"You must be diligent, child. You have to compete! You can’t lose to your brother. If you don’t fight, everything of your grandfather’s will go to him in the future!"
This statement struck An Jincheng deeply.
At that moment, An Jincheng realized that he hadn’t had a meal with his brother for a long time.
He tried to invite his brother to dinner, but the response he received was:
"I’m very busy, no time. I have to have dinner with the senators this afternoon. If it’s still about some trivial matters, don’t bother finding me anymore."
An Jincheng inquired a bit and found out that his brother was busy drinking with those politicians and considering which land to invest in.
So in fact, his brother was indeed competing with him. He felt a bit sad.
He recalled many years ago when his brother had said that if the world was wrong, go and change the world, go and correct the wrongs.
The children of the An Family of Sanqiu Group could naturally say such things. But as time goes by, as people grow up, they gradually realize...
This world, or rather the atmosphere in places like Sanqiu Group, has only one kind of justice—monetary justice.
Justice should not be ridiculed. In fact, money should not be ridiculed. The strong should not bully the weak, but the rich can exploit the poor. Children who do the right thing should not be scolded by their parents, but children from wealthy families will always be praised no matter what they do.
This world has too many distortions, and people have already accepted their existence.
His brother is such a mature person, how could he cling to those childish things? His talk about changing the world, perhaps... was just a desire to obtain grandfather’s wealth?
This is what smart people should do.
The phrase "if it’s still about some trivial matters, don’t bother finding me anymore" made An Jincheng very pained.
He suddenly realized that his uncles had a bad relationship with his father as well. He didn’t want this; he didn’t want his feelings with his brother to become estranged in the future.
He didn’t want to, in the future, say to his own child:
"You must compete, you can’t lose to the children of An Youxuan’s family."
An Jincheng’s rebellion was the choice to give up fighting.
Since then, he began to completely decline. The money his grandfather gave him, he invested in nightclubs, and although he didn’t lose money, it somewhat made his parents lose face.
All of this was just the beginning. An Jincheng started to become uneducated and unmotivated. In the second half of his senior year, his grades plummeted.
Later on, his brother went abroad to study, while he stayed in the country to attend a family-sponsored university.
They could only meet during winter and summer vacations. His brother made new friends. In everyone’s eyes, An Youxuan was always dressed in a sleek, bespoke suit, his hair meticulously groomed, his gaze sharp, as if the world was in his hands.
And An Jincheng?
He became the joke of the An Family, doing everything those unmotivated wealthy second generations did... It seemed he was doing them all. At first, the family tried to discipline him and even hired psychologists, but it was all to no avail.
Even his grandfather was very disappointed in An Jincheng, saying this:
"Losing the big for the small, abandoning the essentials for the trivial."
An Jincheng gradually became marginalized. Sanqiu Group no longer bound itself to An Jincheng. At least when people talked about Sanqiu Group, they no longer discussed who between An Jincheng and An Youxuan was the "Crown Prince." They only thought of the always serious and always diligent An Youxuan.
And An Jincheng and An Youxuan also became less in contact.
Once, An Jincheng wanted to test if his brother no longer cared about him, so he forcefully barged into An Youxuan’s office and started talking about his recent decline, planning to ask An Youxuan to borrow some money.
An Youxuan lent it, then calmly asked:
"Anything else? If not, go amuse yourself. I have to get back to work."
Not even a hint of disappointment on his face. An Jincheng could no longer see any emotional fluctuation in his brother’s eyes.
An Jincheng was extremely disappointed, feeling as if being born into such a family... those with a chance to fight for inheritance rights, regardless of the bond, would eventually become enemies.
But he still told himself again and again, it’s not so bad this way.
His brother got what he wanted. He and his brother would not end up hating each other like their father and uncles, right?
Perhaps in such a family, the best outcome among brothers is to become strangers.
Life is a series of compromises. An Jincheng began to slowly accept all this.
He thought he eventually lost his brother. His private life became increasingly decadent.
He constantly changed girlfriends, constantly changed cars, occasionally asking his family for money. That stereotypical image of a rich second generation overflowed from the screen. Thus, his life took a turn.
Remembering up to here, what Wen Xishu felt was surprisingly a kind of joy. But what had happened was that An Jincheng had been kidnapped.
Even Sanqiu Group found it painful to give out a ransom of 12.55 trillion han yuan. This was a kidnapping that shocked the world. One could say it was comparable to the Longxia Port Island’s century kidnapping.
A useless good-for-nothing who had no real power in the group and spent every day only asking the group for money, greedy and never doing anything... was he worth this price?
The An Family actually held a discussion. Quite a number of people believed the group should hand it over to the police. Paying the ransom would disgrace the An Family, lower its prestige, and affect stock prices, possibly drawing more criminal attention in the future.
Some people in the An Family even hoped An Jincheng would die.
But no one expected that the future successor of the An Family, An Youxuan, would resolutely oppose the majority and, with an uncompromising stance, demand that An Jincheng’s safety be guaranteed.