Chapter 13: Cash Power... Activate!

Just as Yu Zhenghong and his daughter Yu Xueqing were both baffled, puzzling over the door lock, An Sheng had already slipped away, a bottle of Maotai dangling from her mouth, and casually wandered over to Lin Ying’s house. A faint, mischievous smirk lingered at the corner of her lips.

An Sheng didn’t want to put Qing in an awkward position between herself and her superstitious father. Deep down, she already had a solution in mind for this unexpected predicament. However, it meant she had to trouble Lin Ying a bit.

In her previous life, An Sheng often traveled back and forth between Jiule City and Nancheng because Jiule City was one of the key tea-producing regions for Tieguanyin. The entire Xia East area was renowned for producing four major types of tea: green tea, white tea, black tea, and flower tea. The cultivation of green tea here dated back to the Song Dynasty, having once been a famous tribute tea.

If one wanted to engage in the mid- to high-end tea business, the Xia East region was unavoidable. Except for flower tea, which lacked much lore, the other three types each had histories spanning hundreds or even thousands of years, with countless stories to share with customers. To sell tea at premium prices, marketing stories were indispensable.

Every year in her past life, An Sheng would stay in Xia East for about half a month—partly to watch the local tea competitions and partly to select products and negotiate prices. She understood the customs of Xia East and knew the temperament of the older generations well.

Qing’s father might be superstitious, but An Sheng knew that the kind of superstition common in Xia East was not like the fanaticism of religious cults; it was more of a “practical superstition.” The true purpose of superstition was to seek peace of mind amid the uncertainties of life. After all, worshipping the gods cost nothing—maybe the deity would really work some magic. If not, just burn fewer incense offerings and starve it out for a few years; eventually, it would quiet down. If the family’s luck turned bad after worship, they could always bulldoze the land flat.

In Xia East, except for a few special ancestral spirits of notable figures, the wild mountain gods and spirits lived precariously, always walking on thin ice.

So, Qing’s father might be superstitious, but An Sheng thought that the iron fist of wealth could shatter any feudal superstition. Soon, she planned to borrow Lin Ying’s fully insured Cullinan and crash it into him; that would put him in his place. An Sheng had great faith in Sister Lin’s abilities.

……

“Lin Jie, are you awake yet? I came to borrow some props to show off and slap some faces…” An Sheng avoided the busy housekeeper in the kitchen and ran upstairs to the master bedroom. She stood up and rummaged through the mattress, looking at Lin Ying wrapped in a silken quilt.

Lin Ying, lying in bed, was not asleep; she simply lacked the energy to move. When the white fox pushed the door open with a bottle of wine, Lin Ying had already noticed An Sheng out of the corner of her eye.

“Are you asking me to drink?” Lin Ying slowly sat up. Having lain down for too long, the sudden movement caused a slight dizziness from insufficient blood flow to the brain. But she paid no mind to it, instead focusing on the white little creature.

The white fox was one of the few things that had piqued Lin Ying’s interest since the incident. To determine whether the fox was a hallucination from her near-death experience or a product of a mad world, Lin Ying, like a doll with a wound-up spring losing its power, secretly took some pills to wind up her inner spring again.

“Ying—” “Ying ying! Ying!” Lin Ying put down her hand rubbing her temple and looked at An Sheng’s plaintive cries. Unfortunately, she had no talent for understanding animals and could not decipher the fox’s meaning.

However, she keenly noticed that the fox’s front paws were muddy. Moreover, the fox seemed to relish the texture of her bedsheets, unconsciously rubbing its paw pads against the soft fabric when placed on the mattress.

[What… exactly are you? A human, or a mythical creature? Or just an imaginary companion I conjured before dying?] Lin Ying sighed inwardly with a trace of self-mockery, hoping to hear something about reincarnation from the fox’s mouth.

[Wish granted: The Balance Keeper Saint (better to let Lin Ying believe you’re a miraculous fox sporting a Mohawk than chase after nonexistent hopes).]

Feeling faint from low blood sugar and dizziness, Lin Ying’s mind wandered aimlessly. Her expectations took the form of words, appearing in An Sheng’s mind.

“Well, well, the Balance Keeper Saint has appeared. Girl, look at my tiny arms and legs—do I really look like someone fit to run the afterlife’s accounts?”

Seeing Lin Ying’s wish made An Sheng draw a sharp breath.

Lin Ying had made two wishes to An Sheng: the first was for her family to return after a mishap. The condition for the wish’s fulfillment involved turning back time, and the perfect outcome would be helping her overcome depression.

The second wish was even more absurd; seeing her own behavior as if she were a cunning monster, she even imagined a place that didn’t exist, intending to charge off there.

Machine-gunning the underworld… advantage on my side? Yeah, right!

“Girl... how about I roll over and you dig out that black target on my belly? Do I look like Doraemon to you?”

An Sheng grumbled and then turned to grab the phone from the bedside table, expertly entering the five zeros to unlock the notes app.

She typed two lines and held the phone out to Lin Ying, gently patting her thigh with her small fox paw. The playful tap scattered the wild, illogical thoughts swirling in Lin Ying’s mind.

[I… brought you a gift.]

[By the way, sister—lend me some jewelry, cash, and luxury bags.]

“……”

Lin Ying stared at the words on the screen, then gazed out at the scorching noon sun through the floor-to-ceiling window, falling silent.

In broad daylight… can people really get possessed?

“What… exactly are you?” Though Lin Ying had witnessed An Sheng’s prowess ordering takeout and dragging her to eat with brute force, at first she comforted herself by thinking she must have hallucinated from medication overdose.

But after seeing the two lines An Sheng typed on the phone, Lin Ying knew she was not insane; the world itself was!

If the world hadn’t gone mad, how could such an irrational scene possibly unfold before her?

Thanks to her own severe illness, Lin Ying was only briefly shocked before her expression returned to a deathly calm.

An Sheng turned the phone around and wrote:

[I’m just a dashing fox who knows how to style a Mohawk and fluff up my fur.]

[We’ll talk about all that other stuff later. Right now, I urgently need some luxury goods to help me show off and slap some faces.]

Though shocked to her core, Lin Ying’s diseased condition kept her expression indifferent as she nodded ever so slightly and said, “Fine, take whatever you want from the vault and wardrobe.”

“Whether you return them or not doesn’t matter to me… it’s meaningless.”

Originally delighted with Lin Ying’s permission and about to turn away to pick out some luxury items, An Sheng’s heart sank when she saw Lin Ying retreat beneath the covers again.

She had seen the living, and the dead. But never before had An Sheng witnessed a living person quietly awaiting starvation. Lin Ying… was likely the first.

An Sheng sighed deeply.

“Stop sleeping! Come help me!” An Sheng ran back to the bed, biting Lin Ying’s collar and dragging her out.

“Do you expect me, a fox, to put on the jewelry myself?”

“Come help me pick out something expensive…”

Dragged along by An Sheng, Lin Ying listened to the fox’s clear plaintive cries beside her ear. Her face remained as calm and still as a deep well as she said, “I don’t understand your language. If you have something to tell me, use my phone to type.”

[Help me change clothes. You can’t expect a fox cub to dress itself, right?]

“……”

[Help me style that tuft on my head, too!]

In the master bedroom, their dress-up game began, and Lin Ying found a faint spark of interest in life again.