In theory, Ji Tan could have borrowed far more than two million.
But he didn’t know where the Huo family’s asset-monitoring thresholds lay. If he asked for two hundred million outright and triggered a risk alert, Huo Zhaixing might come charging into the Western District to seize him on the pretext of suspicious fund movements. That would be a disaster.
It absolutely wasn’t because little Ji Tan had never seen so much money and didn’t dare borrow that much.
Absolutely not.
Loan application receipt in hand, Ji Tan went to a real estate agency to look for a new place.
Someone had repeatedly reminded him to move before leaving. Even if Xie Zhi hadn’t said a word, Ji Tan would have moved anyway. Their current place was awful, hardly conducive to his brother’s recovery.
“The center belongs to the Prince. Anyone who isn’t part of the Prince’s faction can’t live there.” The agent was a young woman with an androgynous style, chewing gum as she noticed Ji Tan staring at the circular area in the middle of the map and offered him a warning.
The buildings of Xili District were arranged in concentric rings. The outermost ring was the neighborhood where Ji Tan and his brother currently lived. The innermost ring held luxurious buildings averaging only a dozen or so stories, some just a few stories tall, a stark contrast to the skyscrapers soaring up through the rest of the district.
At the exact center rose a majestic tower that pierced the clouds.
Rather than ask the sort of question everyone should know the answer to, like who the Prince was, Ji Tan pointed at an area diagonally opposite Broken-Wire Street. “Around here. Somewhere in a midrange residential complex.”
The agent looked him up and down, then flipped open her listings. “On Purple Arc Street, the average rents are… three thousand for a high-rise two-bedroom with a living room, five thousand for a three-bedroom with living and dining rooms, and nine thousand for a large, single-level apartment.”
That cheap?
The rents were unexpectedly low. Back in Jing City, three thousand would get him only the smaller bedroom in a shared apartment. Yet in City A, where every inch of land was supposedly worth a fortune, the same money could rent a whole two-bedroom apartment in a decent complex.
“What about a two-bedroom over on Broken-Wire Street?” Ji Tan asked curiously.
“Two thousand,” the agent answered with certainty.
“What?” Ji Tan thought his ears had failed him and he’d misheard two hundred as two thousand.
Smack, smack. The agent said nothing, merely kept chewing her gum. She pointed first to the lightning-bolt icon on the map, then to the electricity rate chart beside it.
“Well, well, if it isn’t Chief Ji!” A slightly coquettish young male voice sounded behind him.
Ji Tan stiffened. The voice sounded very much like Qiaoqiao, Huo Zhaixing’s white moonlight. He frantically worked out how to escape, but when he turned around, he saw a young man he didn’t recognize, clinging to the arm of a potbellied middle-aged man and looking at him with a smug, arrogant smile.
“Baby, who’s that?” The moment the middle-aged man saw Ji Tan’s face, his tiny mung-bean eyes lit up.
“Him? He used to be the top drinks host at our KTV,” the young man said with a pout, deliberately raising his voice. “He didn’t know the first thing about alcohol. He sold the most drinks just by showing off his pretty face. Ji! The! Chief! Host!”
“So he’s in the same line of work as you!” The middle-aged man’s mung-bean eyes flashed with excitement. Those tiny eyes positively sparkled, dazzlingly bright.
Ji Tan’s mouth twitched. In this bizarre City A, was there some kind of supernatural rule that guaranteed a hundred-percent chance of being taunted by a former coworker whenever he entered a public place?
“He quit because he’d latched on to someone rich and important. He thought he was too good for the rest of us. But now it looks like he can’t even afford to rent a place.” The more the young man talked, the smugger he grew. Looking at Purple Arc Street, which Ji Tan had marked on the map, he tapped it with the ring finger bearing an enormous diamond. “I’d advise you not to rent here. The electricity bills are much higher than the rent. Wouldn’t want you to fall behind on electricity and end up going back to that old profession you despise so much.”
So it was the electricity.
Ji Tan frowned. Were high-rise electricity bills really so outrageous that he’d have to go back to selling drinks to cover them? No wonder the rent was so cheap. Behind that three thousand lay several more three-thousands.
