Chapter 60, Part One

"Me? I will take a leave and attend your wedding." Pei Ying's voice on the other end of the phone was resolute and unquestionable; once she made a decision, very few people could make her change her mind.

She might not care whom her son married, but this future daughter-in-law was someone she had to see in person. She could not be absent from the milestone event of her only son's life.

"Then you should prepare yourself mentally," Fu Wei said calmly. "I'll issue another notice: you're going to be a grandmother."

"Xuexia is pregnant. Don't frighten my wife."

Pei Ying almost dropped the receiver. Hearing this felt as bizarre as hearing that Mars was about to collide with Earth. It had taken her years to finally realize that she was a mother, and now, all of a sudden, she was going to be a grandmother.

Over the past few years, her career had soared with every step, and she was riding high on success. Everyone congratulated her on her professional achievements, and Pei Ying thoroughly enjoyed that wonderful feeling.

Yet she had not expected her family status to rise to an even higher level—her future daughter-in-law was pregnant, and she was going to be a grandmother.

Such an overwhelming feeling of excitement was beyond words.

"Take good care of her. How about this, I'll find a suitable nanny for you two—"

Fu Wei hung up the phone.

His biological mother was always like this: either she didn't worry at all, or she meddled in everything with overwhelming enthusiasm.

***

Lin Xuexia and Fu Wei's wedding was held at a large hotel on the pedestrian street. Fu Wei had rented more than a dozen wedding cars. Early in the morning, Lin Xuexia got up and put on her wedding dress, while a professional makeup artist meticulously applied her makeup, accompanied by a dedicated filming crew to record the event.

Zhang Yuqin and Lin Yuxia, the two sisters, hovered around her, occasionally exchanging a few words. Gao Chunyan's daughter, Liu Yangqun, excitedly said, "Sister Xuexia, you look so pretty today!"

On Liu Yangqun's feet were the leather shoes she had longed for. She had already saved up thirty yuan. However, when she actually held the thirty yuan in her hands and thought about how she had saved it day by day, Liu Yangqun couldn't bear to spend it. She finally understood her mother's frugal mindset.

Liu Yangqun had originally wanted to give up on buying the leather shoes, but Lin Xuexia encouraged her to pick a pair of shoes she liked. As a result, she got the shoes, and her mother, Gao Chunyan, even specifically helped her buy a new outfit to match them.

Now, she too was wearing a pair of pretty little leather shoes, pristine white lace socks, a youthful and lively short skirt, and a knitted cardigan. Hehe, today she was dressed in a brand-new outfit to attend Sister Xuexia's wedding.

"Mom, everyone come over. Let's take another group photo." Lin Xuexia stood up, and the people around her helped lift the sweeping train of her white wedding dress. In her full regalia, wearing satin creamy-white lace gloves on her arms, she held a bouquet of vibrant red roses.

Zhang Yuqin was also dressed up splendidly today in an appropriately elegant outfit with a flower pinned to her chest. She looked at Lin Xuexia with a gaze full of gratification and relief.

Everyone stood together for photos, with Lin Xuexia in the center. After a few snapping sounds capturing several shots, Pei Ying arrived.

Zhang Yuqin was startled, and Lin Yuexia, Liu Yangqun, and the other girls and children fell silent. Every time they saw Pei Ying, it was like students seeing a strict head teacher, waiting to be reprimanded and inspected.

This in-law of hers exerted immense pressure. Even without wearing her military uniform, Pei Ying could pull off an aggressive aura in simple casual wear.

Compared to her, the eldest sister-in-law and mother-in-law who used to terrify her were nothing at all. Zhang Yuqin even found herself wondering in a daze why she had ever been afraid of Li Yinhua and Zheng Qiaoli in the past?

When she first learned of Pei Ying's identity, Zhang Yuqin had been both terrified and incredulous. She had never guessed that her son-in-law came from such a family background; previously, she had thought his parents were just ordinary cadres and had even worried he might be a scammer, but who would have thought...

Zhang Yuqin was especially afraid that Pei Ying would look down on her daughter and that Xuexia would be disliked. Yet, Pei Ying actually liked Lin Xuexia very much.

"Your daughter is very capable," Pei Ying had told her.

Before coming over, Pei Ying had looked into her daughter-in-law's past and felt that this girl had not had it easy—she was not only beautiful, but also exceptional and resilient.

She deeply admired such women.

Especially after learning the ins and outs of Xie Zitong's farce from her stepdaughter, she had laughed from ear to ear, thinking this future daughter-in-law was clever, amusing, and completely suited her taste.

***

Pei Ying was tall and strode over to Lin Xuexia's side, wrapping her arm around her waist to signal the photographer to take a group photo of them.

Lin Xuexia: "..."

This mother-in-law, who looked a dozen years younger, was a bit mischievously playful.

