Chapter 2
After all, An Rou is not the original owner. Even though she intuitively feels a sense of familiarity with her father's voice, rationally, he is a complete stranger.
Until the short and fat middle-aged man called out "Rou Rou".
An Rou's heart was suddenly stabbed.
His full name is the same as hers, and even his nickname is exactly the same?
It's... too much of a coincidence.
An Younian had already run out of the shop after Sister Hong. He ignored the gazes of passers-by and knelt down in the alley. He tightly grasped the hem of Sister Hong's cheongsam with both hands and begged repeatedly.
He didn't see An Rou coming downstairs, and he didn't call her by her nickname, he just mentioned it -
"Boss Hong, Rourou was raised by you. You are also half her elder. Even if she has upset you in some way, please be magnanimous and forgive her this time."
"I, I asked her to come down and apologize to you!"
An Younian turned his head and saw his daughter standing quietly at the entrance of the shop's stairs, one hand resting on the wooden handrail, slender and fragile. Their eyes met for a moment, and An Rou walked down the stairs expressionlessly, turned around, and disappeared out the back door of the shop.
An Younian immediately softened his heart and couldn't bear to see his daughter suffer such humiliation, so he had to kowtow to Sister Hong.
"Boss Hong, please, how about this? Just lower the raise a little, maybe just a thousand a month..."
There was also an alley outside the back door. An Rou walked around to the entrance of the alley, her eyes wandering around, and locked onto a player walking from a distance.
[Potato Lv15 (Bronze)].
The holographic game allows you to customize your face. This person is good-looking. His eyes are fixed on the game panel in front of him, and he keeps looking at it while walking.
I accidentally bumped into a passerby.
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry." Potato hurried to help the person who was knocked down. When he saw the other person's face clearly, he was stunned.
It was the first time he had seen such a beautiful NPC. She looked like a girl of seventeen or eighteen, wearing a simple off-white cotton cheongsam, with long straight black hair tied back with a headband, and a smooth and full forehead.
There is a kind of greenness and charm of a flower bud that is about to bloom.
At this moment, the girl's wide-open almond-shaped eyes were filled with tears and fear.
When an NPC becomes realistic enough, people will forget that they are just a bunch of fake data. Potato helped An Rou up and asked softly, "Are you okay?"
"I, I'm so scared... Sister Hong..."
An Rou hesitated, bit her lower lip with her pearly teeth, and tears rolled down her face.
"Sister Hong?" Potato's heart moved, smelling the scent of a clue to the mission. "Who is Sister Hong? - Don't be afraid, I am the one who is destined. No matter what happens, I can protect you."
"Heaven, destiny?"
An Rou showed a hopeful look, wiped away her tears, and forced herself to calm down: "Sister Hong is the owner of that hair salon. She is a very nice person, but I don't know why, she seemed like a different person today, losing her temper everywhere. The way she looked at me just now was like..."
"Like it wants to eat me."
Unexpectedly, Potato did not take action immediately. Instead, he asked, "Really?"
He turned on the light screen and muttered, "Strange, if there were any clues, they would have notified me..."
The light screen, which was originally visible only to him, was now visible to An Rou. It was frozen at the task notification interface, with no new messages. The previous collapsed history message only displayed the beginning: [Quest Clue: The Disappearance of Chun-Li. The Little Magnolia Songstress…]
An Rou understood that clues could not be fabricated out of thin air. If she wanted to smear Sister Hong as a ghoul, she would have to be possessed by a ghoul.
It seems that this method doesn't work.
She was racking her brains when she heard Potato mutter again, "Never mind, let's give it a try. Where's Sister Hong?"
An Rou timidly pointed to the alley where the bun shop was located: "It's right in front of that bun shop."
Potato understood what was going on and comforted her: "Don't be afraid, wait for me here."
A long sword suddenly appeared in his hand, and he used some kind of movement skill to disappear at the entrance of the alley in just a few steps. An Rou quickly followed him, hiding behind the wall at the entrance and looking inside.
