Everyday Life

Wang Yan was woken up by his mother, Zhang Xia.

When he got up and looked at the time, it was only eight o'clock. He rubbed his face, then got up to wash and freshen up.

He sat down at the table and started eating. Breakfast was dumplings left over from yesterday.

Just as Wang Yan was about to pick up his chopsticks, Zhang Xia, who knew him particularly well, looked at him strangely. "Huh?"

Attracted by her voice, Wang Yan stopped and looked at his mother in confusion.

Zhang Xia carefully looked him over again. "You haven't lost weight, either. Why do I feel like there's something different about you?"

This wasn't strange. In the world of Dying to Survive, as Wang Yan's experience expanded, his knowledge accumulated, his wealth grew, and his status continued to rise, he had naturally developed a certain presence after managing a company with tens of thousands of employees and gaining a high degree of confidence in himself. We usually called this sort of thing "charisma."

Speaking of charisma, this stuff was seriously damn mysterious. When we knew someone's identity, status, and wealth, we would more or less feel pressured when facing them. But even when we didn't know those things, such people still gave us the feeling that they stood out from the crowd. We would feel that they weren't ordinary people.

And Wang Yan was exactly that kind of person.

When Wang Yan heard this, his heart trembled. She really is my mother. Her instincts are incredibly accurate.

He explained, "Oh, you must be seeing things, Mom. Have you been looking at your phone too much? I told you, don't keep staring at that thing. If you can't help it, go get your eyes checked and maybe have a pair of glasses made."

Hearing Wang Yan say this, Zhang Xia also began to wonder if she had been mistaken. She didn't dwell on it anymore, and cursed him with a smile. "You little bastard, you're getting bolder and bolder. Now you're even trying to manage your own mother."

Wang Yan merely chuckled foolishly and said nothing, continuing to eat with his head lowered.

After that, Zhang Xia began nagging Wang Yan.

It wasn't that Zhang Xia wanted to make his first day of the new year unpleasant. They hardly saw each other a few times a year, so now that she had caught him, she naturally had to give him a thorough lecture.

There was only one reason for her nagging: Wang Yan's lifelong marriage prospects.

Wang Yan was twenty-eight that year. Many of his friends had already married and had children, to say nothing of Zhang Xia's friends.

Zhang Xia was eager to hold a grandchild. She had arranged plenty of blind dates for him, but he had never taken a liking to anyone, which had made her terribly worried.

On this point, Wang Yan's father, Wang Dong, handled things very well. Although he also wanted grandchildren, he never said much. Wang Yan guessed that the main reason was that Zhang Xia's fighting power was too strong, and his father admitted that he couldn't compete.

Compared with a mother's love, a father's love was not as obvious, but it was particularly heavy.

Wang Yan only became more sensible after graduating and gradually started talking more with his father. He believed many people were the same. Only after truly maturing could they understand their father's painstaking efforts.

As for why, Wang Yan had discussed it with his friends before. They felt it was simply because they had been beaten. There was no other special reason.

Nowadays, most parents born in the '80s and '90s still focused mainly on lecturing, while also trying to make education entertaining. As a result, many children had good relationships with their parents and interacted with them more like friends.

But most people of Wang Yan's father's generation were uneducated, rough men. Their method of raising children was to beat them, which had caused Wang Yan to feel somewhat afraid of his father. Now that he had grown up, become sensible, and learned to understand him, he no longer got beaten. Wang Yan believed this was also the beginning of his parents growing old.

Zhang Xia continued talking beside him. Wang Yan had plenty of experience dealing with her, having practiced since childhood. On this point, his father had even more experience. After all, he had been with her for more than thirty years.

Wang Yan responded with a stream of noncommittal noises, letting everything go in one ear and out the other. Seeing that Wang Yan only nodded perfunctorily without saying anything, Zhang Xia eventually stopped, still feeling unsatisfied.

As for getting married and having children, Wang Yan did want that too. The problem was that it wasn't easy to find someone. The difficulty was simply too high.

Putting everything else aside, Wang Yan's circumstances were right there. He looked ordinary, his income was average, and he came from an average family. His parents were ordinary people who both did physical labor, and their income wasn't high. Wang Yan had never asked, but he estimated that they probably had only two or three hundred thousand yuan in savings. The only thing that reassured him was that although his parents had worked physical jobs for years and had a few minor ailments, they had never suffered any serious illnesses. That had saved Wang Yan an enormous amount of worry.

