Chapter 0247 Smooth Sailing

How many people does one encounter in a lifetime?

Zhao Fusheng remembered seeing a Nescafe advertisement that said it was over eighty thousand, or even more, but in the end, not a single one stayed by your side.

Time changes many things. No matter how good a relationship is, if you don't stay in touch, it fades. To make it last, you must keep in touch often. Only by staying in touch can you resist the passage of time.

Often, we think life will be lively enough, but we don't realize that as we move forward, time acts like a sieve—fewer people become important to us, and those who remain become increasingly significant.

Life is limited; only a very few can become our special ones, even our only ones, gradually making it to the end.

Sometimes Zhao Fusheng felt that memory always brought back many interesting things. While smiling knowingly, he would recall that on a certain day of a certain month and year, he had once laughed heartily with someone.

Days passed quickly. MyHome gave Wang Zhen a huge surprise. As time moved past November into early December, MyHome's registered users really reached one hundred thousand.

Moreover, with the increase in page views of the wo123 navigation site, the number of registered users was still growing.

For this, Zhao Fusheng fulfilled his promise and gave each of the four staff members a bonus of twelve hundred yuan.

“Old Zhao, we can make it, right?” Wang Zhen asked Zhao Fusheng repeatedly.

His pressure was much greater than Zhao Fusheng's, because Zhao Fusheng knew clearly that if this attempt failed, he would still have a chance to bounce back, but Wang Zhen might not have that opportunity.

“Don't worry, everything is going smoothly.” Zhao Fusheng could only comfort Wang Zhen like this, because at this moment, no matter what he said, Wang Zhen couldn't take it in.

On the other hand, Tan Kaixuan was somewhat panicked, because according to the current growth rate, it might not take half a year for MyHome's registered users to break five hundred thousand.

Thinking that Zhao Fusheng might come up with some demand to torment him, Tan Kaixuan felt that perhaps he should be nicer to Zhao Fusheng lately, so that when the time came, he might remember this and go easy on him.

Compared to sophomore and freshman years, junior year campus life was actually quite boring, because there weren't as many courses, and most students spent their time agonizing over future choices.

If they decided to take the graduate entrance exam, they had to start reviewing hard now; if they planned to find a job after graduation, they had to start preparing for internships in the second semester of junior year.

On the other hand, guys like Zhao Fusheng and Tan Kaixuan, who neither prepared for graduate school nor planned to find a job after graduation, were idle all day.

“I'm going to eat. Are you coming?” Zhao Fusheng had been reading about business management all morning, his eyes nearly blurry from fatigue. He put down his book and asked his roommates.

Recently, his life was so leisurely it made others jealous. Usually, he read in the dorm, went to class when there was one, dropped by the studio when bored to check on the virtual community, and went home on weekends to spend time with Fan Beibei and see his parents.

Occasionally, his dad would drag him to the Hualian Department Store.

But Zhao Fusheng really couldn't be bothered to criticize his father's entrepreneurial model. He didn't know whose connections his dad had used, but he actually managed to get a loan with the lease contract and renovate the entire first floor of the mall.

According to his father's plan, the first floor would house not only a large supermarket but also a children's playground, a coffee shop, and so on. Zhao Fusheng didn't bother to comment, knowing that this area was the prime location in all of Ninghai, and for at least ten years, no place would be more bustling than this.

Sometimes he even thought that if he got tired, he could just be a rich second-generation and coast through life.

Of course, that was on the condition that his dad's mall became a hit.

“Let's go, eat dumplings.” Wen Yu stood up and said to Zhao Fusheng.

Recently, a dumpling restaurant had opened near District Two, and it was said to be quite good. They had been talking about going there for a while.

“Okay, let's go.” Tan Kaixuan nodded in agreement.

As for Wang Zhen, that guy was now practically living at the studio. At first, Zhao Fusheng tried to persuade him, but now he couldn't be bothered to say anything and just let him be.

The restaurant was less than two hundred meters from their dorm, just past one building.

“Hmm, the place looks pretty clean.” Standing at the entrance, they looked over the decor, and Zhao Fusheng spoke.

“Yeah, a dumpling place should be clean.” Tan Kaixuan laughed.

The restaurant was quite spacious, with about a dozen tables, which was considered decent near a university.

The owner was a middle-aged woman in her forties, not tall. Seeing Zhao Fusheng and the others enter, she asked, “Students, what would you like to eat?”

From her accent, she wasn't a local; she seemed to be from the south. Zhao Fusheng and the others exchanged glances, ordered three plates of dumplings, and found a table to sit at.

It was noon. They hadn't been seated for a few minutes when a group of students came in, apparently just out of class. The one in front went to the counter: “Boss lady, how much for a sleep?”

“This is a snack shop, not a brothel!” The boss lady was stunned for a moment, then replied with an unpleasant expression.

Zhao Fusheng and the others were taken aback, looked at each other, a bit confused.

“I meant dumplings, how much for a bowl?”

“Oh, oh, five yuan.” The boss lady's face flushed slightly, and she quickly pointed to the price list on the wall.

“Cough, cough...”

Even Zhao Fusheng and the others started coughing dryly; it was just too funny.

After a while, the dumplings they ordered were ready. The boss lady brought them over herself and asked Zhao Fusheng, “Do you want a virgin?”

Huh?

Zhao Fusheng blinked: “Isn't this a snack shop?”

“Um, I'm asking, do you want vinegar?” The boss lady took a deep breath, trying to make her tongue sound straighter.

Suppressing a laugh, Tan Kaixuan nodded: “Yes.”

Wen Yu also nodded: “Yes.”

At that moment, Zhao Fusheng suddenly had a brainwave and blurted out: “Check it out!”

Then they all burst out laughing together. The boss lady's face turned even redder, and she shook her head as she went back to the kitchen.

With this little episode, the meal was especially enjoyable, so much so that Wen Yu was still laughing when they left the restaurant.

“That was hilarious.” Wen Yu laughed heartily: “I've realized that Mandarin has all sorts of bizarre pronunciations depending on where people are from.”

Zhao Fusheng nodded: “I believe that. At least for people from Fujian, Mandarin is really torturous.”

Wen Yu and Tan Kaixuan exchanged a glance, and thinking about speaking Mandarin with a Fujian accent, they felt it was indeed tough for them.

“It's not easy either, opening a restaurant here, all for a living.” Tan Kaixuan shook his head and sighed.

Zhao Fusheng was silent. As Tan Kaixuan said, in today's society, while reform and opening up had made some people rich first, the intensifying wave of layoffs had plunged more people's lives into difficulty.

It wasn't that breaking the iron rice bowl was bad, but this one-size-fits-all approach truly left more and more workers directionless. The rich got richer, the poor got poorer.

Good and evil are not necessary complements to each other; the bigger problem is: some believe there is hell, some believe there isn't. Heaven is even less relevant. The natural order agreed upon by folk customs has long been torn apart and retreated.

So, what do we deeply believe in?

Money, power, winner takes all.

That was the moral standard deep in the hearts of most people before Zhao Fusheng's rebirth.

No matter how the internet boasts, or how newspapers and media report, the facts are right before our eyes, indisputable.

When the development of material civilization and spiritual civilization fails to reach a harmonious level, such situations arise—people's moral standards do not match the benchmarks of economic development.

Zhao Fusheng is not a saint; he can't save the world. So he can only try his best to make life a little better for those around him—at least so that his parents don't have to work in their old age, and his friends don't have to worry when they are middle-aged.

More importantly, so that in ten or twenty years, he won't regret or feel sorry for this life.