American Adventure: My Uncle is Don Quixote

23-10.

The entire east stand of the stadium suddenly erupted.

Then the west, south, and north stands followed, the roar of the crowd cascading like a series of falling dominoes, finally converging in the center of the field.

But the madness wasn't just confined to SoFi Stadium.

Three thousand miles away on the East Coast, in a men's dormitory at Boston University, the third-floor common room was packed with twenty or thirty college students in boxers and slippers.

They were gathered around a 55-inch television, the floor littered with empty beer cans, potato chip crumbs, and various drinking games.

The moment Li Wei's 55-yard long pass landed perfectly in the wide receiver's arms and the referee raised both arms to signal a touchdown, the entire common room exploded.

"TOUCHDOWN!!!"

A shirtless Black freshman shot up from the sofa, and the beer can in his hand went flying, smashing into the wall next to the fire alarm light.

"The Giants fucking rock! Li Wei's a fucking beast!!!"

At almost the same instant, doors to the adjacent dorm rooms were kicked open, and disheveled students poured out of their rooms to join the celebration in the hallway.

Some started banging on the walls, others started stomping on the floor, and one person stuck a Giants team flag out a window, waving it in the frigid Boston wind.

The third-floor resident advisor peeked her head out of her room, then quietly closed the door again. She was watching the live stream herself.

Meanwhile, in a bar two blocks from Boston University, everyone leaped to their feet and erupted in cheers the moment the score updated on the television.

It wasn't just Boston. The moment the touchdown was scored, the entire United States of America went wild.

In a square in downtown Detroit, someone had set up a projector to stream the game onto the white facade of a commercial building. When the touchdown happened, the thousands of people gathered there cheered in unison. Someone even inexplicably raised an automatic rifle and fired a burst into the air, sending everyone scattering.

In a residential neighborhood in Atlanta, two neighbors supported the Giants and the 49ers, respectively. After two consecutive touchdowns, the 49ers fan suddenly went silent, while the Giants fan pulled out a megaphone and started shouting, "King! King! King!"

A 49ers-themed bar in San Francisco fell so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Everyone looked like they were at a funeral, their faces grim and crestfallen.

In a tavern in New York Brooklyn, Coach Miller grabbed the bar owner by the collar and yelled for the eighteenth time, "23-10, did you see that!"

"I'll say it again, Miller, I fucking saw it! The goddamn TV is right in fucking front of my goddamn face—"

"23-10! You see that? That's my student!"

...

And the celebration inside SoFi Stadium was far from over.

"YEHEHEHEH AHHHHHH!!!" Travis threw an arm around Craig's neck, jumping up and down with him, not even noticing that his own pants were about to fall off.

"23-10!!! Craig, you see that?!"

"I see it! I'm right next to you!! Stop shouting!"

"That's our brother, our high school teammate!"

Travis and Craig hugged, shouting and jumping. They turned and saw Michael cheering for Li Wei quietly, like a little chick.

"Stop being so reserved, Doc," he said, pulling Michael into the embrace. "Get up and shout with me!"

With one arm around Craig and the other around Michael, the three of them jumped and yelled together.

Michael was a bit stiff at first, but he gradually loosened up, joining the shouting and letting it all out.

Just as the three of them were jumping ecstatically, a strange, burly arm suddenly joined their huddle.

The three of them froze and turned their heads at the same time.

It was the big white guy Craig had been bugging earlier, and now he was jumping along with them.

Without a moment's hesitation, the four of them were now arm in arm, jumping and celebrating the Giants' massive lead, all because of that one touchdown.

It wasn't just the lower stands.

"They scored! They scored!!" Anya screamed. "It's a touchdown! We're in the lead!!"

Speaking a foreign language didn't quite seem to capture the feeling for her.

Anya paused, gathered her emotions, then raised both fists above her head and let out a rapid, sharp stream of Russian.

"Anya, what are you—"

Elizabeth didn't even get to finish her sentence before Anya threw her arms around her.

"Miss Anna!" The housekeeper Kaja's face changed. "You must watch your words and actions!"

"Bleh!" Anya stuck her tongue out at Kaja, then turned back to Elizabeth with a grin. "I was just praising how amazing Li Wei is!"

Although Elizabeth didn't know what Anya had said, judging by Kaja's expression, it definitely wasn't anything nice.

A smile tugged at the corners of Don Quixote's lips. He tried to control his expression, but less than a second later, his mouth curved upwards again.

As the ultimate workhorse, Jin Heon was the only one in the box not celebrating. Most of her attention was fixed on the constantly refreshing order panel in the LW backend, displayed in the top-right corner of her laptop screen.

