The heatwave held the city for twelve days.
Long Jin, Li Mei, and Wang Lei became a machine.
They optimized. They adapted. Long Jin remembered which factories had the thirstiest workers, which parks had the longest lines for the public tap. He directed their rickety cart like a general moving troops.
Profits compounded.
By the end of the second week, their daily take was over ¥200. Their shared kitty swelled. Long Jin's personal net worth climbed past ¥500.
[Net Worth: ¥514]
[Cache: 100/100 Units]
[Wealth Tier: Seed Stage (0.005% Progress)]
[Loyalty Metric: Wang Lei – 82/100]
The number beside Wang Lei's name was a glowing ember in Long Jin's vision. It inched upward with each yuan split three ways. Trust built on a foundation of sugar and sweat.
It was a lie. Long Jin knew how the story ended. A courtroom. A betrayed look. "Because he could."
But the boy beside him now was not that man. He was just a big kid with new soccer boots, bought with his third share of the profits. He grinned as he pushed the cart, his strength turning their enterprise into something formidable.
"We should get a second cart," Wang Lei panted one afternoon, wiping his brow. "Get some of the other kids to run it. We take a cut."
It was a good idea. A natural expansion. The instinct of a born operator.
Long Jin felt a cold spike of déjà vu. In another timeline, Wang Lei would have his own chain of convenience stores. He would lose them to debt and bad partners. He would look at Long Jin's empire with hollow, envious eyes.
"Not yet," Long Jin said. "We consolidate first. We build a brand."
"A brand?" Wang Lei laughed. "It's lemonade."
"It's our lemonade," Li Mei said quietly, labeling a fresh crate of cups with a careful character: 凉 (Cool). "People ask for it by name now."
She was right. They had regulars. Workers who would wait an extra five minutes for their cart.
It was a tiny foothold. A millimeter of market share in a city of millions.
It was everything.
The crack appeared on a Tuesday.
The heat broke overnight. A cool front swept in, bringing a drizzle that felt like ice after the furnace.
They stood under the eaves of the factory shed, their cart covered in a tarp. The shift ended. A few workers hurried past, collars turned up against the rain. No one looked at them.
"We should have known," Wang Lei muttered, kicking a pebble. "Weather changes."
"We knew," Long Jin said. He had known. The heatwave's end was sharp in his memory. He had planned for it. "This is our day for inventory. For repair."
He pulled the tarp back. Pointed to the wobbly wheel. "We fix this. We clean everything. We prepare for the next opportunity."
"What opportunity?" Wang Lei's voice had an edge. The first one. "Summer's over. No one buys cold drinks in the rain."
"They buy other things," Long Jin said. His mind was already racing through the memory cache. Autumn, 1978. A specific shortage. "We pivot."
"Pivot?" Wang Lei echoed the strange word.
"We change what we sell."
"With what money? Our kitty is for lemonade."
"Our kitty," Long Jin said, his tone firm, "is for profit. The product is irrelevant."
The rain dripped. The silence stretched.
Wang Lei looked from Long Jin's determined face to Li Mei's calm one. He saw an alliance he wasn't part of. A understanding that ran deeper than business.
The loyalty meter in Long Jin's vision flickered.
[Loyalty Metric: Wang Lei – 78/100 (-4)]
[System Note: Uncertainty triggers depreciation. Provide clarity or assert control.]
"What's the new product?" Wang Lei asked, his voice flat.
"Coal briquettes," Long Jin said.
The answer was so mundane, so unglamorous, that Wang Lei barked a laugh. "Coal? We're not coal merchants!"
"There will be a shortage," Long Jin said. "The main supplier to the northern districts has a truckers' strike brewing. It won't hit the news for a week. Prices will triple in a month. We buy now. Store it. Sell later."
He remembered the autumn chill, the panic, the inflated prices. A small, unglamorous crisis. A perfect opportunity.
Wang Lei stared at him. "How could you possibly know that?"
Long Jin didn't blink. "I listen. The drivers talk at the noodle shop near the depot. I put pieces together."
It was a lie. A good one. Plausible for a precocious child.
Wang Lei's suspicion didn't fully fade, but it was overtaken by greed. "Triple?"
"At least."
"We'd need a place to store it. A lot of coal."
"I have a place," Li Mei said.
Both boys looked at her.
