Chapter 102 - I Bought a House
The news of rice crops sprouting from snow gradually took on a different interpretation on the internet. Some said that the owner of the farm had done it deliberately to create hype, while others said that they were reverse-seasonal crops researched by a certain experimental base. Regardless which interpretation netizens subscribed to, no one would really believe that golden, dazzling rice crops would grow out of snow. The most they would do was treat the incident as an entertaining anecdote to poke a bit of fun at.
The more developed the internet, the faster the speed at which news was kept up to date on the internet. Sometimes, the most trendy internet slang couldn’t be understood after a few days away from the internet. This piece of news wasn’t as attractive as some celebrity’s explosive scandal, so the netizens very quickly pushed this matter to the back of their minds.
Just because the netizens watching the fun had forgotten about it didn’t mean that certain high-level departments closely following the matter would also forget about it. Food was the G.o.d of the people – who wouldn’t accord a lot of importance to such a mystical ability? Everyone was waiting for the results of Zhuang Qing’s investigation, and the various departments even specially expressed that they would definitely cooperate with all their might should an obstacle be encountered during the course of the investigation.
However, they waited for multiple days without receiving any news from Zhuang Qing’s side. For Zhuang Qing, whose work efficiency had always been very high, not having any results was rather surprising to everyone.
In their hearts, Zhuang Qing occupied a very special position. Everyone was on equal footing during their usual meetings, but dragons held a majestic and mysterious status in the hearts of the countrymen, so there was already some degree of reverence towards Zhuang Qing in everyone’s bones.
Because of the perpetual lack of a result, n.o.body could sit still, but they also couldn’t directly ask Zhuang Qing about it. In the end, in the name of a meeting, they informed Zhuang Qing that he had to be present.
The meeting only started at half past nine, but everyone had already gathered before it even reached nine. Only Zhuang Qing’s seat was still unoccupied.
At twenty minutes past nine, Zhuang Qing finally appeared in the meeting room under everyone’s hopeful gazes. There was even a youth wearing a suit following behind him. Those who recognized Fu Li recalled how he had fended off the great yao’s attacks multiple times for humans, and revealed respectful smiles.
“Apologies, I’m late,” Zhuang Qing pulled out the chair and sat down. Fu Li had appeared at this place with the dual-ident.i.ty of a.s.sistant and secretary. He sat behind Zhuang Qing, his back to the wall. The several people closer to him all turned their heads towards him, flashing him friendly smiles.
Fu Li returned their smiles and then took out his meeting recording book, his att.i.tude extremely like that of a secretary.
“Since everyone has arrived, the meeting will officially commence, “ The speaker had a head of snow-white hair and his face was lined with wrinkles, yet age had not diminished this person’s imposing manner.
Fu Li had a somewhat favorable impression of the humans present, because the purple and golden glow of virtue could be seen in the center of their foreheads. Saving lives and creating prosperity was worthy of this virtue.
To Fu Li, most of the meeting content was difficult to understand. He stole a few glances at the secretaries to his left and right whose pens were flying over paper. Once again, his impression of human abilities went one level higher..
Fu Li b.u.mbled through, noting down most of the content. The meeting was already more than halfway completed when he heard the elderly man sitting at the head of the meeting table say, “Chief Zhuang, you handled online public opinion on the rice crops very well. What kind of creature would be able to create such an extraordinary sight and cause so much food to grow in the span of one night?”
“During the ancient times, there were numerous great yao, each with their own abilities. During the past thousands of years, the great yao no longer appear in public. It is extremely challenging to find out his ident.i.ty,” Zhuang Qing replied calmly. “There is a cultural gap between the current cultivation world and the ancient times, so this great yao’s ident.i.ty cannot be discovered with just this one extraordinary phenomenon.”
“If it can’t be discovered, then forget it,” Everyone present was very rational. They understood that they could not make demands regarding this matter, and that doing so would not lead to a good outcome. Fortunately, the economy had been flourishing in recent years. Even if natural disasters occurred occasionally, there was no need to be concerned about death from starvation.
“The nature of this unknown yao cultivator gentleman is unknown, if it’s…” The boss of the security department didn’t finish his statement, but everyone understood what he meant. Everyone would still be able to live their lives well without this mystical ability. At the most, they would just be a little regretful. But if this powerful yao was not friendly to humans, then that would be a major issue.
The mastermind behind the Feiyi’s incident hadn’t appeared, and everyone’s hearts were strung tight. They had added all suspicious parties, including certain foreign hostile factions, into their list to take precautions against.
“There’s no need to worry about that. During the ancient times, yao cultivators who can imbue vitality were all auspicious beasts by nature, and everyone made offerings to them. They are friendly to all life forms, including humans,” Zhuang Qing said. “The fact that this yao can cause rice crops to grow from snow shows that he is not a brutal yao.”
