Bang, bang, bang!
A series of noises came from outside the door. It was less like knocking and more like pounding.
Lu Man and Lu Xiaoshuang stood up at the same time, intending to open the door.
"Sit down, the two of you." Liu Jing frowned. Hearing such rude pounding, she guessed who was coming. "I'll go send him away."
Liu Jing went to open the door. A man's voice outside spoke anxiously, and Liu Jing could be vaguely heard saying "Don't come in" a few times. After a few minutes, quiet was restored.
When Liu Jing walked back to the living room, she was holding two extra boxes of soap in her hands.
"Who was it?" Lu Weihua asked.
"Liu Xiangxian."
"Uncle?"
"Your brother?" Lu Weihua coughed. "Why didn't you let him come in and sit a while?"
"Sit for what? The sight of him makes my blood boil."
Liu Jing tossed the soap onto the sofa casually. "He doesn't treat us like family at all. He's just going door-to-door selling things."
Hearing this, Lu Man frowned, which stirred up some bad memories.
Lu Weihua felt that since he was his wife's younger brother, the relationship with a brother-in-law was close after all. "Xiangxian is almost thirty years old and still drifting along with nothing to his name. If our family can help him out, we should."
"If he had some sudden, urgent medical emergency, as his older sister I would definitely help."
Liu Jing unsealed the soap box and handed it to Lu Weihua to look at. "What is this? A single bar of soap sells for 40 yuan. Does he really think our money falls from the sky?"
"That's business. Buy low, sell high. If he can sell it, that's his own ability."
Frows formed an inverted V-shape on Liu Jing's forehead. "I don't know what kind of soul-soup this Cuilai Limit fed him, but he's still out here selling this junk."
"This is direct selling," Lu Weihua argued with a different opinion. "The more downline agents you recruit, the more money you make yourself. If you have ten downlines helping you sell goods, you don't even have to do the work yourself—you can just lie in bed and count money."
Hearing this from the side, Lu Xiaoshuang softly muttered, "Pyramid scheme, more like it."
"Why do you always take his side?" Liu Jing noticed her husband was acting unlike his usual self. "I'm telling you, stay away from him, and tell him to come straight to me, his sister, if he needs anything!"
Lu Weihua hesitated for a moment before speaking. "Your brother looked for me before. He told me about this Cuilai Limit project, and I think it's a good path."
"When? Xiangxian looked for you? How come I didn't know a thing about it?" Liu Jing stood up in shock.
"He took me to listen to some 'master' lectures by Cuilai Limit. I signed a 360-yuan contract just to try it out—I haven't started recruiting downlines yet."
Lu Weihua was simple-minded and couldn't keep things to himself. Since his wife asked, he blurted it all out.
"I met a few A-rank agents at the lectures, and they came on stage to share their success experiences. It really is impressive—they earn bundles of cash numbering in the hundreds of thousands, and the Mercedes-S class cars they drive cost over a million."
Liu Jing retorted, "How do you know if it's real or an act? If there were truly a way to make that kind of money, why would they bother teaching outsiders how to get rich?"
"Well, their business model is written as clear as day. Ordinary people use all these health supplements and washing products. The wholesale price is 20 yuan, we turn around and sell it for 40 yuan, and we can also recruit downlines to earn commission cuts..."
"Enough, I'm not arguing with you..." Liu Jing waved a hand to interrupt him, her patience worn thin. "Old Lu, you're the best at business in this family. You built up the clothing shop, but let me remind you of this: the shampoo your brother-in-law sold me last time cost 68 yuan a bottle, and it couldn't even work up a lather—I only believe in one basic truth: people aren't fools!"
She let out a breath with lingering fear. "Just treat that three hundred and some odd yuan you signed away as money thrown away for a lesson. Next time I go back to my parents' home, I'm making sure my mom and dad keep him in line!"
"That 360 yuan is a monthly purchasing agreement." Lu Weihua carefully observed Liu Jing's expression. "I signed for a whole year..."
"Lu Weihua!"
Liu Jing snatched up the chopsticks from the table and slammed them down onto the floor with a sharp *clack*.
"You didn't even consult me about something this major!"
Lu Weihua's temper flared up as well. "I'm racking my brains and breaking my back trying to make money to support this family, and aren't I doing it for the three of you? Once we collect the payments for the clothing sales in July, I'll scope things out, and if it looks good, I'll sign an order worth tens of thousands and rake in a few hundred thousand."
"You're trying to drag this entire family down with you!"
The parents began to quarrel, their tempers running too high to hold back. They had no time to notice Lu Xiaoshuang silently picking up the chopsticks from the floor, her eyes reddening as she walked back to her bedroom.
Lu Man frowned. "Dad, Mom, have a proper conversation. Xiaoshuang still has school the day after tomorrow. Hearing you two fight will really mess with her mental state."
"Son, this has nothing to do with you." Liu Jing wiped her eyes with her wrist. "Don't worry about family matters. Go into your room first."
Lu Man sighed, leaving them to continue venting their emotions, and went to his younger sister's room.
