Chapter 3: Squandering Is Actually a Type of Skill

Upon hearing what Hong Dali said, Tang Muxin was initially elated, but her face turned ghastly pale shortly after. Even though she had decided to eventually renege on the engagement from the start, being directly told by Hong Dali that he might not want to marry her even if she were willing to upset her greatly. This was because she had always been admired and treasured by the people around her.

In fact, she had calculated and prepared for all the possible reactions and questions that Hong Dali might have had… except for this. If she said she didn’t know how to squander, she would be putting herself up against Hong Dali. If they ended up in a disagreement, he might just cancel the engagement. Then, her family’s crisis would not be resolved. But if she said that she knew how to squander, wouldn’t that be akin to telling a barefaced lie? In the end, Tang Muxin could only angrily reply, “I have no idea if I am good at squandering or not because I have never tried it before!”

“Oh, all right then.” Hong Dali had more pressing issues to attend to than wasting time wrangling with this young brat. With an emotionless expression, he said, “OK, that was all that I needed to know. If there’s nothing else, I’ll be heading out to squander. You can just hang around here for now.”

“You—” Tang Muxin couldn’t believe that Hong Dali would just cast her aside like this. With her looks and family background, the people around her were more than willing to spend their time with her. Yet Hong Dali was clearly isolating her now. Obviously startled, she angrily stamped on the floor and said, “How can you be so impolite and ungentlemanly? Are you going to just leave me here alone?” She had come here today with the purpose of getting engaged. If word got out that her soon-to-be fiancé had left her by herself and gone out after only exchanging a few words with her, that would surely be very embarrassing for her.

Ha, called it. I knew that she wouldn’t allow me to go out by myself. Hong Dali had already predicted that she wouldn’t agree. He had already more or less guessed the motives behind the Tang family’s engagement proposal, so he knew that it was unlikely that Tang Muxin would let him go out by himself. Hong Dali cheekily said, “Then come along with me, and we can go out and squander together!” As he spoke, he raised both of his hands up high into the air and declared: “I’m gonna become the Prodigal King!” 1

Tang Muxin’s pretty face went ghastly pale with anger, but there was nothing she could do except scold him. “It is my utmost shame to be associated with a prodigal like you!”

Hong Dali wasn’t concerned with how she regarded him. After they left the room, Hong Dali immediately headed over to his mother and extended his hand toward her. “Give me some money. I am bringing Xinxin out to squander.”

Tang Ruisi coughed violently again. As he was in the unfortunate position of seeking help from the Hong family, he could only pretend not to have understood Hong Dali’s words. He waved his hands at Tang Muxin and said, “Xinxin, go out and enjoy yourself with Dali. I still have some matters to discuss with your Uncle Hong.”

Hong Dali’s mother took out a card from her handbag and stuffed it into his hand, then said in a coddling manner, “Dali, find out what Xinxin likes and buy it for her. There is about 300,000 yuan on the card. If that’s not enough, I will get Aunty Liu to transfer more money into it afterward. The PIN is six zeros—be sure to remember that.”

“OK…” Hong Dali took the card from her and shrugged nonchalantly. Then, suddenly, he asked Tang Muxin, who was beside him, “How much pocket money do you usually get a day?”

Tang Muxin looked away and said, “I get 500 yuan a day. That’s already more than I need.”

“Only that much?” His mother had given him 300,000 yuan just like that, but Tang Muxin only received 500 yuan a day. Hong Dali’s nose twitched as he directly stuffed the card into Tang Muxin’s dress pocket. “Take this money as a gift for our initial meeting, then.” After which, he reached out his hand to his mother again and said, “I have finished spending the money, give me some more.”

His mother looked ludicrously at him, and his father almost spat out the water in his mouth. He quickly took out another card for Hong Dali. “You brat, take this card, then. The PIN is the same as the other card, six zeros. There should be about 500,000 yuan on it, which should be enough for you to spend as you like.”

Hong Dali took the card from him. It was already close to 8:30 PM now. Taking into account the time required for travel, he estimated that he only had about three hours left to complete his mission. Time waited for no man. Completing his squandering mission and earning those attribute points was the highest priority right now. Without another word, Hong Dali dragged Tang Muxin and walked off. “We will be leaving now to go squander.”

Tang Muxin said unwillingly, “You’re the one who is going out to squander, not me. I won’t be learning that from you.

“This child, sigh…” Hong Dali’s father sighed helplessly. Shaking his head, he said with a bitter laugh, “We’ve probably spoiled him too much, haha.”

“It’s… not really that bad…” Tang Ruisi honestly had no idea how he should react, so he could only give a slight chuckle and not express an opinion. Meanwhile, he had already secretly made up his mind to renege on the engagement once his business got back on track.

Regarding the intentions of Tang Ruisi and his family, Hong Dali had already more or less figured them out. However, he was not totally bothered by this right now. In this current body of his, the attributes of each individual stat were so low that it was almost outrageous. The most important thing right now was to squander away some money to increase his attributes. Otherwise, with a dick half the size of his little pinky… Even if Tang Muxin were to strip herself bare and lay on the bed in front of him, he would probably be unable to do anything about it at all.

