[Give me 50,000]
However, strictly speaking, borrowing from loan sharks wasn’t exactly foolish on the part of Zone Two.
It wasn’t that they didn’t know they would get trapped; rather, compared to facing immediate bankruptcy and elimination, taking a high-interest loan was an acceptable alternative.
Bai Jinshu watched a few individuals quietly slip away from Zone Two’s celebrating crowd. A few minutes later, Zone Two’s commercial van returned, and several young men jumped out of the vehicle.
The faces of these young men were plastered with the very same joy as the rest of their teammates. Had one ignored the fact that they had just stepped off the van, no one would have been able to tell what they had been up to just moments ago.
Bai Jinshu narrowed his eyes, took a few long looks, and returned inside the hotel without saying a word.
“You saw it too?” Xiao Tang slipped in quietly from outside, raising an eyebrow at him slightly.
“I saw it,” Bai Jinshu nodded.
Zone Two had likely been preparing to dispatch people for one final desperate gamble to see if they could drag Zone One down with them.
“Zone Two is probably completely broke for real…” The other teammates gathered round. Bai Jinshu lowered his voice, “I don’t know how those two scam artists from Zone One pulled it off, but before those gang members offered the loans just now, I doubt Zone Two even had enough cash on them to cover their next toll fee.”
Right now, almost every zone was close to their respective starting points, which meant the first round of Monopoly had come to an end, and some of the blank land plots had been converted into hotels.
It also implied that during the upcoming dice rolls, there was a risk of landing on someone else’s plot.
According to Monopoly rules, stopping at another player’s hotel required paying a toll fee. Since everyone had only completed one lap, everyone’s initial hotel level was Level 1—meaning a toll fee of 200.
Zone Two didn’t even have 200 left.
As the saying goes, those with nothing to lose have nothing to fear. Now that Zone Two didn’t have a single penny left, even if they weren’t barred from taking action, they couldn’t afford to buy new land plots anyway. Rather than gambling on the illusory chance of gaining money from Event spaces, it was better to be decisive and directly drag down the zone that caused them to be broke in the first place.
Those few men were originally planning to take the van straight to Zone One’s territory. Who would have guessed that the Baihu Gang would suddenly start handing out high-interest loans? With this turn of events, the rest of the team quickly called them back.
It wasn’t that Zone Two didn’t know how terrifying loan sharks were; under those circumstances, they simply had no choice but to borrow.
While having less than 200 in reserve funds, all of their hotels had also been burned to the ground. Their incoming revenue of 150 per hour had been wiped out, and they even had to shell out extra cash for repairs.
On top of that, because the land was currently in a special state, they couldn’t mortgage their plots. If luck went even slightly against them in the next round and they landed on someone else’s plot, their bankruptcy and elimination would be an absolute certainty.
Faced with bankruptcy and elimination, high-interest loans became acceptable by comparison.
At the very least, the people of Zone Two were genuinely grateful to Bai Jinshu.
If not for the appearance of the Baihu Gang, under Monopoly’s current rules, all they could have done was pray they wouldn’t roll onto anyone else’s plot.
“It ended up being a stroke of luck,” Bai Jinshu calculated in his mind. “Everyone’s attention was focused on this church just now, so nobody noticed a few of them slipping away to attack Zone One. If we hadn’t handed out that loan, Zone Two, driven to a dead end, would have definitely dragged Zone One down with them before dying. We would have lost clues to two S-level Legends all at once.”
And now, saving Zone Two while simultaneously preserving Zone One was the best possible outcome.
Looking at it this way, though, he would need to adjust his strategy a bit.
“Yellow-Hair, call in everyone with crew cuts except the ones from Baihu Gang,” Bai Jinshu gestured to Yellow-Hair. “Right now.”
“Got it.” Yellow-Hair nodded and stepped out of the church.
A moment later, several crew-cut guys followed him into the church.
“What’s up, Dad!” The crew-cut guy from Qinglong Gang said with great enthusiasm. “We were just outside pitching our special services to the clients! On top of debt collection and security detail, we can also take cash to burn down other people’s hotels or act as hired guns. We aren’t picky about our clients—whatever brings in money, we do. Once a deal goes through, we split it 50/50! If they’re short on cash, they can just take out a loan with Baihu Gang. We can even handle dead men’s land deals to bypass the bank, finding buyers directly to help them mortgage or sell land below market price!”
