Emily Carter was somewhat at a loss.

In the past, when they lived under the same roof, although everyone had their own little calculations and there were even occasional minor conflicts, as colleagues dispatched overseas by the company, living together under one roof, things would smooth out after a couple of days.

But now, with things like this, how are they supposed to get along in the future?

Thinking of this, Emily Carter felt even more of a headache, almost regretting her decision to apply for a transfer to the West Africa branch.

Of course, in the past, Edward Baker had always seemed to her like a handsome young man with some shrewdness but a rather soft temperament, but today, Edward Baker's demeanor truly shocked her, making her feel like she didn't recognize the person in front of her at all.

Although John Foster eventually admitted everything, how could someone so young be so sure that John Foster had bad intentions? How could he be so certain that John Foster had just sent David Sullivan back to the China Business Center with the sole purpose of getting rid of him?

"Bang—crash!"

It seemed that John Foster had returned upstairs, grabbed something like a table lamp or a mirror, and smashed it hard against the wall, the sound of shattering glass echoing through the place.

Emily Carter's heart skipped a beat again. She was worried that John Foster, unable to control his impulses, might grab something else and rush downstairs to pick a fight with Edward Baker.

Walter Baker also looked anxiously toward the staircase.

"Aka, you drive back first, there's nothing to worry about." Edward Baker picked up the car keys from the dining table and told Walter Baker to drive back.

Edward Baker, however, wasn't worried at all.

When John Foster went upstairs just now, his eyes looked fierce and malicious, but an almost telepathic intuition told him that John Foster was actually more afraid of being given another harsh lesson by him.

Now that he was upstairs smashing things, Edward Baker figured that part of it was because he was unwilling to accept what had happened, but mainly it was just to show his anger, to make himself seem a little less pathetic.

It's the same logic as Northeasterners shouting, "What are you looking at? You got a problem?"

Bluster on the outside, weak on the inside—this phrase seemed tailor-made for him.

He had survived this round; now it was John Foster's turn to try and get by.

Besides, if it really came to another fight, with John Foster's small frame, he might not even be able to break free from Lucy Clark's strong arms. Was Edward Baker really afraid he couldn't handle him?

It was getting late, so Edward Baker simply had Walter Baker drive the car back. As for the silly rule John Foster had set—like "the car must be parked in front of the villa before coming home"—it was time to trample on it a bit more.

"I'm going upstairs to rest. I can't be bothered with your business!" Emily Carter hesitated for a moment, then said this before heading upstairs, making it clear she didn't want to get involved.

Edward Baker glanced at Emily Carter's swaying, shapely hips. Now that he'd fallen out with John Foster, he had no expectation that Emily Carter would take his side.

Emily Carter wasn't stupid.

Even without the temptation of the gold mine, with him and John Foster at odds, one of them would have to leave the West Africa branch. With David Sullivan holding the decision-making power, whether he stayed or John Foster stayed—couldn't Emily Carter guess the outcome?

……

……

After Emily Carter went upstairs, Edward Baker pulled aside Lucy Clark, who still wasn't entirely clear about the situation but had unhesitatingly helped him out, and sat down at the dining table to explain to her the reason behind his falling out with John Foster.

A few days ago, Walter Baker had overheard someone mention that in the northwest border region of Kanem, some locals were mining gold—Walter Baker brought it up at the office, just as an interesting tidbit to tell Edward Baker.

At the time, John Foster was also present. Edward Baker wasn't sure if John Foster had paid attention, but since he needed to borrow the branch's car to get to Iboku to check things out, he couldn't avoid involving John Foster.

Back then, he also thought that if he really wanted to do something in Degulamo, he'd have to work with John Foster, so he encouraged John Foster to go with him.

He had applied for an overseas posting, and with his salary plus the overseas allowance, his income had tripled. But since he had dropped out of high school and joined Dongsheng Group, his salary back home was only about three thousand. Even tripled, it barely reached the standard of a hundred thousand a year.

Fortunately, all his expenses in Degulamo were covered by the branch, and with some other income, over the past year or so, he had managed to save up twenty thousand US dollars.

For an ordinary person, being able to save twenty thousand dollars in just over a year was already a pretty good income.

However, even in Degulamo, if you wanted to invest in something, that amount of money was still far from enough.

When Edward Baker and John Foster first entered Iboku village and saw that, apart from the school, the other houses—including the old chief Felician's chief's compound—were all extremely shabby, their hearts sank.

How could this look like a place with an active gold mine?

John Foster immediately wanted to back out, but Edward Baker thought that since they were already there, he had to at least see the gold mining site before he could be satisfied.

After making their way through the dense primeval forest and finally seeing the local gold mining site, Edward Baker finally understood why Iboku village was still so poor despite having a gold mine.

On one hand, the gold content in the mine was quite low.

Precisely because of the low gold content, the gold mine here had never attracted the attention of the European and American gold mining conglomerates that had entered Africa since colonial times.

Besides that, there was another extremely important reason, just as John Foster had said: the local gold mining techniques were far too primitive and backward.