TV and sound system to their home, his heart was also pounding with excitement, though he wasn't as shamelessly expressive about it as Zhong Xiangdong.

Tomorrow, he would hold his own wife in his arms and sing romantic duets with her.

"It hurts a little bit, but money can always be earned back," Lin Xuexia said, wrapping her arms around Fu Wei's neck. "Once we get through this tough period, let's save up more of a nest egg—no, let's set up more channels of income. With my shop running and the rental income coming in every month after we build the house, we'll have a stable cash flow. Life will only get more and more comfortable from here on out."

Having returned from the future decade, Lin Xuexia knew that letting money rot in savings was unreliable. When she first started out running a street stall, she was foolish and just hoarded cash, only to learn later that she had to figure out ways to make money beget money. Along the way, she had stepped into quite a few pitfalls; for instance, after buying stocks once, she refused to ever try that kind of gambling-like speculation again. She had witnessed people getting rich overnight and had also seen others ultimately ruined, committing suicide by jumping off buildings.

To accumulate wealth, one needed numerous continuous moneybags that endlessly brought in cash for her, providing a fixed positive return every month. The more such moneybags that could generate wealth she possessed, the wealthier she would become.

For example, if one had five hundred thousand yuan on hand and simply let it sit there as a backup, that behavior was quite foolish. It was better to utilize that five hundred thousand and turn it into moneybags that could generate income. When she possessed more and more moneybags, bringing her an income of five hundred thousand every month, would she still need to keep five hundred thousand sitting idle as a backup?

Furthermore, one-off deals were inadvisable.

Lin Xuexia had seen people who had good luck for a year or two, pulling in tens of millions, only to rapidly decline and go bankrupt in the following years because it was unsustainable. There were also contracting foreheads who accumulated tens of millions in family assets over their younger years, only to be lured to Macau later on, becoming obsessed with gambling and squandering everything in less than a month, leaving behind only some real estate—thankfully, they at least still had the real estate.

Therefore, Lin Xuexia wanted a cash flow that could endlessly generate wealth. Right now, she only had "Shanshai Time" as a moneybag, which could bring her tens of thousands in positive income every month; she called this Moneybag Number One.

When the rental properties she planned to build in the future were completed and she could steadily collect tens of thousands in rent every month, that would be her Moneybag Number Two.

As for Fu Wei, who was holding her right now, Lin Xuexia bestowed upon him the honorary title of "Moneybag Number Zero (Pending)."

He might end up being the highest-earning moneybag, but he also had the potential to turn into the most financially devastating money-swallowing beast for a period of time, frantically draining cash from her moneybags.

Lin Xuexia patted his shoulder and grandly declared, "Even if your development project fails and your capital chain snaps, your wife will backstop you, and we'll still be able to make a comeback."

Fu Wei's bright, piercing eyes stared intently into hers. He was quite surprised that Lin Xuexia could utter such words, and the "Moneybag Theory" she had explained to him also left him immensely astonished.

Clearly, his wife was terrible at arithmetic, but her understanding of money and finance made a lot of sense. Once they, as a couple, had more moneybags generating wealth in the future to continuously bring them positive returns, it would be difficult for them to go bankrupt even if they tried.

However, Fu Wei, dubbed Moneybag Number Zero, was deeply dissatisfied. "Why am I Number Zero?"

Lin Xuexia answered, "Number Zero represents infinite possibilities. This is Comrade Lin Xuexia's affirmation of you."

Fu Wei couldn't help but chuckle. His wife lacked a formal education, but she had all sorts of skewed yet logical theories, and the sweet words she spoke were quite touching—far more sophisticated than that fellow Zhong Xiangdong's, operating on an entirely different level.

He leaned down slightly, his high-bridged nose brushing against the tip of Lin Xuexia's nose, and lightly pecked the corner of her mouth. "Then what number moneybag am I to you?"

"You'll have to ask yourself that," Lin Xuexia said with amusement.

"You are my Number Nine moneybag, representing eternity," Fu Wei said with a smile. He racked his brain to come up with sweet talk, but after pondering back and forth, still felt something wasn't quite right; it wasn't vivid enough, nor was it representative. So, with a flash of inspiration, he said, "You are my little treasury."

The term "moneybag" was no longer sufficient to describe his precious wife; she was his little treasury, the national treasury of their household.

"Whenever I'm short on money, I'll raid the treasury." Holding Lin Xuexia, Fu Wei rested his chin on her shoulder, still seemingly unsatisfied.

At that moment, his eyes flashed with brilliant light, feeling that this term was the epitome of vividness.

At the same time, he felt an immense sense of security. He knew other contracting foreheads whose emotional lives varied greatly—some had one wife back home and several mistresses here, while others had wives who played mahjong all day long... Of course, many also had serious careers of their own, but those were mostly just accessories.

A "little treasury" like his wife was rare in this world.

Lin Xuexia: "?????"

She laughed and swatted his face away, saying coldly, "You are not allowed to raid the treasury at will."

Fu Wei scooped her up by the waist, stood up, and walked toward the bedroom. His voice was low and magnetic, carrying a strange, teasing amusement: "Then how about I hand over the treasury instead?"

"I have plenty of inventory on this end. If I want to hand over the treasury, you'll have to open the vault doors."

Lin Xuexia wrapped her arms around his neck: "..."

Glaring at the man before her with slightly heated cheeks, she had no idea that discussing moneybags could somehow lead to this. Zhong Xiangdong had told her that this brother of his was reckless, dull, and utterly devoid of romance when it came to romantic matters.

This... this could only be said to be a natural-born talent of this scoundrel.