Aunt Taylor: "Of course, who can live without a phone these days? Especially someone like you—keep it with you, call for help when needed, and try to avoid places with no signal in the future."

Grace Sullivan nodded in agreement, studied the phone for a while, and then helplessly went to find Alice Carter.

After the transfer to another hospital, Alice Carter had only visited him once, dragged there by her mother. Today, after coming back, Alice Carter didn’t come downstairs until lunchtime and hadn’t said a word to him.

From their few conversations, it was clear that Alice Carter didn’t have much affection for Brian Carter—she even seemed to dislike him.

Knocking on the door, Grace Sullivan imitated Mrs. Chu’s way of addressing her and asked, "Xiao Hui, how do you turn this on?"

It was the first time Alice Carter had heard her eldest brother call her "Xiao Hui." She took several seconds to react: "...Don’t tell me you’ve even forgotten how to use a phone?"

Grace Sullivan replied calmly, "I don’t remember. Could you please teach me?"

Alice Carter was stunned for a few more seconds. Hearing the word "please" from him was truly rare.

All afternoon, Grace Sullivan learned how to power on the phone, set it up, and use various functions, deeply impressed by modern technology. Alice Carter was also thrown off by his humility and eagerness to learn, briefly forgetting her eldest brother’s true nature.

The past two days, at the Xiangyue Communications campus.

The SOA architecture team had set up a project scenario. Samuel Bennett reviewed it and gave feedback, then left the R&D center to return to the office building.

Passing by the landscape lake, he stopped to admire the pool of swimming yellow autumn fish, their scales shimmering.

His assistant came over on purpose and said, "Mr. Xiang, here you are."

Samuel Bennett said, "Have someone catch a few lively ones and send them to Manzhuang."

"Alright." The assistant agreed and reported the main business, "The Chu family just got in touch. They said Brian Carter was discharged from the hospital a couple of days ago."

Samuel Bennett heard it was indeed amnesia and asked casually, "How is he now?"

The assistant said, "He’s been at home playing on his phone for three days."

Samuel Bennett: "..."

The assistant stifled a laugh: "Mrs. Chu wants to know if you’re free this weekend. She’d like to invite you for a meal."

Since the incident, the Chu family had been swamped just handling compensation, and suppressing the news had taken a lot of effort. Samuel Bennett knew David Thompson was stretched thin, so the business handover after the contract signing had been delayed.

It wasn’t that he was being considerate—Xiangyue was a big fish eating a small one, and if they moved too aggressively, they’d be criticized for "devouring" the other. Taking it slow made them seem magnanimous, and no one would mind a good reputation.

Now that things had settled, Samuel Bennett wanted to handle business officially and get the process moving, not waste time on private entanglements or vague emotional connections with the Chu family.

The secretary asked, "Shall I reply for you?"

Suddenly, Samuel Bennett's phone received a text message.

Ten minutes earlier, Grace Sullivan was practicing typing speed. Mrs. Chu told him that her invitation to Samuel Bennett had failed, and asked him to try again to show sincerity.

Grace Sullivan thought for a moment and sent the first text message of his life.

Samuel Bennett looked at the number labeled "Brian Carter"—the one the Chu family had given him after the incident, which he’d saved but never contacted.

Now that Brian Carter had become a "formatted" fool, what normal message could he possibly send?

He opened the message. Brian Carter had actually sent him two lines of poetry—

In the fog, a thousand boats are shrouded in darkness,

While lights burn bright along both banks.

The journey is not yet over,

Still I urge my horse onward with my ancestor’s whip.

Samuel Bennett read it once. The first half’s imagery alluded to the accident that night; the second half expressed his current state of mind—setbacks are nothing to fear, he must press on.

On the surface, the attitude seemed pretty good.

But the hidden meaning... The author of these lines died before thirty, lost to wine and women, and the elegy written for him after his death was the very line Samuel Bennett had quoted at the hospital bedside.

So Brian Carter had not only heard it, but understood it.

Sending these two lines to him—clever and cultured—was a response to the accident that was neither servile nor overbearing, and a return of his mockery that night, neither praising nor criticizing.

This actually surprised Samuel Bennett.

The secretary was still waiting: "About the Chu family..."

"Reply for me," Samuel Bennett changed his mind, "I’ll be there on time this weekend."

Author’s note:

【Major bank】A bank with relatively large capital, generally more than 60,000 silver dollars.

Poet: Zhang Yipo (Qing Dynasty)

Chapter 4

On Saturday morning, the garden had been watered and the lawn trimmed in advance.

Mrs. Chu was busy preparing for the meal, carefully selecting tableware and spending over an hour arranging the long table.

The Chu family had indeed been neglectful lately, so inviting Samuel Bennett for a meal was a gesture of goodwill. They also invited David Thompson and several other senior executives from Yisi to thank them for their hard work during this period.

Besides, Xiangyue would soon be Yisi’s largest shareholder. Before formal cooperation, this was a good opportunity for both sides to socialize—a win-win.

Mrs. Chu was very satisfied with her arrangements. After agonizing over whether to use gold or silver candlesticks, she hurried off to do her makeup and hair, asking in passing, "Is Xiao Chen up yet?"

"He’s been up for ages," Aunt Taylor said quietly while arranging flowers. "He’s been acting strange since coming home from the hospital—up at six every morning reading. Guess what he was reading yesterday? 'Economic Law'!"

Mrs. Chu was startled: "He’s not getting into trouble again, is he?"

Aunt Taylor quickly spat three times for luck: "Think positive—maybe he’s really turned over a new leaf."