Chapter 7: The Empire of Silence
"The world heard his silence—and mistook it for power."
Age 6: The Spark
It began with a single file.
At just six years old ,Long Haochen submitted a confidential proposal to the Global Innovation Exchange under a pseudonym. The document was 137 pages long, hand-drafted, mathematically perfect, and loaded with blueprints for:
Eco-smart skyscrapers-with reactive glass and weather-adaptive floors
AI-powered restaurants- that custom-built meals per guest genome
Floating villas- on geothermal lakes in Iceland and Switzerland
Gravity-resistant elevators- powered by magnetic suspensions
Autonomous cities -built around renewable cores
Smart sport Stadiums - capacity of 2 million spectators ,with eco-friendly system and lighting.
The board laughed—until they traced the IP back to the Long estate.
The laughter stopped.
Within six months, funding poured in.
Within a year, Hundred of nations changed their building codes to accommodate his designs.
Age 7: The Empire Rises
By the time he turned **seven**, Haochen had launched:
Orbis Lux– A real estate dynasty encompassing over 400 luxury towers, resorts, and underwater villas
H-Star Technologies– Smart cities & AI architecture for government contracts
Velorae Group – Elite apartment complexes fused with scent-coded atmospheres, personalized lighting moods, and symphonic elevators
And across every company, one logo reigned:
A single falling feather encased in glass
The mark of Long Haochen
Surpassing a Legend
Long Tianrui, his father, had once been hailed as the 'Pillar of the East', the greatest businessman of his age.
He built an empire in thirty years.
Haochen?
He surpassed it in three.
Economists called it "The Phoenix Phenomenon."
No one understood how a boy—silent, reclusive, barely seen outside his estate—could command markets across the globe.
They never saw the late nights.
The cold light of his private lab.
The boy bent over a tablet with sleepless eyes, designing lives for people he would never meet, cities he would never walk through, all to answer a single whisper in his soul:
"If I build the world, maybe I'll stop breaking inside."
At Home
The Long sisters watched with quiet, aching pride.
They knew what it was costing him.
Pearl- tried to speak to him after press conferences—he would nod, then walk away.
Crystal- left tech memos and stories in his lab, but they returned unopened.
Jade - once stood outside his door with a guitar, singing their old lullaby. He never came out.
Emerald -… simply knocked each night, and sat beside the door until dawn.
But he never opened it.
He just kept building.
Building a world big enough to bury his grief in.
The Smile that Vanished
Once, Haochen had a smile that could sway nations.
That could calm a crying child or silence a raging debate.
But now?
That smile was gone.
Not faked.
Gone.
He smiled only in photos. A mirror-perfect gesture. A porcelain lie.
And the world never questioned it—because perfection, to them, needed no explanation.
But at home…
His sisters remembered.
They remembered the boy who used to laugh in the rain.
Who chased fireflies through the garden.
Who once wrote a love song for their cat.
And every night… they waited for him to come back.
But only the empire grew.
Not Haochen.
One night, after finalizing a billion-euro skyscraper deal…
Haochen stood before the mirror.
His robe was silk. His posture flawless. His face… calm.
But his hand trembled slightly as it touched the braid behind his neck.
The silver strap still hung there, exactly as Emerald had tied it years ago.
And for just a second-
A second.
He closed his eyes and whispered:
"Not enough."
Then he turned away.
And the empire rose higher.