Chapter 402 - 260: The Perfect Life After Financial Freedom

Chapter 402: Chapter 260: The Perfect Life After Financial Freedom

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

He’s really made something of himself.

That kid Wang Hao was a nobody, just a little brat. He’d only been in Peng City for a few months, and now he was back driving an Audi A4.

Needless to say, this was all thanks to Lin Chu.

...

Everything originally inside the ancestral hall had long been "invited" out. Workers were now tearing down the building while another crew laid the foundation. The plot was huge, so it looked like they were expanding it.

Lin Chu walked under a tree and looked at a pair of wooden couplets that used to hang on either side of the ancestral hall. For a moment, his heart stirred.

—Regard the affairs of the state as the affairs of your family; to fully understand the hearts of men is to have the heart of a Buddha.

He must have seen this couplet countless times as a child and a young man. He remembered it existed, but he’d never really understood its deeper meaning. It just seemed pretentious and archaic.

But now...

Looking at it again.

He suddenly felt it had a certain charm.

It had a rather grand perspective.

"Dad, who wrote this couplet?"

Lin Haifu chuckled teasingly. "You don’t even know this? Didn’t you go to college?"

"What college teaches this stuff? Stop pretending you’re so smart and just tell me."

"This is a couplet personally written by Lin Zexu, the man who destroyed the opium at Humen."

"Whoa! Are we descendants of Lin Zexu?"

Lin Chu was a little shocked. A family tree? He’d certainly never seen it, not even a glimpse. ’Who’d be interested in something like that?’

Now, though...

"Ahem... not exactly. We’re not that closely related. My grandpa said our ancestors were probably merchants in the Southern Ocean. During the war, they fled the chaos and hid here. It was all too long ago, I don’t remember the details."

"Is the family tree gone? We don’t have one?"

"The ancestral tablets only go up to my grandpa’s generation."

Lin Haifu rubbed his nose, looking a bit embarrassed as he spoke.

Honestly, he really wanted to claim a badass ancestor, but the problem was, they just didn’t have one.

Lin Chu couldn’t help but laugh out loud. He teased, "Alright then, it’ll have to be you. I hereby declare you the contemporary Patriarch of the Lin Family, in charge of everything."

Lin Haifu was speechless.

He aimed a kick at him.

Lin Chu dodged with a playful laugh.

After a moment’s thought, he took a photo of the wooden couplet to save it.

Now that he was this age, with this mindset, it was as if some attribute deep within his bloodline had automatically awakened, giving him a sense of "love for family and country."

...

The task assigned to Wang Hao was completed quickly.

The village currently had 784 registered residents: 197 elderly people and 11 college students. They handed out nearly two million yuan in total.

After the money was distributed in the village committee’s courtyard, the Lin Family’s reputation in the village shot up.

Giving out holiday money to the elderly, and now rebuilding the ancestral hall...

The Lin Family had truly made it big.

Their doorstep was about to be worn flat.

It was right around the Mid-Autumn Festival, and a constant stream of people came and went. Lin Haifu was starting to feel the pain in his tobacco and alcohol stash—at least two cases a day. Who could keep up with that?

Still, he was absolutely thrilled on the inside.

The Lin family hadn’t been this popular in generations!

After a few bustling days, once the main day of the Mid-Autumn Festival had passed, Lin Chu started to feel a bit overwhelmed by it all. Add to that his dad’s endless, creative attempts to pressure him into marriage, and he decided... to just grab Jiang Ya and leave.

’Fine, I’ll just leave, alright?’

When he first came back, he was "Little Sweet."

Now, after just a few days, he’d become "Madam Niu."

’Time to go, go, go!’

’I’ll come back when the ancestral hall is finished.’

For now, Lin Chu’s plan was this: after the Mid-Autumn Festival came the National Day on October 1st. The holidays were back-to-back, so he couldn’t be bothered to return to Peng City for the ten or so days in between.

He would wait until the opening ceremony of the golf club’s Gold Professional Open on October 6th, and then he’d head back.

As for Wang Hao, he would leave him in the village for the time being. There were still all sorts of miscellaneous things that needed his help.

The Rolls-Royce was here too, so his dad could just drive it.

He would take this opportunity to go out and have some fun.

The feeling of being a hands-off boss was just so satisfying.

His various ventures had all reached a new stage. It was no longer a matter of money, but a matter of time.

The ancestral hall back home was under reconstruction, and the processing plant was waiting to be built.

The company headquarters in Peng City was recruiting people, cultivating talent, and streamlining various processes.

The four branch companies were conquering new territories, each developing on its own.

The plane and the yacht were still under construction and had not yet been delivered.

For some time to come, at least, there wasn’t much that required his personal attention.

Lin Chu was also pondering his future plans.

His plans for the company were extremely clear.

But what about his plans for himself?

That also required serious consideration.

Fortunately, however, everything was going smoothly. He had money in hand, and the foundation of his business empire was laid. No matter what he chose to do, he had the confidence to back it up. It was simply a matter of choosing a path—which road to take, and what scenery to see along the way.

...

「Less than a day later.」

Lu City.

The presidential suite of the Atlantis Hotel.

This hotel was considered one of the most high-end and unique hotels in Lu City, on Qiong Island, and even in the entire country, its main theme being an underwater world.

Lin Chu had long heard of its fame, and now he was finally experiencing it for himself.

He arrived at noon, spent a leisurely afternoon playing by the sea, got a massage in the evening, and returned to his room to play a few hands of poker with Jiang Ya. When the night grew quiet, Lin Chu found he wasn’t tired. He poured a glass of red wine, lit a cigarette, and lay down on the sofa to continue thinking about his plans.

All sorts of ideas flashed through his mind.

Family affairs, state affairs.

Public spirit, private desires.

The present, the future.

It was as if there had always been a faint path in his heart, like a lighthouse in a vast ocean. He was constantly correcting the course of his life by its light.

As he thought about it, Lin Chu was suddenly struck with a burst of energy.

He scrambled up from the sofa, casually grabbed a pen and paper, and began to write and sketch.