Fang Yu scanned his face and entered the residential compound.
It was the evening rush hour, but villa compounds had low density to begin with, and few of the owners were wage earners, so there was hardly anyone about inside.
After all, it was hard to afford a detached villa on a salary alone... even a fairly out-of-the-way one in a prefecture-level city.
As far as Fang Yu knew, the most recent sale of a house with the same layout in the compound had gone for over three million Star Coins.
The rare owners who had bought their villas on a salary were usually executives at big companies, and they seldom made it home before dark.
"Number 168." Fang Yu soon reached his own front door.
While the smart lock on the gate ran its facial verification—
Fang Yu caught sight, twenty meters away, of the pretty owner of Number 167, not yet thirty, wearing a lotus-pink silk slip dress, the thin silk wrapped around her soft body, her hair slightly mussed with a strand stuck to the side of her neck, as though she had just woken up. She was directing two gardeners as they pruned the garden.
In the light of the setting sun,
her strap had slipped half an inch, baring the rounded curve of her shoulder, her hem swaying gently with her movements, her toes curling and then stretching—there was a languid charm to it that made Fang Yu look a few more times than he meant to.
She gave him a friendly nod.
Fang Yu nodded back, but something stirred in his mind: "I wonder how long this one will stay."
He had been neighbors with Number 167 for over ten years, yet he didn't know this young woman's name. He only vaguely remembered that every female owner of Number 167 seemed to be of the same type, and all about the same age.
"Uncle Lei really is consistent in that regard," the thought flashed through Fang Yu's mind.
"Welcome home!" the smart speaker said.
The gate opened.
Fang Yu stepped into his own yard. There was no garden, ornamental trees, fish pond, pavilion, rockery, or vegetable patch such as a proper detached villa ought to have... The hundred-square-meter courtyard lay completely bare.
What met Fang Yu's eyes was a pavilion close against the house, and otherwise a flat expanse paved with bluestone, like a small open-air martial arts training ground.
In fact, it was a training ground. The stones toward the middle were mostly new bluestone bricks, while those toward the outside were mostly old ones, already showing the wear of years—which made Fang Yu smile.
Over all these years, whether it was his father, himself, or his younger brother and sister, they had all trained martial arts here constantly, so the bluestone bricks naturally had to be replaced often.
"Grandfather," Fang Yu called.
"My big grandson's back?" Inside the pavilion, a reclining chair that had been laid flat rocked and turned, and an old man sat up: hair black as lacquer, complexion ruddy, with the face of a man around seventy.
Half-sitting up, a brightly illustrated magazine in his hand, he beamed at Fang Yu.
"I'm back," Fang Yu said with a smile.
"Let me see—it's been nearly a month since I've laid eyes on you. School's out?" The black-haired old man set the magazine down, smiling.
"Yeah." Fang Yu nodded.
"Then rest up while you're on break." The old man nodded. "Martial arts training is hard work, and the food at your school is awful. The cooking lady's off today, so there's no one to cook. What do you feel like eating? I'll order you some takeout... I've found a few new places lately that taste pretty good."
Fang Yu shook his head. "No need, Grandfather. Takeout isn't healthy—you should eat less of it too. I'm still a Primary Martial Artist, so I have to watch my diet."
"Takeout isn't healthy?"
The old man snorted. "Your father is always going on about eating less takeout, and I don't see him in such great shape. All he thinks about, day after day, is making money—as if you can ever make it all? He's got more white hair than I do! People who cook for themselves are angry every day, and angry people don't live long."
Fang Yu smiled helplessly.
His grandfather was named Fang Zhiyuan, already ninety years old. He hadn't had his father until his forties. At his peak he had been a level-10 martial artist; the first half of his life he'd been a man with no fixed job, and the second half, for the sake of social security and medical insurance, he'd spent twenty years as a "flexibly employed" worker.
He had now been retired for over ten years.
In today's Blue Moon Alliance, thanks to the great flourishing of martial arts, even ordinary people had excellent physiques and generally long lifespans; the retirement age had been pushed back to seventy-five.
In his grandfather's own words: "I had it all figured out at forty. Before sixty, I squander your great-grandfather's fortune; after sixty, your father supports the family. And if your father turns out unfilial, no matter—I've enjoyed myself long enough that a miserable old age would only be my due."
Fortunately,
Fang Yu's father had turned out reasonably well.
And his grandfather, ninety years old as he was, looked and moved like a man in his sixties.
"Never mind, go cook for yourself. Don't bother with mine—I'll order takeout later," Fang Zhiyuan said.
"All right." Fang Yu nodded, then thought of something. "Grandfather, when are Xiaolong and Siyue coming back?"
"Not before six thirty, I'd think." Fang Zhiyuan considered. "They've already finished the academic part of the high school entrance exam. Today they're supposed to be testing their martial talent, so they might be a bit earlier."
"Today?" Fang Yu said thoughtfully.
His younger brother and sister were both fifteen, about to graduate from middle school.
Getting into a key high school mattered enormously for getting into a Martial Undergraduate program... Many well-funded key high schools even had plenty of Advanced Martial Artists on staff as martial arts teachers, along with all kinds of scholarships.
That could save a great deal of money.
"And my dad?" Fang Yu asked.
"No idea." Fang Zhiyuan shook his head.
Fang Yu didn't press him. The relationship between his grandfather and his father was a delicate thing.
He seemed carefree, a man at ease with the world, but in truth he cared a great deal about Fang Yu and the younger two.
Yet Fang Yu also knew that his grandfather wasn't truly careless; in fact, he cared very much about him and his brother.
His mother was away year-round, venturing out to train, and his father was busy with business. So whether it was Fang Yu himself or his brother and sister, they had all been raised as children by their grandfather and a nanny.
Fang Yu understood, too, that the conflict between his grandfather and his father was simply a conflict of outlooks on life.
The saying his grandfather admired most came from a writer before the Great Sky-Burning Era: "What are a hundred years of fame, a thousand years of dominance, ten thousand years of a name passed down through the ages? Beside one thing, they count for nothing. That thing is—to live your life in the way you like."
His grandfather had chosen the way he liked, and lived his whole life that way.
"Grandfather, I'm going upstairs. Don't stay out too late—it's going to get cold later." Fang Yu gave the reminder. Wuling City sat deep in the Wuling Mountains, in western Huguang Province; even in summer the nights turned noticeably colder.
A ninety-year-old man, with one careless moment, could run into serious trouble.
In Fang Yu's heart, he still hoped his grandfather would be around for a few more years.
"I know." Fang Zhiyuan waved a hand and picked up the magazine again, getting ready to lie back down.
Fang Yu glanced at the cover—Youth Storm!
It looked like a fashion magazine.
He pushed the door open and went upstairs.
Fang Yu entered his room on the second floor.
He hadn't been home in nearly a month.
But what met his eyes was a tidy, clean thirty-square-meter room, the sheets and pillowcases brand-new, everything in its place, faint traces of water still drying on the wiped table, the window open to air the place out.
"Grandfather really went to the trouble—he even counted the days until I'd be back," Fang Yu thought with a warm smile.
Then, with his keen hearing, he caught his grandfather's muttering through the window from the pavilion, phone to his ear: "I'm telling you, my big grandson has really grown up. The moment he's back, he starts managing me—the natural order turned upside down, I swear..."
He seemed to be grumbling to an old friend.
...
Fang Yu opened his laptop and logged into the school's official website account with practiced ease.
"I wonder..."
"Whether the first batch of recommended admissions list for the school's junior-college-to-undergraduate upgrade is out yet." He clicked on the official announcements section.
Chapter 6