MoneyRoad

MoneyRoad is an urban workplace novel by the web novelist Gei Nin Tian Mogu La, serialized on Qidian and completed in December 2019 at about 1.52 million characters and 517 chapters. It has been adapted into the 2024 TV drama The Future Is Bright, directed by Shen Yan and starring Bai Yu. The protagonist Lin Qiang was a young core member of the credit approval department at the head office of Lianzhong Bank. Because he refused to sign off on a loan to a problematic enterprise whose asset valuation was heavily inflated, he offended his superiors and was "sent down," together with his friend and fellow recruit Zheng Shuai, to the remote Longyuan branch with the worst performance, where they moved into a basement converted from a garage. Under the double pressure of a low point in life and serious illness, Lin Qiang gains the "money eye" ability from a booklet titled The Money Map—he can see a person's financial fortune and prospects, almost like reading a rising or falling market. He does not choose to give up but uses this ability to reexamine the rules and tricks of the banking system: loan review, non-performing assets, internal approval, personnel infighting—probing layer by layer and playing game after game. Set within the banking industry, the novel depicts the grievances of grassroots tellers, the calculations of middle managers, and the power struggles at the top. With interlocking plots and schemes and a tight rhythm of "slap in the face—comeback," it creates the image of a banker with bottom lines but also methods, who values human feelings but also respects rules. Centered on money, fate, and workplace rules, the book is both an exhilarating underdog story and a popularized sketch of the banking workplace ecosystem.