Chapter 52: Returning Home in Glory

Among the entire home-buying tour group, Zhou Ziyang and Shen Xin were the only two young people of roughly the same age.

However, the difference was that Zhou Ziyang appeared significantly more mature than Shen Xin.

Although Shen Xin had already turned eighteen, she was, after all, still the kind of girl who held her mother's hand everywhere she went, playing the role of her parents' obedient child.

On the other hand, despite his young age, Zhou Ziyang gave off the unmistakable aura of an "adult" capable of making his own decisions.

To be honest, this kind of temperament is extremely captivating to well-behaved, innocent young girls.

Upon hearing that Zhou Ziyang intended to purchase a property, the sales agents immediately swarmed over with beaming smiles. Initially, they had not regarded Zhou Ziyang as a target customer at all, assuming that only the middle-aged men accompanied by their families were the potential buyers.

Now that those families had expressed a desire to look around further, the sales agents naturally shifted their focus to flattering Zhou Ziyang.

Zhou Ziyang was quite decisive in his actions. This was largely because he had a basic understanding of the property market in Nanjing University Hexi Gardens, where housing prices were currently hovering around 28,000 per square meter, only to surge to 50,000 or 60,000 three years later.

As for the specific apartment Zhou Ziyang was eyeing, due to its truly superior location, dual north-south exposure, and the bonus of two small private terraces, its price would later be hyped up to as high as 70,000 per square meter.

With such a guaranteed, risk-free investment, combined with its proximity to the school and comfortable living environment, Zhou Ziyang had no reason not to buy it.

Zhou Ziyang began discussing the specifics with the sales agent. Naturally, he would purchase it through a mortgage, though it was a pity that housing provident funds were not yet available to him, which would have saved him a sum of money. Consequently, Zhou Ziyang made a down payment of 1.25 million to secure this four-bedroom, two-bathroom east-end unit.

He casually pulled out his Centurion Black Card.

Upon catching sight of this black card, the sales agent's smile grew even more radiant. At the very least, it indicated that the young man before her was not playing games—he was genuinely a hidden multi-millionaire.

"Please wait a moment." Taking the black card with both hands, the sales agent clicked away briskly in her red-soled high heels, moving faster and more cheerfully than anyone.

During the wait, Zhou Ziyang did not idle about; he strolled around to inspect the surroundings.

The tour group consisted of about a dozen people, served by three sales agents. One had gone to retrieve the POS machine and prepare the contract for Zhou Ziyang, while the remaining two were guiding other clients to view properties. Aside from the unit Zhou Ziyang had chosen, there was still one unsold apartment next door.

Shen Xin had witnessed the entire process of Zhou Ziyang buying the property from start to finish, and it left a profound impression on her. At her age, it was difficult to imagine a boy of her own age purchasing a home as casually as drinking a glass of water.

Shen Xin's father whispered to his wife that the young man looked exceptionally capable, noting that his bank card was an ultra-premium credit card from China Merchants Bank.

"A credit card? What's so high-end about that?" his wife asked, unconvinced.

Shen's father replied, "That's where you don't understand. The minimum credit limit for that card is ten million, and they won't even issue it unless the family possesses substantial wealth."

Hearing this, Shen Xin looked at Zhou Ziyang with an even greater sense of curiosity in her eyes.

Before long, the sales agent hurried back, still wearing a beaming smile as she returned the black card to Zhou Ziyang with both hands and said, "Mr. Zhou, thank you for waiting."

Zhou Ziyang took back the black card nonchalantly.

At that moment, the other sales agents suggested that the tour group go and check out some other layouts.

Consequently, the crowd of people dispersed and left.

As she departed, Shen Xin cast one last backward glance at Zhou Ziyang, though the two of them had no further interaction.

Having signed the contract and acquired his third property in Jinling, Zhou Ziyang immediately began contacting decoration companies to arrange the interior design.

Zhou Ziyang preferred the American style, which exuded a sense of high-end grandeur. The only drawback was its high cost; combining both hard and soft furnishings, it was impossible to pull off for less than 500,000.