After the touchdown that gave the Giants a huge lead, the numbers leaped higher with every refresh.

The feeling was so euphoric it was like she was ascending to heaven.

She stared at the screen, feeling like she was watching a rocket launch—one that had already bypassed the ascent phase and was shooting straight for the stars.

Her email inbox was already flooded, with every message reporting low stock and requesting restocks or inventory transfers.

'Unbelievable.'

'This first batch of five million bottles was their entire production capacity for a whole month. And now it can't even last... a single hour?'

A month's worth of production, sold in one hour.

A price of 5 USD per bottle was already considered expensive.

The combined cost was only 1 USD per bottle. Five million bottles, sold out in an hour.

That meant they had made a net profit of 20 million USD in a single hour.

Twenty million USD in net profit in one hour.

'Isn't that faster than printing money? How many printing presses would you need running at full capacity to make that much?'

A smile involuntarily appeared on her face. For her, as a 1% shareholder, the better the drink sold, the more valuable her shares became.

More importantly, this was a show of Li Wei's trust in her. As the COO, she couldn't afford to mess it up.

Just then, she received a notification from an FMCG industry media account she followed:

[Goldman Sachs Raises LW Valuation from 800M-1.2B USD to 1.8B-2.2B USD]

...

「Downtown Manhattan, Goldman Sachs Headquarters.」

Even though it was Sunday—Super Bowl Sunday, at that—the floor housing the Goldman Sachs consumer goods research team was brightly lit.

For this group of analysts, the Super Bowl was even more important than the Spring Festival Gala in the Celestial Dynasty.

The performance of ads, shifts in brand buzz, and fluctuations in consumer data during the Super Bowl directly impacted the timeliness of their research reports.

If their reports were timely, well-received by the market, and subscribed to by many institutions, their year-end bonuses could gain an extra digit.

So every year on Super Bowl weekend, these elites would scramble to work overtime, as if they were in an arms race.

As one of the top celebrities in the United States of America's sports world, Li Wei's LW brand was no secret to these institutions.

The moment the LW commercial began to air, the Goldman Sachs team started tracking it.

In the first 10 minutes, the data's growth rate met their expectations. With 170 million people watching the Super Bowl commercial, plus the boost from Li Wei's own influence, this level of traffic and sales was to be expected.

This also aligned with their initial valuation of 800 million to 1.2 billion USD.

But starting from the 15-minute mark, the data curve began to deviate from their model.

It began to deviate sharply upward.

"Check Google Trends, the BSR model for Amazon's beverage category, and scrape the credit card transaction records from the LW website," the lead analyst of the consumer goods research team ordered loudly. "Quick, quick, quick! Get me an exact number."

"Somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000 transactions," an analyst reported.

The lead analyst fell silent. LW beverages were sold in cases of six, so 500,000 to 600,000 transactions meant that in just over 30 minutes, sales on the LW website had already surpassed at least 3 million bottles!

"Hurry!" he said after a few seconds of thought. "Raise LW's valuation."

"To how much?"

"1.8 to 2.2 billion USD!" the lead analyst shouted. "And get that news out immediately!"

...

In stark contrast to the jubilant, laughter-filled VIP box Li Wei was in, the scene in the sponsor box area two suites away was entirely different.

Richard Wayne, the President of North American Operations for Pepsi-Cola, looked like his mother had just died. He stared at the iPad in front of him, his expression so dark it seemed like it could drip water.

The screen displayed Pepsi's internal competitor monitoring system.

It was an intelligence tool built at the cost of hundreds of millions of USD, capable of tracking a competitor's market performance through a combination of complex algorithms, credit card systems, and web crawlers.

And right now, on that system, LW's nearly vertical sales curve was about to be as high as his blood pressure.

He took a deep breath, picked up the whiskey from the bar, took a sip, and then placed the glass back on the surface, neither too gently nor too forcefully.

The others in the box were silent as cicadas in winter, too scared to even breathe loudly.

He glanced around. The CEO of Gatorade was pretending to watch the TV screen, but his unfocused eyes made it clear his attention wasn't on the game.

Suddenly, a temporary notification popped up on his iPad screen. The content was identical to the one Jin Heon had received.

"Brian Kelly," he said, calling out the Gatorade CEO's name.

Brian Kelly turned around.

"Stop watching," Richard Wayne said as he stood up. "Come on. Meeting."

"Now?" Brian Kelly was taken aback, instinctively glancing at the game on TV. "The third quarter is almost over. The game still has—"

"Then you can take off your name badge and go home to watch," Richard Wayne said with a nod. "That way you'll have enough time to watch every Super Bowl ever played."

Brian Kelly shot to his feet. "Everyone, to the meeting," he said.