Chapter 19: The End of Birds and Beasts
According to the system notifications, Xiang Yu had gone from being a “critically endangered creature” with barely ten days left to live to gaining nearly another half year of lifespan.
After doing the math herself, Xiang Yu figured out the exchange mechanism between visitor traffic, positive reviews, online popularity, and lifespan. If she could seize this wave of publicity and work hard enough, she might even survive until the New Year.
She finally understood why top students could stay so motivated. When every bit of effort brought a tangible reward, people naturally became more driven. The harder they worked, the more energized they became. It was even more satisfying than winning the lottery.
She was completely hooked. Right now, all she wanted was to head into the mountains and dig a few more hot spring pools with her bare hands.
Even better, she wouldn’t have to.
The system had unlocked a new area in the mountains behind the hot springs called “The Emerald Wonderland.” Along with it came an employee benefit package: a staff dormitory complete with a cafeteria.
It was exactly what Xiang Yu had been dreaming about.
On one hand, the Special Employee System required her to provide accommodation for its employees. On the other hand, her regular staff were all university students, and commuting was difficult. Aside from Young Master Liu Bo, who drove himself, the others either hitched rides with him or took the shuttle boat. They would all be graduating soon and moving out of their dorms, leaving them with nowhere to stay. At one point, Xiang Yu had even considered letting them sleep on the floor inside the hot spring resort.
But this was deep in the wilderness. There weren’t even basic cooking utensils, and food delivery wasn’t an option. They couldn’t exactly spend their days chasing wild pheasants for dinner.
A cafeteria was perfect—absolutely perfect.
Now that the visitor numbers are up, we’re finally making money. I won’t have to keep living in that leaky mud hut anymore!
I’ll hire a good chef to cook proper meals for everyone. Our employee benefits are going to be top-notch!
Because the staff dormitory had been completed and the resort’s popularity had skyrocketed, the system would soon assign two more disabled employees.
Xiang Yu was beginning to understand how it all worked. These disabled employees didn’t survive on ordinary food. Instead, they healed by feeding on things like Faith Points and public exposure. Shen Jiu’s growing online fame while working with her had improved his system evaluation, which in turn qualified Xiang Yu to receive new employees.
It was hard to call Shen Jiu “famous,” though…
The original goal had been to get his face out there, but somehow it was his butt that got exposed first. (…)
At this point, there was nothing to be done about it.
The priority now was to set up and manage an official account as soon as possible. Although Xiang Yu had turned down the MCN agency’s contract offer, she still needed a social media account to post statements, upload videos, and gradually introduce these special employees to the public.
Come to think of it, she also wondered how Shen Jiu was doing.
She had asked Liu Bo and Ji Kailang, but neither of them had seen him, and she didn’t even have a phone number to contact him.
As she pondered this, Xiang Yu looked at the rapidly climbing revenue figures in the backend of the app and decided she’d buy him a cellphone while she was in town later.
She was making money now—there was no need to be so stingy.
The man had followed her into danger despite barely knowing her. Just thinking about how he’d hobbled over on his lame leg to join a group fight made her feel it hadn’t been easy for him at all.
…Well, okay. She had a tiny selfish motive too.
After all, the guy had blown up a car, blocked bullets, and—with one kick from that supposedly crippled leg—had smashed a car door clean off. Faced with something so obviously beyond the ordinary, anyone would feel a certain sense of awe.
The system had handed out quite a few rewards in this latest gift package.
Judging by its description, Emerald Wonderland referred to an outdoor hot spring area. The staff dormitory and cafeteria appeared on the app’s map of the ancient town at the foot of the snowy mountain, where a tiny building icon had lit up in what had previously been a gray, unexplored region.
The icon itself was small, but unlocking a new area made the place finally look a bit like a proper tourist attraction.
If she didn’t expand the map soon, she’d end up running what looked like a private club.
Just the other day, a middle-aged woman had insisted on adding her on WeChat and asked her to close the resort for a day so she could bring over a hundred employees for a company retreat. She’d even asked whether the resort had a banquet hall, mahjong rooms, and KTV facilities so everyone could sing karaoke after dinner.
When a tourist attraction is located like a private club, decorated like a private club, and provides services like a private club…
People are going to assume it’s a private club.
And if it isn’t one, some wealthy lady will offer to invest the money to turn it into one.
What an insult.
Do they really think I’m the kind of person who’s desperate for money?
…Actually, she wasn’t just short on money.
She was short on life. (…)
Maintaining a steady stream of visitors was far more important than the one-time windfall from renting out the entire resort.
With the resolve of someone gambling with her life, Boss Xiang firmly turned down the wealthy lady’s sponsorship, watching a fortune that had practically reached her mouth sprout wings and fly away.
Back then, she’d sighed to herself:
“The biggest taboo in our line of work is falling in love with your customers.”
Now, with her lifespan extended, Xiang Yu felt emboldened. She was overflowing with ambition for her business.
A luxury private club no longer interested her in the slightest.
If she was going to build something, she’d build a national 5A-rated tourist attraction.
