Zhu Gui had already paced around the house countless times. Zhu Hai was dead, Deng Jun and the others had all gone mad—what exactly had happened last night?
Why had they gone mad?
Because they had encountered a ghost!
As the saying went, if one had done nothing shameful in life, one would not fear a ghost knocking at the door in the middle of the night.
But Zhu Gui was afraid.
Zhu Hai knew best why he and the others had appeared in front of Fan Yue’s orchard and home.
If ghosts truly existed in this world, would the next one come looking for Zhu Gui?
That was the way of ignorant country folk.
They could always connect all kinds of events to impossible things, then become trapped in a vicious cycle from which they could not escape.
Of course, the miserable state of Zhu Hai and the others was enough to scare Zhu Gui half to death. For the first time, he suddenly felt that making so much money through unscrupulous means in the past had not been a good thing.
But now that it had happened, what could he do?
Huang Cui, who had lived in comfort ever since her husband became Village Chief, was sitting on the sofa and looking impatiently at him. “Enough. Stop pacing around. You’re making my head spin. If you don’t have the nerve, just sell it at the original price.”
Zhu Gui was just about to say something when he suddenly heard someone knocking on the door.
“Zhu Gui, are you home?”
Upon hearing that voice, Zhu Gui shuddered all over. To be honest, he did not particularly want to see Fan Yue right now either.
Something was wrong. Terribly wrong.
But Fan Yue began knocking hard on the door. “Zhu Gui, I know you’re in there. Staying silent is pointless.”
Since the other party had put it so plainly, Zhu Gui truly had nowhere left to hide. He could only grit his teeth and walk out.
“Oh, it’s Old Fan and Xiaowen. What do you want with me?”
Zhu Gui forced a faint smile and opened the door.
“Didn’t you say someone wanted to buy my orchard?”
Fan Xiwen looked indifferently at Zhu Gui. “I’m here to tell you that it’s eight thousand yuan per mu, transferred right now. Otherwise, there’s nothing to discuss.”
He was getting straight to the point because Fan Xiwen did not want to waste time with someone like Zhu Gui.
In his previous life, Zhu Gui could be called the chief culprit behind his parents’ deaths. In this life, Fan Xiwen had the ability to make things difficult for him, so naturally, he would not let Zhu Gui off easily.
Of course, killing Zhu Gui with a single strike, even without anyone noticing, would have been extremely easy.
But Fan Xiwen had no intention of doing that. Killing him outright would be letting the brat off too easily. Fan Xiwen felt that he should play with him slowly, making Zhu Gui experience the destruction of his family, the separation of wife and children, and true despair.
As for the orchard, it was merely bait Fan Xiwen had thrown out. At most, it would pass through someone else’s hands before ultimately returning to his own.
“Everyone says Fan Yue is honest and simple, and that his son is a bookworm. But damn it, I only found out today that it’s all fake.”
The orchard was Haunted by Ghosts; one person had died and five had gone mad. Zhu Gui felt that the reason Fan Yue and his son had hurried over was that they were desperate to get rid of it. The villagers might not even dare go there for a long time.
That place was no longer anything good for the Fan family. It was even worse than barren hills. At eight thousand yuan per mu, they could say they were making a huge profit.
However, Zhu Gui’s eyes shifted, and he chuckled. “Fine, eight thousand it is. It’s settled.”
After all, that outsider tycoon had said he would pay ten thousand yuan per mu. Once Fan Yue and his son agreed, Zhu Gui would not only make more than forty thousand yuan in pure profit, but could also resolve this troublesome matter as soon as possible. Thus, he agreed readily.
“I said cash. I mean I want to see the money immediately.”
Fan Xiwen’s tone remained calm. Fan Yue did not find this attitude strange at all. On the contrary, he would have found it frightening if Fan Xiwen had been smiling warmly.
After all, what had happened before was hardly honorable, and the two families had already fallen out completely.
“This orchard is more than twenty mu. It’s no small sum.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t even saved one hundred sixty or seventy thousand yuan after all these years?”
Fan Xiwen tugged at his father, preparing to leave.
“Hey, don’t rush off, Xiaowen. Can’t everything be discussed? It’s not that I won’t pay you. There’s only one day’s difference between today and tomorrow, so why the hurry?”
Zhu Gui hurried forward to stop them, but Fan Xiwen looked at him mockingly. “I’m not in a hurry. I imagine that outsider will come to inspect the land tomorrow, right? By then, my family’s orchard won’t be as simple as eight thousand yuan per mu, will it?”
“Your orchard was Haunted by Ghosts.”
Zhu Gui immediately gritted his teeth. If he negotiated directly with the outsider, he would not get the slightest benefit, and he might even have to pay the compensation to Zhu Hai’s family and the others out of his own pocket. That would be a terrible loss.
“I know, you know, and everyone in the village knows. But the outsider doesn’t.”
Zhu Gui’s eyes instantly widened. This father and son from the Fan family were truly devious; they had nothing to do with being honest and simple. If anyone told him in the future how honest the Fan father and son were, he would certainly argue with them. Was this something honest people would say?
“Aren’t you afraid this gets out?”
Fan Xiwen looked at Zhu Gui with a broad smile. “Are you planning to leak it?”
“No. Why would I be that kind of person?”
