Chapter 101 – An Even Greater Challenge

As Yi Shu had foreseen, Xu Shixi was having a very hard time in Sung City. To describe it as a year seeming like a day would not be an exaggeration.

Happy City was Xinyuan's key project this year, almost its top priority. It could be said that whether the company would add a brilliant stroke to its finances this year depended entirely on the smooth execution of this undertaking.

Indeed, the greater the ability, the greater the responsibility; the greater the responsibility, the greater the risk; the greater the risk, the greater the loss.

The earlier proposal from Master Wu to shift one of the outer buildings inward as a whole met with a fresh round of resistance during actual implementation. The originally planned circular boundary of the central plaza had to be compressed into an oval. As a result, part of the facilities intended for the square would be cut in half, provoking immense dissatisfaction and opposition from the investors.

If the two large buildings on the east side were simply torn down, the losses would be incalculable. After all, once Happy City was completed, it would create a twin-city effect with Cloud City, and the economic benefits would become evident almost at once. Much less need be said of the long term.

At present, if the overall design of Happy City were to remain unchanged, it would be necessary to occupy the main road on the eastern side. But how could the government alter a carefully devised road plan on behalf of a private enterprise's oversight?

Yet the difficulties did not end there. Even if approval were granted and the change permitted, the reduced road area would have to be offset by shifting the company on the other side, which had planned a residential district, further back to make room.

During his time in Sung City, Xu Shixi visited several times, only to be turned away at the door each time. On one occasion, he lay in wait at the construction gate, hoping to catch a break, only for the bodyguards accompanying the other side to stop him. He was nearly treated as a suspicious person and taken to the Public Security Bureau for processing.

In truth, the residential complex under construction opposite could easily be moved five or six meters east, even ten, without issue. At the far end ran a river channel, separated from the complex by a long stretch. Since it was unsuitable for planting tall trees, the land had simply been left vacant.

The contractor for the residential district was Shengda, and it had always been at loggerheads with Xinyuan. For any major construction project, the two were bound to fight until blood was drawn.

In the Happy City project this time, Shengda had originally been highly competitive and had held the lead throughout the first two rounds of bidding. But by the third round, it unexpectedly fell behind. In defeat and regret, it became merely a runner-up.

Xinyuan had taken the prize with barely lifting a finger.

Only after the project entered the implementation stage did Xu Shixi learn that the Tang Group had been stirring the waters from behind the scenes. Thus Tang Dai naturally entered Xinyuan and continued the storyline that had ended eight years ago. Perhaps it had all been arranged in the darkness long ago: a breakup without warning, a reunion unprepared for.

The initiative in life is, in truth, very hard to hold in one's own hands.

Having been with Xinyuan for many years, Xu Shixi naturally knew the knot of grievances and enmity between the company and Shengda.

Tang Dai looked at him standing in the middle of the road, reduced to skin and bones, as though he had aged ten years. The young man once full of vigor and brilliance had at last revealed his true face: the appearance proper to his age.

But what, after all, was that appearance? Was it merely aging?

"I have one last method." In the end, Tang Dai could not bear to see Xu Shixi teetering on the edge of collapse. "But at the very least, give me some spirit. The Xu Shixi I know is not like this."

"You have a way?" The light of hope flashed in his eyes, and he was overjoyed.

"Yes, I do." Her tone became almost pedantic.

After saying this, the starlight in her eyes vanished, as though it had fallen into an abyss of endless darkness, swallowing every sorrowful thing indiscriminately into her gaze.

"Never mind, then." Xu Shixi said bleakly. It seemed he understood her sorrow, and yet seemed also to have thought of those recent exchanges of unspoken understanding.

"Why not?" Tang Dai raised her voice in agitation. "Do you have a better way?"

"I..." Xu Shixi hesitated, then stopped short.

"If he says no need, then no need it is." Qiao Siming, who had somehow been lurking in the shadows, seized the right moment and suddenly sprang out. "Are you planning to--"

Before Qiao Siming could finish, Tang Dai sent a cold, piercing glance straight at him, numbing his central nerves and freezing both movement and speech.