For an ordinary person like Wang Yan, getting married and having children was exceptionally difficult. This wasn't something that could happen just because he said he wanted it to.

If he looked for an ordinary woman, setting aside her past and character, the conditions she demanded were usually anything but ordinary. If he looked for someone extraordinary, Wang Yan was ordinary and couldn't measure up to her.

Another point was the social climate of recent years. Girls nowadays tended to have rather high expectations.

Moreover, Wang Yan didn't want getting married to use up all the money his parents had worked so hard to save their entire lives.

Wang Yan could only take things one step at a time and slowly see what happened.

After breakfast, he began visiting relatives from house to house to offer New Year greetings, then called some relatives who lived farther away.

The day passed amid one "Happy New Year" after another.

Starting the next day, Wang Yan began attending all kinds of gatherings.

All sorts of drinking buddies and assorted characters took turns hosting meals. Today one person would set up a table, tomorrow another would organize a round.

These were the hardest days of every year: drinking after one meal and before the next. He drank until he passed out, slept until he woke up, then drank again. He was never truly sober.

This continued until the sixth day of the new year, when everyone had to go out and make a living again. Only then was it over. The New Year had truly come to an end.

Accompanied by his parents' concern and reluctance to part, Wang Yan boarded the train to Lüda.

Wang Yan rented a place in a residential complex not far from where he worked. It had three bedrooms, one living room, one kitchen, and one bathroom, shared by three people. He lived in a secondary bedroom facing south. The room was about ten square meters, which was enough. He only slept there and usually wasn't home much anyway. The rent was 1,300 yuan a month. His workplace was in a relatively prosperous area, and he didn't want to live too far away and have to get up at dawn and return after dark. In an ordinary area, a slightly larger place would cost around 1,000 yuan.

The other two tenants were both men, though he didn't know what they did. Wang Yan had barely seen them a few times, and their schedules were different as well. In such a fast-paced society, nobody had the leisure to shoot the breeze with an unrelated person, especially not with another man. Not every shared rental was iPartment.

When Wang Yan returned to the rental, he found that nobody had lived there for quite some time. He opened the windows to air it out and gave the place a simple cleanup.

He sprawled on the bed and thought about his plans for the future.

Wang Yan had never considered changing jobs. Before obtaining the system, he had thought about switching careers, but now he actually liked his current work.

Besides, with Wang Yan's circumstances, finding a job outside sales was extremely difficult. His educational background alone essentially disqualified him. Although Wang Yan was no longer the same person, he still needed an opportunity to show that. If he didn't even qualify for an interview, what was there to talk about?

As a real-estate salesperson, his current job had one advantage above all else: it offered considerable freedom, far more than many other professions. As long as his performance was good, he could do whatever he wanted. He didn't have to sit at the office, and there was no supervisor constantly spouting nonsense at him.

There was no need to mention what happened when his performance was poor. With Wang Yan's current ability, how could he fail to produce results?

After thinking it over, Wang Yan understood.

First, he would sell houses and make money. He would pay off the tens of thousands he owed, then think about everything else.

To make money, the first thing he needed to do was change cities and change companies.

As for why he needed to change companies, that was because it was the internet age, and even real-estate sales had gone online.

There was only one company dominating the online real-estate market. It shared property listings and also allowed franchises. Wang Yan had previously worked for the leading company among them. At the time, his ability had been poor, while that company had a large platform and a good reputation, so people trusted it more. Those things still had some influence on Wang Yan now, but they were no longer the most important factors.

Thus, Wang Yan intended to find another franchise company with higher commissions. Given his current ability, he might not measure up to the various sales champions and TopSales, but he was still far ahead of the vast majority of salespeople. If his performance was good, the difference wouldn't be just thirty or twenty thousand yuan.

On his second day back at work, Wang Yan submitted his resignation to his manager. The manager made a token attempt to retain him, then approved it. Wang Yan's performance hadn't been very good anyway. He sold only one house every two or three months, so going through the motions was enough.

The next day, he went to the headquarters office and completed the procedures smoothly.

That same day, he packed his things, contacted his landlord to end the lease, and bought a plane ticket to the capital for the following afternoon.

