14 Roaming the Four Seas

Anyone would be struck by the sudden burst of her beauty in that moment.

Sheng Jiayi was indeed beautiful, but always exuded a cool and distant aura, like a blue poppy blooming on the slopes of the Himalayas, swaying between the cliffs—breathtakingly beautiful yet far beyond reach.

In films, she never played roles of fallen women, nor was she ever associated with the image of a dazzling, seductive diva.

Yet when she sang under the dim, cold light, with the night breeze brushing through her hair and the moonlight shining on her, her snow-white skin seemed as smooth as jade, and her deep blue eyes held the vast expanse of the starry sky.

This was what it meant to be a peerless beauty capable of toppling kingdoms and cities.

Xu Mingyan’s heart stirred: “Miss Sheng, do you like watching the city lights?”

Sheng Jiayi faced away from the harbor, looking at him: “I do.”

“They say the mansions above the fog line are damp and gloomy, but just in terms of scenery, the mountaintop is unparalleled,” Xu Mingyan said. “Would you like to go see it?”

Sheng Jiayi regarded him with a faint, enigmatic smile, watching him for a long moment until he averted his gaze. Then she said lightly, “Alright.”

After a moment’s thought, she added, “You should think carefully, Mr. Xu. If you take me away from the He family’s ball and the media catch us, we’ll both be headline news.”

Xu Mingyan chuckled, “I’ll be careful.”

“I have no confidence in your ability to deal with the paparazzi.”

“Then why did you agree?”

“Because sometimes I do things on a whim—like tonight.” Sheng Jiayi frowned slightly. “Aren’t you worried about angering the He family, and losing the chance to do the business you want?”

“Whether the He family minds or not is of no consequence to me,” he said.

Sheng Jiayi lifted her chin, a gesture that lent her an air of arrogance. “You should say that to them face to face.”

“That’s not impossible.” Xu Mingyan flicked his cigarette into the trash bin. “Let’s go.”

Only a handful of luxury cars were parked in the garage below the hillside.

A beast crouched in the shadows, silver-gray steel fused with aesthetic design to perfection, its scales glinting with icy, fragmented light like those of a viper.

The McLaren F1: a true supercar, a groundbreaking marvel in automotive history. Only fifty or sixty were ever produced worldwide, priced at a staggering £600,000. But price was the least of it—such a supercar was priceless and rare. Every kilometer driven in the city wore down its precious life, and even maintenance costs were astronomical.

This was likely the only McLaren in all of Hong Kong.

Xu Mingyan walked straight over, pulled open the side door, and waited for Sheng Jiayi with calm composure.

“Miss Sheng, please.”

Sheng Jiayi sneered, “Mr. Xu, I thought if you were going to put on a show, you’d at least go all out—like renting a modest car fitting for a small business owner, not this outrageously priced supercar.”

Xu Mingyan looked helpless. “Meeting you was unexpected; I didn’t have time to prepare. If there’s a next time, I’ll be sure to pay attention.”

Sheng Jiayi: ...

She glanced at him.

He was roughly 185 centimeters tall or taller, broad-shouldered and narrow-waisted. His simple white shirt and black dress pants suited him exceptionally well. With his hand resting on the car door and sleeves rolled up to his forearms, his muscular lines were subtly visible. His face was indeed striking enough to be impossible to ignore.

Truly, he couldn’t even be bothered to pretend.

But she wasn’t angry. Xu Mingyan lowered his posture and was attentive to the smallest details. He would light her cigarette first, open the car door for her—whether out of his ingrained manners or because he treated everyone that way, a woman could hardly refuse such a gentleman, especially one so young, wealthy, and handsome.

The metallic glint danced on the mechanical dashboard.

To suit overseas markets, McLaren had removed the three-seat design for exported cars, switching to two seats. The car could accelerate to 100 km/h in three seconds. It was the fastest land vehicle in the world. With its roaring engine, it shot out of the garage like a streak of light.

Hong Kong had always been one of the cities with the highest number of supercars worldwide.

To drive at eighty miles per hour on the winding mountain road required intimate familiarity with the route.

Sheng Jiayi asked him to open the convertible roof. The night wind tousled her long hair, which she casually tied into a ponytail as she looked up at the vast night sky.

No stars were visible; the city lights below shone too brightly, trampling the Milky Way beneath their feet.

No extraneous sounds, only the wind roaring like ocean tides.

She smiled, feeling happier now than when dancing under a thousand gazes.

“What’s so funny?” Xu Mingyan asked.

Sheng Jiayi said, “Mr. Xu, have you read ‘The Republic’?”

He kept his eyes on the road and nodded. “Plato’s work.”

“Then you must know the ‘Allegory of the Cave.’”

“Allegory of the Cave? Do you think the He family is the cave imprisoning people and preventing them from seeing the outside world?”

“I don’t think that. I’ve only just met the He siblings.”

“Then where is your cave, Miss Sheng?”

The car slowed, and Xu Mingyan finally looked at her.

“Hong Kong, I guess,” she said casually, pushing stray hair behind her ear.

“I’m honored to be the one to bring you out into the sunlight,” Xu Mingyan said quietly.