"My uncle has a locked shed behind his shop. He's away until spring. He owes my mother a favor." She said it as if discussing the weather. The network of familial obligation—her first weapon.
The plan solidified in the damp air. A shift from sunshine to shadow. From thirst to cold.
Wang Lei finally nodded, a slow, calculating grin spreading across his face. "Okay. Okay, little boss. Let's be coal merchants."
The loyalty meter ticked back up.
[Loyalty Metric: Wang Lei – 81/100 (+3)]
[System Note: Volatile asset stabilized with growth potential.]
But Long Jin saw the flicker in Wang Lei's eyes. The boy wasn't just agreeing. He was learning. Learning that Long Jin's ideas were strange, but they made money. He was filing that away.
The lesson was dangerous.
They liquidated their lemonade inventory. Sold the remaining sugar and lemons at cost. Converted their entire shared kitty—over ¥800—into hard currency.
It was a terrifying moment. Standing in the dusty courtyard of a coal yard, handing a wad of cash to a soot-faced merchant. Their entire empire, exchanged for ten tons of gritty, black bricks.
The merchant counted the money twice, eyeing the three children with profound bewilderment. "Your parents know you're doing this?"
"It's a school project," Li Mei said sweetly. "About… industry."
The man shrugged, took the money. Helped Wang Lei and a hired cart driver load the briquettes onto a flatbed truck.
Long Jin watched each bag being loaded. An audit. His new net worth wasn't in coins. It was in potential energy, stored in carbon.
The truck rattled towards Li Mei's uncle's shed. The rain had stopped, leaving the city washed and shivering.
[Venture: Strategic Pivot]
[Liquidated Assets: ¥812]
[Acquired Assets: 10 Tons Premium Coal Briquettes]
[Current Market Value: ~¥850]
[Projected Peak Value (6 Weeks): ¥2,400-¥2,800]
[System Note: Illiquid investment. High storage risk. High reward potential.]
The shed was perfect. Dry, locked, forgotten.
They spent the rest of the day stacking. The work was brutal. Black dust coated their skin, their clothes, their lungs. Wang Lei's strength was again vital. Long Jin and Li Mei formed a chain, passing bricks.
No one spoke. Just the grunt of effort, the thud of coal.
By dusk, they were finished. Ten tons formed a neat, dark wall in the gloom of the shed.
They stood at the doorway, three silhouettes against the fading light, covered in filth and exhaustion.
Wang Lei leaned on the doorframe, breathing hard. "We look like chimney sweeps."
"We look rich," Long Jin corrected quietly.
They locked the shed. Li Mei pocketed the key.
On the walk home, splitting up at the alley, Wang Lei clapped Long Jin on the shoulder, a heavy, sooty hand. "You're crazy, little boss. But it's a good kind of crazy."
He ran off towards his home.
Long Jin and Li Mei walked a few more steps together.
"He's getting attached," Li Mei said, her voice low.
"I know."
"It will hurt him. When the time comes."
Long Jin stopped. He looked at her, her face a smudged mask in the twilight. "You think we should cut him out now?"
"No." She shook her head. "We need his strength. His belief. It's an investment. We just have to know the cost."
She was using his language. The system's language. It should have chilled him. Instead, it felt like solidarity.
[Emotional Capital: Li Mei +8 (Strategic Alignment)]
[System Note: Partnership synergy increasing. Efficiency bonus applied to future ventures.]
They parted at the corner.
Long Jin walked into his house, leaving a trail of black dust on the floor.
His mother shrieked. "Heavens! What have you been doing? Playing in a mine?"
She dragged him to the bathroom, scrubbed him raw in the tin tub. The water turned gray. She scolded, but her hands were gentle.
He submitted to it. The warmth. The care. A dividend he hadn't earned.
Later, clean and in pajamas, he sat at his small desk. The system display was a constant companion.
[Net Worth: ¥514 (Liquid: ¥14) (Illiquid Assets: ~¥500)]
[Cache: 100/100 Units]
[Phase 1 Progress: 0.3%]
He had done it. He had executed his first strategic pivot. He was no longer a lemonade salesman. He was a commodities speculator. At age six.
The next step was waiting. A test of patience.
Patience was a weapon he had honed over seventy-two years.
The strike hit the news exactly seven days later, just as his memory promised.
Pictures of idle trucks. Angry drivers. Worried officials promising a quick resolution.
