Fang Yu scanned his face at the gate and went into the compound.
It was rush hour, but the villa compound was very thinly populated, and few of the owners here were salaried workers, so there were hardly any people about.
After all, working for wages would never buy you a detached villa... even an out-of-the-way one in a prefecture-level city.
As far as Fang Yu knew, the last house of the same layout to change hands in the compound had gone for something over three million Star Coins.
The handful of owners who had bought a villa on a salary were mostly senior executives at large companies, and they rarely made it home before dark.
"Number 168." Fang Yu reached his own gate.
While the smart lock ran its facial verification.
Fang Yu glanced across and saw, twenty metres away, the pretty owner of number 167, not yet thirty, standing in a lilac silk slip dress, thin satin wrapped over a soft body, her hair slightly disordered with one strand stuck to the side of her neck as though she had just woken; she was directing two gardeners trimming the flowerbeds.
In the last light of the setting sun.
The strap of her dress had slid down half an inch, baring the round curve of a shoulder; the hem swayed as she moved, and her toes curled and spread again, with a languid air about all of it, so that Fang Yu could not help looking a moment longer than he needed to.
She gave him a friendly nod.
Fang Yu nodded back, but something crossed his mind: "I wonder how long this one will live there."
He had been neighbours with number 167 for more than ten years, and he still did not know the young woman's name — he only vaguely recalled that every successive lady owner of number 167 had looked much the same type, and had been about the same age.
"On this front, Uncle Lei is quite the loyal man," Fang Yu thought.
"Welcome home!" the smart voice announced.
The gate opened.
Fang Yu walked into his own yard, where there was none of what a detached villa ought to have — no flower garden, no ornamental trees, no fish pond, no pavilion, no rockery, no vegetable patch. A hundred-odd square metres of small courtyard, and every inch of it visible at a glance.
What met Fang Yu's eyes, apart from a single pavilion pressed up against the house, was a level surface paved in bluestone, like a small open-air martial arts ground.
In fact.
It was exactly that. Most of the bluestone towards the middle was new, while most of it towards the outside was old and marked by the years, and the sight of it made Fang Yu smile.
All these years, his father, himself, his brother and sister had all trained the martial path out here constantly. Of course the bluestone had to be replaced regularly.
"Grandad," Fang Yu called.
"That my grandkiddo, back home?" In the pavilion, a reclining chair that had been laid out flat rocked and swivelled, and an old man sat up — hair jet black, complexion ruddy, face somewhere around seventy.
He propped himself half upright, a magazine with a bright painted cover in his hand, and looked at Fang Yu, eyes crinkling.
"I'm back," Fang Yu said, smiling.
"Reckoning the days, it's been nearly a month. School's out?" The black-haired old man put down his magazine, smiling.
"Mm." Fang Yu nodded.
"Then rest properly now you're off." The old man nodded. "This martial training's hard work, and the food at that school of yours is terrible. The cooking auntie's off today, so there's nobody to cook. What do you fancy? I'll order you a takeaway... I've turned up a few good places lately."
Fang Yu shook his head. "No need, Grandad. Takeaway isn't healthy. You should eat less of it. And I'm only a Low-Rank Warrior, I have to watch what I eat."
"Takeaway isn't healthy?"
The old man snorted. "Your dad's always saying eat less takeaway. Doesn't look to me like his health's any better for it — all he knows is making money, day in, day out. Is money a thing you can finish making? He's got more white hair than I have! The ones who cook their own dinners are angry every day, and it's the angry ones who don't live long."
Fang Yu could only smile.
His grandfather was named Fang Zhiyuan, and he was ninety years old. He had fathered Fang Yu's father in his forties, and at his peak he had been a Level 10 warrior; he had spent the first half of his life unemployed, and the second half, for the sake of his social security and medical insurance, as a "flexibly employed person" for twenty years.
He had been retired for over a decade now.
In today's Blue Moon Alliance, thanks to the great flourishing of the martial path, even ordinary people were in fair physical shape and generally long-lived, and the retirement age had already been pushed back to seventy-five.
In his grandfather's own words: "I had it all worked out at forty. Before sixty I'd blow your great-grandad's fortune, and after sixty I'd let your dad keep me. And if your dad turned out unfilial, no harm done — I'd enjoyed myself long enough, so a rough old age would only be fair."
Fortunately.
Fang Yu's father had turned out reasonably well.
And his grandfather, though ninety, looked and moved like a man in his mid-sixties.
"Never mind, go and cook for yourself, don't bother about me. I'll order in later," Fang Zhiyuan said.
"All right." Fang Yu nodded, then remembered something. "Grandad, when are Xiao Long and Siyue back?"
"Six thirty or so, it should be." Fang Zhiyuan thought about it. "Their academic entrance exam's finished. Today's the martial talent test, I think, so maybe earlier."
"Today?" Fang Yu turned that over.
His brother and sister were both fifteen and about to finish middle school.
Whether they got into a key high school mattered enormously to whether they could test into a martial arts university... Many key high schools with deep resources even had High-Rank Warriors teaching martial classes, along with all sorts of scholarships.
That saved a great deal of money.
"Where's my dad?" Fang Yu asked.
"No idea." Fang Zhiyuan shook his head.
Fang Yu did not press. The relationship between his grandfather and his father was a delicate one.
For all that he seemed a heartless old soul, breezing through life, he did in fact care a great deal about Fang Yu and about his brother and sister.
And Fang Yu knew his grandfather was not truly heartless; the truth was that he cared about him and his brother very much.
His mother had spent years out in the world training, and his father was busy with his business, so Fang Yu, his brother and his sister had all been raised in childhood by their grandfather and the housekeeper together.
Fang Yu understood, too, that it was only his grandfather's philosophy of life that clashed with his father's.
What his grandfather held above all else was a line left behind by a writer from before the Great Sky-Burning Era: "A hundred years of merit, a thousand autumns of empire, ten thousand ages of good name — set against one thing, they amount to nothing at all. And that thing is: to pass your life in the way you like."
His grandfather had chosen to pass his life in the way he liked.
"Grandad, I'm going upstairs. Don't stay out too late, it'll turn cold soon," Fang Yu said. Wuling City sat in the heart of the Wuling mountains, in the west of Huguang Province, and even in summer the temperature dropped noticeably at night.
For a man of ninety, a moment's carelessness could turn into something serious.
In Fang Yu's heart, he still hoped his grandfather would be with them a good few more years.
"I know, I know." Fang Zhiyuan waved him off, picked up his magazine again and made to lie back down.
Fang Yu glanced at the magazine's title — Youth Storm!
Some sort of fashion magazine, apparently.
He pushed through the door and went up.
Fang Yu went into his own room on the second floor.
He had not been back in nearly a month.
But what met his eyes was thirty square metres, tidy and clean: fresh sheets and duvet cover, everything in its place, a shallow film of water on the desk not yet dry from wiping, the window open and airing.
"Grandad's gone to some trouble. He even worked out I was coming home today." Fang Yu smiled to himself.
Then, with his hearing, through the window, he caught his grandfather muttering into the phone down in the pavilion: "Listen, my grandkiddo's really grown up now — walks in the door and starts managing me. The world's properly turned upside down..."
Complaining to one of his old friends, apparently.
***
Fang Yu opened his laptop and logged into his school account from long habit.
"I wonder."
"Whether the school's first list of transfer recommendations is out yet." Fang Yu clicked through to the official notices.