“Don’t worry, baby. You can live anywhere you like. I’ll put a million on your electricity card, and you can spend it however you want.” The mung-bean-eyed man wrapped an arm around the boy’s waist and announced it loudly, but his eyes kept sliding toward Ji Tan.
That sidelong look irritated Ji Tan. “Sir, if your eyes are that small, maybe don’t try looking sideways like other people. You look like a comma lying on its side.”
The middle-aged man’s mung-bean eyes widened in shock. “How dare you speak to me like that! Do you know who I am?”
Who cared who he was? With looks like those, he was hardly going to be a protagonist. Ji Tan knew the rules of getting transmigrated into a novel: you couldn’t offend a child of destiny. Or, at least, you couldn’t offend one before you were strong enough.
And the chosen one of a novel’s world certainly wouldn’t look like this.
“Ji Tan, what are you acting so high and mighty for? Do you still think you’re the young Mrs. Huo?” The young man blocked Ji Tan’s way with his diamond-ringed hand, then pulled up a piece of gossip news from a few days earlier with the other and showed it to everyone in the shop.
【Huo Family’s Young Master Digs Out His Spouse’s Heart, All to Win a Smile from His White Moonlight】
“Whoa, he’s the Huo family’s runaway spouse?” Mung-bean Eyes stared at the phone, then at Ji Tan, in amazement.
More and more people crowded around to watch the spectacle. Some raised their phones; others looked eager to grab him and collect a reward from the Huo family.
Ji Tan backed up two steps and thought carefully about what characters in novels did in situations like this. He needed a move that fit City A’s customs while shocking and frightening the crowd enough for him to escape.
“Hmph!” Ji Tan gave a cold snort and raised his chin high. “Touch me and you’ll regret it!”
Sure enough, the crowd fell still and began whispering among themselves.
“Young Master Huo’s looking for him everywhere.”
“The news said a mysterious man rescued him.”
“They say it might’ve been the Administrator.”
Once he judged the timing was right, Ji Tan strode toward the door. He spun around, pointed at the crowd, and… er, what was he supposed to say next? He stalled for a moment, then shouted at the top of his lungs, “Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west! Never look down on a young man just because he’s poor!”¹
Elio’s Note ¹: This grand declaration is a famous line from Battle Through the Heavens, the sort of thing a hot-blooded underdog hero says before his comeback. Ji Tan deploys it to make the crowd think twice.
“Hiss…”
The shop filled with sharp intakes of breath. Even the young man who’d once worked with him was stunned. By the time everyone recovered, Ji Tan had vanished.
“Wait, shouldn’t he have said something like ‘My boyfriend is the Administrator’ instead?” Mung-bean Eyes scratched his beer belly in confusion.
Smack, smack. The agent finally remembered to chew her gum again. She glared at the pair who had driven off her customer. “Are you two going to rent something or not?”
“Hah! You’re just a real estate agent, and you dare look down on me?” The young man exploded with anger.
“There, there, baby. Don’t be angry. I’ll rent it for you,” Mung-bean Eyes hurried to soothe him.
“Tch!” The young man rolled his eyes at the agent and swaggered out to make a phone call, but not before ordering, “Darling, I want one of those huge single-level apartments.”
The middle-aged man agreed with a smile, then turned to the agent. “How about a two-bedroom for twenty-eight hundred? Deal?”
The agent: “…”
Outside the shop, the former coworker glanced left and right, leaned against the wall, and called a Northern District number. “Young Master Huo, it’s me, Zhaozhao. You used to say I looked just like your white moonlight.”
Beep, beep, beep… The call was cut off.
The young man had no choice but to call again. This time he didn’t dare waste a second before getting to the point. “I used to work with Ji Tan. I’ve got some information to sell you. I saw him here in the Western District.”
The response on the other end was immediate. An assistant passed the phone to Huo Zhaixing. “Zhao Gang. What news have you got? Let’s hear it.”
“Ji Tan isn’t with that mysterious man. He’s looking for somewhere to rent. I know which neighborhood he wants to move into. How much do you think that’s worth?”
