Chapter 191: Insanely Wealthy

Zhao Dasheng dangled the key ring and led Chang Yu out of the front door.

The two first made a turn, walked straight for about five meters, and stopped in front of another villa.

This villa looked no different from the previous one. After all, being in the same residential community, the layout and floor area were quite similar to the one they had just left.

Each was a detached villa featuring a large garden, with a tall iron gate enclosing the perimeter of the garden.

Zhao Dasheng rummaged through the massive ring of keys for a long time, finally selected the right one, and strode joyfully toward the heavy iron gate outside the villa.

"Hey, hey, hey! What are you doing?" Chang Yu hurriedly stopped Zhao Dasheng.

"Me?" Zhao Dasheng blinked in surprise, then replied, "I'm going to open the door, of course."

"Stop, stop, stop! Did you drink too much tonight? That's someone else's house! What are you opening the door for?" Chang Yu argued reasonably.

At that moment, Zhao Dasheng burst out laughing. His laughter was so joyful, so radiant, and yet so... hollow.

Immediately afterward, he performed an action that left Chang Yu utterly dumbfounded.

He simply inserted the key into the lock on the iron gate, gave it a twist, and the lock clicked open in response.

"Stop standing there, come on with me." Tugging along Chang Yu, who still had no idea what was going on, Zhao Dasheng strode majestically into the villa's garden.

His posture and demeanor were as bold and righteous as if he were walking into his own home.

"Why are you looking at me with such astonishment? Have you forgotten what I do for a living?"

Inside the new villa, Zhao Dasheng said to the still-bewildered Chang Yu.

"In H City, no matter who lacks a place to stay, I will never lack one. No matter who doesn't own a house, I will never be without a house."

"Because I'm in the real estate business!"

"I developed this entire residential area, and over half of the villas here are under my name. Tonight, you can stay in whichever one you like—take your pick!"

Zhao Dasheng patted his chest, radiating an overwhelming aura of wealth that completely stunned Chang Yu.

Good grief! While all the young people in this modern metropolis considered buying a single house as their lifelong goal for decades, this fellow Zhao Dasheng already owned dozens of villas.

Tsk tsk, how could the gap between people be so astronomically wide?

Chang Yu admitted that he was envious—ridiculously envious.

"This house is already great, no need to change to another one." Seeing that Zhao Dasheng looked ready to say, "If you find this house even slightly displeasing, I'll immediately swap you for another," Chang Yu quickly expressed his stance.

"As long as you like it, it's all the same to me anyway." Zhao Dasheng skillfully pulled out a spare pair of pajamas he had left in the wardrobe and changed into them immediately.

Witnessing all this, Chang Yu deeply suspected that Zhao Dasheng kept such a set of spare pajamas in every single one of his owned villas.

Well... he could only say that the wealthy really knew how to live.

"Alright, let's just pick a room and go to sleep," Zhao Dasheng stretched lazily. "This house is brand new; no one has ever lived in it since the renovation."

"As for the house we stayed in before, I'll find someone to sell it later. I certainly don't want it anymore anyway."

"You're awesome, boss!" Despite having a myriad of words in his heart, only this single sentence escaped Chang Yu's lips.

...........

In the picturesque and bird-song-filled Fuling Valley, Chang Yu and Master Hao'er sat face-to-face beside a stone table.

"My obedient disciple, you've lost this game again."

Master Hao'er gently dropped a white Go piece onto the chessboard, and thus, our young Go prodigy Chang Yu had lost yet another match.

"Master, your wisdom is as boundless as ever. For as long as I can live, I have never seen anyone play chess as brilliantly as you."

Chang Yu wore a spring-breeze smile on his face, rapidly churning out one flattering compliment after another.

"Hahaha, I've been playing Go for several centuries after all. If I couldn't even defeat a little toddler like you, wouldn't all these years have been lived in vain?"

Master Hao'er possessed not an ounce of false modesty, throwing his head back in hearty, triumphant laughter.

"By the way, Master, you still haven't told me why my cultivation hasn't made any progress lately." Chang Yu's expression turned deeply gloomy, resembling someone suffering from severe constipation for months.

Recently, whether in the real world or within Fuling Valley, Chang Yu's cultivation of true qi had completely stalled.

No matter how many spirit stones he absorbed or how long he spent meditating in the valley, he could not expand the true qi within his body by even a fraction of a hair's breadth.

Had it not been for this reason, Chang Yu would never have squandered the precious time and cultivation opportunities in Fuling Valley just to play chess with this eccentric old man Hao'er.

One must know that whether in reality or within the valley, Chang Yu always plunged into silent cultivation the moment he had spare time—he was exceptionally diligent.

"You, ah, you've run into a bottleneck," Master Hao'er stroked his goatee with a gentle smile, his eyes filled with profound gratification.

Chang Yu's progress in cultivation had been far faster than he anticipated, making him feel that he had lucked into an extraordinary disciple.

"A bottleneck?" Chang Yu asked in surprise.

"Indeed, a bottleneck," Master Hao'er explained patiently.

"On the path of cultivation for our kind, one inevitably encounters various bottlenecks."

"Simply put, a bottleneck means your cultivation at the current stage has reached perfection, and you need to break through the existing tier to reach the next realm."

"You mean I'm ready to break through?" Chang Yu finally grasped Master Hao'er's meaning. "But how should I break through this bottleneck?"

