When asked about his future aspirations, Yang Guohua seemed quite interested.

Parents always hope their children will be better than themselves. This is especially true for the generation of sent-down youth who missed out on school and endured the hardships of being sent to the countryside, which is why they devote all their energy to raising the next generation.

Yang Guohua and Zhang Aijia were both only children, which was actually quite rare in that era when "having children was considered glorious".

It's not that their parents didn't want to have children, but rather that their own circumstances prevented it.

Yang Guohua's parents were both soldiers in their early years. After liberation, his mother's health deteriorated, and she suffered severe bleeding after giving birth to Yang Guohua. Although she survived, she was unable to have any more children.

Sylvia Chang's mother came from a very poor family, with elderly parents and young children to support. Shortly after giving birth to Sylvia Chang, she faced criticism and struggle sessions, followed by three years of natural disasters that left her destitute.

My father spent a long time in prison on a wrongful conviction. He was finally exonerated, but he was already old. He also contracted tuberculosis in prison and died within two years.

Yang Guohua's father fell seriously ill while he was working in the countryside, so he returned to Jincheng ahead of schedule. The caregiver who looked after Yang Guohua's father at that time was Zhang Aijia's mother.

After a while, Yang Guohua's father passed away, but he brought a wife home.

After seeing Yang Guohua finally settle down and start a family, his mother, who had always been in poor health, also passed away, following her husband who had gone before her.

When Yang Yajing was a child, the Yang family restaurant was just starting out. The couple was always busy, and for the first two or three years, she was almost raised by her grandmother.

But my grandmother herself was in poor health. She developed Alzheimer's disease in her fifties and no longer recognized anyone except for talking to herself while holding a photo of her deceased husband.

Sylvia Chang spent all her savings in her early years hiring caregivers, and although her restaurant was doing very well, she was left with nothing.

Whether her grandmother realized she was holding Sylvia Chang back or was simply too confused to keep up with the times, when Yang Ya-ching was eight years old, she took four or five sleeping pills in one day, and just like that, hugging her husband's photo frame, she fell asleep and never woke up again.

From then on, Yang Yajing was the only person in Yang Guohua and Zhang Aijia's world.

"Ya Jing, what major do you want to study in college?" Yang Guohua asked.

"The School of Business, Finance Department, University of Finance and Economics," Yang Yajing answered without hesitation, as if she had already thought it through.

"Finance major?" Yang Guohua was somewhat surprised. "Do you even know what finance is? Why are you interested in finance?"

"Investment!" Yang Yajing replied while eating, "In a business that can turn small money into big money."

“Where did this child learn all this? None of us taught her anything,” Sylvia Chang said with a smile and a shake of her head.

"Hehe! I like math! I especially like multiplication," Yang Yajing said playfully. "And isn't Dad interested in finance too?"

"Why would I care about finance? I don't understand any of that." Yang Guohua felt that Yang Yajing's statement was somewhat unfounded.

"Hmph! I saw it all!" Yang Yajing pointed to a corner of the bookshelf where Yang Guohua's scrapbook was. "Every time there's news about the Huaxia Consortium, or any news about them in the newspaper, Dad never misses it. Why wouldn't he look at it if he didn't like it?"

Yang Guohua exchanged a meaningful glance with Zhang Aijia before saying, "The Huaxia Consortium is the pride of our Jincheng! They didn't have to bow to the foreign devils during the concessions and colonial period, they weren't corrupted by the dye vat of the 1920s, they didn't collapse after liberation, they weren't affected by natural disasters, they weren't ruined by the Cultural Revolution, and the reform and opening up even made them stronger. They are a role model!"

"Oh! So it's national heroism at work!" Yang Yajing laughed heartily. "Is it because the blood of those two old revolutionaries, Grandpa and Grandma, is still flowing in Dad's veins?"

"That's right!" Yang Guohua didn't deny it. "I hope the CEO of the Huaxia Consortium is capable and doesn't get led astray by the messy troubles at home like other wealthy families!"

Yang Yajing also knew that, in both her previous and current lives, the Xia family's trivial matters would frequently appear in gossip magazines.

Even financial magazines mention the power struggles within their family.

I remember Yu Yue, who dislikes business, would use the gossip of the Xia family as a model for writing novels. Even the "Tao family's mother" was the wife of the Xia family's boss.

Thinking of "Grandma Tao," Yang Yajing felt she should start paying attention to the Xia family's affairs. In her previous life, before her rebirth, Jiang Xuanxuan had clung to this old woman.

That evening, when Yang Guohua and Zhang Aijia returned to their room, Yang Guohua sighed, "Alas! No matter how many sparrows a phoenix grows up among, it can never become a sparrow! Once its wings are fully grown, it is a phoenix no matter how you look at it."

“Ya Jing will be an adult next year. You’ve been saving up for her coming-of-age gift for eighteen years. Why don’t you give it to her then?” Zhang Aijia has trusted Yang Ya Jing a lot these past few years. She feels that it would be more meaningful for her to use the money for her own purposes rather than keeping it for her.

In his previous life, this small sum of money was a large amount in their family. Knowing that Yang Yajing wanted to study finance, and fearing that she would be ostracized in the circle of the rich because she had no family background, Yang Guohua wanted to make money work for her so that Yang Yajing's university life would be more comfortable.

He invested his eighteen years' worth of savings, his coming-of-age gift, into the stock market. But before he could make much money, he passed away.

At that time, Yang Yajing didn't understand the stock market, and Zhang Aijia had no concept of it either. Moreover, because of her husband's early death, she didn't even think about it.

In order to help her family, Yang Yajing did not go to the University of Finance and Economics to take the entrance exam. Instead, she took the exam for administrative management at Jinzhou University and worked as an office worker.

During the millennium-long bear market, upon hearing the stock market news, Sylvia Chang remembered that Yang Guohua had thrown all that "large sum of money" into the stock market.

I checked my account and found that the stocks had plummeted so much that I didn't even recognize them anymore!

At that time, Sylvia Chang was running a restaurant that was barely keeping the business afloat, and Yang Ya-ching was helping out at home when she didn't have classes, so they had no time to manage those stocks.

Only after learning that Sylvia Chang was ill did Yang Yajing remember the money. Although the stock market had recovered somewhat by then, the money was far from enough.

After paying for hospitalization and medical expenses, there was nothing left when it came time to pay for surgery!

Yang Yajing had mentioned selling the shop, but Zhang Aijia absolutely refused. It was her livelihood!

Cancer is a disease that can't be cured easily! She doesn't want to be cured and then have no income, how will she survive?

Yang Yajing has just started working and earns a meager income. How can she rely on her daughter to make a living? This burden is worse than not getting treatment!

Yang Yajing, who had already lost her father at that time, did not want her mother to leave her as well.

Faced with her mother's pessimism, she visited many of the mother's old friends. Most of these friends themselves had lost their jobs and had no relatives to turn to for help.

With nowhere else to turn, Yang Yajing finally put aside her pride and asked Jiang Xuanxuan for money for the first time.

One wrong step leads to another, and what followed was a wildfire ignited by that spark, burning her to ashes.

The only saving grace was that it allowed her to see Jiang Xuanxuan for who she truly was, and it also brought her back to her senses on the day of her rebirth.

That lifetime was too late, and this lifetime...