Chapter 6

Seeing the old man go upstairs, the deputy manager immediately stood up to greet him. Realizing his tone was inappropriate, he quickly corrected himself, "Please rest in the VIP room on the third floor."

"No need, I'll stay here. Go and call Xiao Lin to see me. I'm here to work, and it's better to discuss work-related matters in a work environment."

Smith said this with a serious expression and sat down in the deputy manager's previous seat.

"Alright, please wait a moment. I'll go upstairs and ask Manager Lin to come down and see you."

Smith is one of the directors of Citibank, which belongs to the Citigroup, and is also the general manager of Citigroup in the Asia region. This time, he came to Shanghai with the intention of conducting a surprise inspection and deliberately said he would arrive three hours later than he actually did.

As the deputy manager was about to go upstairs, Smith casually flipped through the documents on the table and inadvertently saw a piece of paper that the deputy manager had discarded.

Upon seeing the string of letters and numbers written by Su Yang, the high-ranking official of Citigroup immediately changed his expression, and his voice even trembled, "Hey, you, come back here and tell me who wrote this?"

The deputy manager was startled and quickly stopped, "This was delivered by a security guard just now, saying it was from a customer downstairs."

Smith frowned and immediately stood up, "Take me down to meet that distinguished guest."

The deputy manager didn't dare to ask more and hurriedly nodded, "Alright, please follow me."

Downstairs, Su Yang was already getting impatient, muttering to himself, "If no one comes to receive me, I'll just storm into the general manager's office."

At this moment, the security guard who had delivered the note walked over to Su Yang, looking displeased, "Kid, you almost got me fired. Don't cause trouble here, just leave."

"What, did you give the note to someone?"

"Yes, he said it looked like gibberish..." The security guard said angrily, "Really, don't cause trouble, just leave."

Su Yang was not pleased, frowning and shouting, "Cause trouble? When I deposited money at your headquarters on Wall Street, your chairman bowed and smiled. Now, you come here and call me a troublemaker. If you don't take me to the general manager, I'll find him myself."

"Kid, don't make things difficult for me. Where are your parents? I'll take you to them!"

The security guard had a good temper and assumed Su Yang was a child from a wealthy family playing around, probably while his parents were conducting business.

Just then, the deputy manager rushed down from upstairs, grabbing the security guard and asking worriedly, "Where is the customer who gave you the note? You didn't drive him away, did you?"

"Huh?"

The security guard was taken aback and pointed at Su Yang, somewhat embarrassed, "It was this kid who gave it to me, Deputy Manager Zhang. Don't be angry, I'll drive him away."

"No!"

The deputy manager quickly shouted, "You did well. I'll take care of this distinguished guest personally. You can go back to work."

The security guard was more and more confused but didn't dare to oppose his superior. He glanced curiously at Su Yang and left.

"Little friend, where are your parents? Did they give you that string of numbers?"

The deputy manager, upon seeing Su Yang, instinctively thought the "distinguished guest" Smith mentioned must be the child's parents. He bent down and smiled as kindly as possible.

"That's my storage number."

Su Yang glared at the deputy manager and said irritably, "Since you recognize that number, what are you waiting for? Take me to get my things."

The deputy manager was stunned for a moment. Just as he was about to say something, Smith was already walking quickly in this direction.

1000

"Mr. Smith, the writing on that paper is from this little boy."

Seeing the president arrive, the deputy manager breathed a sigh of relief. After all, he knew nothing and didn't want to say anything inappropriate and get into trouble.

After coming to Citibank, Su Yang was called a "kid" or a "little friend" repeatedly, which made him unhappy. He said sternly, "If anyone calls me 'little' again, I won't be polite."

To be honest, with Su Yang's current appearance, even if he tried to look fierce, he still looked very cute. It was hard for anyone to be scared. The deputy manager almost laughed at Su Yang's intimidating words.

But the first words out of Smith's mouth made the deputy manager stop laughing and break out in a cold sweat.

"Respected guest, you are right. These employees are too disrespectful. I will certainly punish them later."

If it were just the content of these words, the deputy manager wouldn't have been so frightened. After all, such polite words shouldn't be taken seriously. However, Smith said this in his not-so-fluent Chinese, which was enough to make the deputy manager believe that he might be fired for calling the child a "little friend" a couple of times.

