Chapter 305: Urban Card Drawing System (11)

As the father and daughter left, they carried tea leaves gifted by the abbot in their left hands and fruit gifted by the monks in their right.

Whether the tea leaves or the fruit, they were all agricultural products produced and sold by Yunqi Temple itself—

The century-old tea trees grew on the edge of a cliff; the tea leaves harvested each year totaled only a few taels after being stir-fried. The abbot had generously given all of this year's new tea to Lao Xie.

The green plums planted in the backyard, though low in yield, were crisp and refreshing. Perhaps seeing that Xie Yang liked to eat them, before they left, the monks climbed ladders and trees to pick all the green plums from the old plum trees, sifted out the best-looking ones, and packed a full bag for Xie Yang.

The father and daughter declined repeatedly, but their arms were still stuffed full.

On the way down the mountain, Xie Yang felt quite moved: the difference between one temple and another is really quite large.

Recalling the memories left by the original owner, Lao Xie had taken the original owner to climb Fuyin Mountain more than once before and had donated incense money to the temple on that mountain several times. But let alone receiving gifts, they even had to pay an extra ten yuan just to eat a vegetarian meal.

The key was that the young monk in the temple's dining hall didn't have a very good attitude either, giving people an arrogant feeling of "take it or leave it," "come or don't come."

Lao Xie likely thought of this too, and sternly lectured her: "Three feet above your head there are gods; don't judge temples and high monks casually. When praying to Buddha, you must be sincere. Don't haggle over a mere vegetarian meal; wine and meat pass through the intestines, but the Buddha remains in the heart. Ever since I went to Wufu Temple, my luck has been getting better and better, and everything I do goes smoothly. It shows that the Bodhisattva can see and hear our every word and action."

Xie Yang: "..."

Everything going smoothly—could it not be because of the "Good Luck Streak" card she sent?

Comrade Lao Xie continued: "... Of course, besides the Bodhisattva, your mother has also been protecting me from heaven..."

"..."

After returning from the temple, Lao Xie went back to the company to work.

Xie Yang processed the green plums brought from the temple. With so many plums, how long would it take to eat them fresh? It was better to soak them in alcohol.

Making enzymes was out; she didn't like that taste. Green plum wine was more to her liking.

Xie Yang absolutely refused to admit that she had developed a small addiction to alcohol.

Holding onto a wine bottle and refusing to let go is what you call an addiction; occasionally having a small drink when the mood strikes is called enjoying life.

She asked Tian Sao to buy groceries at the membership-only warehouse supermarket and bring back a case of 35-degree double-distilled sorghum liquor.

This was something she learned from a master brewer in a previous life: medicinal liquor is best made with high-concentration pure grain spirits.

But fruit wine is better suited to being soaked in thirty or forty-degree white spirits or rum.

If the alcohol content is too high, it will make the fruit wine too harsh, and you won't be able to taste the fragrance of the fruit.

"Yang Yang, your phone is ringing."

Just as she finished soaking the air-dried green plums, the phone she had tossed on the sofa rang.

Wu Jie helped bring it into the kitchen.

Seeing the caller was Zhu Qi, this girl, like Feng Xuanxuan, was one of the original owner's "plastic" friends.

More precisely, they were fair-weather friends who only kept in touch when eating, drinking, and having fun.

Xie Yang signaled for Wu Jie to put it on speakerphone.

Unexpectedly, after it connected, the one speaking wasn't Zhu Qi, but Feng Xuanxuan.

"Yang Yang, Qiqi organized a gathering and invited us to go play at a club her family invested in. You should come too! We haven't hung out together in a long time!"

"Not going."

Xie Yang refused flatly, but she suddenly remembered that in the original world, when Zhu Qi organized this gathering, she seemed to have invited quite a few people in the circle. Zhu Qi's childhood friend, Xue Ling, even wildly touted a wealth management platform.

At the time, the original owner, egged on by Feng Xuanxuan, emptied the remaining money in her card and invested it in this platform.

As a result, not long after, the platform completely collapsed, and the boss who raised the funds fled abroad. The money the original owner invested naturally went down the drain.

Now that it was her turn, she naturally wouldn't be fooled again.

But then she thought that the original owner wasn't the only one fooled at the time; there was another person who was also cheated quite miserably, and that was Chen Jiani, who had only gotten to know Zhu Qi, Feng Xuanxuan, and the others—and entered this circle—because of the original owner.

Chen Jiani was Chen Bobo's youngest daughter, and the Chen Family was one of the suppliers for Xie Family Home Furnishings.

During the summer vacation after high school graduation, Lao Xie held a grand banquet for a hundred tables at the Jiangcheng Hotel to celebrate the original owner's advancement to university, and Chen Bobo brought his youngest daughter, who was about the same age as the original owner, to offer congratulations.

Because Chen Jiani had used hormones when she was sick as a child, she was unusually fat.

And no matter how she tried to lose weight, she couldn't, so she was often mocked by classmates, and her personality became somewhat timid and insecure.

Even though her family was wealthy, she rarely went out to play.

It was only after getting to know Xie Yang that she followed Xie Yang into this circle.

At the time, seeing the original owner invest a lot of money into this wealth management platform, Chen Jiani remembered her father's instructions: to learn more from Xie Yang and to properly build up her courage.

So she gritted her teeth and invested all her savings into it.

After the P2P platform collapsed, the original owner never saw Chen Jiani again, though she vaguely heard Feng Xuanxuan mention it once: Chen Jiani is too small-minded; she was scared like that just from losing a little money.

The original owner was in a bad mood herself at the time, losing money on every investment, so she had no heart to care about others and forgot it after hearing it.

Little did she know that Chen Jiani had been so frightened by this investment collapse that she fell into a serious illness.

After coming out of the hospital, the Chen Family's business was hit by the real estate slump; although it didn't go bankrupt, the profits fell sharply.

Chen Jiani hated herself for not understanding and investing blindly, causing her family to lose a sum of money for no reason. After feeling inferior and resentful, she retreated back into her turtle shell and was no longer willing to socialize.

As her memories reached this point, Xie Yang said to the other end of the phone: "Fine, send the location of the gathering; I'll go if I have time."

Feng Xuanxuan was annoyed when she heard this, and said with a resentful tone: "You still haven't taken me off your blacklist."

Xie Yang: "It doesn't matter, just use Zhu Qi's to send it."

"..."

After hanging up, Zhu Qi turned to look at Feng Xuanxuan with a curious expression: "Did you and Xie Yang have a fight?"

"Who knows! It's simply inexplicable!" Feng Xuanxuan pouted, "Maybe her family's business has been good lately, unlike mine... she just doesn't want to play with me anymore."

Zhu Qi: "..."

She thought to herself that when Xie Yang used to play with you, your family wasn't any richer than hers.

The Feng Family had many members, and even if the annual output value of Feng Family Textile looked like a lot, when divided by the number of people, it really wasn't as much as the money in the hands of the Xie Family's father and daughter.

If Xie Yang were truly a snob, why wait until now?

However, her friendship with Feng Xuanxuan was only average; to put it bluntly, it was a plastic friendship. If one day their elders had a falling out over business matters, they, as the younger generation, would absolutely never associate with each other again.

……

On the day of the gathering, Xie Yang did not dress up elaborately as she had in the past, but instead casually chose a silk dress.

Although the price was not cheap, compared to those high-end luxury garments, this outfit was truly considered inexpensive.

Sure enough, just after getting out of the car and before even entering the clubhouse, she was mocked by a voice:

"Pfft... Xie Yang, what on earth are you wearing? Has your family gone bankrupt?"