Ginkgo leaves from the Huading Group building fell into Su Qing's canvas bag. She stood on tiptoe to brush off the leaves on Lin Aotian's suit and suddenly laughed: "Your tie is messier than Zhou Mingxuan's financial statements." "Stop talking nonsense." Lin Aotian let her tie the knot again, and the scent of freesia in her hair lingered on his nose. He remembered that she lay in the study last night to help him sort out the clan documents, and finally fell asleep hugging the wooden dragon, drooling on the cover of "East China Sea Law". The phone vibrated in his trouser pocket, and Chen Mo's message came with an exclamation mark: "Boss! The remnants of Xingyao Capital have joined forces with three hedge funds to sell Huading shares in the open market!" On the electronic screen in the trading hall, green numbers fell like beads with a broken string. Lin Aotian watched Zhou Mingxuan stumble into the conference room, buttoning two buttons of his floral shirt incorrectly, and suddenly had a bad feeling - the last time he saw him like this was when he burned up the alcohol lamp in the laboratory in college.
"Aotian!" Zhou Mingxuan swung his phone, and on the screen was a hot post on a forum, "Huading CEO appoints people based on personal connections, and Zhou's old employees collectively eat empty salaries." In the accompanying picture, three old sailors stood in front of the old house holding Mid-Autumn Festival gift boxes, "They said you used clan funds to support idle people!"
Lin Aotian pinched his swollen temples, and his eyes swept through the malicious speculation about Su Qing in the post: "A little tailor who hooked up with the clan leader, who can't even bake a cake and wants to enter the ancestral hall." He suddenly remembered that three days ago, Su Qing was baking a chiffon cake in the kitchen, and finally served a "mushroom cloud" with a slumped waist, but insisted that "this is called abstract art."
"Launch the 'Dragon Scale Plan' to protect the stock market." He suddenly spoke, his finger swiping across the list of Zhou's old employees on the tablet, "By the way, make a documentary about the stories of these three people, called "The Harbor Under the Dragon's Claw."
Zhou Mingxuan was stunned: "It will cost 1 billion to protect the stock market! These old sailors are of no help to the stock price!"
"It will help me." Lin Aotian looked at the sycamore tree outside the window and remembered the words in his mother's diary, "The smiles they put on every time they saw the dragon-patterned gift box are more important than any candlestick chart."
When the smell of burning wafted from the kitchen of the old house, Su Qing was watching the clan's sacrificial cakes on the mobile phone video. The hot steam from the steamer blurred the screen. She hurriedly turned off the fire and found that the steamed "dragon-shaped rice cake" had turned into a crooked-necked lizard with its tail still stuck to the steamer.
"Failed again?" Lin Aotian pushed the door open, his suit still carrying the tense atmosphere of the trading hall, but he laughed when he saw the "artwork" on the chopping board, "I think it looks more like the parrot Zhou Mingxuan raised."
"Go to hell!" Su Qing picked up a rag covered with glutinous rice flour and chased him, but stopped when she saw the plan to protect the market on his phone, "Aotian, do you really want to use so much money to protect the market? Zhou Mingxuan said..."
"Zhou Mingxuan also said that the cake you baked can kill people." Lin Aotian held her hand covered with rice flour, and the touch was like the temperature of his mother kneading dough in the past, "But do you know? When the documentary about those old sailors was played on the screen in the trading hall today, the stock price stopped falling."
Su Qing's eyes lit up: "Really? Just because they were holding gift boxes and laughing?"
"Because that is the real temperature." Lin Aotian suddenly chuckled, his fingertips brushed across the jade bracelet on her wrist, the golden dragon pattern looming in the steam, "What the capital market lacks most is someone who dares to play cards out of the box."
On the top floor of Huading Building late at night, Zhou Mingxuan huddled on the sofa with a laptop in his arms, the blue light of the screen reflecting the dark circles under his eyes. Lin Aotian handed over a cup of cold coffee and saw that he was revising the documentary script, inserting his own embarrassing stories into the story of the old sailor: "I remember that year at the dock, I broke the handlebar of Aotian's bicycle, and he chased me for three blocks..."
"This part has been deleted." Lin Aotian kicked his slippers, but saw that the background music he added to the video was the theme song of their club activities in college. The phone vibrated, and Chen Mo sent a message: "The clan elders called and said that the 'Dragon Scale Plan' violated the principle of capital efficiency." He looked at the lights outside the window and remembered the scene of Su Qing breaking the celadon bowl in the old house ancestral hall during the day - she said "broken peace" in panic, but the elders' livid faces eased. Suddenly he chuckled and replied to Chen Mo: "Tell the elders that Su Qing will be responsible for the cakes for the next sacrifice, and I will pay for the broken ones." At three o'clock in the morning, Su Qing rushed into the office holding the newly baked "dragon-shaped cookies". The icing on the cookies was crookedly painted with three little dragons, and the one in the middle was missing a leg. "To replenish your energy!"
She shared the cookies with Lin Aotian and Zhou Mingxuan, and took a bite of the little dragon with a missing leg. "It didn't get burnt this time, but the icing was squeezed into the wrong mouth." Zhou Mingxuan bit the cookie and said vaguely: "In fact, you should be a crisis public relations. The cake diplomacy in the clan hall last time was much more useful than Aotian's business strategy." Lin Aotian looked at the flour marks on her apron and suddenly remembered the last page of his mother's diary. She drew a crooked smiley face and wrote next to it: "My Aotian, be a warm helmsman." He suddenly realized that the so-called anti-logical decision-making is nothing more than turning the softness in the heart into visible power. The morning sun penetrated the French window and shone on Su Qing's newly made cookies. Cheers came from the trading hall, and Huading's stock price began to rebound. Zhou Mingxuan held up his phone and shouted, "Look! The forum owner who scolded us apologized and said he was moved to tears by the old sailor's story!" Su Qing looked at the biscuit crumbs on Lin Aotian's suit and suddenly chuckled, "It seems that the Dragon King's biscuits are much more useful than Long Xiao."
"That's because the Dragon King has learned to leave claw marks." Lin Aotian wiped the icing off her nose, "Not in the family tree, but in everyone's heart." The phone vibrated again, and Chen Mo sent a photo: In the clan meeting hall, the elder was studying the biscuits baked by Su Qing, and next to him was a copy of the "Amendment on the Participation of the Spouse of the Clan Leader in Clan Affairs". The sun fell on the crooked wings of the wooden dragon, adding a touch of warmth to this originally serious space.
Su Qing suddenly pointed out the window: "Look! The ginkgo leaves are all yellow, do they look like scales dropped by the Dragon King?"
Lin Aotian looked at the golden leaves flying all over the sky, and suddenly felt that the so-called Dragon Royal Business Road has never been about fighting a bloody road in the capital market, but leaving warm traces in every place it passes. Just like the cookies baked by Su Qing, although not perfect, they have a warmth that makes people smile.
And this may be the real strength - allowing yourself to leave a soft corner in the business empire, planting freesia, baking crooked cookies, and guarding those seemingly irrational but precious people and things. When the first ray of autumn sun shone on the dragon logo of Huading Building, he suddenly chuckled. It turns out that the most powerful dragon breath is never the roar that shocks the world, but the fireworks that can melt the ice.