122: Chapter 122 Only I Can Give You a Sense of Security

The sudden light made Su Wanqing subconsciously squint. Before she could react, a large, warm hand covered her slightly cold hand.

"Do you feel like all of this is too fake, afraid that when you wake up tomorrow, I'll have turned back into that poor delivery guy?"

Chen Fan's voice was very soft, yet it was like a hammer, precisely shattering the thin shell around Su Wanqing's heart.

Su Wanqing's body stiffened for a moment, and she turned her head. Chen Fan was half-leaning against the headboard, looking at her. There was no sleepiness in his eyes, only bloodshot veins, yet they were frighteningly bright.

"Fan Zi..." Su Wanqing's nose soured. She propped herself up and sat, leaning into his embrace. "I'm panicking inside. Truly panicking. Five years ago, you had to borrow money just to buy a tub of milk powder, and now... planes, yachts, villas worth hundreds of millions. This gap is too big, so big that I feel like I'm dreaming."

She gripped Chen Fan's pajama collar tightly, her knuckles turning white. "Tell me the truth, is this money... clean? Are you doing some kind of business out there that's putting your life on the line? If that's the case, let's not take this money. Let's sell the house and the cars; can't we just live a safe and peaceful life as a family?"

These were the words she had been holding back all night.

For a woman accustomed to a hard life, this sudden, overwhelming wealth brought not just joy, but more so, a fear of the unknown.

Chen Fan looked at this silly woman in his arms, his heart aching.

He reached out to tuck the stray hairs on Su Wanqing's forehead behind her ear and smiled. "Silly girl, what are you thinking? Your husband doesn't do things like murder or arson, nor would I deign to do them."

"Then these five years..."

"I went to gamble with my life." Chen Fan interrupted her, his gaze becoming distant, as if piercing through the walls to look at that non-existent "past."

He had to give her a reasonable explanation, one that could put her at ease and also explain the source of his trillion-dollar net worth.

"Wanqing, do you know about the financial markets?" Chen Fan's voice was low. "That is a battlefield that requires no knives or guns. Five years ago, I was at a dead end. Since I didn't want to die, I had to go crazy."

Chen Fan held her hand and placed it on his chest. "I was lucky and encountered a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I took the few thousand yuan I had saved from delivering food, added a hundred times leverage, and charged into the international futures market. That is a true meat grinder; win, and you're living the high life; lose, and you're down and out."

Su Wanqing didn't understand what futures or leverage were, but she heard "one hundred times" and "meat grinder," and she was so scared her hands were trembling.

"The first trade, I made three hundred thousand. The second trade, I threw all three hundred thousand in and made five million." Chen Fan began to weave his "myth." Although the System was fake, his current business acumen was real, and he spoke about these things with authority. "I was like a reckless madman, snatching meat from an alligator pit. Every transaction was me gambling with my life."

"Why did you have to push yourself so hard?" Su Wanqing's tears fell.

"Because I have a wife and children to support." Chen Fan stared into her eyes, enunciating every word. "Because I don't want my woman to have to haggle with vendors over a few yuan for groceries, and I don't want my children to drool over other people's toys. Poverty is the most terrifying disease in this world."

"Then why didn't you contact us?" This was Su Wanqing's biggest knot in her heart.

Chen Fan was silent for two seconds, then hugged her tighter. "Because I wasn't strong enough back then. I moved too many people's cheese in the financial circles, and countless eyes were watching me. If they knew I had a weakness, knew that you were still in this dilapidated little county town, you would be in more danger than I am."

"I could only endure. Endure until I stepped all those opponents under my feet, endure until I built a sufficiently strong capital barrier, endure until I had the ability to give you absolute security."

Chen Fan pointed to the pitch-black night outside the window. "Now, I have done it. Huihuang Group is the wall I have built for you. Inside this wall, you are the queen, and the children are princes and princesses; no one can harm you in the slightest."

These words were seven parts true and three parts false.

The truth was his love for his family and his determination to protect them; the falsehood was that non-existent "history of financial battle." But for Su Wanqing, that was enough.