The price of coal in the markets ticked up. Then climbed.
Long Jin watched it from a distance. He didn't need to be in the trading pits. He had his ten tons, locked in a shed.
He met Wang Lei and Li Mei at the shed once a week. A silent inspection. The black wall stood, undisturbed. Their fortune in fossilized sunlight.
Wang Lei's excitement grew with each newspaper headline. "It's happening! You were right!"
His loyalty meter soared.
[Loyalty Metric: Wang Lei – 90/100]
The number was a trap. Long Jin knew it. High loyalty now meant a steeper fall later. The betrayal would be proportional to the trust.
He kept his distance. Focused on other preparations.
He began his physical training. At dawn, in the alley behind his house. Simple forms. Stretches. Isometric exercises. The muscle memory was there, buried under a child's softness. He dug for it. Painfully.
[Combat Proficiency: 3]
[System Note: Physical progression is logarithmic. Early gains are slow.]
He also studied. School was a triviality, but he used the library. Economics. Chemistry. Basic engineering. He read not to learn, but to remember. To reactivate the knowledge sleeping in his mind.
Li Mei, meanwhile, began her own training. She didn't tell him the details, but he saw the new grace in her movements. The way she could fall silently, catch a dropped object without looking. She was awakening her birthright.
They were two seedlings, growing towards a storm they knew was coming.
The crisis peaked in the sixth week.
A early frost hit. The truckers' strike dragged on. The price of a coal briquette quadrupled.
It was time.
They didn't sell to the open market. Too visible. Instead, Li Mei's mother, through her network of "aunties," found a buyer. A small community bathhouse desperate to keep its fires lit.
The negotiation happened in the shed. The bathhouse manager, a harried man with nervous eyes, looked at the three children with disbelief.
"You own this?"
"We're representing the owners," Long Jin said, his voice calm. "The price is two thousand five hundred. Take it or leave it. The municipal depot has a waiting list of fifty."
It was a bluff. But delivered with absolute certainty.
The man bargained half-heartedly. He was out of time. He counted out the money. A thick stack of bills.
The exchange was made. The coal was his.
The shed was empty. The money was in Li Mei's schoolbag.
The manager arranged his own transport. As the last bag was hauled away, Wang Lei let out a whoop that echoed in the empty space.
"We did it! Two thousand five hundred!"
They split the profits. After repaying the initial kitty, the gain was staggering.
Long Jin's share: ¥710.
His liquid net worth now soared.
[Net Worth: ¥1,224]
[Wealth Tier: Seed Stage (0.006% Progress)]
[Achievement Unlocked: First ¥1,000]
[Cache: 100/100 Units]
[System Note: Illiquid to liquid conversion successful. Liquidity is tactical flexibility.]
Wang Lei danced with his stack of bills. "We're rich! What's next? TVs? Bicycles?"
"We wait," Long Jin said, folding his money away. "We watch. We learn."
"Wait for what?" Wang Lei's euphoria faltered.
"For the next opportunity."
But Long Jin wasn't thinking of the next opportunity. He was watching Wang Lei's face. The joy. The hunger. The addiction to the win.
This was the true cost basis. Not the money they spent on coal. But the trust they were building on a foundation of secrets.
They left the shed for the last time. Wang Lei ran ahead, dreaming aloud of sneakers, of a new soccer ball.
Li Mei fell into step beside Long Jin. "The first real test is coming," she said.
"I know."
"Not the money. Him." She nodded towards Wang Lei's retreating back. "He'll want more. Faster. He'll start asking questions we can't answer."
"Then we'll have to answer them," Long Jin said. "Or redirect him."
She looked up at him. "Can we redirect him forever?"
Long Jin didn't answer. The system didn't offer one either.
They walked on, the weight of the money in their bags feeling less like triumph and more like the first brick in a wall that would eventually separate them from the world.
The sun was weak and pale. Autumn was settling in.
Their childhood was a balance sheet. And Long Jin had just made his first major entry in black ink.
The green glow in the corner of his vision seemed a little brighter.
[Phase 1 Progress: 0.7%]
[Note: Capital accumulated. Foundation laid. The compounding of time and action begins now. Remember: every asset has a corresponding liability. The ledger always balances.]
He felt the truth of it in his bones.
The profit was real.
The debt would come due.