Zhu Gui hurriedly shook his head because he seemed to understand something from Fan Xiwen’s eyes. They were terrifying eyes.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“That outsider has only come to our village once, and then immediately wanted to buy my land. We don’t know what he wants to do, but with so much land in the village, he just happened to choose mine. Surely he won’t give up so easily over a few rumors about ghosts.”
“Tomorrow, you can tell him directly.”
Those words came from Fan Yue. Naturally, the usually honest and simple Fan Yue could not have thought through so many twists and turns. Fan Xiwen had told him what to say before they came.
Fan Xiwen had already left. After glancing at Zhu Gui, Fan Yue also turned and walked away.
Zhu Gui frowned and pondered for a long time, but his wife Huang Cui said angrily from the doorway, “What are you still standing there for? Go after them! It’s forty thousand yuan back and forth. If that outsider refuses to buy it, we can just ask for the money back, can’t we?”
Zhu Gui suddenly understood, then hurried after them.
In the village, Zhu Gui naturally considered himself an important figure.
..
Without much effort, the one hundred seventy thousand yuan was in their hands.
Zhu Gui had pocketed quite a lot during his years as Village Chief. Not to mention anything else, the village had once had an ironworks, but it eventually became impossible to operate and was sold. The villagers received hardly any of the money. There was also a funeral home at the village entrance, and once again, very little money found its way into the villagers’ pockets.
Naturally, this money would not end up in Fan Xiwen’s hands.
“Your mother will save this money for you. It’ll be used for university and for getting married later.”
Those were his mother’s exact words. Fan Xiwen was somewhat helpless. Who could blame her when he was only in Senior year of high school?
As the old saying went, a person with no hair on his lips could not be relied upon to handle affairs properly.
Aside from his living expenses, whenever his elders gave him a red envelope, even if it contained only a few hundred yuan, his mother would put it away for him, claiming that she was saving it.
Until he graduated from university and went out to find a job, Fan Xiwen could forget about controlling the family finances.
This caused Fan Xiwen’s wonderful plan to buy jade for Formation arrangement to fall through. However, he merely shook his head. A true hero would not be defeated by a lack of money. At least, Fan Xiwen, who had once been the Chu Emperor, did not believe he would ever lack money.
He would simply have to find another way!
“Son, what exactly is this plan of yours?”
The use of the one hundred seventy thousand yuan had been settled, so naturally, they now asked about their son’s plan.
Who knew what had possessed them to agree to their son’s vague explanation at the time?
Fan Yue and Su Qing secretly thought to themselves.
“Don’t worry. The orchard belongs to our family, and the money belongs to our family too. That’s what Zhu Gui owed us.”
Fan Xiwen revealed a confident smile. It seemed to be infectious. After Su Qing and Fan Yue nodded, they unexpectedly stopped asking questions.
“I’m a little tired. I’ll go back to my room and rest first.”
As he walked back to his room, Fan Xiwen thought calmly, “Next, we’ll see what kind of background that outsider who was willing to come all the way to this impoverished wilderness actually has.”
He wondered what expression the outsider would wear when he returned to Zhujiachong and discovered that the thing he had dreamed of obtaining was gone.
He was looking forward to it!
Behind the door panel of the pigsty at Fan Xiwen’s home, a charred, rotten piece of wood lay there quietly. It seemed to possess a faint, shimmering radiance.
There was no spiritual energy gathering around it. It appeared to be nothing more than an ordinary piece of rotten wood.
As for the spiritual energy that had gathered around the orchard, it had already been swept away completely.
This belonged to Fan Xiwen. Without his permission, who could take it away?
..
The next day, Fan Xiwen rose very early.
Seeing that their son seemed almost fully recovered, Fan Yue and Su Qing were preparing to have him return to school that afternoon. After entering Senior year of high school, they wished they could split every minute in half to make use of it. How could he waste so much time at home?
Although Fan Xiwen was somewhat unwilling, his parents were firm, so he had no intention of continuing to argue.
Besides, he still had many things to do. Staying at home all the time would not work.
The spiritual energy in this world was far too thin, utterly insufficient to support Fan Xiwen in advancing far along the path of cultivation. Having been accustomed in his previous life to viewing billions of living beings as ants, he could not possibly become one of those ants in this life. Moreover, he still could not let go of the death of the Ten Directions Divine Venerable in his previous life.
Now that he had been given another chance, Fan Xiwen had the opportunity to complete the God Emperor Heart Sutra.
Naturally, he also had the opportunity to fight the Lord of Great Han once more. This time, Fan Xiwen would work hard to make his foundation far stronger.
Until he destroyed the Lord of Great Han, causing the myriad races of Xinghe to bow their heads wherever the banner of the Great Chu Divine Dynasty pointed.
But all the problems had returned to the starting point.
The spiritual energy on this Unnamed Star was too thin.
Let alone restoring the cultivation of the God Emperor, even orthodox ascension would be somewhat difficult.
Therefore, Fan Xiwen had to think of every possible way to search—to search for spiritual energy, to search for the Fortuitous Opportunity that had allowed him to leave the Unnamed Star back then, or perhaps to personally arrange a teleportation array capable of reaching the Xinghe Continent.
All of this was something Fan Xiwen had to do. It was impossible to remain trapped in the remote mountains...