In his past life, when Zhou Ziyang had renovated an apartment in a small county town, he realized that home renovation truly had no ceiling—you could make a place look pretty for over a hundred thousand, yet still find aspects to dislike even after spending millions.

Therefore, this time Zhou Ziyang did not splurge extravagantly. He merely hired a decoration company to handle the basic plumbing, electrical work, and hard installations, while taking charge of the soft furnishings and interior styling himself.

Originally intending to stay in Jinling for just a few days before returning home, he ended up delayed for several days because of the renovations, and time swiftly slipped into August.

During this period, he did return home for a few days.

He drove the latest model of the black BMW 3 Series back. While this was certainly nothing worth boasting about on the internet, in the small town where Zhou Ziyang lived, a BMW 3 Series was the absolute ceiling of local luxury.

Zhou Ziyang and his mother were still living in a 60-square-meter dormitory apartment allocated by her work unit back in the previous century. Both the exterior facade and the interior decoration were old and distressingly dilapidated.

The people living there were either individuals who had spent half their lives accomplishing nothing at their work units, bogged down daily by the trivial matters of firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, and vinegar, or migrant tenants from out of town.

The tenants were relatively fine; they generally left early in the morning and returned late at night, dragging their exhausted bodies home.

The main issue lay with the middle-aged women in their forties and fifties, roughly the same age as Zhou Ziyang's mother, who had nothing better to do than gossip all day long.

To Zhou Ziyang's mother's face, they would praise her as an extraordinary woman with backbone, raising her son all by herself!

Yet behind her back, they would mock her for turning a decent life into such a miserable state, claiming she had simply let those other women get off easy.

Unfortunately, Zhou Ziyang's mother did not understand these nuances. She failed to realize that these neighbors could never empathize with her hardships; instead, they merely harbored a sense of schadenfreude, falsely believing that their own lives were superior to hers.

Ever since he was a child, Zhou Ziyang had witnessed too much of this.

Right inside this tiny dormitory building, marital squabbles and domestic violence were absolute everyday occurrences.

Incidents of husbands cheating and having extramarital affairs emerged endlessly.

Every single time, it would cause a commotion that alerted the entire floor, followed by the wife crying and the husband making a scene.

During such moments, his mother would be exceptionally proactive in trying to mediate.

The distraught wives would embrace Zhou Ziyang's mother and cry, saying, "Sister Juan! I truly admire you. I should just be like you and divorce him!"

At times like these, Zhou Ziyang's mother, Yang Lijuan, would swell with a deep sense of accomplishment, feeling validated in her own life choices.

Yet what was the reality? After their noisy rows, those couples would invariably patch things up and return to normal.

When the Chinese New Year arrived, every household would still light their festive lanterns.

Only Zhou Ziyang's household consisted of just an orphaned mother and son.

Putting up Spring Festival couplets and setting off fireworks seemed lively enough.

Yet for a household of just two people, such formal rituals felt entirely pointless.

And now, a brand-new BMW 3 Series was parked right downstairs.

A neighbor hanging laundry outside on the ground floor had long since noticed this pristine vehicle.

She wondered whose wealthy relatives were visiting.

It wasn't until Zhou Ziyang stepped out of the car that she froze in a daze for a long moment before finally daring to recognize him.

"Oh? Ziyang?"

Zhou Ziyang smiled at her and said, "Aunt Sun!"

"Goodness, it hasn't even been many days, but you look completely transformed, Ziyang! Did you just buy this car? Did your dad buy it for you?" Aunt Sun asked, taking it for granted.

Hearing this, Zhou Ziyang felt a cold chuckle rise within him, though his expression remained utterly calm and light as he replied, "As if he'd ever care."

"Then whose car is this?"

"I won five million in the lottery, so I came to pick up my mother to live a good life."

"Ah??" Aunt Sun stood there with her mouth agape for a long while, utterly speechless.