Gan Qing asked, "What happened to your father after that?"

"After that, he was finally willing to work. Someone found a job for him, operating the elevator right in this building," Yang Yifan replied.

"Operating… what?"

"Oh, you don't know," Yang Yifan said. "In the earlier years, not many residential buildings had elevators. This building might look rundown and small now but back then, it was considered one of the more modern ones. A lot of people weren't used to elevators so the management committee paid to have someone in the elevator responsible for opening and closing the doors, and pressing the buttons for the required floors. No one does this job nowadays.

"Every day, from six in the morning until twelve at night, he would move a small table and stool into the elevator and sit there with a pot of steeping tea. He would chat a bit with anyone who went in. Anyone could do this job as long as they knew their numbers and it didn't require any skills or physical strength. A master of the house with an entire family, yet his salary was based on the minimum wage, not even enough for his traditional remedies. But no matter what, it was a proper job. It was much better than having him spending the whole day idling and getting up to no good with his scoundrel friends."

Yang Yifan spun her phone in her hand. That hand was a hand without even a single hangnail and was very well cared for. The flesh and bones were well-proportioned and it looked like the owner lived a pampered life. "When I was young, I even wrote words of gratitude to your shifu in my diary. But unfortunately, my dad found that diary."

Gan Qing was startled.

However, Yang Yifan didn't go on. Right then, someone in that chat group of hers that was refreshing madly sent her a private voice message. With Gan Qing's hearing ability, even if it was a normal phone that didn't leak noise, if someone in the same room made a phone call she could hear what the person on the other end was saying. Hence, she grabbed a handful of candies and prepared to go back into the house to avoid hearing the conversation.

"It's fine," Yang Yifan waved. "A proxy shopper in Europe, it's nothing serious."

After saying that, she tapped on the voice message to listen to it.

"Happy New Year, my dear!" A very sweet female voice came from the phone. From the tone, Gan Qing immediately knew that it was someone from the same line of work as her. Other than the people selling things, no one spoke like that. "I finally found for you that bag that was out of stock everywhere. There's even a discount, aren't you happy! It can be a New Year present for yourself!"

Yang Yifan looked rather lost. Perhaps she couldn't recall which model it was that she had wanted.

There were numerous dings as the other person sent a string of photos over. Then, she said, "I'll quote a price for you. The proxy fee is as per the rules and I'll give you privilege treatment since you're a regular. Hurry up and send me your preferred colour and model, darling. I'll make sure you can carry it when you leave the house on the very first day after the Spring Festival holiday."

Listening at the side, Gan Qing had goosebumps all over. She planned to try advancing her customers' status to "darlings" when she returned to her shop.

Yang Yifan skimmed through the photos indifferently. She showed her phone screen to Gan Qing and asked, "Not bad, right?"

"Not…" Gan Qing hadn't even made out whether the bag was round or flat when she saw the price the proxy shopper stated and nearly bit her own tongue. Before she could finish counting the number of zeros at the end, the message was pushed up. All at once, she didn't dare comment thoughtlessly anymore for fear of committing the offence of treating the renminbi with disrespect.

Then, she heard Yang Yifan reply easily beside her, "I don't want the black and the yellow. For the rest, I want one of each. I'll transfer the deposit to you?"

Gan Qing, "..."

She felt that she could brag to other people in the future. After all, she was someone who was neighbours with a member of the nouveau riche.

"I'm sorry, my dear," the proxy seller said in a low and gentle voice. "Right now, for the more expensive orders, I take full payment. We've known each other for so long, you trust me, don't you? Nowadays, other than orders from friends like you, I don't accept orders from anyone else."

"All right." Yang Yifan was rich and not petty with money matters. She didn't mind it. "Why have you started collecting the full payment in one go?"

"Ai, actually it's Coco," the proxy shopper hesitated a while but couldn't resist saying in the end. "Before this, I helped her get a pair of shoes from Italy. I've sent the item to her a few months already but she still hasn't transferred the other half of the payment to me. Maybe there was a problem with the shipping? But she doesn't reply to my messages and my calls to her can't get through. I can't contact her in any way now… Ai, I'm not complaining to you. We've all known each other for so long and it's just a pair of shoes. I don't mind giving them to her as a present. I'm just a bit worried about her. You seem to be on good terms with her. If you see her after Lunar New Year's, just help me remind her."

Yang Yifan raised her brows, puzzled. "Which Coco?"

The proxy shopper's laughter could be heard all the way across the ocean. "How big is your harem, oh my god! I really like how you're so cold and fickle. It was just on New Year's… New Year's Eve that you were eating steak with her."