Actually, Hong Dali could now understand the pain and anguish of this body’s previous owner.

With such a weak and sickly body and a dick so small, even procreation would be a challenge for him. Thus, what else could he have done besides squander money? There had in fact been some justification in what the original owner of this body had done. It was totally excusable!

When the two of them came out of the Hong family’s villa, Hong Dali started looking left and right. He wasn’t someone who hadn’t seen the world before. Even if he had never personally experienced some things before, he had still at least seen such luxurious villas while browsing the internet. But this was the first time that he had come across a family occupying an entire hill by themselves. Seeing the surrounding forest with no end in sight, Hong Dali couldn’t help but feel like swearing. Just how big was this place?

Originally, what he’d had in mind regarding the size of his home had only been on the scale of the home that was owned by the CEO of a certain Qiuqiu IT corporation. That level of wealth would already be enough for him to live comfortably. But that image he’d had in mind totally paled in comparison with what he was seeing in front of him right now. Even those villas in his previous world that had been worth billions seemed like nothing at all compared to this.

Although the land valuation here was probably incomparable to that of Beijing or Shanghai in his previous world, from what he knew, Hong Dali could still perceive how incredulously wealthy his family was. For one, the open field garden surrounding the villa was at least the size of two football fields. That alone would already be worth an incredible amount of money. In the center was a road measuring 15 meters wide that connected to the main road at the foot of the hill. Precious ginkgo trees that were unusually tall and lush were lined up along the entire length of the road. About these trees, they weren’t as simple as they looked. All of them should be at least several hundreds of years of age. Disregarding the trees themselves, just the transportation costs alone were already extremely expensive. Moreover, most of them were about as thick as the width of an average adult human, so one could only wonder how such a neat and consistent arrangement had been achieved.

Not only that, when Hong Dali brought Tang Muxin with him and took an unknown-brand limousine down to the foot of the hill, he saw two blood-red jade lion statues outside of the gate. They were about three meters tall and looked very ferocious. Hong Dali couldn’t help but want to swear at that. The only time he had ever seen such a massive statue back in his previous world was when he had traveled to Beijing on holiday and spotted something similar outside the front doors of a certain country’s bank. But that statue had only been made out of stone and was totally incomparable to these two jade statues.

From all of these observations, Hong Dali was now fully aware of how substantial his family’s net worth was.

It was something that was totally unimaginable to a country bumpkin like him.

Along the way, in addition to still being surprised by how affluent his family was, Hong Dali’s opinion of Tang Muxin improved slightly.

Sitting beside her, Hong Dali could smell a sweet orchid-like scent around him. It was so fragrant that he actually wished to take in more breaths of it. Of course, this wasn’t the main reason Hong Dali’s opinion of Tang Muxin had improved. The real reason was that Tang Muxin had not shown any signs of yearning for Hong Dali’s wealth despite the enormity of it.

She was just like a lily—light and fragrant, but not too overpowering. Her eyes might have shown some signs of amazement and even envy at first, but that had turned back into indifference very quickly.

She neither spoke nor made any actions; she just had her head down in thought about something.

After he had calmed himself down, Hong Dali suddenly asked, “Why don’t I provide for you?”[2; Usually refers to keeping a mistress]

“Go to hell! Surely you know better than me what type of a person you are, no?” Tang Muxin glanced at Hong Dali, then fished out the bank card and threw it on the car seat. “Take your card back. There is no way I will take your dirty money!”

“The bank card is innocent, so what are you venting your temper on it for? Take it back and hold onto it properly!” Hong Dali grinned with his teeth showing. “If you don’t take this money, I will cancel our engagement!” This threat was seriously a killing move, and Hong Dali didn’t believe that Tang Muxin would dare to oppose him.

Unsurprisingly, Tang Muxin’s eyes welled up with tears and nearly cried. Grieving, she said, “Y-you only know how to bully me!” Although she said that, she still took the card back eventually.

“You’re even refusing something that fell into your lap from the heavens, so I really wonder what’s going on in your mind. You don’t even want free money?” Although Hong Dali was harsh with his words, he was actually feeling very perturbed on the inside. Even at this point, he still wasn’t sure how to handle the relationship between him and Tang Muxin. He had only just arrived in this world a short while ago, so ensuring his own safety was his greatest concern right now. He had to do his best to avoid raising any sort of suspicion, so the best option now was to only engage in activities that he was sure of. “Come with me later to squander. Even if you don’t like it, you’re out with me now. You should at least accommodate me a little, right?” Most importantly, Hong Dali was too unfamiliar with this world. Therefore, he needed someone who was familiar with this world to keep him from going awry.

Tang Muxin’s cute little nose twitched as she said, “Do you not have any ambitions?” Although there was still some anger in her tone, at least she didn’t reject his offer outright. “Other than squandering, do you really not have anything else that you can do?”

“Currently speaking, there is indeed nothing that I want and can do.” Hong Dali laughed with a snigger. He suddenly changed the topic and said, “Speaking of which, squandering is actually a type of skill. Do you think that squandering money is very easy? If you do, you are wrong. For example, what are a few good ways for us to squander our money tonight? An activity that has to start from at least 100,000 yuan.”