Qiao Siming froze for a moment and did not immediately answer. Tang Dai's words were devastating to him.

"What are you trying to say?" she asked deliberately, as if she knew nothing.

Did she really want me to say it? No, she wouldn't. She wouldn't let me say it! Qiao Siming thought inwardly. If she had wanted him to say it, she would not have cut him off so abruptly just now.

She had always been like this. When a secret reached the day it could no longer be kept, only she herself could reveal it; no one else could presume to speak in her stead.

Qiao Siming raised his eyebrows. "What I mean is, Shixi has his own methods. Over the years, I've seen his abilities more than once. Every time, he has managed to turn danger into safety and get through the crisis." He directed his gaze at Xu Shixi. "Wouldn't you agree?" His words carried diluted poison: not enough to kill at once, but enough to make a person dizzy and ill at ease.

He threw a flattering cap over Xu Shixi's head without warning, and Xu Shixi had no choice but to catch it. "I'll think of another way," he said, glancing at Tang Dai with something close to sorrow before walking toward the other side of the road.

"What exactly are you doing!" Tang Dai bit hard at her lower lip with her upper teeth. "Every single time... you have to barge in and interfere." You ruin my plans completely.

"I don't want you to keep hurting yourself," Qiao Siming coaxed. "I care about you."

"You care about me?" Tang Dai said without a trace of softness. "No need. Put away your concern. I don't want it."

"You think having you come to Sung City with me means anything?" she said bluntly. "Then you're terribly mistaken!"

With that, she too left the scene.

When three people quarrel, only one is left standing guard in the end. It is a scene all too common in most soap operas. Even they were not spared the old cliche.

I don't want it to mean anything, and I know that in your heart I can never mean anything. But I can't help wanting to care for you. How foolish that is. And yet, in my repeated foolishness, I keep setting new records.

Qiao Siming stood there stupidly for a long time. Then, once again lifting his numb legs, he followed far behind in the direction Tang Dai had gone.

Any bad thing that has already happened, before the outcome is known, will only continue developing in a worse direction.

The loophole in this project finally alarmed Xinyuan's top management. The moment Xu Shixi received the call from the company, he sensed the building was about to collapse. Before that, his assistant Xiao Ye had already caught wind of it. She was a hardened hand trained in a large company, and sometimes a leader's glance, a gesture, even a gust stirred by walking was enough for her to perceive the subtle currents beneath. She called Xu Shixi and told him to find a way quickly and prepare at once.

Yet no matter how capable he was on his own, he could not turn back the heavens.

Xinyuan convened an emergency meeting.

The directors seated around the table looked gloomy as if attending a funeral, gaunt and withered; anyone who did not know better might have thought someone in their family had died.

"I said long ago that Manager Xu was too young to shoulder such an important responsibility," said an oily man with a patchy bald head.

"And what use is it saying that now? Where were you before?" shot back a fashionable middle-aged woman.

"If you ask me, Manager Wan should have been put in charge from the start. He is steady and prudent. Though not as innovative as young people, the experience he has accumulated is not something the young can compare with," said a middle-aged man about the same age as Wan Xinheng, clearly speaking up for him.

The cacophony of voices continued.

It was probably an occupational disease of large enterprises: in the ten or so minutes before a meeting began, everyone had to pour out all the unhappiness pent up in their hearts.

Even after speaking, one did not necessarily feel better. It was merely an indulgence of the tongue.

Xu Shixi sat quietly at the side. He had neither the right, nor the ability, nor the face to tell them to shut up.

"If you're all so good at talking, why don't you take responsibility yourselves?" Tang Dai could no longer bear their filthy chatter.

"Miss Tang, the losses caused by this project blunder must also be borne half by the Tang Group. How can you make it sound as if this has nothing to do with you?" the fashionable woman retorted without yielding.

Tang Dai wanted nothing more than to seize the water bottle on the table and hurl it straight into her face, smashing that smug expression to pieces, to smithereens.

She had intended to do exactly that, but Xu Shixi, seated opposite her, gave her a look, and she reluctantly swallowed back her anger.