Qin Lin immediately looked at the screen in his mind.
His Game Character had leveled up again. The notification said he could develop another six plots of Level 1 land and upgrade one plot to Level 3.
Level 3 land could grow more valuable crops.
Of course, upgrading to Level 3 required in-game coins. He had sold all the crops from his game in real life, so he had no coins left in the game.
Luckily, he'd kept all the fish he'd caught over the past few days.
He immediately sold them all, but kept the Quality 2 Wild Crucian Carp, Wild Grass Carp, and Black Carp.
Those big fish were all good stuff, so naturally he'd held on to them.
But even after selling all the fish he'd caught lately, he still didn't have enough game coins to upgrade the land to Level 3.
It seemed that the higher the land's level, the more game coins it took to upgrade.
Qin Lin simply had his Game Character pick up the tools and develop the six newly opened plots of Level 1 land.
He cleared weeds, broke up stones, and chopped down stumps. After spending some time developing all six plots, he planted new okra seeds.
He didn't plan to sell the okra from these six plots in real life. He'd sell it all in the game.
He had to develop that Level 3 plot first.
Besides, he'd need to set aside some of the land that opened up in the future for crops to sell in the game. He'd need game coins to develop land whenever his character leveled up.
Time passed.
At two in the afternoon, Qin Lin received a notice that the judicial auction was about to begin.
As the internet became more widespread, traditional judicial auctions had become less common. The courts had kept up with the times and started holding online judicial auctions.
Qin Lin logged into the local judicial auction website, where he'd already received his bidder number.
The items seized by the tax bureau had also gone up for auction.
Before long, Fuhai Villa went up for auction.
And just as he'd expected, someone else had their eye on it.
As soon as bidding began, three people took turns raising the price. Starting from the opening bid of 600,000 yuan, it went to 610,000, 620,000, 630,000... and finally reached 700,000 yuan.
The three bidders were only raising the price by 10,000 yuan at a time. They seemed rather stingy, clearly hoping to get the villa for as little as possible. They also probably had limited budgets.
Qin Lin considered the situation. He had a budget of just over 1.28 million yuan, and he had no idea how much the others could afford.
He couldn't inch the price up by 10,000 yuan like those three. People like them tended to think, If I raise it by another 10,000, maybe the others will give up. They were just banking on luck.
Besides, 10,000 yuan wasn't much pressure. Even ten bids would only add up to 100,000 yuan.
But raising the price by 100,000 yuan all at once put a completely different kind of pressure on people. It also made him look determined to win.
Qin Lin was about to raise the bid by 100,000 yuan, but before he could, a fourth bidder joined in and offered 800,000 yuan outright.
Someone else had thought the same thing as him and raised the bid by 100,000 yuan in one go.
Sure enough, the three people who'd been inching up the price by 10,000 yuan stopped bidding.
A 100,000-yuan jump was quite a shock to them. It also made it clear that their budgets were limited and they'd only hoped to get a bargain.
Now Qin Lin was the one with a headache.
He'd met a rival. The only question was how much money this person had.
"Forget it. I'll go all in. Whether I win or not is up to fate." Qin Lin muttered, then entered a bid of 1.2 million yuan—twice the opening price.
So they wanted to scare people off? Let's see who scares whom.
Besides, he'd earned this money without spending a cent.
If the other bidder outbid him, then he wouldn't have the budget. He'd just have to accept that it wasn't meant to be.
Meanwhile.
In a room, three young men were looking smugly at the computer.
One of them laughed. "I told you, raising the price by 100,000 at once would scare off those three hesitant guys. If we'd kept raising it by 10,000, we might have ended up spending more than 100,000."
When you were young, you had to have the courage to take risks and start a business. The three young men were exactly like that. They'd worked in travel planning in the city for a few years, built up some experience, and wanted to return to their hometown to start a business.
They also thought Fuhai Villa had a lot of potential, so they'd pooled their money to bid on it.
Seeing that a single jump in price had scared off the other bidders, the three were in high spirits.
"Bidder Q43 has offered 1.2 million yuan!"
The latest bid rang out from the computer.
"Damn it, someone else is trying to mess things up?" one of the young men grumbled.
1.2 million?
All three were dumbfounded when they saw the price.
He'd raised the bid by 400,000 yuan in one go?
"Is this guy nuts?"
"Seriously, he's loaded!"
The three complained.
They didn't know whether this guy was bluffing by raising the price by 400,000 yuan, but they knew they'd definitely been bluffing when they raised it by 100,000.
Now they'd scared off the others, only for someone even bolder to show up.
"Are we... still bidding?" one asked.
The other two hesitated as well. This was far beyond their budget.
One sighed. "Maybe we should call it quits. We're still young, so there'll be other opportunities."
"Let's wait a bit longer," another said.
"Then let's wait," said the third.
"Congratulations, bidder Q43. You have successfully won the auction for Fuhai Villa. Please follow the information you received through the website to make the payment and complete the relevant procedures at the court within the specified time."
Qin Lin let out a sigh of relief.
It seemed the other bidder had been bluffing too. His move had ended up scaring the other guy off as well.
Now that he'd won the villa, Qin Lin didn't want to waste time. He went straight to the court to complete the paperwork and pay the 1.2 million yuan.
However, the procedures for such a large auction were complicated. He had to collect the court's ruling and confirmation documents and payment receipt, and the court also had to issue an enforcement assistance notice so the relevant departments could cooperate...
Between the paperwork and the review, it would take at least a few days.
But once he'd paid the 1.2 million yuan and received the ruling and payment receipt, he could complete the rest of the paperwork at his leisure. After all, the auction was to recover taxes for the tax bureau. No department would make things difficult for him just for the sake of internal competition. If word got out, it would undermine the government's credibility.
That evening.
Qin Lin harvested the ripe strawberries and okra and sent them to RT-Mart. Once the day's earnings came through, his bank balance rose from just over 80,000 yuan to more than 120,000.
After that, he rode his little electric scooter to the tax bureau again to pick Zhao Moqing up after work. He wanted to tell her the good news about winning Fuhai Villa.
Zhao Moqing soon came out, beaming.
"Moqing, did something good happen today?" Qin Lin asked with a smile.
Moqing smiled. "We're getting a bigger bonus this month, so of course I'm happy. The items our tax bureau put up for judicial auction sold really well today. We recovered more than expected."
"Especially Fuhai Villa. It seems some rich guy had his eye on it. He went straight in with a bid of 1.2 million yuan, double the opening price."
"That was way more than expected. Everyone said he'd scared the others off. If someone had kept bidding for another round or two, that spendthrift who doesn't care about money would probably have offered even more."
"..." Qin Lin.
A rich guy? A spendthrift who didn't care about money?
She was talking about him, wasn't she?
Damn it, now he didn't feel like sharing the good news with her anymore.
He'd make sure the villa was thriving, then give her a huge surprise.
Moqing added, "Still, if someone can spend that much on Fuhai Villa, they'll surely put real effort into developing it, right?"
"Honestly, the villa has so much unused land. If they planted a whole sea of brilliant bougainvilleas, they'd attract plenty of visitors."
Qin Lin silently committed Moqing's words to memory.
A sea of bougainvilleas had to go on the list first.
Before you continue