“That’s good then,” After the most worrisome problem was resolved, the atmosphere at the meeting relaxed. The boss of the security department even had the thought of cracking a joke, “To think the status of yao cultivators in the past really was decided by their birth; their positions were determined the moment they were born, isn’t that a bit too simple and cruel?”
“It’s probably because the hearts of yao cultivators are more pure and simple?” Zhuang Qing returned this statement in neither a servile nor overbearing manner.
The boss of the security department instantly zipped his mouth shut. Zhuang Qing’s words indicated that the hearts of humans were complex.
Zhuang Qing represented the cultivation world and naturally had to protect the cultivation world in such a setting. It was fine if they joked around individually during private video conferences, but during official meetings, Zhuang Qing would stand his ground firmly.
Excessive aggressiveness would be over the top, while excessive nonchalance was weakness. Since he wanted to protect the entire cultivation world, he wouldn’t be careless in this aspect.
After the meeting ended, everyone bid goodbye to Zhuang Qing and even specially shook hands with Fu Li, their att.i.tudes so friendly that it nearly bordered on enthusiasm. Fu Li even suspected that they wanted to pluck a strand of his hair to take back as a souvenir.
Seeing that Fu Li was surrounded by these people, Zhuang Qing reached out and dragged Fu Li out of the crowd. He raised an arm at everyone. “There are still many things waiting for us to handle at the cultivators’ management bureau, we’ll take our leave first.”
Everyone watched with some regret as Zhuang Qing strode out of the meeting room with Fu Li.
This was a rabbit yao capable of rivaling the Kunpeng in a fight, and defeating the G.o.d of Pestilence and Suanyu. With such formidable magic power, he was definitely also an auspicious beast. Shaking hands with him would definitely not be a disadvantage to them.
“They’re a gang of old foxes. Don’t have dealings with them in private, otherwise you’ll be exploited without even knowing it,” Zhuang Qing pulled open the car door and sat down, speaking to Fu Li, who was seated in the front pa.s.senger seat. “Although human lifespans are only a short hundred years, their intelligence far exceeds the four thousand year old you.”
Fu Li curled his lips. “If I didn’t know you were warning me out of good intentions, I would think that you’re deliberately mocking me.”
“No, you’re not getting it, I am deliberately mocking you,” Zhuang Qing started up the car without even a sideways glance.
“Do you still have any love for your colleague?” Fu Li buckled his seat belt and snorted. “I’m now a second generation yao, what do I need to use my brain so much for?”
Zhuang Qing c.o.c.ked his head, casting a glance at Fu Li. Tenderness surfaced in his gaze but was very quickly concealed. “Love for colleagues? You’re thinking too much, there’s no such thing.”
Fu Li: …
“Zhuang little dragon, I feel like you haven’t been very friendly to me lately,” Fu Li stared at Zhuang Qing suspiciously for a very long time. “You’re not a hater of the rich, right? Are you envious of my status as a second generation yao?”
“Shut your mouth!” Zhuang Qing stepped on the brakes. With an ashen face, he said, “You got me into a car accident once, don’t make it happen another time.”
Fu Li gave a pure smile, innocence overflowing from his gaze.
Half an hour later, the two of them were stuck in traffic. Fu Li gazed at the slow-moving flow of traffic ahead and then suddenly turned, smiling at Zhuang Qing. “Zhuang little dragon, thank you.”
“You didn’t tell them about King Ganglie’s ident.i.ty today because you didn’t want to bring him trouble right?” Fu Li was merely unwilling to work his brain too hard; he wasn’t an idiot. The reason why King Ganglie had concealed his ident.i.ty wasn’t made clear yet. If the humans found out that the King was an auspicious beast capable of bringing about b.u.mper harvest at a plot of land, who knew how much trouble that would cause?
“Don’t overthink, I just didn’t want to inconvenience myself,” The tips of Zhuang Qing’s ears burned. “If you really want to thank me, settle all the supernatural incidents in the human world found by the communications department.”
“Sure,” Fu Li smiled and agreed.
The cars continued moving ahead at a snail’s pace. Driving and stopping was a severe waste of petrol, but Zhuang Qing’s mood continued to remain good. He switched on the radio in the car and listened to the male and female host advertising something in exaggerated voices. They seemed to be talking about some real estate company that had started selling property, how good the district was, and how cheap the prices were.
“When I first came to the human world, I worked at this real estate company’s construction site,” Fu Li suddenly grew spirited. “Who would have thought that it had already started selling the houses.”
When Fu Li thought about how he had partic.i.p.ated in its achievement, there was a bit of pride mixed in with his excitement.