She didn't need to know how the specific K-line charts moved; she only needed to know that this man had turned himself into a man-eating beast for the sake of this family.

"No more of that in the future." Su Wanqing buried her face in his chest, her tears soaking Chen Fan's pajamas. "Never again are you allowed to gamble with your life. Our family has enough money now; it's enough for several lifetimes."

"I'll listen to you." Chen Fan gently patted her back. "From now on, I'll just be an idler who only knows how to spoil his wife and raise the kids. The company has professional managers to handle it, and I'll just stay home and take care of you and the three little ones."

Su Wanqing laughed through her tears and pinched his waist. "Who needs you to take care of me? I have hands and feet."

"That won't do; you are our family's key protected person now." Chen Fan reached out and touched her still-flat abdomen. "This little one came at just the right time; it's a ticket given by the heavens to make up for the past, allowing me to experience being a father from the very beginning."

The night deepened.

Having resolved the knot in her heart, Su Wanqing soon fell asleep in Chen Fan's arms, her breathing long and steady.

Chen Fan, however, had no sleepiness.

By the faint light, he looked at his sleeping wife, and then looked at the family photo on the nightstand.

In the photo, Muyang and Nianyao were smiling brightly, but Chen Fan could tell that there was a hint of caution in both children's smiles.

Nineteen years.

He had been absent for a full nineteen years.

Although the family was reunited now and the children behaved very sensibly, that sense of insecurity brought about by long-term material deprivation and the lack of fatherly love could not be instantly filled by one or two big meals or a few luxury cars.

Especially Nianyao.

Although this girl talked about "obligatory chocolate" and acted carefree, he remembered yesterday at their hometown, when Nianyao saw those relatives making fools of themselves over a few tens of thousands of yuan, the disgust and... fear that flashed in her eyes. It was a fear of poverty.

"System." Chen Fan murmured in his heart.

[Host, I am here.]

"Check my available liquid assets balance."

[Current available liquid assets in the Host's personal account: 876.532 billion...]

That long string of numbers was just a cold symbol in Chen Fan's eyes.

"Money is just waste paper when it sits in the bank." Chen Fan looked at the ceiling, his gaze gradually becoming firm. "I have to let the children know that in the Chen family, money is the least valuable thing."

He had to carve this confidence into their bones.

Chen Fan picked up the phone from the nightstand, lowered the screen brightness, and opened the banking app.

He found the payee nicknamed "Sweet Little Cotton Jacket," and his finger hovered over the screen for a moment.

"My daughter seems to be keeping a low profile at school this semester?" Chen Fan recalled the information he had investigated earlier; Nianyao ate in the cafeteria and lived in the dormitory at school, and even hesitated for a long time before buying a slightly expensive bag. How could that be?

His, Chen Fan's, daughter should treat money like dirt. And to achieve that, he first had to let her possess enough money to drown her desires.

He entered his password and verified with his fingerprint. In the transfer amount field, Chen Fan didn't hesitate at all; he directly pressed a "1" and then started wildly pressing "0".

Ones, tens, hundreds, thousands, ten thousands, hundred thousands, millions, ten millions... It wasn't until the screen prompted "single transfer limit" that he stopped his finger, feeling it wasn't enough.

"Let's just transfer a 'small goal' of 100 million as pocket money for now." Chen Fan pursed his lips, seemingly unsatisfied with this amount. "If I give too much, I'm afraid I'll scare this girl. It has to be gradual."

[Ding! Transfer successful.]

Looking at the big green checkmark on the screen, Chen Fan threw the phone back onto the nightstand with satisfaction.

Tomorrow morning, when this girl wakes up and sees her phone, her expression should be quite interesting, right?

Chen Fan lay back down, held his wife, and closed his eyes.

Outside the window, the eastern sky had already begun to turn a fish-belly white. A new day was coming, and for Chen Nianyao, who was fast asleep in her Yunzhou University dormitory, a "money storm" capable of shattering her worldview was quietly lying in her phone, waiting to be awakened.