The emotional bond between the two families was strong. The old uncle was sincere and genuine—whenever he got his hands on something new, he’d invite Edward Clark’s whole family over.

The rabbit meat was cooked to perfection and smelled amazing. They drank only beer, took a few bathroom breaks, and after a bit more rest, that was about it. Dinner lasted until after eight o’clock, then they called a cab from the city to take them home.

This apartment building was built in the 1990s. There was no shared area, the units were spacious, and there were large balconies on both the north and south sides. The parents’ bedroom was on the south side—bright and roomy, with a TV.

Now that the dishes were done, the couple lay in bed watching TV.

LCD TVs had just been invented, the technology wasn’t there yet, and they were far from common. Home TVs were still those big, bulky ones. They were watching “The Grand Mansion Gate”—the first run had long since finished; this was a local station’s rerun.

Master Bai San was inside, smoking opium paste.

Edward Clark was half-watching, half-not, a little tipsy, and suddenly said, “Don’t you think Little William seems a bit different?”

“A bit more mature, maybe?”

Linda Carter felt the same way. She thought for a moment and said, “He used to be dead set on being a reporter. Just mentioning the newspaper would make him light up. But today, hearing what he said, he seemed so clear-headed. Hey, do you think someone told him some inside scoop?”

“Could be. Honestly, I’ve thought this for a while—how could you get into a big newspaper without connections? And it’s a major paper in the capital, too. We can’t really help him. If he went to Shencheng, I could at least reach out to my classmates.”

“Your classmate’s at that crappy paper that’s about to go under.”

“How can a newspaper go under? The government gives them funding. If we spend a little, we could even get Little William a civil service position. But I think the kid has other ideas. Anyway, he’s young—no rush for a couple of years.”

Edward Clark’s catchphrase was always: no rush for a few days, no rush for a few years.

He had a good eye, but poor follow-through—he talked more than he acted. Linda Carter was the opposite, so they balanced each other out.

Meanwhile, in the north bedroom.

The room wasn’t big: a bed, a tall and narrow bookshelf crammed with books, VCDs, and tapes, and a desk squeezed in beside it.

That desk had accompanied William Clark for over a decade. At this moment, he was wearing headphones, listening to his Walkman, hunched over writing.

He was listening to a pop music mix, from “Tian ou ou, tian ou ou,” to “I want you to stay with me, watching the sea turtles swim,” and then to “I’d rather you stay cold to the end”...

He swayed as he listened, a sense of ease radiating from head to toe.

That’s right—ever since his rebirth, aside from the initial confusion, his overwhelming feeling was one of ease.

His parents’ hair hadn’t turned gray, they were healthy, he himself was in his prime, strikingly handsome, China had just won the Olympic bid, was about to join the WTO, the nation was on the rise—then the men’s soccer team would soon balance out the national luck, Jay Chou had only debuted a year ago...

They say the 1980s were a stew of new ideas, the 1990s a rush of passion into business, and the early 2000s were an even more contradictory stage—still holding onto some of the sights and ways of the 80s and 90s, while also leaping headlong into a new era and new technology.

Trends burst forth from tradition, refinement grew out of roughness, the poor got poorer, the rich got richer. Looking back years later, it became the root of many problems.

Like the urban-rural fringe, migrant workers, real estate, monopolies.

The wild days of diving into business were over; the rough ways were fading. The first wave of the newly rich were busy packaging themselves as entrepreneurs, busy establishing order within their turf, and at the same time, reaching out to see what they could grab outside their turf.

Social resources, from the most basic land and grain, to industrial materials, energy, technology, and even the intangible world of finance, had created wave after wave of tycoons.

And as these resources were divided up to the present day, up until the fourth industrial revolution, only one large-scale industry remained that could become the new field for emerging capital groups:

The Internet!

“Shhh!”

“Shhh!”

The tape finished one side, making a scratchy sound in the headphones, then after a while, it auto-reversed and started playing again.

William Clark didn’t bother with it, nor did he care what song was playing—he just kept writing. Over the past few days, he’d jotted down a lot of scattered thoughts, then slowly pieced them together, finally forming a fairly clear outline.

He finished the last sentence with a flourish, circled a word, and finally put down his pen.

He picked up his second-hand, monochrome-screen Nokia 3310.

A candybar phone, with changeable shells, a maximum standby time of 245 hours, built-in Snake game, could make calls, send texts, be used as an alarm clock, calculator, and for smashing walnuts, heads, floors, or any hard object.

Sales: 126 million units!

Released in 2000, bought by his mom, and handed down to William Clark after she was done with it. After all, cell phones were expensive, and pagers were still everywhere.

“……”

William Clark held the phone, not playing with it, just examining it, as if admiring a treasure. He even felt a bit perverse about it. Finally, he murmured softly, “Well, I’ll be counting on you to make me some pocket money.”

Making money—making money was important.

William Clark wanted to make money, but since he’d been given a second chance at life, he wanted even more to live as he pleased.

He’d settled on a plan, climbed into bed, crossed his legs, and started listening to music for real. He even began to hum along, but it was a completely different song, totally off-key:

“I want to bloom!”

“I want to sprout!”

“I want the spring rain to pour down!”

……

The next day, 10 a.m.