The deal was quickly done. Just as Lin Muyan had expected, the old man was on the level too, he didn’t try to cheat her, and offered twenty-three million, though it would have to be in installments.
Lin Muyan wanted only a lump-sum deal and wouldn’t take installments, so she volunteered to knock three million off the price.
In the end the old man, delighted, cheerfully paid out a clean twenty million in cash, transferred straight into Lin Muyan’s account.
Goods handed over and money settled, Lin Muyan walked out of the antiques market light as a feather, and only now had the time to glance at the bullet comments.
As expected, the bullet comments had had their composure shattered long ago.
【Oh my god, is making money really this easy? It’s spoiling that green-tea wretch rotten, this is my Jiaojiao’s golden finger, and she’s the one who’s figured out how to play it.】
【I’m furious, I’m furious, aaaah! Stuff like that should be the least valuable thing of all, and yet she gets it right before the apocalypse, perfect for stockpiling!】
【……】
The comment stream was thick with all manner of fury and frustration. Just then, another eye-catching bullet comments drifted out.
【Wait! Why is she stockpiling? How does she know the apocalypse is coming?】
For an instant the bullet comments fell into an eerie hush, and then erupted in overwhelming shock.
Lin Muyan smirked to herself. How do I know, you ask? You told me, that’s how.
Whether or not the apocalypse came in the end, she would prepare for it by every means she could. Even if there turned out to be no apocalypse, she wouldn’t be out anything, all this money had been dug up with the Golden Shovel, free for the taking, truly.
With twenty million in hand, Lin Muyan felt a good deal more secure.
She doubled back once more to the farmers’ market she’d just left, switched to a few different grain shops, and placed orders for batches of rice, flour, grain, and oil, three million yuan spent.
Next came all sorts of canned goods, seasonings, and dried provisions, another three million’s worth ordered.
She didn’t buy anything else for now, with three months still on the countdown, she had time.
That left fourteen million. She wanted to buy a house.
But exactly what kind of house, and where, became a thorny question.
After all, she didn’t know what the apocalypse would actually involve. The bullet comments had said it was natural calamities, but what kind of natural calamities?
Thinking it over, Lin Muyan was suddenly struck by inspiration, and muttered as if to herself.
“With this windfall, shouldn’t I buy a house to improve my living situation? That home in the urban village is just too shabby, beneath my status.”
【See? What did I tell you? The chicken’s foot was bound to poke out sooner or later! [1] she’d give herself away eventually, 露鸡脚 jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_2620862_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_2620862_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });】
【I knew this one wouldn’t behave. She still thinks she’s some lofty wealthy young miss. “Beneath her,” my ass, a mere green-tea cannon-fodder like her deserves to live in a doghole!】
After a stretch of cursing, the rational faction in the comment stream and all the armchair analysts emerged again, and these were exactly the ones Lin Muyan had been waiting for.
She fixed her gaze on these bullet comments and studied them a while, then pinned down several crucial pieces of information.
Forget the distant future, take the near term. The first few months after the apocalypse descended would bring freakish weather of extreme cold and extreme heat, so a building’s insulation absolutely had to be up to par, and its heating-and-cooling systems strong enough.
After that there’d be months of continuous rain. With sustained torrential downpours, S City’s drainage system was bound to collapse sooner or later, so the higher up a floor you lived, the safer.
But across all of S City, the highest ground was that feng-shui treasure-spot of Half-Mountain Villa, the very villa district where the Shen family lived, also known as the top-tier billionaires’ quarter.
No wonder the bullet comments had mentioned that after the apocalypse came, Shen Jiaojiao would lead the others through it from the Shen family’s villa. So Half-Mountain Villa was relatively safe, it seemed.
Which brought up the problem: she didn’t have enough money, not nearly enough!
With what she had now, she couldn’t afford so much as a villa bathroom. That place was a whole other world, even an ordinary person who fancied himself the owner of a gold mountain couldn’t vault across the class divide and reach it.
What was more, by the rate at which Lin Muyan’s treasure-digging coughed up gold coins, she might not scrape together the money for a house even if she dug day and night for years, and on top of that there was the matter of random chance.
Lin Muyan sighed. She’d come all this way, she thought, so she might as well try her luck, what if there were some “haunted house” up for sale in Half-Mountain Villa? Then maybe, with a bit of effort, she could snag a bargain.
No sooner thought than done. Lin Muyan flagged down a car at once and headed straight for Half-Mountain Villa.
The whole way there, the driver kept stealing glances at Lin Muyan in the rearview mirror.
A girl this strikingly good-looking, asking by name to go to Half-Mountain Villa, a place ordinary folks wouldn’t even dare set foot in, the driver was genuinely curious whether he’d had the luck to pick up some seriously rich client.
“Er, miss, do you live at Half-Mountain Villa?”
Lin Muyan gazed out the window at the familiar roads streaming past, her heart a jumble of feelings. Hearing the driver’s question, she blurted out:
“I used to live here…” A pity she’d later run headlong into the melodramatic life of swapped-at-birth heiresses, and now found herself forced into the early-prep stage of apocalypse survival. Tell me that isn’t absurd.
At her words, the driver immediately thought of the phrase “a family fallen on hard times.”
He’d never have guessed the pretty miss was a down-and-out wealthy young lady. What a shame, really, otherwise he’d have liked to put himself forward and see if he might have the honor of driving for a great house.
When they reached the destination, Lin Muyan once again stood at the entrance to Half-Mountain Villa.
The gate’s security system, on par with a military base, made her falter for a moment.
She used to walk through this gate head high and shoulders back, perfectly at ease, now, returning after the Shens had thrown her out, she felt like a thief with a guilty conscience.
And it had been a mere two days, no more!
Lin Muyan couldn’t help a sigh, and walked slowly forward.
The guard on duty today was one Lin Muyan knew by sight, and he recognized her at a glance.
“Miss Shen, you’re back?”
Lin Muyan was slightly taken aback, had this man not heard about the Shen family’s affairs yet?
She put on a calm front, gave him a slight nod, and walked into Half-Mountain Villa without the least hindrance.
Nearly the whole mountain fell within Half-Mountain Villa’s grounds, and every villa had vast private space, which made getting around the district on foot extremely taxing.
The guard wore a puzzled look too. “Miss Shen, where’s your driver? Would you like me to drive you in?”
Lin Muyan hastily waved him off and made up an excuse. “I feel like taking a walk. Don’t trouble yourself over me, my driver will come pick me up later.”
The guard nodded, and even saluted respectfully at Lin Muyan’s receding back, returning to his normal sentry posture only three minutes later.
Seeing that the guards didn’t come after her, Lin Muyan let out a quiet breath of relief.
Yet she still couldn’t manage a smile, because from the entrance at the foot of the mountain, touring all of Half-Mountain Villa would take more than a day, you couldn’t get far at all. Even reaching the Shen villa would be over two hours on foot from where she stood!
There were shuttle carts in the villa district, but with her guilty conscience Lin Muyan didn’t dare take one.
She didn’t want the Shens to know she’d come back here. In her memory, her adoptive parents had always been gentle, dignified, cultivated, gentlemanly.
But now, the moment they laid eyes on her, they treated her like a mortal enemy, there was no telling what cutting, vicious words they might fling at her.
She wanted the image left in her heart to be, forever, her adoptive parents at their kind and gracious best.
And the first twenty years of her life, though they’d turned out to be a fleeting dream, a bubble burst, those beautiful memories shouldn’t be spoiled.
References[+]