As soon as the call ended, she saw that at some point the Ruanlin Family had sat down beside her, holding the little booklet she’d been flipping through the most recently, and handed it to her. "Take it."

Jiaojiao looked at her suspiciously, took a glance at the passbook that had been stuffed into her hands, and that one glance scared her so much her eyes almost popped out.

"Gran, how come you have this much money?"

Two hundred thousand!

Her grandma actually had two hundred thousand!

"Old lady, since when did you have this much secret stash?" Jiaojiao was genuinely shocked; she hugged the Ruanlin Family’s arm and tilted her head up to ask.

The Ruanlin Family had been living with the Ruan Family all these years. She’d known before that the Ruanlin Family had some money, but she hadn’t expected that "some money" meant casually taking out two hundred thousand in one go.

"Your gran’s got plenty of money. Take this to use first. If it’s not enough, tell Gran again!" The Ruanlin Family was domineering as hell.

So that meant... it wasn’t just two hundred thousand?

Jiaojiao was deeply, deeply shocked.

After handing the passbook to Jiaojiao, the Ruanlin Family went off to cook, as if what she’d given her wasn’t a huge sum of two hundred thousand, but just a scrap of waste paper.

Jiaojiao never would’ve thought that just casually going around raising money, she’d actually raised herself into a millionaire lady! It was downright terrifying!

After dinner that night, Jiaojiao held the one million she’d scraped together over the past week, feeling like she was in a dream.

Duan Xi came in from outside, and seeing her sitting there dumb and dazed, walked over curiously and asked, "What’s wrong?"

Jiaojiao pushed all the money she’d raised over in front of him and said very solemnly, "Brother Xi, from this moment on, I am no longer me. I’m a millionaire lady now!"

Duan Xi picked up the passbooks in front of her and looked them over, and immediately fell silent.

Once again he realized that if he didn’t work hard to make money, it really wouldn’t do. Otherwise, at the slightest call from his little wife, there’d be a pile of people scrambling to support her. That feeling was really not pleasant at all!

——

Right after Little Potato’s birthday, summer gradually drew away.

The weather was getting cooler and cooler. Although Jiaojiao’s senior-year courses weren’t that intense anymore, graduation was looming, and all the other miscellaneous things on every front were starting to need consideration.

Back in high school, Jiaojiao could barely be counted as a top student, but after entering Qing University—this top-student factory—she became pretty average by comparison. Unlike Duan Xi and Ruan Hao, who both got direct-PhD spots, she could only aim for a guaranteed master’s.

But because of their major, whether to stay at Qing for grad school or go to another university was also a problem.

Even though it was only the first semester of senior year and there was still time, it was something they could already start thinking about.

Jiaojiao naturally wanted to stay at Qing. She didn’t want to be too far from her family, but Shu Jiao hoped she could go out and see more of the world. Now that the danger around her had been completely resolved, and she’d be turning eighteen in October, she wasn’t as worried as before.

So she suggested that Jiaojiao could go to another school or even abroad for grad school.

But the moment Shu Jiao made that suggestion, Jiaojiao refused it on the spot.

Back then, Duan Xi had stayed in the country for her; there was no way she was going to go abroad after he’d stayed behind.

After Jiaojiao stated how she felt, Shu Jiao, who was only making a suggestion anyway, didn’t push it further.

In early November, with still more than half a month to go before Jiaojiao’s birthday, Duan Xi began the full-on hustle of officially starting his business. The office building for the startup was in one of the buildings they’d bought. It was seven stories tall; they’d taken possession before the New Year, and the renovations were already done. Duan Xi chose to set the office on the top floor.