"Leaving so soon, Mr. Li?"
Standing in the cramped doorway of Apartment 2202, Qiu Yingying rubbed her sleepy eyes, glancing up at the cheap wall clock.
"It is past midnight, I really must be going. Add my WeChat; I promise to treat you to a massive feast the next time I have a free evening," Adrian smiled charmingly. He reached out and casually ruffled Yingying's hair as if she were a remarkably stupid golden retriever.
"Oh no! My hair is all messed up!" Yingying whined, frantically trying to smooth down her frizzy bangs, her cheeks puffing out in childish dissatisfaction.
"By the way," she suddenly remembered, looking past him. "Where is Sister Fan? Did you manage to kill all the cockroaches in her room?"
"I exterminated them a long time ago," Adrian chuckled softly. "But Xiaomei was completely exhausted by the ordeal and has already fallen asleep. Do not disturb her."
As he spoke, Adrian raised his right hand—the palm still slightly flushed red from the heavy friction—and patted Yingying on the head one last time.
"Ahhh! Mr. Li, stop it! My hair!" Yingying puffed out her cheeks angrily, looking exactly like a frustrated, big-eyed goldfish.
"Go to sleep early. And remember to lock the door behind me," Adrian instructed smoothly, entirely ignoring her pathetic anger as he stepped out into the hallway.
"He actually just left like that... Mr. Li is truly an exceptional, perfect gentleman!" Yingying sighed dreamily the moment the door clicked shut, clasping her hands over her chest in absolute envy.
A second later, she turned around, her eyes locking onto the wall clock again, and she immediately let out a terrified shriek. "Oh no! Oh no! Oh no! It's past midnight! I have corporate training tomorrow morning!"
Leaving the chaotic, idiotic dynamic of 2202 behind him, Adrian strode out of the towering lobby of the Ode to Joy residential complex. Standing in the cool night air, he unlocked his smartphone, scrolling through a fresh gallery of high-definition photos with a dark, deeply contented smile.
He had spent nearly an entire hour ruthlessly swatting "cockroaches" in Fan Shengmei's cramped room. The once glamorous, sophisticated beauty had been reduced to a pathetic, sobbing mess, her face buried in her mattress as tears streamed down her cheeks. Her heavy, plush buttocks were now swollen to a terrifying, livid red.
Of course, thanks to his transplanted, master-level martial arts precision, it was purely a superficial punishment. Although Fan Shengmei's ass looked absolutely horrific right now, there was absolutely zero permanent tissue or muscle damage. She just needed to lie on her stomach for a few days to let the fiery swelling subside.
'I have no idea how she is going to explain to her coworkers why she's limping for the next forty-eight hours,' Adrian mused callously. 'But who cares? That is entirely her problem.'
In truth, when he had been pinning her down and staring at that heavy, perfectly swollen ass, his dark impulses had nearly overwhelmed him. He had been a hair's breadth away from ripping her thong off entirely and mounting her right then and there, eager to test how that heavy, bruised flesh felt wrapped around his cock.
However, his absolute, cold rationality had held him back at the very last second.
The System's parameters were ruthlessly strict. If he claimed her virginity or fucked her tonight, the one-year exclusivity timer would instantly start ticking. He would have to guarantee that a desperate, transactional parasite like Fan Shengmei didn't allow another wealthy man to touch her for a full 365 days.
If it were a fiercely loyal woman like Hu Yifei, or a brain-dead, easily manipulated idiot like Yingying, he might have been confident in locking them down early. But Fan Shengmei? Her moral waistband was only marginally tighter than the outright whores from Tiny Times. Getting a social climber like her into his bed before he possessed absolute, inescapable leverage over her entire life was a terrible tactical error.
After all, in the grand scheme of this city, Adrian was currently just a wealthy second-generation landlord with a few decent properties. In the desperate eyes of the working poor, he was a billionaire god. But in the eyes of the truly powerful, politically entrenched elites of Shanghai? He was just a rich country bumpkin waiting to be slaughtered.
