Seeing only his cousin standing by the river in the front yard, Zhou Xiang knew that Ling Ran and the others had gone to the back warehouse of the store, so he led them back to the street.

I saw my father getting ready to go home on the street, so I quickly called him, "Dad, go buy some more groceries. We need to have more than a dozen people eating today."

Father Zhou didn't ask why and just agreed, "I'll take this home and come back."

"Whatever you want."

Zhou Xiang brought ten people to the back warehouse, and Ling Ran was helping to unload the truck! Seeing Zhou Xiang bringing people, he said, "Hurry up, come and help."

Zhou wanted to ask if she needed help, but Ling Ran waved her hand, "No, you go home. No, wait for me to take you home."

Zhou wanted to stop him, "It's just a short distance, and the streets are full of people. It's not dangerous."

Ling Ran looked at the things on the truck and agreed to let her go home by herself. "Tell Aunt Jiang or Uncle Zhou to go to town and ask if anyone is willing to rent a house. These ten people will be working as security guards on the river."

"Don't you live at home?"

"They can stay at home, but with Uncle Zhou's personality, he'll have to get them drinking every day. They're here to do work, so how can he drink every day? If he doesn't accompany them, it wouldn't be appropriate for Uncle Zhou, as he's the elder, to do so."

Zhou Xiang also knew his father's personality. As long as someone could drink, he would persuade them to drink. Every time Zhong Xiong and the others came, they had to drink with him.

"Okay! I'll ask Mom to go ask. My Dad should be busy cooking. I'll tell him that there are more than a dozen people eating today."

"Well! Until you find a house, you still have to live at home."

After Zhou Xiang left, Ling Ran hurriedly urged the people who were staring at him blankly to do something, "What are you doing? Are you so dull?"

The dazed man immediately came back to his senses when he saw the boss's cold face and hurried to do his work. A boss like this is the real boss.

As Zhou Xiang walked, he wondered if there was a house in the town that could accommodate ten people.

Soon she walked back to the front yard of the food station and saw her cousin still standing by the river looking at the other side. Her eyes lit up and she ran to her cousin.

"Uncle, there's money to be made!"

When Xie Lin heard about money, he turned around immediately and asked, "What kind of money can I make?"

Zhou Xiang raised his hand and pointed at the row of single dormitories to the west of the office. "Are those rooms empty?"

Xie Lin nodded. "It's empty, but two of the rooms are rented out as warehouses."

There are eight rooms in a row! After renting two, there are still six left. "Rent the remaining six to me."

"What's it for? Will your family be short of housing?"

"Didn't ten people follow me to look for Ling Ran just now? They were Ling Ran's teammates, working as park security guards. They can't stay at my house, right?"

Xie Lin heard that the dozen or so tall and strong men were here to work as security guards, so it was certainly inappropriate for them to live in Zhou's house. Not to mention anything else, Zhou Quan, the drunkard, was also a problem.

"Okay! I'll rent them all to you for five dollars a month."

Zhou Xiang was surprised. "Isn't this too cheap? Don't try to lower the price on purpose!"

Xie Lin took out the key and said, "Come on, I'll take you to see it, and you'll know why it's so cheap."

Zhou Xiang saw the room with light coming through the ceiling and mold on the floor, and frowned. "Is this just a shabby house? It would cost a lot of money to rent it, repair it, and renovate it, and then return it to you in the end. It's not worth it."

"Do you want to buy it?"

"Well! It's worth buying for at least 20 years."

"No, buy it for at least 50 years."

Zhou Xiang smiled secretly in his heart, the longer it takes to buy it, the more money you will lose, uncle!

"Okay! I'll buy a 50-year one."

Xie Lin looked at her suspiciously, "You agreed so readily, why do I have a bad feeling?"

Zhou Xiang shook his head. "Isn't it enough to just agree to it? Do you think you'll be reassured if I haggle with you? If you don't maintain this house, it will collapse. Once it collapses, the only thing left is land for rent. Besides me, who else can rent this land by the river? My river channel is already completed, so why should I rent it?"

"That sounds reasonable. Okay! Do you want to buy all eight or just six?"

"Of course I'll buy them all. I'll help with the re-tiling and renovations. But, are those two warehouses expired yet?"

"There's no written lease contract, and the rent isn't paid until the end of each month. I keep asking them several times a month for five dollars. It's so annoying. I'm going to ask them to move out right now and won't even pay them half a month's rent."

"Don't worry, let's write the purchase agreement first. After the purchase is completed, we'll go to the notarization. Those two families won't be able to leave even if they want to."

"Great! Don't you have an agreement that hasn't been notarized yet? It's perfect for us to do it together."

When the uncle and nephew went to the office and sat down to write the sales agreement, Xie Lin asked Zhou how he planned to buy it.

"I won't force you to lower the price. You want five dollars now, but the price will go up in the future, right? For 50 years! I'll rent a room for 10 dollars a month, and this price will remain the same for 50 years. You are not allowed to raise the price for any reason during the period."

Xie Lin did some mental math and shook his head in denial. "When you bought your house, it was two dollars, and it's gone up three dollars in ten years. If you've been paying three dollars a year for the past 50 years, you'll be 55 by the fifth decade. That's an average of 27 dollars a month!"

Zhou wanted Wang Hui to calculate it, so he used his cousin's increasing method. After Wang Hui finished the calculation, the average was only 10.99.

Xie Lin's head was confused. "Isn't it average like me?"

"Uncle, let's keep it simple. You're talking about five increments, right? You have to divide by five to get the average, right? How do you average it by dividing by two?"

When Xie Lin saw Accountant Wang nod, he knew that he had made a mistake in his calculations and that Zhou Xiang had not tricked him at all, so he agreed.

Zhou Xiang chuckled. His cousin had been managing the river for a while, so his brain had become much more flexible. However, his calculations were wrong. Why was he using addition and subtraction? He should have used doubling and multiplication! Each year's increase was 2.5 times the previous year's! It was definitely 15 times less!

Accountant Wang was no match for him either. He was also fooled by me and my cousin, and was now confined to this small town.

Finally, Zhou wanted to rent eight single dormitories at the food station for 50 years at a monthly rent of 10 yuan.

Many years later, when the rent in the town skyrocketed, he asked Zhou Xiang what happened. Zhou Xiang told him the reason, which made him so angry that he raised his hand to hit him.

Zhou wanted to comfort him quickly, "Uncle, even if you take back hundreds of thousands more, won't you still use it to support those people who do nothing but wait for living expenses?

The more you give, the greedier they become. If I hadn't bought the river and this house, where would they have gotten the living expenses for those years?

People are always greedy. Isn't it good for you to save money for me? If you give it to those people, they might even think you've taken even more! Hundreds of thousands of yuan, divided among twenty or so people, only a thousand or two thousand yuan per person. But they don't think so. They think each person should get a hundred thousand or so.

Because they think the small amounts of money you work so hard to earn are big money. As long as it's money coming in, it's big money, and as long as it's money going out, it has nothing to do with them. But if you spend it on them, they have to spend it as much as they want. That's human nature."

Xie Ling sighed and stopped talking to her.

At this time, the uncle and nephew happily went to the judicial office to notarize the agreement. Zhou Xiang also asked the mayor to come along, because the mayor still had the two dilapidated houses, which were now the halls of the underground haunted house.