Did he trick the young marshal into becoming sworn brothers and then go south to Huangpu Military Ac

Hearing Lin Qi's bold words, Sister Song, being quite shrewd, remained unmoved.

She didn't move, but Song Ziwen's back was already pressed against the back of the chair.

He recalled the scene he had witnessed half a month ago. That day, he went to Huangpu on business and happened to see Lin Qi giving a vivid lesson to the first batch of students.

Several newly manufactured 60mm mortars could fire a single shot from 600 meters away, instantly flattening an old Qing Dynasty beacon tower. He even had this dream that night.

Now, fifty planes are piled up on this dream.

"Mr. Lin..."

Sister Song finally spoke, much slower than before.

She stood up and gently brushed the scraps of paper from her cheongsam onto the ground.

"I was confused just now."

The words weren't spoken loudly, but there were only three people present, and they could hear every single one clearly.

"You are the Song family's god of wealth, and also a neighbor that the Song family can't avoid in the future."

Sister Song raised her head: "In the business world, contracts on paper are for outsiders to see. We'll have many more areas to work together in the future, so I'll split it 50/50. I won't go back on my word."

She paused for a moment, then smiled wryly, a smile that also conveyed a sense of relief.

"There are other ways to bring our two families closer than just marriage. Sometimes, making money together is even more reliable than blood ties. I thought about what you said yesterday all night, and today, I believe it."

Song Ziwen breathed a sigh of relief.

He breathed a deep sigh of relief; in all the years he'd known his older sister, he'd never seen her bow her head to anyone like this.

Lin Qi nodded, accepting the offer.

Back at his seat, Sister Song personally picked up the copper kettle from the red clay stove and poured him a fresh cup of tea. The water was at the perfect temperature, and the tea was amber in color.

Lin Qi picked up the glass, took a sip, put it down, and got down to business.

"Two million US dollars, transferred in two batches via wire transfer. The funds will be transferred from Citibank's transoceanic account to the corporate account of Morgan Trust on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York. The account number and password will be recorded separately by Brother Ziwen later."

Song Ziwen immediately pulled out a small notebook from his pocket, turned to a blank page, and gripped a pen.

"Once the money arrives, I'll send you the order details: which stocks to buy, at what price to enter, and when to exit. I'll send you the details one by one."

Lin Qi looked at Song Ziwen's pen tip.

"Build your position in three batches, with three trading days between each batch. Don't take it all at once. Those old foxes on Wall Street will pounce on you as soon as they smell blood. Don't mess with them."

Song Ziwen nodded, his pen moving swiftly across the paper.

"The first month..."

Lin Qi emphasized those words a fraction more.

"I'll make your Song family earn a million."

Song Ziwen stopped writing, looking shocked.

If a Harvard finance professor dared to say that in class, he could be expelled from the university that very night.

Lin Qi ignored his reaction and continued speaking.

"Of this million, half a million will go to your Song family, and half a million will go to me. I will not keep a single penny of my half a million."

"Once you issue the invoice through your West Coast agent, leave immediately."

"Send it to Seattle."

Lin Qi raised his eyelids slightly.

"Go to Boeing and place an order."

"Fifty planes."

"Boeing PW-9 fighter jet."

Song Ziwen paused for a moment while writing.

He had heard of the name before; it had just completed its maiden flight last June, and the US Army Aviation Corps itself had not yet officially equipped it with the equipment.

"Biplane configuration, Curtiss D-12 V-12 liquid-cooled engine, 440 horsepower, level flight speed of 159 miles per hour, service ceiling of 21,000 feet, a pair of Browning .30 aircraft machine guns in the nose, with a bomb load of 240 pounds."

Lin Qi recited every single parameter without pausing.

Song Ziwen raised her head and opened her lips.

This isn't someone in the military industry talking to him; it's an expert who's been working in the aviation field for over a decade ordering food.

"The fuselage was disassembled into boxes, the engine was declared as a postal transport component, the machine gun and cannon parts were mixed into mining equipment, and the fuselage wing panels were used as agricultural spraying equipment frames. It departed from the west coast, went through Hong Kong once, or detoured to Haiphong Port in French Vietnam to land."

Lin Qi paused for a moment.