"That's hard to say," Master Hao'er replied cheerfully, looking somewhat carefree.

Even though Chang Yu was Master Hao'er's sole disciple, upon learning that Chang Yu was on the verge of a breakthrough, Master Hao'er showed not a shred of worry.

"Sometimes, when the realm arrives, the breakthrough happens naturally. Sometimes, grasping the fleeting instant between life and death can trigger a breakthrough. And other times... you simply take a nap, and when you wake up, the breakthrough is achieved."

"In short, everyone's life circumstances and cultivation experiences are different. It's hard to say which method will work for you and which will be useless; such things all depend on fate."

Good grief, is it really that metaphysical? Chang Yu thought to himself.

Yet he finally understood that worrying anxiously when facing a bottleneck was utterly useless—it all came down to destiny.

Then how was he supposed to find the unique method to break through his specific bottleneck?

Chang Yu had no clue whatsoever, leaving him with a severe toothache-like ache in his heart.

"Alright, let's end today's game here."

Master Hao'er flicked his sleeve, and the chessboard and pieces on the stone table seemed to sprout legs, leaping one by one into the cuff of Master Hao'er's sleeve. Chang Yu could only watch in wondrous awe.

"My good disciple, accompany your master for a stroll in this valley. You have nothing to do anyway, so you might as well keep this old codger company."

Master Hao'er stood up with an air of breezy nonchalance and led Chang Yu for a casual walk around.

"Master, do you happen to have any high-efficacy healing medicine?" Remembering the injury he had sustained in the real world, Chang Yu decided to cast his gaze upon his cheap master's hidden inventory.

"Of course I do," Master Hao'er answered without hesitation. "Cultivators like us inevitably clash and kill; it is quite normal to refine some superior healing medicine for emergencies."

"What, are you injured?" Master Hao'er's bright, clear eyes swept up and down over Chang Yu. "Looking at you, you don't seem injured at all."

The dream world differed from the real world; Chang Yu did not carry his physical injuries from reality into this realm.

Although he was wounded in the waking world, his condition in Fuling Valley remained completely pristine.

"Isn't this just in case? What if I get hurt one day and can use it right away?" Chang Yu lied smoothly.

"Take it." Master Hao'er pulled a small jade vial from his sleeve and handed it to Chang Yu. "Use it sparingly. This is a fine treasure that countless people beg for in vain."

"Got it, Master!" Chang Yu beamed brightly, snatching the small jade vial into his hand as if terrified that Master Hao'er would retract the offer.

"You rascal!" Master Hao'er shook his head, finding him rather amusing. "Could your master possibly shortchange you?"

Speaking of which, what on earth were Master Hao'er's sleeves made of? Chang Yu always felt that his sleeves resembled Doraemon's magical pocket—whatever was needed, it was there.

It seemed... awfully formidable.

Waking up from his sleep, daylight filled the room.

Chang Yu sat up on the bed clutching the small jade vial. Beside him, Zhao Dasheng was still sawing logs in deep slumber.

Worried that something might happen to Zhao Dasheng, Chang Yu had shared the same room and bed with him last night.

Stepping on tiptoes out of bed, Chang Yu headed straight for the first-floor bathroom.

Stripping off his outer pajamas, Chang Yu stood before the mirror and meticulously poured the powder from the small jade vial onto his newly stitched wound.

The medicine was powdery, looking somewhat like baking soda. Remembering Master Hao'er's frugal instructions, Chang Yu poured only a tiny pinch onto the area.

Ah, diligence and frugality—nothing wrong with that!

A faint wave of coolness drifted from the wound, akin to sipping a refreshing herbal tea during the scorching dog days of summer, leaving Chang Yu feeling utterly revitalized and refreshed.

He extended a finger to spread the powder evenly across his wound, and almost instantly, the pain vanished entirely.

Instead, an itch that seemed to pierce straight into his marrow radiated from his shoulder. The itching was so intense, akin to a cat's scratch, that it went right to Chang Yu's heart.

"What's going on?" Chang Yu frowned, enduring the wave after wave of itching on his own. "The itching is so unbearable, I'd rather it just kept hurting."

Yet in the next moment, Chang Yu completely reversed that thought.

To his astonishment, pink new flesh was sprouting at a rapid pace over the wound on his shoulder. In merely a few seconds, the injury had completely healed itself.

"This, this..." Chang Yu was stunned on the spot.

Witnessing with his own eyes the rapid healing of the wound on his shoulder delivered a profound mental shock to Chang Yu—a shock no less intense than seeing Xia Lin personally manifest her healing powers for him.

"No wonder it felt so unbearably itchy; the wound was growing new flesh." Now Chang Yu finally understood the origin of that agonizing itch.

Chang Yu took a pair of scissors, snipped the threads he had sewn the previous night, and pulled the stitches out in one breath.

The injury that should have taken a full month to heal had long since vanished, leaving not even a scar behind.

Reaching out to stroke his smooth shoulder, Chang Yu marvelled in astonishment that the previously injured patch of skin was now entirely indistinguishable from healthy skin.

He tested rotating his shoulder; his movements were completely fluid and unrestricted, with no lingering pain or stiffness whatsoever.

It appeared that the injury he sustained last night was truly, completely healed.

In the span of a single night, the vibrant, energetic Chang Yu was back.

"This medicine is truly miraculous..."

"Even the legendary flesh of Monk Tang could be no better than this!"