When Fu Wei came to pick up the bride, Zhang Yuqin didn't set up any difficult obstacles. Pei Ying, however, brought people to set up checkpoints, offered ideas to Zhang Yuqin, and watched the fun with great amusement.

Zhang Yuqin, who had initially been somewhat afraid to speak to her, gradually found herself able to exchange a few words with her.

Fu Wei carried Lin Xuexia into the wedding car, and the group happily headed to the hotel. With Pei Ying's presence, there were even more guests than expected, so they added a dozen more tables. Lin Xuexia changed into a toast-giving dress; because she was pregnant, she didn't drink alcohol and drank water instead.

After a whole day like this, the wedding finally came to an end, and the newlyweds moved into their new home.

Worried that the newly renovated house still smelled of fresh furniture and wondering if it might affect the baby, Lin Xuexia decided that for the first few months after the wedding, they would continue living in the apartment on the west side.

Finding it no trouble at all, Fu Wei simply had a doorway cut to connect the two apartments together. Since they owned the entire building anyway, the entire third floor was opened up into one unified space.

True to her word, Pei Ying brought over a nanny surnamed Wu, in her forties, who was very experienced in taking care of pregnant women. Knowing that Lin Xuexia needed someone experienced to look after her, Fu Wei figured that anyone his mother found would, at the very least, have no issues.

Nanny Wu lived in the small guest bedroom on the second floor, while Lin Xuexia and Fu Wei lived on the third floor. With the door closed, there were no disturbances. Fu Wei told Aunt Wu not to go upstairs after dark, and the couple closed their doors to live their own cozy little life.

The video footage from the wedding day was turned into videotapes, and Fu Wei kept more than a dozen copies, leaving Lin Xuexia quite speechless.

"Now you really are my wife," Fu Wei said every night as he hugged his wife to sleep, always tasting her sweetness before dozing off. He thought it was wonderful that she didn't need to wear those restrictive... pajamas.

Lin Xuexia couldn't quite handle him at times, but she had also grown used to hugging and kissing for a good half-hour every day before bed.

Kissing enhanced their marital affection. As Fu Wei kissed his wife, he felt that whether or not they went all the way wasn't so important, yet when the passion peaked, both of them would be left lingering in uncomfortable suspense.

Fortunately, they had other things to occupy their nights.

With Pei Ying's help, half of Fu Wei's six hundred thousand yuan in construction payments had been recovered, with the remaining three hundred thousand to be paid back successively next year. Fu Wei had originally planned to form a real estate company with several partners, pooling three to five million yuan to acquire land and develop a commercial residential neighborhood. However, Lin Xuexia suggested starting with the three hundred thousand yuan first, buying a moderately located piece of inexpensive land, and building two twelve-story rental apartment buildings first.

Later, they could use these two buildings as collateral to take out a bank loan of over a million yuan as startup capital for the real estate company.

"Wife, you really do... dare to think and dare to act."

From the perspective of ordinary people, there was actually no need to make things so complicated—spending a million yuan to buy land and build houses, flipping them to turn a profit of several million or tens of millions, was the norm. But choosing specifically to build two buildings without selling them, and using them for rentals instead, like Lin Xuexia suggested... was quite unusual.

Yet Lin Xuexia's plan was extremely sound. Once the two buildings were completed, there would be at least one to two hundred tenants. Regardless of how troublesome rental management might be, the buildings belonged to them and held great value; monthly rental income would reach ten to twenty thousand yuan, totaling over a hundred thousand a year, allowing them to break even in two to three years.

Then they could use the property as collateral for loans, and as housing prices rose in the future, the value of the two buildings would steadily appreciate.

In Lin Xuexia's memory, housing prices would rise very rapidly in the following years. By 1992, some high-end properties could sell for over ten thousand yuan per square meter, and by 1994, the average housing price was around six thousand five hundred. In the years that followed, although housing prices would experience fluctuations, rental rates went up every single year.

Holding several more properties for rental income meant that no matter what happened, a steady stream of rent would come in every month for the next decade. What started as ten to twenty thousand yuan a month in rent would eventually become a hundred thousand a month, totaling over a million yuan a year in the future.

Lin Xuexia pushed against the man's chest beside her. "Are you going to listen to your wife or not?"

Fu Wei smiled and pulled her into his embrace. "I'll listen to my wife. I'll build the houses, and you can collect the rent. So my wife wants to be a residential landlady, right? I'll let you live it to your heart's content."

With the decision made, the couple began discussing the purchase of the land. Lin Xuexia picked a plot near the pedestrian street. At the time, the location seemed a bit out of the way and not particularly good, but its virtue lay in its low price. The couple spent around four hundred thousand yuan to buy a very large plot of land; originally planning to build two buildings, it now looked like they could build four.

From the current perspective, this location was truly nothing to write home about, but who could have foreseen how rapidly the city would expand, turning today's remote area into a bustling and prosperous district in the years to come?