"Before the end of the year..."

"All of them landed in the Pearl River."

"We can't delay even a day."

The private room was silent for a few seconds.

Sister Song didn't speak. As a businesswoman, she believed her younger brother should ask the questions; she wouldn't interrupt.

Song Ziwen held a fountain pen, the nib hanging over the notebook.

Right now, his mind wasn't on the contract or the 500,000; it was on the words "the end of that year."

It's the end of June now, and there are still six months until the end of the year.

Fifty of the latest biplane fighter jets, plus parts, spare parts, aviation fuel, hangars, pilots, customs clearance, and connections with consulates of various countries, all completed in six months?

He wrote a paper at Harvard about transoceanic arms transport, which included a case from three years earlier where Chileans ordered five seaplanes from Britain.

That transaction took a full year and four months from placing the order to delivery.

Fifty Boeing PW-9s, six months.

This is like throwing the word "impossible" on the ground and stepping on it.

Song Ziwen raised her head.

"Brother Tuozhi."

His Adam's apple bobbed, and he pushed his glasses up, but they weren't secure, so he pushed them up again.

"Fifty aircraft, six months, that's too rushed."

Song Ziwen looked at Lin Qi's face, but Lin Qi didn't say anything.

"Even if we have connections, if we can't get through one crucial point in the large-scale arms shipments, the entire supply line will collapse. What the brokers on the European side fear most is a fixed delivery date; they need a buffer period, these seven months..."

As he spoke, he swallowed and uttered the second half of his sentence.

"Do you know what's going to happen at the end of the year?"

Upon hearing this, Sister Song turned her gaze towards him. She didn't ask any questions, but waited for Lin Qi to speak.

Lin Qi didn't reply. He picked up the teacup but didn't drink from it. He held the teacup, turned it around once, and then put it down.

I looked up through the open, carved window at the river.

The Pearl River was quite muddy at this moment. A gunboat flying the Union Jack slowly descended from upstream, with plumes of black smoke rising into the sky from its chimney. Several sampans on the shore were tossed violently by the waves, and the boatmen, barefoot, were struggling to hold on to their poles.

Lin Qi stared at it for a long time.

He wasn't looking at gunboats; he was looking at the white lanterns hanging at the doors of thousands of households in Guangzhou six months later.

The countdown in my head is ticking away.

He didn't turn his head and lowered his voice.

"Brother Ziwen."

"Do as I say."

"As for why it had to be at the end of the year..."

Only then did he turn around and glance at Song Ziwen.

"You'll know in six months."

Lin Qi pushed the untouched cup of tea further inside, stood up, straightened the hem of his suit jacket, and pushed open the carved nanmu door of the private room.

Light from the corridor shone obliquely through the crack in the door, illuminating half of his profile and clearly showing the line of his jaw. The door closed silently, and the bodyguards stood on either side outside, none daring to look up.

The sound of Lin Qi's leather shoes faded into the distance along the corridor.

Inside the private room, Sister Song remained motionless.

She sat firmly, her hands folded on her knees. The carpet at her feet was covered with scraps of the contract from earlier, and a gust of wind lifted one of them, which caught on the tip of her shoe.

Song Ziwen stood up, walked over, bent down and picked up the small piece from the ground.

The edge of the paper still had a few black English letters on it, half of a C from the "CONTRACT" line on the contract cover.

He didn't say anything, but tucked the piece of paper into the inner cover of his notebook, closed it, and felt a cool sensation when his fingers touched it.

"Big sister."

Song Ziwen spoke up.

"End of the year."

After he finished speaking those two words, Sister Song turned her gaze back to her brother's face.

A gust of wind blew in through the window again, and the kettle on the stove boiled over. The lid bounced and rattled from the steam, but no one paid any attention to it.

Sister Song stood up, walked to the window, and closed the window halfway, reducing the river breeze.

"End of the year."

She repeated it.

Then she looked at the porcelain cup on the table that Lin Qi had just emptied. There was still a small piece of the contract stuck to the bottom of the cup. She reached out, picked out the piece of paper, and looked at it on her fingertips for a while.

Loosen your fingertips.

The paper floated down and landed in the tea stains, the ink spreading out and dispersing into a black mass.