As Yu Zhenghong and Yu Xueqing, the father and daughter, stood there with bewildered faces, trying to figure out the door lock.
Ansheng already, with a bottle of Mao-tai in her mouth, waltzed over to Lin Ying's house, a sly grin barely visible on her lips.
Ansheng didn't want Ah Qing to be caught in the middle of her and her superstitious dad's problems.
For this sudden incident, Ansheng already had a solution in mind.
However, it would require a bit of help from Lin Ying.
In her past life, Ansheng often traveled between Jiule City and South City because Jiule City was one of the tea-producing areas of Tie Guan Yin.
The entire Xia Dong Region was abundant in green tea, white tea, red tea, and floral tea.
The history of green tea cultivation could be traced back to the Song Dynasty when it became a famous tribute tea.
Anyone wanting to enter the mid-to-high-end tea business had to go through Xia Dong Region.
The teas here, except for floral teas that lacked stories, had centuries-long histories the sellers could share with customers.
If you want your product to fetch a high price, storytelling is an essential marketing factor.
Every year, Ansheng would stay in Xia Dong for about half a month, firstly to watch the tea competitions, and secondly to select products and negotiate prices.
Ansheng understood the customs of Xia Dong District and also the characters of the older Xia Dongren.
Ah Qing's dad had a habit of praying to gods and Buddha out of superstition.
But Ansheng knew these Xia Dongren too well, their so-called superstition was not like fanatical religious devotion; it was better described as "pragmatic superstition"... The original purpose of superstition was a quest for peace of mind amid life's uncertainties.
Anyway, praying didn't cost money, so who knows, maybe the deity would really bless them?
If it didn't work, they'd just burn less incense in the future and starve it for a few years until it behaved.
If after worshiping, things went wrong at home, they'd bulldoze the place flat.
In Xia Dong Region, except for a few special ancestral deities, any other obscure gods lived in this area as if walking on thin ice, constantly on edge.
Was Yu Xueqing's dad superstitious?
But Ansheng would say, the fist of financial power could smash any feudal superstition.
Later, borrowing a fully insured Cullinan from Lin Ying to crash into him might just straighten him out.
Ansheng believed in Sister Lin's capabilities very much.
.........
"Is Sister Lin awake yet? I came to borrow some bling for a face-slapping show..."
Ansheng dodged the busy kitchen maid and ran up to the master bedroom on the second floor, stood upright, perched on the mattress, and looked at Lin Ying wrapped in a layer of silk quilt.
Lying on the bed, Lin Ying wasn't asleep; she just felt utterly lethargic and didn't want to move.
When the fox pushed open the door with a bottle of liquor, Lin Ying had already noticed Ansheng out of the corner of her eye.
"Are you trying to buy me a drink?"
Lin Ying slowly sat up, having lain in bed for so long, that sitting up rapidly would cause brief dizziness due to insufficient blood supply to the brain.
However, she didn't care about the dizziness but looked at the white, whining creature.
The white fox was one of the few things that could interest Lin Ying after what had happened.
To explore whether the white fox was her fantasy in her dying moments or a product of a world gone mad, like a wind-up toy losing its spring, Lin Ying would secretly take a few pills to wind herself back up.
"Eek——"
"Eek! Eek!"
Lin Ying removed her hand from her throbbing temple and looked at the whining Ansheng, but unfortunately, she had no talent for understanding small animals.
She couldn't comprehend the fox's whining.
But she astutely noticed the dirt on Ansheng's front paws.
Plus, the fox seemed to take a particular liking to the texture of her bedsheet, secretly rubbing its paw pads against the comfortable fabric of the bedsheet while standing on the mattress.
[What are you really? A human or a mythical beast? Or a fictional companion I conjured before death—Lin Ying sighed inwardly with a touch of self-mockery, hoping to hear about reincarnation from your mouth.]
[Wish Fulfillment: Balance Saint (Rather than leaving her expectations unmet, let Lin Ying believe you are a life miracle with a Mohawk combed up high)]
Lin Ying, slightly light-headed from low blood sugar and dizziness, was lost in thought.
The whimsical hope manifesting in Lin Ying's thoughts as a text-form wish appeared in Ansheng's mind.
"Wow, you've unleashed the Balance Saint, girl, do I look like someone who could run to the underworld and be a Balance Saint with these scrawny arms and legs?"
After seeing Lin Ying's wish, Ansheng couldn't help but take a sharp breath.
Lin Ying had made two wishes to Ansheng: the first was to hope her family could come back after an accident.
The condition for fulfilling that wish was time reversal, and to perfectly fulfill it would be to help her out of depression.
The second wish was even more outlandish—not only did she contemplate behaving like a magical creature, but she even imagined an entirely fictional region for Ansheng to tackle.
Maxim gun a blitz on the underworld... Advantage is on my side? What nonsense!
"Sis, shall I expose my belly for you to tap the black bullseye, do I look like Doraemon to you?"
Ansheng grumbled and turned around, grabbing the phone on the bedside table, quickly entered the five-zero password, and opened the memo app.
Ansheng wrote two lines in the memo and carried it to Lin Ying, patting her thigh.
The little fox's paw softly dispelled the fantastical notions swirling in Lin Ying's mind.
[I... brought you a gift.]
[Oh, and Sis, could I borrow some jewelry, cash, and luxury bags?]
"........"
Lin Ying looked at the words on the phone, glanced at the blistering midday sun outside the window, and fell silent.
In broad daylight... could someone get possessed?
"What exactly are you?" Lin Ying, although having witnessed Ansheng's prowess in ordering takeout and dragging her out to dine, wondered.
Initially, Lin Ying comforted herself into thinking she might have overdosed on her medication, resulting in hallucinations.
But as the fox typed two lines of text on the phone using the pinyin input method, Lin Ying realized she was definitely not the one going insane—the world was losing its mind!
If the world hadn't gone mad, how could such an unreasonable scene be unfolding in front of her?
But due to her own severe condition, Lin Ying only expressed temporary surprise before her expression returned to lifeless calmness.
Ansheng turned the phone around and wrote on it:
[I'm just a handsome fox with a fluffy physique that knows how to style a Mohawk.]
[We can talk about those things later, I need some luxury goods right now to put up a good show.]
After reading the words on the phone, Lin Ying, although deeply shocked inside, nodded lightly, her indifferent expression due to her condition: "Sure, the stuff in my safe and wardrobe, you can take them yourself!"
"I don't care if you return them or not; they don't mean anything to me anyway..."
Initially thrilled to get Lin Ying's permission and ready to choose luxury goods, Ansheng felt a twinge of discomfort seeing Lin Ying return under the covers.
She had seen live people, and she had seen dead people,
but witnessing a living, breathing person quietly waiting to starve herself was something Ansheng had never seen before, not in this life or the last.
Lin Ying... appeared to be the first.
Ansheng sighed internally.
"Don't sleep! Come help!" Ansheng hopped back onto the bed, biting Lin Ying's collar, dragging her out:
"You expect me, a fox, to put the jewelry on myself?"
"Come pick out the expensive ones..."
As Lin Ying was being dragged by Ansheng, listening to the clear whining of the fox in her ear, she said with an impassive face:
"I don't understand your language; if you need to tell me something, you can type it on my phone."
[Help me change, you can't expect a little fox to change clothes by itself, can you?]
"......"
[Help me comb that tuft on my head upward!]
Inside the master bedroom, the makeover game began, and Lin Ying took a slight interest in life again.