Ji Tan hadn’t expected someone to recognize him even there. He ducked into a convenience store, bought a black face mask, and put it on.
Renting a new place wouldn’t be cheap. He couldn’t afford to sit around living off his savings. He needed a job as soon as possible.
He couldn’t find a website where he could submit job applications online. Helpful netizens told him that in the Western District, you had to bring your résumé directly to employers. Beneath his post titled 【This Savage Land of the Western District Is Wasting My Computer Skills】, they recommended several tech companies.
With directions from a pretty young woman and an enthusiastic elderly man, Ji Tan navigated the twisting maze of high-rises until he found a print shop. He borrowed the shop’s computer and put together a résumé.
“Young man, you can’t write it like that.” The print shop owner shook his head at what Ji Tan had printed.
Ji Tan looked at the page in his hands. He’d designed this standard résumé himself during graduation season, and it had never failed him in an application. Apart from leaving out his educational qualifications, everything about it was solid. He’d even included his outlook on the future of mobile app development.
Surely any boss with a bit of business sense would see the value of his proposal, set aside their prejudice about his educational background, and hire him as CTO.
The shop owner pulled out a résumé template. “You need to list your faith, the faction you belong to, the factions you’ve served before, and your family background.”
Ji Tan: “…Am I applying for a job or paying my respects to a gang boss?”
Well, when in Rome. Ji Tan knew only one god, so he wrote Argus under faith and “none” in all the other fields.
What family did Xie Zhi belong to, anyway? In the Northern District, you could still call it an old-money family. Here in the Western District… the Buried Love Clan?²
Elio’s Note ²: “Buried Love Clan” (葬爱家族) jokingly calls back to a flashy, melodramatic Chinese internet youth subculture, with wild hairstyles and heartbreak-themed nicknames.
Ji Tan was sitting in an interview waiting room when his own thoughts made him chuckle.
“Mr. Ji?” The staff member calling the next applicant patted Ji Tan, who was sitting in a corner with his head lowered, stifling a laugh.
“Right, it’s my turn.” Ji Tan came back to his senses, instantly composed his face, and put on the artificial smile of a polished professional.
He’d been following the recommended list, going from company to company to drop off his résumé. Most simply collected the applications and said they’d respond in a few days. This company happened to be conducting interviews today, so the receptionist had taken his résumé and led him straight into the waiting room.
Only when Ji Tan entered the interview room did he realize what kind of company this was.
“Tell me why you applied to our company,” the interviewer asked with a friendly smile.
Ji Tan glanced up at the slogan on the wall: When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back at you.
This was the Xili District branch of Little Abyss, the only social media app on his phone.
“I think social media could be presented in a better way. For example, you could develop an app specifically for short videos. Each video would be no more than three minutes long, and swiping up would take you straight to the next one,” Ji Tan explained confidently.
Although his specialty was AI, building mobile apps was child’s play to him. Give him enough staff and funding, and recreating an entire Musical Note Federation or Penguin Empire would be no problem.³
Elio’s Note ³: “Musical Note Federation” and “Penguin Empire” are playful stand-ins for major Chinese short-video and tech giants, drawing on the musical-note symbol associated with Douyin and the penguin mascot associated with Tencent.
The interviewer listened to him at length without changing expression, then actually let out a derisive laugh. “Young man, have you ever tried making a mobile app yourself?”
Ji Tan didn’t answer immediately. He’d just explained the entire process of developing one, yet the man was still questioning him. He didn’t think a company this big would send some professional mocker like his former coworker just to pick a fight. Could there be some special restrictions on building mobile apps in City A?
To be safe, Ji Tan kept smiling. “My university major wasn’t computer science, but my technical skills are excellent. Bring me a computer, and I can demonstrate right here.”
The interviewer looked over Ji Tan’s résumé again and only then noticed that he hadn’t listed his educational background. “What was your major?”
Ji Tan: “The smelting and reconstruction of metals and natural organisms.”
The interviewer looked visibly flustered. Embarrassed that, as an HR director, he didn’t recognize the field, he feigned composure. “I see. That’s quite an uncommon discipline. How would you describe it in everyday terms?”
“Chef.”