Why the capital? Did he even need to think about it? The housing prices were high. Along with those high prices came high-income buyers. Their character wasn't something he would concern himself with—high income didn't necessarily mean good character, but they were generally not too terrible either. Those were the resources Wang Yan needed.

Leaving everything else aside, as Wang Yan sold more and more houses, he would meet more and more people. Most of them would be elites from various industries. Even if the buyer himself wasn't an elite, if he wanted to buy a home in the capital at a certain age, his family members could also become Wang Yan's targets.

The more people Wang Yan knew, and the more those people acknowledged him, the more his work would eventually become something beyond simple real-estate sales. Of course, not everyone could be maintained as a long-term connection. If nothing happened afterward, most deals would be one-time transactions. But Wang Yan was confident that he would reach that point.

That evening, he got together with some friends and said goodbye. The next day, Wang Yan flew directly to the capital.

Wang Yan hadn't told his parents. He was already a grown man; how could he still make his parents worry about him? He didn't need to imagine it. After telling them, they wouldn't sleep well until they were certain that Wang Yan had truly settled down.

After arriving in the capital, he didn't rush to rent a place. Wang Yan found an inn and paid for three days.

He then began searching for a suitable company. Two days later, Wang Yan found a branch in Xicheng. It was a franchise store affiliated with a real-estate sales website. In other words, the branch manager was the owner and could make all the decisions himself. That gave Wang Yan plenty of room to operate.

After a long talk with Boss Zhao, Wang Yan found that, setting aside sales ability, his years of experience had given him an edge over the owner in various other areas of overall ability. As a result, the owner had a good impression of him, and their discussion proceeded very smoothly.

In the end, they agreed that Wang Yan would pay the owner 5,000 yuan a month. After the website's cut was deducted, Wang Yan would receive the full commission. He also didn't have to clock in and could do whatever he wanted. Five thousand yuan was acceptable. Before leaving Lüda, he had asked around, and this sort of arrangement usually cost 2,000 yuan. After taking operating costs, housing prices, and other factors into account, Wang Yan felt that 5,000 yuan was fair.

Neither side had any objections. They put everything into the contract and completed his onboarding immediately.

After leaving, Wang Yan found a place farther away and rented a single room for 3,000 yuan a month, with one month's rent as a deposit and three months' rent paid in advance. The surroundings were nice, and the layout was the same as before, except that the living room had been partitioned into an extra room. Four people shared the apartment, and Wang Yan lived in the partitioned living room. It was on the top floor and faced the sun, making the room particularly bright and comfortable.

The next day, Wang Yan began taking action, focusing mainly on Xicheng. Whether it was new or secondhand housing, he went wherever the properties were expensive. The benefits of his high mental energy appeared once again: he could memorize more property listings, and do so more quickly.

During this period, he looked into various home-buying policies, household-registration policies, school-enrollment policies, loan policies, and so on. He also had to learn the strengths and weaknesses of the different school districts in detail, what made them good, and what made them bad. He studied the customer groups for various developments and what they did for a living.

Wang Yan was extremely anxious because the cost of developing in a new city was enormous. His credit cards were nearly maxed out. If he didn't start bringing in money soon, he would have to test his friends' willingness to help. Wang Yan didn't want to do that. Whether they were sincere or not, being able to play together was a form of fate, and he didn't want to casually put them to the test.

It wasn't that he couldn't borrow money. It would be ridiculous to claim that a person had no two true brothers. The main point was that things hadn't reached that stage yet. He could still hold on.

Wang Yan's life completely settled into a routine. Every day, he got up early to run and exercise, spent half the day viewing properties, spent the other half making cold calls, exercised at night, read and studied, then went to sleep.

Speaking of cold calls, Wang Yan truly couldn't find any other effective method. He had also opened an online channel, but all the listings there were fake, and the customers had been scared off. The results were minimal. He could only keep making cold calls and have a proper conversation whenever he encountered someone interested. That was all.

At the beginning, this really depended on luck. Even if a sales champion came, it would be useless. Unless they had profound hypnotic abilities, or perhaps worked in a pyramid scheme, nobody could make someone who didn't want to buy a house go and buy one—especially with the country imposing all kinds of restrictions.

Wang Yan kept making calls and kept arranging property viewings.

Hard work would not let a person down. Finally, after Wang Yan had worked hard for more than twenty days, luck came knocking.