A wild ginseng plant that was fifty-three years old was worth 480,000 yuan. As his cultivation improved, ordinary medicinal herbs would offer him less and less assistance, while the herbs he needed would only become rarer and more expensive.
That meant he couldn’t spend all the remaining money on an ordinary home.
The house needed to provide not only a comfortable living space for his family, but also enough room for cultivation, alchemy, and the arrangement of formations. An apartment with neighbors living above and below him was clearly unsuitable.
After lunch, Chen Yan took out her phone and began helping the family search for properties.
“Bro, how big a place do you want?”
“Preferably a detached house with a yard, somewhere quiet.”
Chen Yan looked up at him.
“Do you know how much a detached villa in Jiangzhou costs?”
“No.”
“One in a good location downtown would cost at least tens of millions. Even somewhere more remote would normally run into the tens of millions. What we have now is nowhere near enough.”
“Then look for one with an abnormal price.”
“What do you mean by an abnormal price?”
“A house priced far below market value that still hasn’t been sold.”
Chen Yan understood.
“You want to buy a foreclosed property?”
“A foreclosed property is fine. A haunted house is fine too.”
Zhou Lan, who was drinking water, nearly choked.
“Little Xuan, now that we have some money, we should buy a proper house. We absolutely can’t touch a haunted one.”
“Mom, I’m only asking Yanyan to take a look.”
Chen Xuan did not explain himself to his family.
A house that ordinary people avoided might not necessarily be dangerous to him. If no one dared to live there because of feng shui, malevolent energy, or some other reason, he might even be able to buy it cheaply.
Chen Yan filtered the listings according to his requirements.
Most foreclosed properties had problems involving ownership rights, debts, or former residents refusing to move out. Detached houses that had remained unsold for a long time because something had happened there were genuinely rare.
After scrolling for more than ten minutes, her finger stopped on one listing.
“There really is one.”
Chen Yan handed her phone to Chen Xuan.
The house was located in Qixia Mountain Manor, north of Jiangzhou. It was a three-story detached villa with a total floor area of 360 square meters, along with front and back yards and a basement. Similar properties in the area were priced at more than eighteen million yuan, yet this one was listed for only 8.88 million.
Exactly half the price!
The house in the photographs didn’t look run-down. In fact, the interior even appeared fairly luxurious.
The reason for the low price was described rather vaguely: The property has a special history. Those who are concerned about that should not inquire.
The comments section, however, stated the truth outright.
The owner’s wife had died less than six months after moving in. She had fallen down the stairs, and three lives had been lost.
At the time, she had been pregnant with twins. Even stranger, every part of the staircase had been perfectly fine except for the handrail she had happened to lean against. It had inexplicably snapped, causing her to fall down the stairs and suffer fatal injuries.
Later, the family’s nanny inexplicably went insane, while the owner’s business also ran into trouble. In the span of a single year, he lost more than a hundred million yuan.
The house had been on the market for two years and had been sold twice during that period.
Neither buyer had lived there for even a month before demanding to cancel the contract. One claimed that they could always hear someone walking around in the basement at night. The other said they had seen a long-haired woman dressed in white in the yard.
They were also plagued by nightmares every night, and in the mornings they experienced sleep paralysis like nothing they had ever felt before.
The real estate agency refused to believe the rumors and arranged for an employee to spend one night there.
The next morning, the employee was found unconscious in the yard, with numerous scratches on his body. After taking him to the hospital, the doctors said that he had inflicted the scratches on himself. The employee, however, insisted that something else had happened. As soon as he woke up, he resigned, left Jiangzhou, and never returned.
After that, no one showed any interest in the property again. Its price dropped from over eighteen million yuan at the beginning all the way down to 8.88 million.
“Bro, this isn’t an ordinary haunted house.”
Chen Yan lowered her voice.
“Everyone online says the place is haunted. There are even lots of people in the comments under the agency’s listing warning others not to go view it.”
Zhou Lan immediately said, “No. We may be short on money, but we still can’t buy a place like that.”
Chen Xuan did not answer. Instead, he zoomed in on the aerial photograph of the property.
The villa stood with Qixia Mountain behind it, while a natural lake lay not far in front. On the surface, the arrangement of the mountains and water was flawless. It could even be described as a landscape that gathered wind and energy.
However, the trees on the two sides of the villa were growing in completely different ways.
The branches and leaves on the eastern side were lush and thriving, while large areas on the western side had withered and yellowed. Along the edge of the courtyard wall was an artificial waterway dug at a later date. It ran diagonally across the property from the northwest.
A photograph alone was not enough to determine the true cause, but this house was clearly more than the site of an ordinary accident.
More importantly, Qixia Mountain had far denser vegetation than the city. Even through the photograph, Chen Xuan could tell that an extremely faint earth vein might remain there.
If he could resolve the problem with the house, it would be an ideal place to establish his first cultivation grounds on Earth.
“Contact the agent.”
Chen Xuan returned the phone to his sister.
“I’ll go view the house tomorrow.”
Chen Yan stared at him.
“You’re really going to view a haunted house?”
“I forgot to tell you—I learned more than medicine in my dreams. I also learned feng shui.” Chen Xuan gave her a mysterious smile. “I’ll know once I take a look tomorrow.”
“Bro, did you really have a dream that mysterious?” Chen Yan asked suspiciously.
“Of course. We have to thank Mom and Dad for giving me such a fitting name. Chen Xuan—how could someone with a name like that not be mysterious?” Chen Xuan said with a laugh.
“Even if it wasn’t our ancestors’ graves that sent us good fortune, didn’t we have a very famous ancestor? What was his name again? Oh, right—Old Man Chen Chuan!” Chen Yan’s eyes lit up.
“Ah!”
The moment she finished speaking, Chen Xuan rapped her on the forehead.
“His name was Chen Tuan—with the hand radical. Get it right.”
“Oh, yes, yes, yes. That’s the one.” Chen Yan immediately began searching for information about him, growing more excited by the second. “I remember there’s a legend that he often practiced a sleeping cultivation technique, sleeping for a hundred days or even several years without waking. That’s why later generations honored him as the ‘World’s Number One Sleeping Immortal.’ If you learned your abilities in a dream, could it be that he was the one who passed them on to you?”
She searched for information about the old man as she spoke.
To everyone’s surprise, she actually found it. When their parents came over to take a look, even they felt that the story sounded remarkably plausible.
In the blink of an eye, all three of them had each taken three sticks of incense and gone before the ancestral tablets to light them and bow repeatedly. Chen Xuan could only laugh and cry at the sight.
Still, Chen Xuan was happy to let them believe it. Old Man Chen Tuan really was an excellent excuse for him, and from then on, he could use that explanation whenever necessary.
Compared with telling his family that he had traveled to a cultivation world and then somehow returned, this was much easier for them to accept.
…
The next morning, Chen Xuan contacted a real estate agency.
The call was answered by a female agent named Song Yuqing. When she heard that someone wanted to view Villa No. 17 in Qixia Mountain Manor, she fell silent for several seconds before confirming it again.
“You’re certain you want to view Number Seventeen?”
“Yes,” Chen Xuan replied calmly.
“Sir, please allow me to make this clear beforehand. The situation with this property is unusual, and everything has already been stated clearly on the listing. Before viewing the house, you’ll need to sign a risk disclosure form. We’ll only be responsible for opening the door and will wait outside. You may enter and look around on your own, but we will not accompany you during the viewing. If you’re sure, we can arrange a time.”