The bun shop was only about twenty meters from the alley entrance. An Younian was still kneeling and begging Sister Hong, his sobbing voice and Sister Hong's impatient voice echoing one after another. A few scattered pedestrians gathered around to watch the show.
Potato used his mobility skills, took a few steps forward, and soon stopped in front of the bun shop, pushing aside the pedestrians.
An Rou pricked up her ears and vaguely heard Potato ask, "Are you Sister Hong, the owner of the hair salon?"
In comparison, Hong Xian's answer was full of energy: "Yes, who are you?"
Before he could finish his words, the long knife hidden behind Potato suddenly appeared and chopped down at Sister Hong's forehead!
"I know you are a ghoul!" Potato shouted.
"ah!"
Sister Hong let out an eardrum-piercing scream and covered her head. The sharp blade flashed across her forehead, stopping just short of her head, the gust of air ruffling her carefully styled hair.
Using force to intimidate is a common method used by players to identify ghouls. If they are ghouls, they will inevitably reveal their true colors in times of crisis.
Although An Rou didn't play games, news of the Soul-Calling Song was everywhere in the world these days. Not to mention the farm owner was said to be a master gamer, and his son often boasted to An Rou about how great his father was. Therefore, An Rou had some understanding of the game.
Apart from not quite understanding the logic of the clues, An Rou wanted this reaction from Tu Dou.
Seeing that her goal was achieved, she quickly walked back to the back door of the bun shop in her high heels.
As soon as An Rou left, Potato realized that he had been tricked and retreated to the alley, but there was no sign of the young NPC girl.
He slapped his forehead in frustration.
Lust really blinded him, and he had wasted no time in damaging Sister Hong's favorability towards him. The NPC's favorability towards the player affected the player's destiny value, which was the player's core indicator in the game and could be thought of as the game's "luck."
Perhaps, the girl NPC is actually another player in disguise, trying to trick people for fun.
But he even forgot to ask the other person's name...
Potato stamped his feet and continued on his way.
His sudden and unexpected use of force not only stunned Sister Hong, but also An Younian and the other NPCs who were watching the show. When An Rou returned to the bun shop, her father, An Younian, was still kneeling on the ground outside the main entrance, and Sister Hong was slumped across from him, a fishy liquid slowly seeping onto the ground.
The passersby who were watching smelled the smell, came to their senses, covered their mouths and noses, and laughed out loud.
"Boss Hong, Boss Hong..." An Younian hesitated, not knowing whether he should remind him.
In fact, he didn't need to say anything. Sister Hong, who was very concerned about her reputation, had already realized her ugly appearance from the laughter of others. She didn't even bother to pick up her fallen high heels. She got up in a panic and rushed back to the hair salon not far away, one foot high and one foot low.
The pedestrians dispersed. An Younian was stunned for a moment, then stood up and turned around, only to see his daughter staring at him intently.
An Rou looked like her mother, delicate and beautiful, but ever since she witnessed her mother transform into a ghoul, she'd been so frightened that her mind hadn't been working very well. But now, looking into his daughter's clear, dark eyes, An Younian felt something was different.
He glanced at the hair salon, and when he walked back to the bun shop, he had put on his usual smiling face, with his eyes narrowed.
"Rou Rou, are you hungry? Daddy will cook for you."
It seems that he is not going to find out how she angered Sister Hong.
An Rou felt a lump in her throat, unable to speak out. "Two hundred a day, day after day, that's six thousand a month. If I save this money, even if the rent goes up by two thousand, I'll still have four thousand left. Can't you even figure out such a simple calculation?"
The so-called two hundred, one hundred is the fee that An Younian entrusted Sister Hong to take care of An Rou over the years, and the other hundred is the capital for An Rou to play mahjong. There is no doubt that all of it will fall into the pockets of Sister Hong and the other two.
Her expression was sarcastic, which made An Younian startled again. He stepped forward and tried to touch her forehead: "Where do you feel uncomfortable, Rourou?"
An Rou stepped back and dodged, then turned and went upstairs.
