Chapter 1828 — Upheaval at Home, Part Two
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"Uncle Qing, what on earth is the matter?" Gu Mengyao had caught the strangeness in him too. "I mean, all these things in the house..."
"Ah! You mean the things..." Only then did Uncle Qing realize what she was asking, but a moment later he heaved a deep sigh and said, "Yao-yao, the truth is, something terrible has happened at home."
"Something terrible?" Gu Mengyao was briefly taken aback. "What kind of terrible thing?"
"Mr. Gu... his investments failed, and he tried to kill himself..." Uncle Qing knew well what a blow the news would deal her, but he could not keep it from her.
"What!" Gu Mengyao shot to her feet, staring at Uncle Qing in disbelief. "Uncle Qing, what did you say? Daddy tried to kill himself?"
"Mr. Gu's investments failed, and he threw himself in front of a car... He did not die on the spot, but he is still in the intensive care unit at the hospital, not yet out of danger..." Uncle Qing nodded, his voice very heavy. "I wanted to tell you about this earlier, but I was afraid you would worry and lose your focus driving, so I waited until you were home to say it... I am sorry, Miss Gu..."
"Uncle Qing, don't say that..." Grief-stricken as she was, Gu Mengyao knew he had only been thinking of her; and after the great upheavals of Wei Zhao's qi deviation and Tang Zhi staying behind in Snow Valley, her heart had grown far tougher and more mature than before.
Anxious as she was for her father's safety, she forced down her grief and asked, "Uncle Qing, what exactly happened? How could Daddy's investments have failed?"
"It goes back to the partnership with the An family..." Uncle Qing then recounted, one by one, the whole course of Gu Pengzhan's collaboration with An Mingyue. At the end he said, with a helpless air, "Back then I advised Mr. Gu to take his profits and get out while he could, but he seemed possessed—he insisted on mortgaging both his shares and the properties, and in the end he lost every last cent... Miss Gu, I am truly sorry..."
"Uncle Qing, this is not your fault." When Gu Mengyao heard how her father, with nothing left to his name, had walked head-on into the path of a speeding car, tears poured down her face. But she did not blame Uncle Qing; she knew that her father had never let him interfere in his business investments, and so even if Uncle Qing had tried to advise him this time, her father would never have fully listened.
"Miss Gu, Mr. Gu may not be out of danger yet, but there is still hope. Grieve, but bear it; while the green hills remain, there is no fear of running out of firewood—when Little Yi wakes, we may yet have a chance to turn the tables..." Here a cold gleam flashed through Uncle Qing's eyes. "What we have lost, we will take back."
"As long as there is hope..." Gu Mengyao nodded, feeling a little better. But something in the latter half of his words caught her ear. "Uncle Qing, do you suspect there was foul play in this?"
"Miss Gu, there is no evidence, but the An family..." Here anger flashed again in Uncle Qing's eyes. "I fear the An family never meant well with this partnership from the very start. It is only that I can find no flaw in it now..."
"There is nothing wrong with the futures trading records?" Gu Mengyao asked.
"Nothing wrong with them—only, the futures were traded overseas, and the detailed records were provided solely by An Mingyue. I cannot get at the original records," Uncle Qing said, shaking his head.
"Could they really... have lost it all, every last cent?" Gu Mengyao was somewhat astonished. She knew nothing of futures, but she had seen what stocks could do; surely even a badly losing stock could not come to absolutely nothing?
"What they did was margin trading—going long and short on margin. A hundred-percent loss is normal; there is nothing wrong with that," Uncle Qing said. "What I fear is that all those trading records are fake, manufactured after the fact..."