Yang Yifan was even more puzzled. "New Year's Eve was my company's annual dinner. My skirt was too tight so I wasn't full from eating. After the dinner, I had supper to make up for it and I ate alone."

The proxy shopper fell silent for a while. Then, she sent over a screenshot of her WeChat Moments.

The few photos in it looked familiar to Yang Yifan. She took a closer look—they were all photos she had taken herself!

On New Year's Eve, she had been bored while waiting for her food and had snapped a few photos. Someone had removed the watermark, adjusted the angle of the photos, then added the caption: Meeting up.

The proxy shopper said, "Erm… There's only about ten minutes between your post and hers. I saw that the both of you seemed to be in the same place so I left her a comment asking if she saw you. She said she was meeting up with her 'gal pals.'"

Yang Yifan, "..."

The proxy shopper said, "And on Christmas, she also posted your car. Erm… this is awkward. I have always thought that the two of you were on good terms… So, you don't know about all this?"

Yang Yifan asked, "Who is this?"

Yang Yifan's WeChat contact list was so long that she couldn't go through the whole thing and there were a whole bunch of random names inside. After all, this was a time when even buying a tub of face cream would result in the shop employees chasing you for your WeChat. Everything posted in her WeChat Moments was basically about food or play. There was nothing serious, so everything was public and there were no groupings. After searching for a long while, she found the account for "Coco." She couldn't recall when she added this person. The other person had obviously put her under a filter, all she could see was a few perky selfies.

"How can there be such a drama queen!" The proxy shopper was so shocked that she forgot to make her voice higher-pitched, speaking in a very rough and frank mid-pitched female voice. "She's even in the Goddess group. Fuck, this won't do, I'm going to expose her in the group!"

Due to this interlude, Yang Yifan's chat group was once again flooded with messages, as savage as a scene of a carnage.

"Sorry you have to see that. These are people I met on an app for product recommendations and sharing," Yang Yifan said. "There are all kinds of weirdos."

Gan Qing let out an ah. Her expression was one of confusion.

"It's simple—after you buy something, you share a few photos to show off, and everyone will say how jealous they are and compliment you. Everyone in the group knows how it works so it's more effective to be vain there," Yang Yifan said. "No one will shout in your ear, 'You spend tens of thousands to buy a baggie, have you gone mad.'"

She had just finished speaking when they heard Old Master Yang's voice carry over from the living room. "Isn't it enough to have just a baggie to carry your things? She even changes them every day! How much does one pound of pork cost? If I stew pork ribs every day, it's enough for me to stew for a few years! One baggie! Ai! Is it to carry a national treasure?"

Yu Lanchuan quietly withdrew his chopsticks that were heading towards the pork ribs.

Yang Yifan said, "Grandpa, I beg you, all right? Can you please not use the word 'baggie'?"

"But it is just a baggie!"

Yang Yifan, "..."

Old Master Yang said with a heavy heart, "Regardless of whether you have or don't have money, you should live life as it is. You can save money today but what if you can't save money tomorrow? You're only how old? You still have a long way ahead of you! You have to plan for the long term, save some money! When I was your age…"

The over ninety years old grandfather started on his one century's worth of recollections of how difficult the past had been and how easy the present was in comparison. The younger generation all had a headache from his recollections and fought for the task of clearing the table and doing the dishes. All they wanted was to escape from the scene.

Gan Qing was the only who steadfastly returned to sit on the sofa. While practising using her right hand to peel an apple, she occasionally interjected with a word or two as appropriate depending on Old Master Yang's tone, her attention not entirely on the conversation, but at the very least, the old man was not monologuing to himself.

Her right hand could write and there appeared to be nothing wrong with it most of the time. It just couldn't bear much weight; if she carried the weight for too long, her hand would start to shake. When she focused her strength on her hand, it would also start to shake. The cuts she made into the apple were sometimes deep and sometimes shallow. Yu Lanchuan watched her from the side with his heart in his throat.

"...isn't that right, Xiao-Chuan?" Old Master Yang asked.

"Hmm?" Yu Lanchuan was looking at the knife in Gan Qing's hand and had not been listening at all. He answered without thinking, "Yes, you're right."

He saw Gan Qing's hand tremble and the blade slid forward half an inch, heading straight for the spot between her thumb and her index finger on her other hand.

Yu Lanchuan was even more tense than the person holding the knife. He grabbed Gan Qing's wrist, pulling it over to have a look. Fortunately, the knife in Old Master Yang's house was blunt and did not cut open her skin. It had only knocked against her hand until the area turned pale.