Sheng Jiayi was silent for a long moment. “Mr. Xu, what brings you to Hong Kong?”

She used a different title—Xu Mingyan knew this meant she wouldn’t accept any lies or evasions.

“How did you recognize me?” he asked.

She arched her elegant brow. “You don’t really think you’re unknown, do you? You’re from the Xu family.”

“You must have been very young when your family left Hong Kong—ten years old?”

Sheng Jiayi shook her head. “Hong Kong media rarely report on your family, but I once heard your name on the radio.”

The air seemed tinged with the scent of damp rain.

At the end of June, Temasek Holdings of Singapore acquired Malaysia’s telecommunications group for a staggering $3.7 billion—the largest merger and acquisition ever in Asia. Given the special geopolitical relations between the two regions, the value of this deal was astonishing.

This was also the largest transaction since Xu Mingyan became chairman of the family-controlled Temasek investment foundation.

“The Xu family is Hong Kong’s largest landowner. As the sixth-generation heir, even living far from home, it’s hard to remain truly anonymous. Moreover, your mother comes from a prominent background; she’s the heir to Singapore’s largest real estate group. As her only son, you entered the family’s Temasek board at an age others could barely imagine. How could you think your name is unknown?”

Xu Mingyan pondered for a long time before replying, “Miss Sheng, you make a good point. But I have one question: Temasek is a private equity firm with the Singapore government as its largest shareholder. The company only discloses its investment portfolio and returns annually, never shareholder information.”

Sheng Jiayi toyed with a diamond brooch the size of a thumbnail, her expression unchanged. “When you returned to Singapore, I hadn’t entered show business yet. I was interning at the foreign exchange bureau, translating foreign documents. One happened to be about Temasek’s ownership structure. You know, such a giant managing hundreds of billions of dollars is closely watched. Besides, in your circles, this isn’t a secret. You’re just surprised I, an outsider, know these things, aren’t you?”

Xu Mingyan didn’t answer immediately. He eased off the gas as the car approached an iron gate.

Infrared security didn’t stop the McLaren from entering. They drove along a tree-lined stone path, past an imposing white building almost palace-like, and stopped in the quiet center of a lawn.

Xu Mingyan was the first to get out, helping Sheng Jiayi from her high heels.

“This is your home?” she asked.

“Old family estate,” Xu Mingyan said succinctly. “My great-grandfather’s property. It was almost auctioned off years ago but was repurchased by my grandfather.”

The mountaintop was the highest point of Victoria Peak, an excellent vantage for Victoria Harbor’s night view. The villas here were mostly old estates, decades or even a century old, developed since the colony was founded. Back then, the Chinese lived at the foot of the mountain, Europeans on the Peak, and above the consulates were the residences of European nobility.

The area above the fog line was perpetually damp and really unsuitable for living. Few still resided there. These buildings became cultural relics, worth a fortune yet nearly impossible to sell.

But the Xu family was far from selling off ancestral property. If the He family could be called old rich of Hong Kong, the Xu family was old rich of the entire Chinese diaspora—a pioneering overseas dynasty, originating from San Francisco and dominating Southeast Asia’s top echelons from the very beginning.

The first-generation patriarch of the Xu family made his fortune mining gold in San Francisco. The Xu family remained a major presence in Chinatown, even producing a U.S. senator.

Xu Mingyan’s great-grandfather traveled back from Hawaii to Hong Kong. He was the island’s earliest compradore, dealing in opium, running gambling dens, marrying six wives as beautiful as flowers, and fathering ten sons of varying caliber.

Xu Mingyan’s grandfather was the ninth son. By his generation, the family fortune was already divided and scattered. The Chinese often say wealth doesn’t last beyond three generations; by logic, the Xu family should have ended here, fading from history.

But Xu Mingyan’s grandfather, Xu Lingchuan, was a formidable figure worthy of Hong Kong history.

This Cambridge engineering graduate, armed with the family’s split inheritance of eighty thousand dollars, bought two rubber plantations in Malaya, a stibnite mine, and vast land in Causeway Bay sold cheaply by the Land Corporation.

During World War II, with soaring oil and mineral prices, Xu Lingchuan amassed great wealth.

He married a Shanghai noblewoman, the daughter of a Kuomintang general, Kong Nanyin. With this connection, he used his funds to buy a fleet of ships, delivering food and medical supplies in batches via small boats into Japanese-blockaded mainland China. Simultaneously, he bought cheap lands and corporate stocks from panicked Hong Kong British colonial consortia.

The former gave him shipping rights along the South China Sea; the latter secured his dominance in Hong Kong’s commercial world.

After the war, Xu Lingchuan became Hong Kong’s richest man.

The Xu family’s six generations have seen many ups and downs but have remained deeply rooted and flourishing. Xu Lingchuan’s lineage intermarried with prominent families, controlling vast lands in the South District, Wan Chai, Kowloon, and the New Territories—lands worth astronomical sums, let alone their holdings in major trading houses and British consortia.

No wonder Boss He called him a big fish.

Sheng Jiayi thought of this with interest as she fiddled with her brooch.