This guy actually had a pretty good business mind.
It was almost a waste for him to be a low-level thug.
It would just be better if he didn’t call him “Dad.”
Bai Jinshu rubbed his temples: “Here’s the deal—I called you guys in to let you know that for the group outside, don’t drive them to bankruptcy. As for pitching your services, keep it at a level where they won’t make a huge profit, but won’t take massive losses either, got it?”
“That’s… a bit tough,” the crew-cut guy from Zhuque Gang scratched his head. “We don’t know how much cash they actually have on hand. The only reason we know they have five thousand right now is because Baihu Gang just lent them five thousand. Once we enter subsequent dice-rolling rounds, we won’t know how much money they have left.”
“I’ll handle that part,” Bai Jinshu didn’t give a direct answer, merely adding, “You guys just need to make sure they don’t get eliminated, nor do they become…”
“Then why not just knock them out directly?” The crew-cut guy from Xuanwu Gang asked in confusion. “Isn’t this competition all about outlasting everyone else? Dad, we’ll get you first place!”
“Don’t worry your little head about it, just focus on helping us win first place,” Xiao Tang brushed him off from the side. “Bottom line is, Zone Two cannot go bankrupt and exit the competition, got it?”
“Oh…” The three crew-cut guys left in a daze.
By now, Xiao Tang had also figured out Er Si’s intention.
Previously, he had planned to let both Zone Two and Zone Four fall victim to the scams, then step in at the right moment to resolve their crisis through proper maneuvers, leading them to view Zone Three as a reliable ally.
However, that approach was still relatively gentle.
They hadn’t anticipated that Zone Two would plan a suicidal strike against Zone One.
They were completely out of money. To put it nicely, regardless of whether they went through with the attack, a bit of bad luck in the next round would guarantee their elimination anyway—they were backed into a corner.
Since that was the case, why not retaliate before going down, at least making Zone One pay for scamming their money?
They dared to act this way precisely because they had lost all hope.
However, giving them a few thousand in seed capital was equivalent to restoring their hope for a comeback. Under these circumstances, their actions would become far more cautious.
As long as their funds were constantly suppressed to an amount that wasn’t enough to thrive, but not low enough to make them throw caution to the wind, they would continue to stay in the game for that tiny ray of hope to “outlast everyone else.”
Unlike Zone One’s situation, Zone One had been deceived by an outside third party. Whether it was the initial high-salary scam or the subsequent money-recovery scam they failed to see through, the perpetrators were actually non-competitors. Consequently, although their trust in other competitors had waned due to the previous hospital incident and the hotel fire, it hadn’t hit rock bottom yet.
In their minds, trust in fellow competitors was actually higher than in third parties, because the high-paying job scam had been set up by an Event space within Monopoly, not by anyone else.
At the same time, among the competitors, the two thousand Bai Jinshu had coughed up had drawn a very clear distinction between Zone Three and the other zones, highlighting Zone Three’s reliability by comparison.
Thus, he had effortlessly gained Zone One’s trust.
Zone Two, however, was a different story.
Leaning halfway against a church pew, Xiao Tang casually observed the man in the windbreaker currently talking business with the other four crew-cut guys outside the church entrance: “Zone Two doesn’t trust us at all.”
Having been scammed by Zone One, Zone Two’s trust in other competitors was actually lower than in third parties.
If Bai Jinshu and his team stepped in to fork out cash and solve Zone Two’s crisis now, they would only be suspected of harboring ill intentions.
Meanwhile, as a third party outside of the competitors, Baihu Gang enjoyed a higher level of trust—even if they were loan sharks.
“What do we do next then?” Xiao Fei asked with a touch of anxiety. “Aren’t we supposed to scam them out of their territory? If they don’t trust us, how are we going to scam it out of them?”
The word “scam” tumbled off his tongue with remarkable ease now; who knew what the bullet chat in Xiao Fei’s livestream looked like at this moment.
“Doesn’t matter,” Bai Jinshu narrowed his eyes. “Competitors have competitor-style scams, and loan sharks have loan shark-style scams.”
“Announcement,” he tapped his knuckles against the back of the pew. “I know you can open a single-user channel. Come out.”
[Hey, don’t say it so openly,] Announcement popped up in a flash. [My supervisor will review the work recordings later. What if he catches me privately contacting competitors?]