I closed the door and sulked for a while before I realized I was actually angry with an NPC. I thought it was a bit ridiculous.
A little later, An Younian arrived with dinner. NPCs, as expected, couldn't be predicted by ordinary people. In just a short while, he seemed to have accepted the profound change in his daughter's personality, and there was no trace of inquiry in his words or eyes.
Dinner was seafood noodles topped with a golden poached egg. As An Rou ate her noodles, she watched An Younian rummage through the drawers until he finally unearthed a square, oil-paper package in the corner of the living room cabinet. Inside was a copy of the "Three Character Classic" in a simple binding, with a piece of paper tucked inside.
An Younian faced her sideways, his chubby profile showing a sense of nostalgia. He stroked the paper for a while and prepared to go out.
"What is that?" An Rou called out to him.
An Younian hesitated to speak, finally managed a smile and replied vaguely, "Land deed."
"show me."
An Younian hesitated, but An Rou had already stepped forward and took the paper without question.
The text was in traditional Chinese characters and arranged vertically, making it difficult to read. However, An Rou grasped the key point: "Eight acres of land?"
"The small farm passed down from your grandfather has been abandoned for more than ten years," said An Younian.
"What are you going to do with it?" An Rou thought, "Are you going to sell it to raise money for the shop rent?"
Perhaps because he felt guilty towards his ancestors, An Younian looked depressed.
An Rou's guess was correct, and her earlier calculations for An Younian were also correct. However, she hadn't considered one thing: the bun shop's profits were limited, and An Younian's daily expenses were high, leaving him with little spare cash, barely enough for the rent. Hong Jie had suddenly raised the rent to six thousand gold coins, and even if An Rou gave her the three thousand she had, she still wouldn't be halfway there.
It's the end of the month, and in two days I have to pay the rent for the next season.
"Then there's no need to sell the land, right? Such a large piece of land, just to raise three thousand?" An Rou was puzzled.
"That land can't grow crops and is not worth much." An Younian said that it is unknown whether it can be sold for three thousand.
As for why no crops could be grown, An Rou asked, but An Younian looked confused and couldn't explain it.
"Give me the deed, I'll sell it and definitely raise the rent for you." An Rou said.
*
When the rickshaw arrived, the sun was already high in the sky.
The pale sunlight fell on my body, without much warmth, and sprinkled on the sparsely covered wasteland in front of me, making it look even more desolate.
This place is on the outskirts of Zhongsu Town, nestled against a twenty-meter-high black wall. Beyond the wall lies a lifeless land where ghouls roam rampant. Looking out, the wasteland stretches quite large, surrounded on three sides by dark green fields, the remaining side extending all the way to the base of the wall.
Eight acres of land is not that big, it is just a part of the wasteland.
Following An Younian's description, An Rou found the dilapidated thatched house in the center of the wasteland. Half of the house had already collapsed, and the other half was barely supported by a few wooden pillars.
However, the mud-pasted stone houses on the left and right sides of the thatched house were still relatively intact. An Rou recognized that the left one was a chicken coop and the right one was a duck shed.
"Three thousand gold, eight acres of land..."
An Rou muttered to herself as she measured the ground beneath her feet. Having not been cultivated for years, the land had become very hard, without the slightest hint of softness that arable land possesses.
Admittedly, this abandoned farm is far from the image in my mind of a small villa, a big fish pond, and seeding trucks and harvesters shuttling back and forth in the golden fields, but it is still a farm after all.
——She was so young, and the reason she was able to work in a place like a farm for five years was because the real world was becoming more and more chaotic, and the farm seemed like a safe haven away from the world.
At an exchange rate of 1:5, if she could buy such a large piece of land for 15,000 yuan in the real world, she would wake up laughing in her dreams.
It will definitely not be sold. The current problem is how to make up for the shortfall in store rent if the land is not sold.
After all, it was Sister Hong who caused the rent increase because of her. If An Younian could solve this problem, it would be like An Rou had to spend money to buy this abandoned farm.
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