Therefore, his absolute priority was to rapidly aggressively multiply his capital and secure political leverage.
Money, fortunately, was the easiest part of the equation. Although the massive, hyper-profitable real estate investments he knew about would take a few years to mature, he possessed the meta-knowledge to make terrifying amounts of liquid cash in the short term.
For example, it was 2012. Obama was securing his re-election, the OPEC meetings were predictably stalling, and global oil prices were about to steadily climb. Consequently, cotton and soybean futures were ripe for exploitation. As long as he manipulated the macroeconomic trends, he could easily leverage his twenty million yuan and multiply it tenfold within a matter of months.
As for the delusional fantasy of becoming the world's richest man overnight by using 1000x leverage, like the pathetic protagonists in cheap rebirth novels?
'Absolute fiction,' Adrian sneered internally.
In a global financial market that operated on trillions of dollars, a smart ghost could easily siphon out a few million in scraps without drawing attention. But if a random, unconnected citizen suddenly tried to short the entire market for billions? The massive institutional funds and political watchdogs would instantly freeze your accounts, investigate you for insider trading, and bury you alive. Without terrifying political connections or a private army to back you up, massive, sudden wealth was just a painted target on your back.
"Yeah, yeah, I see him. That's gotta be the kid Brother Bin ordered us to bag."
Just as Adrian reached his expensive carbon-fiber bicycle and prepared to pedal home, his superhuman hearing caught a faint, hushed conversation drifting from the decorative bushes behind him.
It was approaching 1:00 AM. While the inner-city nightclubs were just warming up, the residential perimeter of Ode to Joy was effectively a ghost town. The silence made the whispering painfully obvious to a trained killer. Of course, if Adrian hadn't possessed the transplanted, hyper-vigilant instincts of the Sword Saint, a normal man would have never detected the ambush.
Out of the corner of his eye, Adrian caught the movement of three dark figures stepping out from the shadows. They were young, hardened street thugs dressed in cheap floral shirts, one of them hastily hanging up a cell phone.
'Well, it seems I severely underestimated the impatience of these spoiled princelings,' Adrian sighed internally.
It was a brutally simple, yet highly effective tactic. Because Yao Bin hadn't known Adrian's name or which unit he lived in, he had simply ordered his street-level underlings to stake out the exit of Building 22. The moment a prime suspect walked out, they were to intercept him. Since Adrian had ruined Miss Qu's precious party, Yao Bin was treating him to a midnight beating as a romantic favor.
"Hey, kid! Stop right there. We've been watching you snoop around. Are you a damn bicycle thief?"
Seeing Adrian grip the handlebars of his bike, the three thugs immediately fanned out, completely surrounding him. The heavily tattooed leader pointed an accusing finger at him and barked the question.
...?
Adrian froze, his dark eyes narrowing as his tactical brain instantly recalibrated the situation.
'The script is slightly different than I anticipated,' he realized.
He had originally assumed these three street rats would just draw knives and rush him in a blind rage, allowing Adrian to brutally shatter their limbs under the legal guise of self-defense. But they hadn't attacked. Instead, they were loudly accusing him of a crime.
It was a calculated, political trap.
It was blindingly obvious: if Adrian threw the first punch and engaged in a violent street brawl with these three "concerned citizens," the police would be called immediately.
Given Yao Bin's terrifying background as the nephew of a provincial governor, the princeling would simply make a single phone call. The police would arrest Adrian for assault, and Yao Bin would ensure he was thrown into a holding cell for the absolute legal maximum of forty-eight hours without bail or formal charges.
They wouldn't technically break the law; they would simply use the bureaucratic process as a weapon. They would release Adrian at exactly 47 hours and 59 minutes, smile, and tell his expensive lawyers they were "strictly following protocol."
As for the other, darker methods a political heir could employ once a target was trapped in the legal system? There were far too many to list. After all, it was a universally acknowledged, cynical truth in this country: Organized crime doesn't exist, because the elite ARE the organized crime.
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