From Robinson Crusoe

Chen Zhou made a trip to the city, successfully sold two pieces of gold, made contact with a gold company, and met Ms. Feng, who was involved in the currency business, at an antique shop. Chen Zhou's trip was quite fruitful.

After adding Feng Yingxuan as a friend, Chen Zhou didn't chat with her much. He just politely asked for her name and then changed his nickname on her end.

He specifically instructed Feng Yingxuan that if she came across any yellow jade pebbles, she should let him know, and he would definitely buy them if he had the money.

However, natural yellow jade pebbles are extremely rare, sought after by the wealthy, celebrities, and major collectors. Even if a nobody like him got wind of it, he probably wouldn't be able to get his hands on one.

In modern society, money is certainly important, but power, fame, and status are often more important than money.

In particular, China is a society that values ​​personal connections. People who can make connections can easily earn money, while those without connections face great difficulties in doing business. Not only do they struggle to make money, but they are also often harassed by various departments under various pretexts.

……

After returning to the town by car, Chen Zhou did not go straight home. Instead, he took the more than 700,000 yuan in his bank account, which he hadn't even had time to warm up, to the sales office.

In recent years, many new residential areas have been built in the new urban area of ​​Balin Town.

A few years ago, when housing prices were at their peak, the price of new buildings in this town reached nearly 12,000 yuan per square meter.

In other ordinary towns, even with high housing prices, it would be impossible to reach this level. However, Baling Town has very strong educational resources. The key high school Chen Zhou attended even produced the provincial science champion, and its rate of students admitted to top universities ranks among the top in the entire province.

Education is something we can't be poor about.

Parents are always willing to spend money so that their children can excel and not fall behind in their studies.

Not to mention the locals of Baling Town, parents from surrounding towns and even other cities flock to Baling Town in order to send their children to the town's top schools.

Over time, Baling Town, a small town with limited mineral resources, underdeveloped tourism, no large factories, and no pillar industries, has prospered thanks to its education sector, and this prosperity has not declined to this day.

However, the prosperity of the education sector could not ultimately support the real estate bubble, and when housing prices across the country plummeted, the housing prices in Baling Town were not immune.

In less than four years, the price of housing in the new city has dropped from 12,000 yuan per square meter to 8,000 yuan per square meter.

This rapid price surge not only affected developers, leaving them overwhelmed with questions from the first wave of buyers, but also caused potential buyers to hold onto their money and adopt a wait-and-see approach.

After all, housing prices have fallen so quickly. Buying now or waiting a year could save you tens of thousands of yuan. Nobody's money grows on trees, and nobody wants to waste money if they can save as much as possible.

In the sluggish market, even sales staff at real estate offices are losing their jobs or resigning to pursue more lucrative careers.

Chen Zhou, a young man with a "huge sum of money" who could buy the apartment outright, became a hot commodity at the sales office and enjoyed the rare privilege of being personally received by the manager.

Although developers don't make as much profit as those who buy houses with cash, they can't do as much with mortgages.

But now the industry is in a slump, sometimes not even a few houses can be sold in a month. Real estate developers are starving and will do anything to get something out of them.

That afternoon, after confirming that the contract and other formalities were correct, Chen Zhou made the payment directly and acquired his first house.

This apartment is a small unit, only 60 square meters, but it is located on the first floor near the gate of the community and comes with a 20-square-meter basement.

Chen Zhou's real intention wasn't the house itself; buying the house was secondary. He was mainly interested in the basement.

However, the house they bought was a bare shell and uninhabitable. To move into their new home, they would need to find someone to renovate it. Finally, they would buy a safe and store their treasure inside.

……

Balin Town is Chen Zhou's hometown, and his relatives and friends have all gathered here.

Because Chen Zhou's father was in the renovation business, Chen Zhou got to know many elders who worked in this industry.

After buying the house, he made an excuse that a friend's house needed renovation, and approached one of his uncles. They agreed on a price, and the renovation of the new house started that afternoon.

……

Before we knew it, it was mid-September.

Chen Zhou used the more than 700,000 yuan he received to buy a new house, purchase decoration materials, and settle wages, and the money gradually dwindled.

Given the current situation, let alone purchasing a safe, even completing the renovation is uncertain.

