Chapter 0013: The Brightest Star in the Night Sky

Tan Kaixuan was completely dumbfounded. As soon as Zhao Fusheng wrote those few lines, he was already on his knees in admiration.

"Fusheng, Old Zhao, you're my brother, my real brother!" Tan Kaixuan said excitedly. Though he was an advertising major, he was still half a literary youth at heart. How could he not see that Zhao Fusheng's poem was of considerable quality?

Literature, though it has its highbrow and lowbrow distinctions, still allows one to discern basic quality at a glance.

Watching Tan Kaixuan rush out excitedly, Zhao Fusheng shook his head speechlessly. For him, there was really nothing to get excited about. If he remembered correctly, this poem was actually a lyric, but because the internet wasn't well-developed yet, it remained unknown.

The content of the poem wasn't important; what mattered was the emotion it conveyed.

Sitting in the dormitory, Zhao Fusheng's mind wasn't on Tan Kaixuan.

From the very beginning, when he realized that the world he had been reborn into was different from the original one, he had already mentally prepared himself. Even some celebrities had disappeared, let alone people around him. The only thing to be thankful for was that the familiar few were still there, a mercy from the god of fate.

It turned out that his initial caution was correct.

As a reborn person, he certainly held a handful of trump cards, but if he didn't play this good hand at the right time, he would still be overturned by the waves of the era.

Zhao Fusheng didn't want that one day, people in this world would refer to him as a pioneer of some cause, then shake their heads and sigh that he was born at the wrong time.

These past two days at home, Zhao Fusheng had read quite a few newspapers and magazines, getting a general understanding of this world's situation.

In a sense, most of this world was the same as the one he originally came from. Some people were gone, but others were still here.

For example, at this time, the internet had not yet entered thousands of households. Going to internet cafes to play games was considered heretical. The internet age was just emerging, like a small lotus bud, existing only in the imaginations of many media outlets.

Moreover, Zhao Fusheng heard from Fan Baobao that a chat software called QOCQ had recently become popular, reportedly modeled after a well-known foreign chat software.

If Zhao Fusheng remembered correctly, in about five months, the number of registered users of this software would exceed sixty thousand. In the following years, this cute penguin would become a behemoth among Chinese internet companies, influencing more and more people's lives.

Naturally, this included Zhao Fusheng and his friends.

As for Mr. Liu, who loved drinking milk tea, and the "alien" who liked to lecture the Eighteen Arhats, if Zhao Fusheng remembered correctly, they should not have risen yet at this time.

As for the stock market, if Zhao Fusheng remembered correctly, the bull market starting in May would gallop at a breathtaking pace.

The reason he remembered this was that when Zhao Fusheng was down and out, he was set up to owe nearly a million in foreign debt. Tan Kaixuan flew overnight from Shanghai to Ninghai, directly slapped a million-yuan check on the other party's face, and then dragged him to a barbecue stall near the school for a late-night snack.

During the meal, Tan Kaixuan, known as the king of bottom-fishing in Shanghai, talked at length about stocks. It was then that Zhao Fusheng learned that starting from the summer of 1999, because the CSRC submitted to the State Council six policy recommendations—including reforming the stock issuance system, allowing insurance funds into the market, gradually solving legal financing channels for securities companies, allowing some qualified securities companies to issue financing bonds, expanding the pilot scale of securities investment funds, invigorating the B-share market, and allowing some B-share and H-share companies to conduct share buybacks—the stock market finally broke through the 1,500-point mark.

Moreover, after a bottoming out at the end of the year, from the end of 1999, it lasted for over a year, with the index rising nearly 1,000 points.

This was a terrifying number, meaning that during that year and more, no matter what stock you bought, it would rise, and at least double or triple.

In his previous life, the main reason Zhao's father and mother hated Jiang He so much was that during this bottoming-out process at the end of the year, Jiang He failed to hold onto the stocks and liquidated all of them, causing the Zhao family to lose over eighty thousand yuan entirely.

