Chapter 1701 - 692: Gathering Together

Chapter 1701: Chapter 692: Gathering Together

The manor’s original name was "Tianqiao Manor." It was one of the assets that Chen Qiaosheng, the boss of Tianqiao Group, casually picked up back when his assets were ballooning years ago.

Back in the era when pay-to-play games were rampant, Tianqiao Group could basically be called the overlord of the domestic gaming scene. Zhou Wang was just born a bit late, but if you look at people born in the 80s and 90s, pretty much all of them played Tianqiao Group’s games. It wasn’t until Tencent and Net One rose that Tianqiao Youke gradually declined.

But at his peak, Chen Qiaosheng even sat on the throne of Huaxia’s richest man, which shows how much money he had back then.

So even though he bought this manor on a whim and almost never lived in it himself, because he bought it early enough, according to what Mr. Chen casually mentioned to Zhou Wang in private, the basic land for the manor only cost a little over twenty million.

Of course, that was twenty-something million back in 2006, not really comparable to now.

The subsequent construction of the main building and landscaping of the lawn, plus all kinds of supporting facilities, along with the interior decoration and everything, cost another seventy to eighty million.

That’s where the estimate that this manor is worth over a hundred million comes from.

But... the fact that Chen Qiaosheng transferred this manor to Zhou Wang at a price of 0 yuan basically means Zhou Wang scored a massive bargain.

The main reason is that nowadays land management in Magic City is much stricter; there aren’t that many loopholes to exploit. Even in the suburbs, trying to get 10 mu of mixed commercial-residential land is extremely unrealistic. A similar manor is almost impossible to replicate.

"If you put this manor up for auction now, there’d probably be loads of people fighting over it. I feel like selling it for one or two billion would be no problem at all..."

Because his mother has been hustling in Magic City for many years and knows this stuff inside out, Young Master Zhang spoke at length while puffing on his cigar.

To ask Brother Dog face-to-face and get some clarity, he’d come along with Guo Bing, Shao Xiaoqi, Tang Yiming and the others. Right now they were sitting in the garden outside the main building waiting for news. With nothing better to do, the few of them started bragging.

"Brother Yuan, that’s a bit exaggerated. Even though Brother Dog got this place for free, the maintenance costs and property tax on a manor like this must be astronomical every year. The kind of people who can afford to live in a place like this definitely aren’t ’loads of people’... At least if I couldn’t sell it, I wouldn’t dare accept it even if you gave it to me."

Tang Yiming shook his head and laughed.

"You’ve got a point. But Mr. Chen probably won’t restrict Brother Dog from freely trading it, so that’s what I find puzzling."

Zhang Zhiyuan frowned at this point. "With Brother Dog’s deep financial foundations, how would he end up in some kind of debt crisis?"

On the way to the manor, they’d already had a heated discussion. After all, they were all well-informed heirs of established families. Judging by all the big gestures Zhou Wang usually showed, none of them believed he was someone short of money.

And if there really was some kind of crisis, there would have been warning signs. Yet Zhou Wang never showed any intention of borrowing money from them.

"You can’t speak in absolutes. My family went bankrupt once before. At the time my dad hid it from my mom and me, and we didn’t find out until the bank people came knocking. Plus in business, big ups and downs are normal. Maybe Brother Dog has some unspeakable difficulties, that’s why he hasn’t told us..."

Cheng Qing shrugged as he spoke.

"And honestly, do we really understand my uncle?"

At this point Shao Xiaoqi chimed in: "Uncle Zhou’s story is pretty legendary to begin with. He didn’t rely on his parents and somehow built a fortune in the hundreds of millions by the time he graduated college. That’s already unbelievable. So even if something happens that we can’t make sense of, I guess that would be... normal, right?"

Hearing this, everyone fell silent.

Yeah. Even if they got along great with Zhou Wang and had already spent plenty of fun times together, none of them dared claim they truly understood him.

His rise was magical enough as it was.

Young Master Zhang seemed like he wanted to say something, but after glancing around at everyone, in the end he kept quiet. He just silently took out his phone and started fiddling with it, no one knew with what.

Seeing the mood turn heavy again, Old Ruan maybe decided to lighten things up and pretended to joke: "You guys don’t need to get so gloomy. Even if Brother Dog falls from grace, he still has a whole bunch of beauties keeping him company... If it were me, I’d rather go bankrupt. I don’t even need many—just give me two or three girlfriends at Brother Dog’s standards and that’d be more than enough."

"You’re dreaming, fuck off!"

"Exactly. Getting one would already be impressive, and you still want two or three? Why don’t you just fly to heaven?"

Old Ruan’s one line instantly loosened up the atmosphere. They all couldn’t help laughing and cursing at his "greedy as hell" attitude.

It’s just that when their gaze swept over the inside and outside of the European-style building—at those women either gathered in small groups or wandering alone—their expressions were all complicated.

There was envy, jealousy, and a bit of schadenfreude... Having this earth-shattering harem blessing isn’t exactly easy to enjoy either!

"We’ve met Miss Ding before. Honestly, when I first learned about the history between Ding Yi and Brother Dog, I actually cursed him in my heart..."

"Brother Yiming, what do you mean by that?"

Guo Bing asked curiously right away.

"I was cursing Brother Dog for not knowing what’s good for him."

Tang Yiming shrugged. "Ding Yi’s got the looks, the personality, the family background, and her IQ and EQ are insanely high. She’s straight-up written like a webnovel female lead. If anyone else landed a girlfriend like that, they’d practically worship her to the skies. But Brother Dog, nope, he just didn’t know how to cherish her..."

"That’s true. I used to think Ding Yi was pretty much the perfect marriage partner."