Chapter 1828 — Upheaval at Home, Part Two

"Uncle Qing, what on earth is the matter?" Gu Mengyao had caught the strangeness in him too. "I mean, all these things in the house..."

"Ah! You mean the things..." Only then did Uncle Qing realize what she was asking, but a moment later he heaved a deep sigh and said, "Yao-yao, the truth is, something terrible has happened at home."

"Something terrible?" Gu Mengyao was briefly taken aback. "What kind of terrible thing?"

"Mr. Gu... his investments failed, and he tried to kill himself..." Uncle Qing knew well what a blow the news would deal her, but he could not keep it from her.

"What!" Gu Mengyao shot to her feet, staring at Uncle Qing in disbelief. "Uncle Qing, what did you say? Daddy tried to kill himself?"

"Mr. Gu's investments failed, and he threw himself in front of a car... He did not die on the spot, but he is still in the intensive care unit at the hospital, not yet out of danger..." Uncle Qing nodded, his voice very heavy. "I wanted to tell you about this earlier, but I was afraid you would worry and lose your focus driving, so I waited until you were home to say it... I am sorry, Miss Gu..."

"Uncle Qing, don't say that..." Grief-stricken as she was, Gu Mengyao knew he had only been thinking of her; and after the great upheavals of Wei Zhao's qi deviation and Tang Yun staying behind in Snow Valley, her heart had grown far tougher and more mature than before.

Anxious as she was for her father's safety, she forced down her grief and asked, "Uncle Qing, what exactly happened? How could Daddy's investments have failed?"

"It goes back to the partnership with the An family..." Uncle Qing then recounted, one by one, the whole course of Gu Pengzhan's collaboration with An Mingyue. At the end he said, with a helpless air, "Back then I advised Mr. Gu to take his profits and get out while he could, but he seemed possessed—he insisted on mortgaging both his shares and the properties, and in the end he lost every last cent... Miss Gu, I am truly sorry..."

"Uncle Qing, this is not your fault." When Gu Mengyao heard how her father, with nothing left to his name, had walked head-on into the path of a speeding car, tears poured down her face. But she did not blame Uncle Qing; she knew that her father had never let him interfere in his business investments, and so even if Uncle Qing had tried to advise him this time, her father would never have fully listened.

"Miss Gu, Mr. Gu may not be out of danger yet, but there is still hope. Grieve, but bear it; while the green hills remain, there is no fear of running out of firewood—when Little Yi wakes, we may yet have a chance to turn the tables..." Here a cold gleam flashed through Uncle Qing's eyes. "What we have lost, we will take back."

"As long as there is hope..." Gu Mengyao nodded, feeling a little better. But something in the latter half of his words caught her ear. "Uncle Qing, do you suspect there was foul play in this?"

"Miss Gu, there is no evidence, but the An family..." Here anger flashed again in Uncle Qing's eyes. "I fear the An family never meant well with this partnership from the very start. It is only that I can find no flaw in it now..."

"There is nothing wrong with the futures trading records?" Gu Mengyao asked.

"Nothing wrong with them—only, the futures were traded overseas, and the detailed records were provided solely by An Mingyue. I cannot get at the original records," Uncle Qing said, shaking his head.

"Could they really... have lost it all, every last cent?" Gu Mengyao was somewhat astonished. She knew nothing of futures, but she had seen what stocks could do; surely even a badly losing stock could not come to absolutely nothing?

"What they did was margin trading—going long and short on margin. A hundred-percent loss is normal; there is nothing wrong with that," Uncle Qing said. "What I fear is that all those trading records are fake, manufactured after the fact..."

It seemed no one was a fool. The An family had done it seamlessly, leaving no flaw to be found in the accounts, yet Uncle Qing still had his suspicions—not that the An family cared. Let them suspect; the matter was already settled beyond recall.

"The An family..." Gu Mengyao dried her tears and fixed the name in her mind.

"Miss Gu, the ownership of this villa no longer belongs to us either—it is the An family's now. Only, An Jianwen said that he and you are friends, and he did not want to see you homeless, so he argued with his father and had the villa left to us," Uncle Qing said. "I do not know whether An Jianwen had a hand in this, or whether he is sincere or false, but from now on, it would be best to have as little to do with the An family as possible."

"I understand..." Gu Mengyao had not expected that the villa was no longer hers. Looking at the familiar surroundings, she felt a pang of bitterness. "So that is why all of Little Shu's things were moved here?"

"Yes..." Uncle Qing nodded. "By the way, Miss Gu..."

"Uncle Qing, why are you still calling me Miss Gu? What 'young lady of the house' am I now? Just call me Yao-yao..." After such an upheaval, Gu Mengyao seemed altogether sorrowful.

"All right, Yao-yao. The money I have on hand is nearly gone now, and Mr. Gu's medical expenses from here on are still unprovided for. Could you withdraw the pocket money in your card and give it to me first?" Uncle Qing, never one to stand on ceremony, asked straight out.

"Of course, no problem..." Gu Mengyao said without thinking—but the words were scarcely out when her expression changed slightly. "No—the money is gone..."

"Gone?" Uncle Qing was struck dumb on the spot.

"On the road, we ran into robbers..." And with that, Gu Mengyao told him of the perilous scene on the journey, and how Little Shu had thought fast and turned disaster into safety...

"Ah, money is a thing outside the body; if it is gone, it is gone. But at a time like this, to have no money..." Uncle Qing would hardly blame Gu Mengyao. In that situation, never mind a million—even five million or ten million would have had to be handed over.

"How about I ask my brother, and see how much my family can come up with? I cannot say for a large sum, but a few hundred thousand ought to be possible." Shen Yushu's family was not well off: her parents were both researchers, her grandfather was retired at home, and her brother's salary was not large either—beyond his own living expenses, he could not have saved much.

"No need to ask... the money of the Chen and Song families has probably all been lent to Fatty Lai..." Uncle Qing shook his head. He knew of the bankruptcy of Guan's Pharmaceuticals as well; if Fatty Lai still had money, Uncle Qing would have gone to borrow from him long ago. They were not close, but with Wei Zhao's connection it would have been no problem—the trouble was that Fatty Lai could barely save himself now.

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