Chapter One: Wallet Zero

Lin Zhou, you have the most complaints. Pack up.” A cardboard box was already waiting beside his desk. Lin did not argue. Thirteen years earlier, his father Lin Haichuan had vanished after his company collapsed, leaving lawsuits, debt, and one sentence their relatives never stopped mocking: The most expensive thing in the world isn't gold. It is what people will pay but refuse to admit they value. Lin had guaranteed the company's debt. Now even his salary account was frozen. Fighting for a six-thousand-yuan job would not save him from three million. He carried the box back to his rented room in an urban village. Rain leaked through the window frame and dripped onto the old computer his father had left behind.