Moreover, Lin Xuexia knew that this place would be close to a subway station in the future, making transportation convenient. Although the subway was still under construction before her rebirth, she had seen the blueprint plans. In short, buying this land would definitely not result in a loss.

Zhong Xiangdong found their approach completely incomprehensible. "Old Wei, you can't listen entirely to a woman when it comes to business matters."

"Is it any trouble to build so many houses just to collect rent? Hundreds of households, collecting rent every day—you and your wife are going to work yourselves to death."

Fu Wei replied, "Listening to your wife is the only way to avoid making mistakes."

Many people were establishing real estate companies nowadays, rushing to acquire land and develop property. Fu Wei had initially felt tempted and wanted to do real estate development as well. He already had his own construction company and could assemble a suitable construction team, but he lacked experience in real estate development.

Following his wife's advice, they would build a few rental buildings first. Rental properties didn't need to be built too lavishly; tenants didn't have high demands for apartment layouts. As long as the rent was reasonable, what kind of property couldn't be rented out?

These four buildings would act like a small neighborhood, serving as practice. Once built, they would become a continuous egg-laying goose, which would benefit cash flow.

Hearing that her daughter and son-in-law planned to buy such a large piece of land with a fifty-year lease term, Zhang Yuqin was terrified.

"You're getting a piece of land like that just to build houses and collect rent?" These concepts were extremely vague in Zhang Yuqin's mind. The land her daughter planned to buy was nearly five mu—not exceptionally large, but certainly not small either—and they were going to build four buildings on it!

In the village, people fought tooth and nail for a tiny homestead plot, and only men were eligible to apply for homesteads; women didn't even get a share. Now her daughter was buying land to build houses!

Lin Xuexia said, "We bought the land, but we don't have the money to build the houses just yet..."

Fortunately, her husband was the contractor, which made everything much simpler. The couple could pool the construction funds gradually, building one block first, and as construction went on, money would slowly come in.

Once these four buildings were completed and kept for rental income, wouldn't it be equivalent to buying nearly four hundred apartments in one fell swoop?

Buying the land had practically emptied the couple's pockets, and combined with the need to save money for construction, they were stretched quite thin.

To earn more money, five more people followed Zeng Shiqing's example by buying marinated meat from her to sell elsewhere as braised pork rice. Xuejun led two apprentices while Lin Xuexia supervised from the side.

Lin Xuexia no longer did the physical labor herself; she prepared the spices and only supervised the quality control in the kitchen.

Fu Wei was busy preparing and operating the paperwork for buying the land and constructing the buildings, which were expected to break ground around March or April after the New Year. Starting in January, many workers would head home for the New Year one after another, and as the year-end approached, Fu Wei was busy with various social engagements.

Meanwhile, Lin Xuexia rented a one-hundred-square-meter shop on the pedestrian street. It was a sublease; originally a restaurant that had operated for a year before failing, the owner subleased it to her for a four-thousand-yuan transfer fee, leaving behind the original interior decorations and tables and chairs. The rent was twelve hundred yuan a month, payable every three months.

Across from this restaurant was another establishment called "Bailixiang," which was extremely busy, packed with diners at both lunch and dinner. In contrast, the struggling restaurant forced into liquidation had lackluster business and had reached the point where it couldn't keep its doors open.

The original owner of the restaurant, Sun Jindou, knowing that Lin Xuexia still intended to run a restaurant there, hesitated and trailed off: "..."

Once they finished the sublease paperwork, Sun Jindou couldn't help asking Lin Xuexia, "Is your husband a chef?"

Having previously seen Lin Xuexia in the kitchen starting to retch at the smell of raw meat, he knew it was unlikely she would be wielding a wok and ladle in the kitchen. Running a restaurant required either a husband-and-wife team or hiring a separate chef, and generally, the former was much more stable.

Lin Xuexia answered, "No."

"You'd better watch out for the restaurant across the street. They poached all the chefs I previously hired."

Sun Jindou had originally hired several skilled chefs to prop up his restaurant, but in the end, they were poached by the opposite side with higher pay. Every time he hired a new one, they poached him too, until he had no other options left. Unable to sustain the restaurant himself, he had no choice but to sublet it.

"My chefs aren't afraid of being poached." Lin Xuexia planned to run a fast-food restaurant, mainly serving quick meals like braised pork rice and curry rice. Since there were quite a few office buildings nearby, she also planned to offer a telephone-order delivery service, putting her in a completely different lane from the Bailixiang restaurant across the street.

Sun Jindou: "...I was just as confident as you are back then."

At this time, restaurant chefs were high-income earners. A skilled chef could easily make seven or eight hundred or even a thousand yuan a month, and eighty percent of a restaurant's labor costs went toward the chefs.

After getting rid of the restaurant, Sun Jindou felt immensely relieved to shake off this hot potato. He planned to look for another way to make a fortune, though he also felt quite guilty about dumping this mess onto Lin Xuexia... Sun Jindou decided he would come back to check on how her restaurant was doing after a while.