Despite being short of money, Chen Zhou did not contact Manager Sun of the city's gold recycling company, even though Manager Sun frequently called him and expressed his intention to acquire more gold resources. He remained unmoved.

After all, he had a lot of gold in his possession, and a large portion of it had a distinct Inca Empire or medieval European style. Chen Zhou was genuinely worried that selling too much gold through the same company would cause unnecessary trouble.

On September 16, Chen Zhou specially flew to a city where gold ATMs were installed and exchanged 750,000 yuan through the gold ATM.

He then pawned two gold bars at a lower price, receiving 68 yuan in cash.

Several large sums of money entered the account, attracting the attention of the bank.

To Chen Zhou's relief, the bank did not inquire about the source of his funds or freeze his account. Instead, it upgraded his user level, assigned him a dedicated customer service representative, and recommended a series of deposit incentive programs and suitable investment projects.

The enthusiasm of the bank's customer service representative over the phone was something Chen Zhou had never seen before, which made him sincerely feel that money really is a good thing.

With only a dozen days left before his private space expired, and fearing the loss of treasures worth hundreds of millions, Chen Zhou immediately purchased ten large safes after returning to Balin Town and moved them into the basement.

Since the basement was the first part of the renovation, and it wasn't very big, the renovation work had already been completed a few days earlier, so moving the safe did not affect the renovation progress.

……

After returning to the modern world, as he adapted to his body more and more, Chen Zhou discovered that in addition to his hearing, skin toughness, sense of smell, and vision being different from ordinary people, his memory had also been greatly improved.

Before participating in the challenge, he could only be considered a fairly intelligent person. Although he worked hard in school, he was still far from being one of the best students and often felt that he had to do his best to keep up with the top students' thinking.

As Chen Zhou grew older, his memory was no longer as strong as it was in high school, and he gradually began to say, "A bad pen is worse than a good memory."

He found it much more difficult to learn Russian on the island and translate those materials than he did in high school and college when he was learning English.

This is partly because there is no learning atmosphere on the island, and partly because it is closely related to the decline in physical function as people age.

Upon returning to the modern world, Chen Zhou discovers that not only has he become younger, but his memory has also recovered to an astonishing degree.

He could memorize a fourteen-digit number after just two glances, and once he did, it was deeply etched into his brain and would never be forgotten. Using this memory, Chen Zhou set ten different passwords for each of the ten large safes.

Without a cell phone to record the event, it would be very difficult for anyone to open his safe unless violence is used.

However, Chen Zhou still underestimated the amount of his treasure.

Excluding wine and handicrafts, his collection of real gold and silver, including various gold ornaments, filled his safe. There was even a lot of silver that couldn't fit in the safe, so he had to stuff it into sacks and then haphazardly stack them in the basement.

It's hard to imagine that bundles of silver bars and silver rods as thick as an arm would be stuffed into sacks like junk and thrown into a corner.

……

After finally managing to retrieve and properly store all the treasures that didn't require high preservation standards, Chen Zhou began to worry about where to put his famous wines, paintings, handicrafts, woven tapestries, and other valuables.

Many famous paintings and handicrafts have very strict preservation conditions. Too much moisture is bad, too dry is bad, exposure to direct sunlight is bad, and even the temperature can affect the state of the pigments.

After researching online for a few days, Chen Zhou purchased a sunken villa in another residential complex.

This small villa is a second-hand house. The owner is a wine connoisseur, and a wine cellar was specially built inside the villa.

The wine cellar is equipped with intelligent environmental monitoring equipment that uses sensors to monitor temperature, humidity, and light in real time. It also contains professional storage equipment to preserve the wine and keep it in optimal condition to enhance its flavor.

After buying the villa, Chen Zhou placed his personal collection in the wine cellar, so that as long as the villa always had electricity, his wines would not be damaged.

Of course, occasional power outages wouldn't matter; the storage conditions for wine aren't that demanding, and besides, Chen Zhou doesn't need to make money from these famous wines.

While a small number of wines can weigh as much as gold, the price of most wines cannot compare to that of gold.

Gold's unique properties dictate that it will always be a hard currency before humanity truly sets foot in the cosmos, and its status cannot be shaken by any of the various "glamoury and cheap" commodities that people hype up.

After carefully storing the treasures and wine, Chen Zhou spent a large sum of money to purchase a set of light-shielding LED lights that were supposedly used in museums.