If Jiang He had had any conscience and kept those stocks, a year later, they could still have broken even.

But unfortunately, when he saw that the stock market had plummeted and he couldn't recover his losses, he immediately closed his positions and absconded with the money.

Zhao Fusheng sat there, lost in thought for a long time.

Life is just a series of isolated moments. Through memory and fantasy, many meanings emerge, then disappear, and after disappearing, they emerge again.

He knew very well that the road before him was very wide, very long, even transcending time and space.

Wealth and status would eventually be his, as long as he was willing.

But before that, Zhao Fusheng wanted to enjoy life, enjoy this beautiful time.

The body goes with worldly affairs, the mind finds leisure in stillness.

The autumn leaves have just fallen, a farewell has been years.

Perhaps this poem truly reflects Zhao Fusheng's mood at this moment.

……

……

He did not know that, because of a certain action of his, like a butterfly inadvertently flapping its wings in the Amazon jungle, he had stirred up a storm over the Pacific.

And in a certain female dormitory at Ninghai Normal University, at this very moment, someone was screaming in surprise.

"This, this is a love poem written for Hu Xia?"

"Just delivered by Tan Kaixuan?"

"No way, is this real? It's no worse than those contemporary poets..."

Female dormitory relationships are actually much more complicated than male dormitory ones. Compared to the male's easy reconciliation after a conflict, female grudges often stem from a small matter and last throughout the entire college period.

Sometimes, even after graduation, they never speak to each other again.

Hu Xia was usually not a very outstanding girl in the dormitory. She was not very tall, with healthy wheat-colored skin. Perhaps because she came from the Jiangnan water town, she always spoke softly and slowly, occasionally blushing.

Most of the time, Hu Xia was the kind of person in the dormitory who kept a low profile. But today, because of a love letter, she was suddenly pushed to the forefront.

"I didn't expect that Tan Kaixuan kid to have such talent."

Girls studying at a normal university tended to have a bit of a literary and artistic inclination, especially when it came to such romantic matters.

Hu Xia's cheeks were as red as burning clouds. She sat there, head down, not knowing what she was thinking, with her roommates' exclamations ringing in her ears.

Tan Kaixuan's letter had already been passed around several times, even attracting people from other dormitories.

Compared to the increasingly materialistic campuses more than a decade later, college girls at this time were not so concerned about material things. The word "talent" could still attract people.

Just like now, Tan Kaixuan had become synonymous with a gifted scholar.

The story of a gifted scholar and a beautiful woman undoubtedly caught many people's attention. Many of Hu Xia's close friends had already started urging her to accept Tan Kaixuan's pursuit.

Hu Xia was very excited at the moment. She knew that Tan Kaixuan liked her; she had felt it since freshman year, but she didn't expect him to confess in this way.

The unique emotions of a girl's shyness and joy intertwined, and Hu Xia felt her heartbeat quicken.

But in her heart, she still had some doubts, because in her impression, Tan Kaixuan didn't seem like the type to write poetry.

Just then, a tall figure walked into Hu Xia's dormitory. Seeing the newcomer, the girls all froze, and several even showed expressions of unease.

The newcomer had a faint smile on her face, a slender figure, and a face that looked somewhat thin but not the snake-like chin of later years; it was very rounded. Upon closer inspection, she resembled a star named Song Jia.

"I heard you have a good poem here. Could I take a look?"

Her voice was as smooth as pearls and jade, sounding as gentle as a heavenly melody in one's ears. Even though she was a woman herself, Hu Xia couldn't help but nod.

Fair fingers picked up the paper with Tan Kaixuan's love poem. Her beautiful eyes were like autumn water, with rippling glances. Then, the person froze.

"In that life, I..."

Looking at the poem on the paper, she suddenly wanted to meet the author.

At the same time, Zhao Fusheng, who was being dragged by Tan Kaixuan to go out for a meal, suddenly sneezed.

Rubbing his nose, Zhao Fusheng muttered, "I wonder who's thinking of me."