“How much kickback are you pocketing on the side?” Bai Jinshu asked, unceremoniously. “The total extra spend on that plot we passed earlier was four thousand. Split 50/50, that’s two thousand. I’ll give you ten thousand. You tell me Zone Two’s remaining currency balance at the end of every round.”
[That won’t do,] Announcement replied with staunch principles. [If I tell you, I’d be violating the rules, and I’d get fired.]
“You don’t need to tell me,” Bai Jinshu narrowed his eyes. “I’ll give you the kickback, and you only need to tell those three crew-cut guys outside.”
“After every round ends, privately report Zone Two’s remaining currency balance to them. Have them keep Zone Two’s liquid cash flow controlled between two to three thousand. Especially for Baihu Gang—interest rates can be adjusted, auto-fluctuating up and down. They mustn’t make a huge profit when they land on a gold grid, and they mustn’t go bankrupt if they suffer a big loss.”
Announcement: [If the supervisor finds out about this…]
Bai Jinshu: “Twenty thousand.”
[How could this possibly be called a private transaction?] Announcement executed a lightning-fast U-turn, speaking with righteous fervor: [Everyone in Baihu Gang is a local resident—this is an open and legitimate partnership! I offer my highest respects to the father of our four business partners! Shall you scan me, or should I scan you?]
Xiao Tang: …
“The speed at which people kneel in your Monopoly game could beat 99.9% of the Legends out there,” she twitched the corner of her mouth. “If all Legends were this easy to talk to, I feel like the exploration process in the starter village would be a whole lot easier.”
[How can you call this kneeling? This is called money making the devil turn the millstones,] Announcement replied with complete candor. [If you give me two hundred thousand, I’ll even call you Dad.]
“No need,” Bai Jinshu said coldly. “Not short on sons.”
“Money’s been transferred to you,” Yellow-Hair raised his head. “Sister Tang, less than a minute left until the next dice roll.”
The four zones soon rolled their points in sequence for the next round.
Zone One and Zone Three finally passed their respective starting points, receiving an extra two thousand.
Guan Hongyan and her team had pretty decent luck, triggering another Event space. News arrived that they had obtained a special card that, once activated, could swap positions with a random team—a rare buff-type functional card among Monopoly Event spaces.
By contrast, Zone One was somewhat unluckier; they happened to roll directly onto their own starting point, unable to purchase the land or trigger an event.
However, for them, this wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Each zone’s starting point was accessible only to contestants from that specific zone. Rolling onto their starting point meant that the telecom fraud compound employee coming to collect debts couldn’t enter the area to enforce payment.
They bought themselves a precious round of peace and quiet. At the same time, Zone Two—who assumed they were being deliberately set up—was likewise unable to enter the starting point to attack Zone One’s contestants.
Zone Two was indeed plagued by bad luck, rolling their dice straight onto Bai Jinshu and his team’s very first land and handing over 200 as a toll fee.
Had they not taken out that high-interest loan just moments ago, their entire zone would be facing elimination right now.
Looking at it from this angle, Bai Jinshu had essentially saved their lives after all.
Finally, Zone Three rolled their points as well.
“We’re here,” Xiao Tang crouched on the ground to take a look. “Is this plot still a land plot?”
Evidently, what lay before them was another vacant land plot.
Right on cue, Bai Jinshu’s four dutiful “sons” arrived by the roadside along with the renovation workers.
“Dad!” The four crew-cut dutiful sons leapt out of the vehicle. “For our hotel this time, do we want opulent billionaire chic, light and airy Mediterranean style, traditional vintage Ming-Qing style, or refined and elegant Republic of China style…”
They were getting more familiar by the second…
Bai Jinshu’s eyelids twitched violently: “Mediterranean style, then.”
“You got it, Dad! Starting work right away, Dad!”
“Won’t you guys lose money hiring renovation workers like this?” Crouching nearby, Xiao Tang watched curiously as the renovation crew grandly hauled over a mountain of equipment, unable to resist asking.
“No loss at all!” The crew-cut guy from Zhuque Gang waved a hand. “How could spending money on the big bosses of the Hammer Gang be considered losing money!”
Xiao Tang: “Fair enough…”
Anyway, these four gangs had attached themselves voluntarily, and they had even achieved an industrial closed loop thanks to Er Si. What was wrong with squeezing them a little?