This lamp has a built-in ultraviolet filter, which can prevent ultraviolet radiation from causing the pigments to fade.

In addition, there are several large temperature and humidity control cabinets, which can precisely control the temperature and humidity inside the cabinets, thus better preserving precious handicrafts such as ancient paintings, silks, and pottery.

The northern inland areas are relatively dry, but rainfall is still very frequent in late summer and early autumn.

Although the humidity in the storage room is not usually too high, Chen Zhou still purchased a dehumidifier and a humidifier to help control the humidity, just in case.

He also bought an inert gas sealing system to suppress mold and insects in the room, thus better preserving paintings and silks that are easily eaten by insects.

……

The slightest slackening could result in losses of tens of millions, leaving Chen Zhou no room for carelessness.

He squandered the money, and the more than one million he earned from the second sale of gold vanished in the blink of an eye.

With a large investment, the results were naturally very pleasing.

Whether it's gold and treasures or wine and handicrafts, they all found a relatively suitable environment for preservation. Private space has been cleared out, and all wealth has fallen into the realm of real life.

Although the money in Chen Zhou's bank account has become four figures, his real estate holdings have quietly gained several zeros.

At 25, an age when life is just beginning and requires hard work and effort, Chen Zhou achieved financial freedom and began living the life he had always dreamed of: buying whatever he wanted, going wherever he wanted, and eating whatever he wanted.

After a period of intense activity, Chen Zhou finally had some free time to consider what he should do for the rest of his life. He also had time to sort out his relationship with Manager Sun, who had been bothering him, and to play a couple of games with the kid in the neighborhood who was supposedly very good at chess.

……

At the end of September, Manager Sun finally had the opportunity to host a banquet for that unremarkable young man.

Just like when they first met, Chen Zhou displayed a composure beyond his years. Manager Sun carefully considered his words, trying to subtly inquire whether Chen Zhou planned to continue selling large amounts of gold without touching on his privacy.

Chen Zhou really needed money, but the gold market had already started to rise, and the price offered by the gold recycling company was not very high.

Having secured his valuables and feeling relatively relaxed, Chen Zhou was not inclined to sell any more gold for the time being.

He planned to register a company with the qualifications to trade precious metals, and then find a few trustworthy people to help him convert the gold in his hands into legal assets, and then sell it at a more suitable price.

Otherwise, every time he sells gold to a gold recycling company, the other party will make 50,000 to 60,000 yuan. Even if his gold comes easily, he can't just give it away for free.

Chen Zhou had experienced poverty. When he worked at the cement factory, he would hesitate for a year before buying a razor that cost a few hundred yuan. He had only recently become wealthy and was not yet ready to play the role of a "spendthrift young master".

However, Chen Zhou was short of money at the moment, and Manager Sun was indeed a sincere person. Although he did not intend to sell the gold, he could sell his large amount of silver.

There are quite a few large silver mines in China, but the silver trading market is far less active than the gold trading market. Silver is also less sensitive than gold, so selling silver is a good option for Chen Zhou.

Upon hearing Chen Zhou mention that he had some silver to sell, Manager Sun immediately lost interest.

After all, the price of silver for recycling is less than 8 yuan per gram, which is almost 100 times less than that of gold. He really has no interest in such a business.

It wasn't until Chen Zhou revealed the amount of silver he had that he expressed his willingness to cooperate, much to his surprise.

The reason was simply that Chen Zhou, this young customer, had an enormous amount of silver, a staggering 21 tons.

Even if the profit per gram of silver is not much, the cumulative effect of this alarming figure is still a terrifying number.

It's important to understand that 21 tons of silver is a whopping 21 million grams. Even if you only make 0.5 yuan per gram of silver, it's still a multi-million yuan business.

Manager Sun has been in the precious metals business for many years and has handled transactions in tons before, but he has never seen an individual seller who owns 21 tons of silver before.

At the dinner, Chen Zhou was still wearing his simple domestic brand sportswear, without a luxury watch, and even had to take a taxi to go out.

But in Manager Sun's eyes, this big customer's attire was clearly a disguise, and he dared not even try to find out what kind of background Chen Zhou had.

Not making money when you can is the mark of a fool. Who would bother provoke a tiger for no reason? (End of Chapter)