Truly a second generation yao spoiled rotten by great yao, he could even feel glory from doing manual labor. Zhuang Qing wanted to make a few mocking statements, but when he saw how Fu Li smiled till even his brows and eyes curved into crescents, he couldn’t say a single word.
No wonder humans liked to say that love made people stupid. Not only had he become stupid, he had even turned cowardly.
How lacking in maturity!
“Why don’t I buy a house as a gift to you?” Zhuang Qing felt that he might be even less mature than he had thought.
“How is that proper? I heard that houses in the human world are very costly,” Fu Li didn’t have much desire for a house. In any case, to a yao, living anywhere was fine.
“The gems and medicinal pills you gave me are also extremely valuable in the current world, so why did you give them to me?”
“Because you like them,” Fu Li replied as if it was only right and proper. “Since you like it, of course I’ll give them to you.”
Zhuang Qing glanced at him silently. “I’m giving you a house also because you’ve once dedicated yourself to them. To us yao cultivators, money is just a way to make our lives in the human world more convenient. So what if I give one to you?”
“You seem to have a point,” Fu Li was persuaded by Zhuang Qing. “Then just buying one for me is fine.”
The corner of Zhuang Qing’s lips curved. “Okay, then let’s go now.”
Upon reaching the company’s property purchase center, a sales agent stepped forward to receive them. When he brought them to look at the three-dimensional model of the multistory buildings, Zhuang Qing directly stated, “We won’t look at the multistory ones, lead us to the villas and bungalows.”
The moment Mr Sales heard this, his att.i.tude became even more cordial. He didn’t take Zhuang Qing and Fu Li to look at the bungalows either, instead directly leading them to the area where the models of villas were located. He told Zhuang Qing a ton of stuff like lighting, the room configuration, greenery, property, and so on. Zhuang Qing turned towards Fu Li and asked, “Which one do you like?”
Fu Li took a few looks at the models and randomly pointed to one. “This one then.” It looked very small, but he could make do with it with some difficulty.
Mr Sales understood then that he was the true owner. He glanced at the way the two people stood shoulder-to-shoulder and suddenly saw the light. So these two people had that kind of relationship. He instantly smiled, “Congratulations on purchasing your new house. Will you be paying a deposit first or directly going through the procedures to purchase the house?”
“Direct purchase,” Zhuang Qing placed a hand on Fu Li’s shoulder.
Fu Li held Zhuang Qing’s shoulder. With the way he and Zhuang Qing looked now, they could be elected as the representatives of all the good brothers in the country.
Mr Sales was elated. Letting them sit down and rest in the VIP rest area, he then went to fetch the property purchase contract.
This sort of straightforward, nouveau riche customers were to his liking – they could decide to buy the largest villa within three minutes. He retrieved two types of contracts, one of which was for a down payment while the other was to make the purchase in full.
After putting down the contracts, the two guests directly chose to make the purchase in full, as he had guessed. The only unexpected thing was that the gentleman named Fu Li was the owner of the house, while the other individual paid the bill.
A property worth several tens of millions was given away at a drop of a hat. Love was truly worthy of the greatest admiration.
Fu Li finished signing all the contracts and then used a wet tissue to wipe the thumb he had used for fingerprinting. He spoke to Zhuang Qing, “This place is a bit far from the workplace.”
“It’s okay, it’s not like you definitely have to live at this place,” Zhuang Qing picked up his teacup and took a sip from it. “If your family’s elders come over, they’ll need a place to rest.”
Only then did Fu Li realize why Zhuang little dragon had suddenly decided to give him a house. If this were two thousand years ago, he wouldn’t have felt that such a thing was important. But after coming to the human work and interacting with many yao and humans, he understood how precious this kindness was.
“Zhuang little dragon, thank you,” Fortunately, he had gotten to know Zhuang Qing after coming to the human world, and the feeling of leading a wanderer’s existence had gradually vanished, thought Fu Li.
Ever since Reflecting Mist Mountain’s destruction, he had been without close relatives or friends. Apart from hiding deep within the mountains and forests, cultivating or sleeping, there was nothing very important.
Zhuang Qing was probably the only good brother he had genuinely made friends with in the past two thousand years.
“If you say thank you another time today, don’t talk to me again,” Zhuang Qing stood up. “Let’s go for lunch, we still need to go back and work in the afternoon.”
“Oh,” Fu Li picked up the contract for the purchase of the house as well as the bill, and then followed Zhuang Qing out of the building. After getting into the car, he placed the bag containing the contract and bill into his Qiankun pouch.
No place was safe. Placing them in his Qiankun pouch was still the most rea.s.suring.
Noticing his actions, Zhuang Qing’s mood lifted again. As for the small matter of his bank account now being short of a huge sum of money, he no longer cared about it as much.
In the afternoon during work, everyone watched with envious and jealous hearts as Fu Li once again plucked a few Zhuyu fruits from the Langgan Tree to give to Zhuang Qing.
