Chapter 6: The Plot of Land
"Yea, I could use some magic in my life right now." Jin bitterly laughed as he reached the derelict plot of land near the shopping street which Ming bought from. He had totally forgotten the existence of this humongous plot of land near the Tiangong Shopping District.
It was in ruins from an arson and the previously abandoned building was still an eyesore to many. The Tiangong Shopping District had suffered a poor streak of business due to that particular plot of land since people had been avoiding it.
The land was previously owned by a pachinko franchise business and they were earning a fair share of the money. One of the shopping street district store owners was rumoured to have frequented there and lost a great deal of money.
Unable to pay his debts, the loan sharks and bank officers had been visiting his shop to get collect money. The ruckus enough for him to not earn any revenue and made his shop neighbours lost their customers too. The bankrupt store owner eventually became fed up with everything in life and decided that burning the pachinko was the best revenge he can get for ruining his life.
Of course, it was his own fault but he did not wish to admit it at all.
The funny thing is, the night he wished to burn the pachinko down, the pachinko boss was having an affair right in his office with his daughter. The store owner found out and decided to burn the boss, his daughter and himself to death on that very same night. Little did he know his precious daughter was actually 'sacrificing' herself to get money from the pachinko boss to pay the debts of her father. Her father refused to believe her and set the whole place alight.
The daughter and the boss tried to run away but the father had already locked and blocked all the exits, rendering their escape attempts useless. The boss tried to call 119 but luck had it that the phone battery died out the moment he had connected to the fire department. This was because he had been videoing the entire scene from the start of the affair until the time he tried to call 119.
According to the uploaded cloud security camera playback, the daughter eventually gave up all her hatred for a moment and embraced her dad while both of them suffocated to death from inhaling the smoke. The boss struggled, trying to put the fire out with any extinguishers he could find but was killed by a falling ceiling, which he had cut corners with when building the store.
Ever since then, the pachinko incident made the large plot of land undesirable. Anyone in the vicinity knew that the land was bad news. Some even said that the ghost of the store owner continued to live on in the place to haunt any newcomers.
It was five years since then and the plot of land that was valued highly previously was at a new low. Many developers were itching to get this piece of cash cow land but they were scared of the history of it. So, no one had offered to buy it until Ming came along. Ming probably realised that with the help of the System, Jin might have a chance to strike big with this large plot of land and inadvertently helped revitalise the Tiangong Shopping District. Perhaps this might never happen but one can only try.
"So Yun, how is the System going to help with this burnt piece of crap here. It probably needs days to clear all this junk and the reconstruction work will cost a hell lot of money. Aside from the locked inheritance, even the leftover money of 48,000ish Yuan in the bank, it is not enough to up a proper storefront." Jin had a very bad headache upon seeing this abandoned building.
His phone vibrated, and the screen automatically shifted itself to 'Store Layout' App. The starting screen was a panda wearing a construction hat and holding multiple rolls of blueprints near its chest, Jin was starting to get amused by the panda related starting screens. "Pick one of the three layouts provided by the System, I will do the rest for you while you keep yourself busy with the optional mission objective," Yun explained to him without revealing too many details.
There were three layouts aptly named Layout A, B and C. The blueprints were similar except where the storefront was located at. At the west of the plot of land? Center of the land? Or east of the land? While Jin majored in computer engineering, he had dipped his feet wet into general engineering and civil engineering since his crush was in civil. Hence, he figured out the layout in the blueprints was sound minded after analysing them.
There was not much a difference in the blueprint layouts as well so he decided to pick it at the west of the land which coincidentally faces one of the exits of the Tiangong Shopping District. At least, customers would see the shop as compared to the centre or the east where they were more secluded.
He chose Layout A and a few pictures popped up. There were the options of the interior design for the store. He had been to many dungeon supplier stores so he already had a picture of what he wants in mind. Some were downright fanciful, others were just cluttered with weird junk to make it hippy. He decided to go with something clean and minimalist.
Most dungeon suppliers had individual rooms for their customers' privacy to battle but Jin had a deep impression of a dungeon supplier store in an outlying town area where the business owner places the dimension spaces in the open and had a magic eye overseeing the battles inside the dimension space.
The magic eye then streamed the battle on the TV outside for people to view.
This method help distract the customers waiting for their turn while allowing fellow cultivators to deduce battle tactics against the monster they were going to fight. In addition, it helped to create hype for the customers waiting.
Jin explained to Yun his desires upon seeing that none of the interior layouts fits the criteria he wanted. "Hmm, what you wished for is indeed reasonable and within the budget of the System. Alright, I can approve of it. Here are the sample pictures of various interior designs of the criteria you mentioned to me." Yun said in his head.
Jin excited looked at his phone again as the screen refreshes. After ten to fifteen minutes, He decided on a certain layout and tapped on the option. "Jin, you sure you want this layout? After today, you will not able to change your layout that easily unless you opt for a major renovation. Do you need more time to think about it?"
"Yes, I decided to go with this." Jin subconsciously nodded his head to agree with Yun.
The moment he agreed verbally, the Panda with the construction hat appeared again and bowed towards Jin. A small text bubble appeared on top of the panda "Thank you for your patronage."
Suddenly construction related barricades like acoustic echo barriers fell from the skies without a single sound onto the plot of land. The echo barriers covered the whole plot of land and were at least fifty meters tall. If Jin had been there to witness it, he might have thought he had become insane. He quickly looked around to see if anyone saw the same event he did.
To his surprise, there was no one around despite the late evening probably due to the poor business in Tiangong Shopping District.
"Jin, come back tomorrow. Have a good shower and rest, you will have busy days ahead. I think. Hahaha!" Yun gave a cheeky emoji smile.
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