The last time Smith used his broken Chinese to communicate was when he met the mayor at the Citibank Shanghai headquarters. Those who knew the executive president of Citibank's Asia region knew that he only used this respectful way of speaking when he met Chinese people with significant influence.

Su Yang squinted and sized up Smith, his frown gradually easing. He nodded, "You should have understood what that string of numbers means, right?"

Smith smiled and said, "It is an honor for our bank to serve a distinguished guest like you. Please follow me to the VIP room to rest. The items you deposited will be brought to you shortly."

Finally, he met someone with some discernment. Su Yang's mood improved slightly, and he waved his hand, "Lead the way. I'm in a hurry, so let's be quick."

In the VIP lounge, Smith personally served Su Yang a cup of black tea and said with a smile, "You have already given the storage number. Please provide the eighteen-digit password so I can retrieve your items."

Su Yang didn't say much and recited a string of eighteen characters, a combination of Arabic numerals, English letters, and Roman characters.

The late-arriving General Manager Lin quickly wrote down the password and left the VIP room to retrieve the items at Smith's indication.

In the vault eighty meters underground, General Manager Lin passed through the cash vault and the precious metals storage room, sweating profusely, before finally opening an ancient and heavy mechanical security door.

In the entire bank, only he knew about this place.

"What a day, a Black Gold account holder appears in my territory..."

A Black Gold account was only available to the most prestigious customers during the early rapid development phase of Citibank. Due to the enormous privileges and the substantial financial requirements, in the thirty-five years before the Black Gold accounts were discontinued, Citibank issued no more than fifty Black Gold accounts.

Most of the Black Gold account holders are now deceased, but those still alive are all influential figures whose actions can shake the global financial world.

The secret vault that General Manager Lin opened was specifically built for Black Gold account holders.

After carefully entering the eighteen-digit password provided by Su Yang, General Manager Lin successfully opened the safe and retrieved a metal box made of alloy.

Only at this moment did he finally believe that the handsome child sitting in the VIP room had a terrifying background that he couldn't fathom.

"Black Gold accounts cannot be transferred to others. How could a child who is only a few years old possess a Black Gold account that was discontinued over seventy years ago?"

General Manager Lin couldn't figure this out, but he didn't have the courage to ask the person involved.

When the metal box was brought to Su Yang, Smith tactfully left the VIP room, leaving Su Yang alone.

Outside the VIP room, General Manager Lin couldn't resist his curiosity and asked the president, "That's just a child, but Black Gold accounts cannot be transferred, and they have been discontinued for so many years. This is impossible."

Smith's attitude towards General Manager Lin was much better than towards Deputy Manager Zhang. After a moment of silence, he said, "What you thought of, I have also thought of. However, the metal box can only be opened by the original account holder using their fingerprint. So, we don't need to worry about anything. We just need to serve the guest well."

General Manager Lin nodded in agreement, understanding the president's meaning. A Black Gold account was an astonishing existence for them. They just needed to do their job and not worry about the rest.

A few minutes later, Su Yang left the VIP room without bothering to talk to anyone else.

When Smith and General Manager Lin entered the VIP room, their expressions changed dramatically, both looking incredulous.

On the redwood round table in the VIP room, an empty open box caught their eye. The scene contained too much information.

Su Yang had retrieved three items from Citibank: a crystal-clear jade pendant, a black key made of an unknown metal, and a jade medicine bottle from Hetian containing more than ten pills.

After putting the jade pendant, key, and medicine bottle close to his body, Su Yang walked briskly from the Bund to Nanjing West Road.

After being isolated from the world for over sixty years and being in such an international metropolis as Shanghai, Su Yang was interested in everything. He circulated the Heavenly Energy, listened to everything around him, and absorbed a lot of knowledge about modern society.

There were many terms Su Yang couldn't understand, such as "cool," "how," "2B," "just passing by," and "no action, no death." He didn't take them seriously, just finding the way people spoke in this era a bit strange.

"Listening to them is annoying. These people on the street are so talkative. Out of ten sentences, only half a sentence is useful for me to understand this era. I might as well go back to the old house first."

The "old house" Su Yang mentioned was an old villa in the most prosperous area of Shanghai. Relying on his past memory, he found the right place.

Standing on the bustling street, looking at the old villa where he had lived for three years in his previous life, many memories flashed through his mind. Even with Su Yang's carefree nature, he felt a bit excited.

"Who would have thought that after so many years, this old house is still perfectly preserved..."