Once areas like the snow-capped mountains and Heavenly Lake were unlocked, she’d take everyone trekking through the snow to spot snow leopards and dig for caterpillar fungus. The city tourists, who’d never experienced anything like it, would end up with frozen noses and bodies stiff from the cold before heading back down the mountain to soak in a steaming hot spring. Then, pleasantly exhausted and lightheaded, they’d spend the night in the cozy little town at the foot of the mountain.
That’s what you call flash-freezing to lock in the freshness, then slow-simmering over a gentle fire.
No Chinese person could resist turning themselves into such a perfectly prepared poached chicken.
Although most of the map was still grayed out and the boss herself hadn’t exactly seen much of the world either, that didn’t stop her from staring at the app’s map and daydreaming about her grand business empire.
No one looking at her now would ever guess that just yesterday she’d been an “endangered species” with barely over ten days left to live.
After indulging in her fantasy for a while, Xiang Yu hailed a taxi back to the university to meet the school administrators, who were reportedly frantic to see her.
On the ride back, her phone continued chiming nonstop with new messages.
Ji Kailang called her, and this time she finally answered.
She was so excited that her voice was practically shaking.
“Boss Yu, you’re incredible! Seriously incredible! You have no idea how many people showed up this afternoon. Your huge parking lot was completely full—the visitors’ cars were parked all the way out on the field ridges! It was absolutely packed! People everywhere—it was a scene of overwhelming excitement!”
“There were too many people and too few hot spring pools, Boss! Anyone who arrived late basically didn’t get to soak. But nobody wanted to leave empty-handed. They all grabbed bags of peanuts or walnuts, or bought a couple of chickens from the villagers before heading home.”
“The village’s free-range chickens start trembling the moment they see people coming now. And Old Man Liu at the entrance has been casting his fishing net over and over again. He’s so frugal he barely even feeds the fish, so they’re usually so skinny that nobody in the village wants to eat them. But the folks from the city think they’re fantastic—they love this kind of all-natural produce.”
To the villagers, it was like country folk marveling at city folk—except the city folk were just as enchanted by them.
Director Ji didn’t say much more. After hurriedly thanking Xiang Yu a few times, she hung up. In the background, Xiang Yu could hear what sounded like someone herding ducks.
Director Ji was busy collecting payments from tourists through Alipay, and later she’d have to exchange the digital payments for cash so the elderly villagers without smartphones could get their share.
City people wanted their chickens cleaned and ready to cook.
After slaughtering them, the birds had to be thoroughly washed at the village well and chopped into small pieces. Many young people no longer owned heavy cleavers for chopping bones, so they wanted to be able to toss everything straight into the pot as soon as they got home.
It was more work, sure.
But those extra few steps meant the villagers could sell directly at retail prices instead of letting middlemen take a cut. The customers didn’t want the chicken heads, tails, or innards, so the villagers kept those for themselves and stir-fried them into another meal.
In effect, the grain they’d fed to their chickens and ducks had been transformed into stacks of genuine cash.
It was hard to imagine what a dark day this was for all the birds and beasts of Hama Valley.
Xiang Yu opened WeChat and found that Ji Kailang had sent her more than a dozen long voice messages that afternoon.
Her excitement practically overflowed from every recording.
The first few were all expressions of gratitude.
“Thank you so much, Boss, for saving Liao Xiaopang and Pingping.”
“Grandpa Liao wants to thank you personally. He’d like to visit someday and express his gratitude.”
But after that, she completely lost herself in the excitement.
“Oh my God, Sister Yu! Sister Yu! There are so many people!”
“So many people!”
“I had Pingping and the others come over. We’re not going inside the main hall—we’re just helping outside.”
“Holy crap, these bosses are so generous!”
“Even our termite mushrooms aren’t enough to sell!”
“We’re running out of chickens to slaughter!”
“Don’t worry, Sister Yu! All of us village officials are on duty! I even brought Da Huang, the big yellow dog at the entrance, out to help keep order! We’ll make sure everything’s up to standard!”
“I’ve finally seen what a tourism economy looks like! Hahahahahahaha! Hehehehehehehe!”
She called her “Sister Yu” in every other sentence, completely ignoring the fact that Xiang Yu was three years younger than she was.
By the last voice message, she was laughing like some deranged demonic elder from a xianxia novel, her maniacal cackle lingering in the air long after the recording ended.
She also sent Xiang Yu screenshots from the village’s group chat.
The village officials were asking everyone who had red dates or sweet potatoes at home to bring them to the hot spring resort so visitors could grab a handful for free. The idea was to encourage tourists to buy the villagers’ peaches, termite mushrooms, free-range chickens, and ducks as well.
This was followed by a detailed price list and regulations.
Price gouging was strictly forbidden.
Passing off inferior goods as premium products was strictly forbidden.
Anyone caught doing either would be blacklisted by Boss Xiang and permanently banned from selling at the hot spring resort.
Apparently that warning alone wasn’t enough.