Buildings went up at lightning speed in the holographic game. Since everyone in Zone Three had gained experience by now, once the renovation style was settled, they sat back in their comfortable vehicle and waited for the hotel’s final completion.
Except this time, things were a bit strange.
After more than ten minutes passed, no one had come to knock on the door to inform them that the hotel was finished.
“What’s going on?” Xiao Fei felt a little puzzled. “I’ll go down and take a look.”
“No need, we’ll go!” The four crew-cut guys quickly hopped off to inspect the situation.
A few more minutes slipped by before a knocking sound finally tapped against the car window.
The one knocking on the window was the crew-cut guy from Xuanwu Gang, his face filled with utter daze and bewilderment: “Uh… it seems like we dug up something insane. Why don’t you guys come down and take a look, Dad?”
“Dug up what? A corpse? A dead body? Was a corpse buried in this plot before?” Xiao Tang spouted a string of bizarrely terrifying words. “Let me see.”
She was the first to jump off the vehicle.
“N-No, not a corpse—wait, you could also say there is a corpse…” The crew-cut guy from Xuanwu Gang babbled incoherently.
His reaction was so peculiar that it piqued everyone’s curiosity, prompting them to step out of the vehicle to see what on earth had been unearthed.
Bai Jinshu stepped out of the commercial van and looked toward the land plot they had purchased—
Greeting his eyes was a massive pit.
A very, very huge pit.
“Is the land plot we bought really this big?” Xiao Tang asked, bewildered.
“No,” Bai Jinshu quickly answered. “This area spans at least four of the surrounding plots.”
The pit was massive—so vast you couldn’t see its far edge in a single glance. Not only had the entire plot they purchased turned into a crater, with only the adjacent road barely remaining intact, but several unowned blank plots surrounding their plot had also caved in into the pit.
Looking out across the view, the whole section of land looked as if it had been leveled flat, sinking downward by more than a few meters.
“What’s going on?” Yellow-Hair gasped in surprise. “Did the construction crew dig the foundation in the wrong spot? We didn’t buy the adjacent land!”
“No…” The crew-cut guy from Zhuque Gang walked over, his face thoroughly dazed. “Why don’t you guys come over and take a look, Dad… We dug up something insane.”
“What is it?” Her curiosity thoroughly piqued by these guys, Xiao Tang eagerly ran over.
By the edge of the pit near the road, the renovation crew hired by the Qinglong Gang guy and the remaining two crew-cut guys were all crouching together. In the center of the crowd was an elderly-looking site foreman.
The foreman was holding a black object—its nature unclear—his hands trembling uncontrollably: “Holy mother of… This seems, seems to be the real deal!”
“Take another look!” The crew-cut guy from Baihu Gang said impatiently. “Are you sure? Is this thing really authentic?”
“I can’t say for sure…” The foreman’s voice quivered. “But, but this thing looks pretty different from the stuff usually dug up…”
‘What on earth is it?’
Bai Jinshu knitted his brows and looked over.
Cupped in the center of the crowd was a black sphere.
Or rather, the sphere wasn’t actually black—there was simply too much dirt caked onto it, giving it a black appearance at first glance.
Along the edge where the foreman held it, the dirt rubbed away by his skin revealed a glint of flesh-toned glaze.
It looked like some sort of ceramic object, or perhaps a painted piece of pottery.
“Sister Tang!” The crew-cut guy from Qinglong Gang came scrambling over on all fours, lowering his voice: “We seem to have… seem to have struck cultural relics!”
Everyone: ???
‘Say what now?’
“When laying the foundation, the construction guys said they hit something really hard and wanted to keep drilling down. But an experienced master craftsman said it didn’t feel like soil and that they might have struck something else instead. So the site quickly shut down the machinery, dug out the surrounding area to check what was underneath, and found they couldn’t tell—though whatever hard surface lay underneath was huge…” The crew-cut guy from Qinglong Gang gesticulated wildly as he explained. “Then they wondered if they’d run into a bed of rock or something, thinking this spot might not be suitable for laying foundations to build a house, and that they’d need to shift locations. So they started searching outward to find the edge of this rock layer.”
Little did they expect that as they dug outward and searched, the size of this “rock layer” actually spanned four or five whole plots.
Just as the team searching for the edge of the “rock” finally reached its perimeter, the workers digging right here made a fresh discovery.
