Playing cards couldn't even bring a moment of peace.

Su Yehao was quite helpless. He tossed a 10,000-yuan chip to the dealer, asking him to put away the remaining chips for him to play next time.

He walked over to the aquarium, admiring the diverse marine life.

There were brightly colored humphead wrasses, enormous giant groupers, manta rays and sea turtles leisurely swimming around, and seahorses moving up and down along the glass.

He had seen it many times, but it still fascinated him. He was considering building a small aquarium in his villa on Crab Island, with his study and living room adjacent to it.

At that moment, he saw a few young men, arms around each other, joking and laughing, talking about going for a massage and sauna if they won money that night.

It reminded Su Yehao of his old friends.

Times had changed.

He Shao Fan had eloped with Zhao Yimeng's younger sister, traveling all over the world. He didn't know how long this relationship would last, always claiming it was true love, yet breaking up faster than anyone else.

Zhugan, whose family ran an accounting firm, had gone to Shanghai to open a company, assisting his family in expanding into the mainland market, and they could barely get together a few times a year.

Bao Ya Jun hadn't left, but he had bought a small farm in New Zealand, planning to live on both sides once his child was a little older. He was always clamoring to marry his daughter to Su Yehao's son.

To that, one could only say that Bao Ya Jun's genes were quite powerful, as the little girl looked more like him.

So any talk of childhood sweethearts was directly rejected by Nangong Tian, who grabbed Su Yehao's neck, telling him not to arrange any marriages randomly.

Nowadays, he knew many people, but there were fewer and fewer who he could truly get along with.

Su Yehao had said earlier that he missed the time when he was studying at Donghuang Rose Middle School, right after the accident, and he wasn't just making it up.

Back then, he had started a brand new life, with dreams and pursuits, full of fantasies about the future, and full of energy every day.

But now.

Although life was very good, with both personal achievements and emotions far exceeding Su Yehao's expectations, his mentality was different from the past, and he always felt listless.

Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw once said that there were two great tragedies in life: one was not getting what you loved, and the other was getting what you loved.

This was probably a true reflection of Su Yehao. He had almost everything he wanted.

Last year, on his birthday, he thought about what he should buy to reward himself. It seemed like a simple thing, but it troubled him for a long time. In the end, he just bought a milky white Bugatti Veyron, and the mileage on the odometer hadn't exceeded eight hundred kilometers yet.

There was nothing he could do. There were too many supercars waiting for Su Yehao to break them in.

The girls around him also didn't know what gifts to give him, so they all bought him supercars, or watches, oil paintings, and so on.

Reaching the top of the mountain, reaching the end of the sea.

Just like many people find it difficult to make big changes as they live their lives, Su Yehao was now the same.

No wonder many people over the age of thirty started to drink a little every day. It had little to do with addiction, but mainly for the sake of a rare moment of relaxation...

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Early August.

Pengcheng had a new subway line opening, and the relevant authorities invited Su Yehao to attend the ribbon-cutting ceremony.

He didn't like these kinds of activities before, but now he could take the opportunity to stroll around and find something to pass the time, which seemed pretty good.

The subway was public transportation, and the fares were set relatively low.

The authorities didn't expect to make money from it at all. It would be good enough if the profits could maintain the line's repairs and maintenance.

Su Yehao, who invested and became a shareholder of Pengcheng Railway, also didn't expect to recover his investment, with interest, from the subway itself.

The truly profitable projects were not underground, but above ground.

Pengcheng Railway had some side businesses. For example, the land expropriated during the planning process would be counted as investment in the form of land shares.

In addition to acquiring a large amount of land, Su Yehao also helped with its planning, using idle funds for investment and financial management, financing several local real estate companies, developing commercial real estate projects, and trying to earn money through external leasing.

The short-term investment was too large, and the financing interest rate was relatively high. It might be quite profitable in the future, but it was still a loss-making project at the moment, having already swallowed about 27 billion RMB of Su Yehao's money, which was provided by his family trust.

Mostly due to being short on funds and wanting a big investor to help with infrastructure construction, Pengcheng had repeatedly taken the initiative to let Su Yehao finance and increase his shareholding in Pengcheng Railway in the past two years.

Other cities followed suit.

For example, Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Sijiucheng (Beijing) all began to refer to Pengcheng Railway's joint venture model, introducing some external funds during the construction process, and trying to replace real money with land, attempting to achieve a virtuous cycle for subway projects.

Many olive branches were thrown at Su Yehao, but he had already lost interest in the mainland real estate market. Including Sihai International, and counting the financed Biguiyuan, Hengda, etc., he held a total of several hundred billion RMB worth of land.

This was several hundred billion RMB in 2007. By the time they were successfully developed, it would almost be the peak of this round of the real estate market.

In addition to commercial real estate projects that were kept for rent, in other real estate businesses, it was better to retreat bravely and try to use the profits to invest in other fields, such as manufacturing electric vehicles, producing semiconductor equipment, or developing emerging markets in overseas developing countries.

The advantage of foresight was obvious at a glance.

When others didn't pay attention, Su Yehao had already begun to lay out his plans. When others began to fall into madness, he was already considering withdrawing.

Boss Xu of Hengda also came today.

He acquired three pieces of land nearby, including one commercial land and two residential lands. The subway entrance would be near the residential area, making it a proper subway property.

In just a few years, Hengda had soared, and now held more than 60 million square meters of land reserves, spending the first half of this year busy acquiring land.

With Su Yehao as a shareholder to help operate, the banks gave the green light all the way. Although it wasn't to the point of being unsecured and unlimited, the bullets in his hands were quite sufficient.

Hengda's performance last year was even slightly better than that of the established real estate giant Wanke, and this year it further widened the gap.

At this moment.

Boss Xu stood in front of Su Yehao, smiling and saying, "It's only ten o'clock now. Why don't we find a place to sit down and have lunch together? I happen to have many business questions that I need to ask Mr. Su for advice."

Since he had nothing to do anyway, Su Yehao readily nodded, saying:

"Sure, let's go to my golf club. I don't want to do anything on such a hot day. Let's find a place to chat and drink tea. I'll arrange the lunch."

Several bosses of medium and large real estate companies were present, and with Su Yehao coming, several official representatives also accompanied them.

On the matter of land reserves, it takes two to tango. The reason why the economy has been so booming in recent years is largely due to the benefits brought about by the marketization of real estate.

In the past, people were reluctant to spend money, saving a little money in the bank to earn interest. Now, a large amount of assets flows into the real estate market, which is also equivalent to consumption.

Including building materials, landscaping, transportation, home appliances, decoration, banks, and the vast number of migrant workers, all benefited from this, and home buyers also enjoyed the dividends of property appreciation.

In the whole process, no one suffered losses... except for those who didn't buy a house.

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