"That knife is okay," Old Master Yang said. "The last time, Fan-Fan held it the other way round but it didn't cut her hand."

Zhang Meizhen crossed her legs and let out a "Mmhmm" at the side.

Gan Qing raised her eyes and gave Yu Lanchuan an inscrutable look. As though he had touched a live wire, Yu Lanchuan immediately threw her hand back at her. "There's even such a cutting tool specially for disabled people now?"

"What are you saying?" Old Master Yang smacked Yu Lanchuan and looked at Gan Qing's right hand. "Girl, your hand has been like this for a long time now. Did you get someone to look at it? I know a few doctors who specialise in treating this kind of injury."

"It's fine." Gan Qing shifted the knife to her left hand. Instantly, the apple peel seemed to come loose on its own, falling down smoothly. "It doesn't affect me."

"In the future, if you need to do anything that requires fine and detailed work, it won't be convenient with just one hand," Old Master Yang said. "Are you still working as a shop attendant at Tianyi's family's shop? You can't be a shop attendant for your whole life. What plans do you have for the coming year?"

Gan Qing smiled. "I'll think about it later. In any case, I'm just one person and I also don't have a need to buy… those 'baggies.' If I can earn enough for food, that's enough."

Old Yang finally caught a young friend who was willing to listen to him talk so, of course, he wouldn't let her go easily. He was very unsatisfied with her cursory answer. "You must make plans. While you're young, you should save up more capital for yourself… I see that you are good at cooking. Back then, your shifu too…"

Gan Qing's brows twitched slightly. She didn't want to talk about this with the old man, so she picked a topic that the other person probably also didn't want to talk about, planning to end the conversation.

"He's not my shifu. I've been thrown out of the sect." Then, she asked, "Back then, Wei Xiao injured your son's muscles and bones, and ruined his martial arts abilities. Did you not bear him a grudge all these years?"

Yu Lanchuan was stunned. He looked at Old Master Yang in shock, recalling that when the old man had brought up Wan Mu Chun in the past, his words had always been brief and unclear. He never thought that there would be such a story behind it.

But right then, Zhang Meizhen scoffed at the side. "Raising a son but not educating him, that's the fault of the father. That brat had it coming for a long time!"

Gan Qing didn't think that this matter had a lot more behind it than she had imagined. She looked at one, then at the other. "Erm, Meizhen-"

Zhang Meizhen interrupted her, giving her no chance to go on. She stood up and picked up her coat. "I'm sleepy, I'm going back up to sleep."

Old Yang opened his mouth as though he wanted to ask her to stay. But before he could stretch his hand out, Zhang Meizhen had already strode off without a second thought.

Gan Qing asked, puzzled, "Did I say something I should not have said?"

Old Master Yang had chattered non-stop for the entire night. Now, he just shook his head and sat on the sofa with his back hunched, and fell into silence.

Gan Qing felt rather apologetic. She handed the peeled apple to Yu Lanchuan without thinking. "Then, I… I'll go up to check on Meizhen-jie."

When she walked to the door, Old Master Yang suddenly spoke behind her, almost inaudibly. "When I scold Fan-Fan, it's not because I don't like her spending money frivolously on material possessions. Furthermore, she's spending the money that she earned herself, so what can I say… I'm just afraid that she's obsessed with it, just like her dad, and is blinded by these worldly desires."

Perhaps it was because the old man sitting on the sofa was a very lonely sight, but for some reason, Gan Qing felt that his last sentence sounded rather ominous.

Teacher Meng-Meng spent her days submerged in the arcane arts. She might have really gained a sixth sense through close proximity.

On the second day of the Lunar New Year, a phrase popped up in the trending topics without warning—"Feast of Yanning."

The people in the whole country were lying around idly during this long Spring Festival holiday. Once they got wind of this drama, every single one of them reached out their hands, planning to feast on it. Gan Qing also followed the crowd and tapped indifferently on a post and skimmed through it. The gist of it was that there were rich people in Yanning who gathered together to do bad things under the pretext of having a private dinner party. Among those implicated were high-falutin public figures such as a certain company president, a certain official's son and so on. A large number of indecent photos and videos were leaked—they had all been censored but the readers were free to let their imagination loose.

The photos and the videos were leaked by a girl who had been paid to attend. Right now, this girl had gone missing and her family had made a police report.

The last post had a photo of the missing girl. It was pixelated, but so lightly that it seemed malicious.

Halfway through enjoying this drama, Gan Qing choked. The girl looked like the one she had seen on Yang Yifan's phone on Lunar New Year's Eve, the one called "Coco."