Got "Money"

The front doors of the self-built building stood wide open. The moment Ming Jiu walked in, the pungent smell of smoke hit her.

The first-floor living room held solid wood sofas and a coffee table. Several young men with brightly colored hair lounged in crooked positions, scrolling through their phones. The huge ashtray on the table was already piled high with cigarette butts.

If there really had not been a lending company in this building, Ming Jiu would have thought she had walked straight into someone's home.

When they saw Ming Jiu enter, one of the young men in a leather jacket got up and walked toward her. "What do you want?"

Ming Jiu answered evenly, "I'm looking for Black Brother. I want to borrow money."

The young man looked Ming Jiu up and down. She wore a matching dark gray tracksuit. At 1.7 meters tall, she was only slightly shorter than him, with long limbs and a slender frame.

Her long black curls were casually tied up, and a mask covered her face, leaving only a pair of bright, calm eyes visible.

The young man withdrew his gaze. "Big Brother's upstairs. Come with me."

Ming Jiu followed him up to the third floor. He stopped in front of a room with a metal plaque for some lending company hanging beside the door.

The young man opened the door. Compared to the old self-built building, the room before her could practically be called resplendent.

The floor looked like it belonged in a hotel lobby, the walls were covered in marble veneer, and an enormous chandelier hung from the center of the room.

Mahogany sofas, a mahogany desk, a mahogany tea table, a mahogany display shelf... A heater was running as well. Behind the desk sat a crew-cut man with a face full of flesh. He wore only a black tank top, exposing a pair of exaggerated tattoo sleeves.

Ming Jiu's gaze fell on the man's face, and it matched Black Brother, whom she had seen a few times in memories from her previous life. It was definitely him.

The young man walked over to Black Brother, bent down to whisper a few words in his ear, then stepped aside.

Black Brother swept his eyes over Ming Jiu and raised his right eyebrow, which was split by a scar. His already unfriendly face became even more menacing.

"Borrow money?"

Ming Jiu nodded, her expression unchanged. "That's right. I want to borrow money. I have collateral."

She truly was not nervous. This Black Brother looked frightening, but he was a very loyal man and quite famous in the underworld.

After the natural disasters struck in her previous life, Black Brother had protected this entire urban village. Quite a few people had even come specifically to seek refuge with him.

Black Brother said, "Fine. How much?"

Ming Jiu took the property deed from her bag and placed it directly on Black Brother's desk. "Eighty million."

Two apartments and two storefronts. The apartments were in excellent locations. The storefronts had been bought a little late, and their locations were somewhat worse. Eighty million was what all the properties could sell for combined—provided she patiently waited for the right buyers.

Ming Jiu simply did not have the time.

Black Brother glanced at the red deed booklet on the desk and signaled to the young man beside him. The young man immediately began checking the documents while taking out his phone, presumably to look up property prices.

Before long, the young man handed his phone to Black Brother. Black Brother lowered his head to look at it for a while, then raised his eyes toward Ming Jiu.

"Miss, we can't give you that price."

"Didn't the person who introduced you tell you the rules for borrowing money? At most, we can give you 70%. The banks give even less, and their loans are slow to come through."

Ming Jiu did not waste words. "These properties are in very good locations and have plenty of room to appreciate. I only need the loan for one month. If I can't repay it after one month, the properties will be yours. I can sign for the highest interest rate."

She would not be repaying the money anyway. She had come here to sell the properties.

Ming Jiu said, "Eighty percent is my bottom line."

Black Brother was indeed tempted. This was a big deal. As long as he secured the apartments and storefronts, he would definitely make a profit.

"Seventy-five percent. I want ten points of interest."

Growing up, Ming Jiu's knowledge of bank lending had been limited to Baidu searches. On the way here, she had looked it up. Mortgage loan interest rates at banks were currently around 3%, and private lending could not exceed four times the bank rate. Black Brother's terms had not yet reached the legal limit.

But anything was fine—forget ten points, even a hundred points would be fine.

Ming Jiu "considered it carefully" for half a minute, then nodded and casually stated her real purpose.

"Fine, but I want gold. Today." As she spoke, her gaze swept over the clock on the wall. "Before five."

Black Brother agreed, and then the two sides haggled over the price of gold.

The current gold price was not what it had been half a year ago—back then, gold prices had skyrocketed from over seven hundred to twelve hundred. Over the past six months, gold prices had continued falling, and today's price had dropped again to 923 per gram.

Gold prices would not rise again anytime soon. Black Brother really did have plenty of gold on hand, and selling it now would not cost him anything. But there was no way he would trade with Ming Jiu at the bank price.

In the end, they settled on 950 per gram—slightly cheaper than the black market rate. According to Black Brother, he liked straightforward customers like Ming Jiu and was giving her a little discount.

Soon, the young man took photos of the property deeds and went to have someone verify the details of the properties. Right in front of Ming Jiu, Black Brother made a phone call and instructed his men to prepare the gold.

Everything went smoothly. Before three o'clock, Ming Jiu had received the contract. At Black Brother's signal, the lackey delivering the gold opened a suitcase, and the golden gleam nearly blinded Ming Jiu.

Before signing the contract, Ming Jiu deliberately touched every gold bar one by one. As she counted, the prompt asking whether she wanted to exchange them for coins kept ringing in her mind, matching the number of gold bars exactly. Only after confirming that Black Brother had not mixed in any fakes did she finally relax.

They settled the accounts, signed the papers, and collected the money—ten minutes later, two lackeys carried an eighteen-inch new suitcase downstairs for Ming Jiu.

Ming Jiu dragged the heavy suitcase out of the narrow alley alone, her heart burning hot.

The market value of the apartments and storefronts was over eighty million. At a 75% loan ratio, converted into gold at 950 per gram, that came to 63,160 grams in total.

Most of the gold bars Black Brother had brought were 100-gram bars, with 10 grams being the smallest size. Ming Jiu did not want a single yuan in cash, and when they could not make up the final 10 grams, Black Brother simply took off his thick gold chain and clipped off a small piece to make up the difference.

Mm, he was a social boss with quite a good temper.

After leaving the urban village, Ming Jiu used every ounce of strength she had to haul the suitcase, weighing more than 120 jin, into the car.

[Sis System, are you there?]

[Destroy the surveillance footage in the urban village. Don't just destroy the footage of when I appeared—destroy everything from the past two hours.]

Soon, the system prompt sounded. [Done.]

Ming Jiu opened the suitcase. More than a hundred jin of gold only filled the bottom of the eighteen-inch suitcase. She picked them up one by one and exchanged them all for coins in the system.

More than 60,000 grams of gold ultimately exchanged for 6,316 gold coins. Added to the 54 gold and 15 silver already in her account, she now had a total of 6,370 gold and 15 silver.

Rich overnight—but not quite that rich.

After spending an entire afternoon on this, she had staked all her family's real estate and still had not saved enough for even one Gene Optimization Potion...

Ming Jiu took a deep breath, closed the system panel, and started the car for home.

It was fine. She could still go farming in the wild.