“I’m so envious that the boss can eat such precious fruits. The Langgan Tree won’t even let me touch it,” Zhang Ke lay sprawled over his desk, looking somewhat despondent.
“Talk when you’re as strong and good-looking as the boss and can have a powerful boyfriend like Fu ge,” Xu Yuan rapped him on the head with a file. “Stop indulging in fantasies and obediently tidy up the files.”
“It was us two who first saw Fu ge, who would have expected him to get together with the boss in the end.” Zhang Ke hugged the files and lamented, “This is fate.”
“If you want to view it that way, the old yaoguai defending the Yao Union’s office should have seen Fu ge first, as well as that green-haired duck. It wouldn’t have been you,” Xu Yuan rolled her eyes towards the ceiling. “More importantly, if you have the guts, then say those words in front of the boss.”
Zhang Ke: …
He didn’t have the guts.
“Zhuang little dragon, Zhuyu fruits for you,” Fu Li placed a plate of fruits in front of Zhuang Qing. “You can eat them without worry, they’ve been washed.”
Zhuang Qing looked up. He was just going to get Fu Li to stay behind and eat with him when Fu Li threw down the words ‘I’m going to work’ and ran out.
He looked at the Zhuyu fruits still dripping with water on the fruit plate and let out a gentle laugh.
The Zhuyu fruits were very fragrant and sweet. Zhuang Qing slowly ate them, mouth after mouth. After finishing the fruit pulp, he kept the Zhuyu fruit’s pits, washed them clean, and placed them inside his storage ring.
Humming a yao folk song from the ancient times, Fu Li returned to his work desk at the public office area. He picked up the collated reports of supernatural events and picked the most suspicious case.
Making annotations, Fu Li picked out a ‘haunted house occurrence’.
Many so-called haunted houses in modern human society were either hype created by the media or a case of humans scaring themselves. Among a hundred haunted houses, not more than one percent of them truly had ghosts.
These humans didn’t stop to think either. Decent ghosts had to develop their career in the underworld and queue to be reincarnated too, what use was there in staying in the human world? There was nothing to eat and drink, nor was there a ghost to talk to, why would they want that?
Resentful and malicious ghosts were even less likely to remain in dilapidated, unoccupied houses. These places weren’t in line with their schemes to harm the human world.
Earthbound spirits were the sole possible existences that could remain, because the resentment prior to their death, coupled with lapses by the underworld yinchai in their work, meant that they were unable to leave their place of death. They could only repeat the despair and suffering of their death day after day.
But there was a lot to be said about the formation of earthbound spirits. If there was an earthbound spirit in any random so-called haunted house, the underworld yinchai’s salary would probably have long been completely deducted.
“Fu ge,” Bored of tidying up files, Zhang Ke listened to the tune Fu Li was humming. His body and mind seemed particularly relaxed. He asked with some curiosity, “What song are you singing? Why does listening to it fill my body with spiritual qi?”
“This is a song from the yao world that I learnt from my mountain’s Elder White Goat, I don’t know what it is,” Fu Li thought that Zhang Ke wanted to learn it. “This is the language of the yao world, you won’t be able to learn it.”
Zhang Ke knew that Fu Li was telling the truth, so he didn’t think that Fu Li was deliberately refusing to teach him. Instead, he asked curiously, “Then what’s the meaning behind this song?”
“Thanking the Heavens, Earth, rivers, and blessing all living things – that’s the rough meaning,” Fu Li took out all the information related to the haunted house. “I don’t sing it well. When Elder White Goat sang it, all the yao cultivators on the mountain would stop and quietly listen to him sing. It’s a pity that he’s just too lazy. He’s too lazy to speak, too lazy to sing, too lazy to do anything. Throughout two thousand years, I only learnt three tunes.”
On the other side, Chu Yu, who was secretly listening to Fu Li hum the tune, thought that the personalities of Fu Li’s elders were really all kinds of strange. There was the red bird Zhu Yue who spent lavishly yet still felt that her presents weren’t good enough and the white goat who was too lazy to even lift a finger. The fact that Fu ge hadn’t been raised wrong by them was virtually an affair of great fortune for the yao world.
“Fu ge, you seem to be in a particularly good mood today, did you pick up a treasure?” Chu Yu asked curiously.
“I didn’t pick up a treasure, but I have a house now,” Fu Li very happily replied.
“You bought a house?” All the colleagues in the room were shocked. Although Fu Li was in possession of many unusual treasures, he didn’t have much of the currency that was in circulation in the human world. In an extremely expensive area like the capital, Fu ge was actually able to purchase a house?
Had he gone to the human world to sell his medicinal ingredients?
Ilyz: ‘not drawn to scale’ isn’t in FL’s vocabulary lol