"Xiaoshuang, are you alright?"
Lu Xiaoshuang had hidden herself beneath the quilt. Lu Man pulled back a corner of the quilt and saw her curled-up form, appearing fragile and helpless.
She covered her ears with both hands, tears staining her cheeks.
"Brother..."
Lu Xiaoshuang's voice was laced with crying, and Lu Man's heart gave a sharp pang as he gently pulled her into his arms.
"When will they stop fighting? As long as they can stop fighting, I'll do whatever it takes..."
Back in the late nineties, the financial situation of Lu Man's family was even worse than it was now. A hundred sorrows afflict a poverty-stricken couple, and arguments between his parents were inevitable.
A young Lu Xiaoshuang in such an environment had a reflex-like dread and fear toward her parents' discord and fierce quarrels.
Lu Man hated this so-called direct-selling project called "Cuilai Limit" with a passion.
If the current situation were allowed to progress, a month from now, his father Lu Weihua would receive a large final payment for a business deal. This year's "July 1st" marked the 85th anniversary celebration, and commercial orders for red performance costumes were pouring in from all over, allowing Lu Man's family's small clothing shop to catch a windfall.
In July, a full thirty thousand yuan in cash would be added to the household.
And Lu Weihua, ignoring Liu Jing's ten thousand objections, would pour every last cent into this "Cuilai Limit."
The result, naturally, was that the money went down the drain.
Thirty thousand yuan bought a pile of "health supplements" not even fit for feeding pigs, along with counterfeit, shoddy three-no's daily chemical products.
What was hateful about the pyramid scheme was not just exploiting people's desires to make quick and big money, but making you sell your dignity to drag your relatives and friends down with you, leaving you completely burned out and estranged from everyone.
Lu Man's parents nearly divorced over this.
At its worst, an agreement had already been drawn up: after the divorce, Lu Man would go with Lu Weihua, and Lu Xiaoshuang with Liu Jing.
"I have to stop this tragedy!"
Looking at the undried tear tracks on his younger sister's face, he realized that before his rebirth, a big reason why Lu Xiaoshuang chose to leave home and go abroad was probably to forget the psychological trauma inflicted upon her by her family of origin.
"Xiaoshuang, this time your older brother has the ability to stop all of this. Brother promises, from now on you won't have to be afraid anymore." Lu Man silently made this promise to her in his heart.
"Brother..." Being held by Lu Man—after all, they were teenagers in puberty—Lu Xiaoshuang felt a little shy and wriggled her body. "You don't need to worry about me. I want to sleep for a bit, I'll be fine once I wake up."
"Then get some rest. If it's too noisy, just wear headphones." "Okay."
...
He couldn't stay in the house anymore. Lu Man went outside, taking a walk to sort out his thoughts.
"The root cause is this thirty thousand yuan down the drain."
If Lu Man could earn over thirty thousand yuan in extra income before July, first, it would reduce the loss to the family's foundation and keep his mother Liu Jing from being too heartbroken; second, it might even make it possible to use his own financial power to dissuade his father Lu Weihua, who was blindly going all-in.
Just now, he had also tried to interject in his parents' argument. But the mindset of a traditional and conservative family was that adults' business was none of children's concern.
"To shed the identity of a 'child' doesn't depend on age, but on economic capability."
Many people, after reaching adulthood, leave their hometowns for work, and upon returning are still regarded as children by their families. The reason for this boils down to two things: either they lack a healthy and considerable income and savings, failing to earn enough money or save any surplus grain; or they have earned money, but not enough of it flows back into their family of origin.
Families are bound together by the ties of affection, but the right to speak within a family is determined by the ability to provide for it.
"There are only about 20 days left until July," Lu Man calculated. "Three full weeks at most to earn a persuasive thirty thousand yuan and stop this family crisis!"
For an 18-year-old student who had just finished the college entrance examination, averaging nearly 1,500 yuan earned every single day for three weeks—and this was back in 2006, when the average monthly salary of an ordinary urban worker was around 800 yuan.
"Looks like I'll have to go to school ahead of time." A picture gradually took shape in Lu Man's mind. If he wanted to utilize the advantages of his rebirth, his alma mater was the nearest and most abundant resource available.
Going to school to make money was Plan A. To add an extra layer of insurance, it was best to have a Plan B.
Lu Man stopped in front of a storefront and looked up at the sign.
[Sports Lottery Nanhu Sales Outlet]
Coming back through rebirth, he hadn't remembered any specific lottery numbers for the Welfare Lottery, but fortunately, 2006 was a special year for football fans.
In 2006, the FIFA World Cup in Germany.
It was also in this year that the sports lottery first released the gameplay for match outcome guessing and tournament qualification guessing.
Lu Man wasn't a hardcore football fan; he had only played football and beach football during his university years. Logically speaking, remembering a group of teams qualifying from 16 years ago was almost too difficult for him.
Yet in 2006, an unexpected incident on the pitch left such a deep impression on him that it planted an indelible memory in his mind.
"Zidane, Zidane."