Chapter 1 (1/2)

The time was already past 10 pm and Lu Li had just gotten off work and walked out of his office.

He looked up at the tiny bit of sky he could see in between the tall skyscrapers around him and as he saw that sight, he felt a lot more depressed than before.

Shanghai was a city that could make an ordinary person feel terribly small and insignificant, as if one was just merely an ant struggling to survive in a cosmopolitan city.

This city made one feel helpless and threw one into depths of despair.

When Lu Li first graduated from university, he had been full of hopes and dreams and because of that, he decided to remain in this huge international financial centre without thinking twice about it. He wanted to fulfill his grand dreams of becoming a trendsetter of his generation!

But…it was too bad…

After he started work however, he realized that he had to come to terms with the truth. That he had to accept the fact that he wasn’t the main character of this universe! That he was nothing but an ordinary human!

This city had attracted too many talented and brilliant people. Some were geniuses in their own right, while some hailed from rich and powerful families, making them winners in life from birth.

To such people, this city was like their playground.

But for the ordinary person on the street like him, this city could swallow them whole!

Lu Li was feeling rather frustrated today, so he didn’t run like usual towards the nearest train station to catch the last train back to the rented apartment he lived in, on the outskirts of the city like he normally did.

If one looked at his face, they would see that he had no expression on it at all. Or rather, he looked like someone who was completely numb to life as he walked along the pavement absentmindedly.

The thoughts in his mind were many and were too complicated…

He had graduated when he was 23 years old and had started work after that. Four years had already passed since then.

Over the last four years, he had seen one colleague after another start work with great excitement and anticipation, only to leave their companies in disappointment and depression before making their way home to their hometowns in regret.

It was painfully obvious that this was a city that swallowed up people’s dreams!

Lu Li himself was beginning to think about leaving too. Should he leave this city where his dreams had been born and subsequently killed?

Just earlier today, his parents had called him.

As usual, his mother, Yu Qin, was hurrying him to find a girlfriend so that he could settle down and start a family.

She also informed him that he didn’t need to worry about being able to afford a house. The two of them had withdrawn their pension, so together with their life savings, they had about $700,000 for Lu Li to use so that he could buy a house.

Lu Li himself had saved about $300,000 over the years he had been slogging away in this city, so he had about a million in total.

This amount was enough to pay the deposit for an apartment in Shanghai.

Of course, this was under the condition that the location of this apartment had to be pretty far from the city center.

Right now, the districts in the heart of the city like Huangpu, Luwan and Jin’an would cost him almost $130,000 per square meter.

Even outside of this area, the properties in Dongxin cost at least $70,000 per square meter.

You had to go way outside the city center to get land that averaged between $20,000 to $30,000 per square meter.

If you were happy with buying something smaller, a million was enough for the deposit.

When he thought about these things, his eyes glinted, and he clenched his fists subconsciously.

His parents were like everyone else – both of them had to work in order to support the family. Being able to cough up $700,000, meant that they had nothing else to their name. That money didn’t just include their pension. It probably included their retirement savings too.