They even had Grandpa Liao—the elderly man who had shouted, “Put down roots here!” while taking charge of the earlier crisis—record a speech outside the ancestral hall.
In the video, he solemnly reminded everyone to live up to their ancestors’ expectations, never do anything against their conscience, and earn their wealth through honesty.
Although these village officials were all quite young, they clearly commanded tremendous respect in the village and knew exactly how to get things done.
Xiang Yu remembered that, before coming here, she’d stuffed two expandable batons into her bag.
It wasn’t that she wanted to assume the worst about people.
But she knew the saying: poor and isolated places often breed troublemakers.
She didn’t know whether Hama Village had once been such a place.
But by the time she arrived, people like Ji Kailang had already been stationed here for three years as poverty alleviation officials.
She marched in funeral processions wearing mourning clothes, supervised environmentally friendly funerals so people wouldn’t set off firecrackers or accidentally burn down the mountains, helped Xiang Yu build relationships with the villagers, accompanied her up mountains and across rivers…
All so the villagers could earn a share of the tourism economy and make some money selling their local specialties.
Every single day he raced around the village and the surrounding hills as if fueled by inexhaustible energy.
It was almost as though that small body of hers contained a system whose sole mission was to revitalize Hama Village.
Now that’s something…
Once the resort was fully developed, she’d set aside a dedicated area for them as a specialty products market.
After replying to Director Ji’s messages, Xiang Yu received another call from the team of lawyers assembled by the university.
Even the ever-helpful Professor Wang had gone through connections at the affiliated hospital to check on the injuries of the human traffickers.
Several alumni working at local law firms added Xiang Yu to a group chat and carefully walked her through exactly how to fight the case if the other side decided to sue her.
Overall, things weren’t nearly as serious as Ning Qiao had made them sound online.
Xiang Yu hadn’t been taken to the police station as a suspect—she had simply gone there to give a statement.
After the legal team asked her about the details of the incident, they visibly relaxed and were even in the mood to joke around with her.
“So… your gang—uh, I mean, your team—is just a little too good at fighting. You barely made a move, and the other side was almost beaten to death.”
“Now, beating someone to death is definitely against the law. Even if it’s self-defense, it gets pretty complicated. What you did as an act of bravery doesn’t exactly fall under ordinary self-defense, either…”
“So, beating people into that condition definitely isn’t ideal. And then someone recorded the whole thing and posted it online. Try not to do that again.”
Then the lawyer offered his “professional advice.”
“My suggestion? If the stray dog at the entrance to the village happened to bite someone to death, that would just be an unfortunate accident.”
“You know—the little Tibetan Mastiff mixed with a German Shepherd. You never registered it, never got it licensed. You just felt sorry for the poor thing and tossed it a few bones every now and then. Then some strangers showed up, and it rushed over and bit them a bunch of times.”
“What does that have to do with you?”
Even the elite lawyers had quite a sense of humor.
Before ending the call, one of them added,
“A friend of Dean Wang’s over in the emergency department checked on those traffickers’ injuries for you.”
“You have no idea how disgusting the ER was today. The doctor doing the wound cleaning had an absolutely miserable time.”
“He also asked Dean Wang to pass along a message: if you’re going to beat up human traffickers, then beat them up. But after you’re done, don’t pour manure on them and make extra work for the medical staff.”
Xiang Yu nodded obediently.
Under the lawyers’ guidance, she created the hot spring resort’s official social media account and had professionals draft a formal statement explaining the situation.
She also called Director Ji from the Public Security Bureau to let him know that the clarification had been posted.
Once everything was taken care of, she stopped by the shopping mall to buy several mobile phones.
After a moment’s thought, she also purchased a stack of Tiangou Supermarket shopping cards and JD .com gift cards—one set for each employee.
For the past few days, the handful of university students in the staff group chat had been carrying the resort through its overwhelming surge of visitors. Their salaries had already been agreed upon in their contracts, so it wasn’t appropriate to change them on a whim. Since young people loved shopping online, gift cards were practically the same as giving them cash.
She had originally planned to follow the lawyer’s joke and actually buy a dog as well.
But she was simply too exhausted.
She’d gotten into a fight, rushed into the city, run errands all over the place, and spent the entire day answering endless phone calls and replying to countless messages.
By the time she walked out of the mall, night had already fallen.
By the time she reached Hama Valley, night had completely fallen.
The countryside was wrapped in a deep, velvety darkness. Only a bright, clear moon hung high against the black sky, while the distant mountain ridges were outlined with a soft silver glow. Around her echoed Hama Valley’s signature chorus of strange, quirky bird calls, accompanied by the refreshing night breeze rustling through the bamboo groves.
She had only been here for half a month.
Yet the way she felt now was completely different from the unease she’d experienced when she first set foot in this place.
Walking this land now filled her with an unexpected sense of peace.
A little cat chased the moonlight at her feet, trotting alongside her all the way home.
From far away, she spotted the hot spring resort, glowing brightly against the darkness.
And sprawled haphazardly across the steps outside the entrance were several familiar silhouettes.
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