“Ancestors above, what in the world is this!” The workers up front were the first to notice something off.
“This looks like a ceramic fragment of a human face…” Someone with sharp eyes blurted out.
The moment the phrase “ceramic fragment of a human face” left his lips, the surrounding workers gathered round in curiosity. Word spread like wildfire, work ground to a halt, and everyone wanted to see what on earth this thing actually was.
A single fragment couldn’t prove anything, so the worker dug down a bit further to search.
This time, what he pulled out was a complete head.
[Ding!] Announcement refreshed once more. [Event space refreshed. A brand-new building type has been discovered.]
[This is a special land plot. As you entered this area, the Terracotta Army tomb buried deep underground has seen the light of day. This Event space is special and needs to be triggered after competitors purchase the land plot and dig the foundation. Competitors, please choose between adding 3,000 in investment to purchase the surrounding plots to build a museum, or returning 2,000 in investment and surrendering it to the organizer.]
Everyone: ???
‘Huh?’
“I have a question…” Under the bewildered gazes of the crowd, Bai Jinshu narrowed his eyes. “Is there anything special about this new museum?”
[The museum is a special building type. Normal hotel buildings only charge accommodation fees when a competing team rolls the dice and stops on the plot. The museum, however, has no stay requirement—any competitor who passes through this plot will be mandatorily charged a fee.]
“Meaning if we drop 3,000, we get to collect admission fees for this museum in the future, but if we take the 2,000 refund, the organizer collects the money instead?” Xiao Tang asked as well.
[Correct,] Announcement confirmed. [Please make your choice, competitors.]
“Then it’s obviously adding 3,000 to buy up the surrounding plots! We’re not short on cash anyway.”
“Alright then, let’s build the museum,” Xiao Tang stood up from the ground and looked toward the crew-cut guy from Qinglong Gang “Have your renovation team build the museum.”
The construction site sprang back into full, roaring action.
Before everyone in Zone Three could snap out of the shock of this windfall dropping straight into their laps, they stood by the roadside in a daze for a long while before finally accepting the fact that digging a hotel foundation had unearthed an ancient tomb.
“So your Monopoly Event spaces actually do have buff plots after all…” Yellow-Hair muttered. “I thought every single one of your Event spaces was just meant to scam people out of money.”
This museum Event space was clearly a bully clause. If everyone passing through here had to pay admission, it meant they would guarantee a baseline revenue of three ticket sales every round—because other teams couldn’t just leap over these Event spaces and manifest out of thin air up ahead.
Add to that the regular sightseer fees, and like this… it was practically a massive income stream.
“Yeah…” Bai Jinshu’s lip twitched. “Turns out you really can make money through legitimate channels in Monopoly.”
Announcement: [What gave you the delusion that you’d only lose money here?]
“Your organizers did!” Xiao Tang said, speechlessly. “Every single clause from your organizers! The impression your organizers left on me is that you’ll stop at nothing to scam money…”
“Wait a second,” she narrowed her eyes guardedly. “There are no hidden fees or forced add-ons this time, right?”
[None! Absolutely none!] Announcement swore with utmost certainty.
Right at that moment, another crew-cut guy came scrambling out from the half-built museum.
“Holy shit!” That crew-cut guy scrambled on all fours. “Sister Tang! Sister Tang, help!”
“What’s wrong?” Everyone exchanged glances and quickly rushed inside.
“Inside!” The crew-cut guy looked deathly pale. “While we were building, a living person walked right out of the tomb!”
Bai Jinshu: ?
“A living person?” Xiao Tang looked completely baffled. “Where? Let me see.”
‘How did this suddenly turn into a paranormal event?’
“H-Here…” The crew-cut guy cautiously led them into the depths of the museum.
In the building that hadn’t even been connected to electricity yet sat a middle-aged man exuding tremendous dignity.
“He… he’s even saying some super weird stuff,” the crew-cut guy whispered under his breath.
The middle-aged man of supreme dignity: “I am Qin Shi Huang. I have now been resurrected. Transfer me 50,000, and once I reorganize the Qin Dynasty, I will title you my Grand General.”
The crew-cut guy: “Sister Tang, look, he’s saying it again!”
Xiao Tang: …
Bai Jinshu: …
“Get out here,” Bai Jinshu looked silently at Announcement. “Who was it that said this Event space had no forced add-ons or hidden fees?”