PART 2
From his tone, Luo Yan knew Jiang Si had been right again. She was just as shocked.
“Your family’s grave told me,” Jiang Si said, glancing at it. After hitting her son, the old woman had been squatting on the ground, eating the incense and candles. She must have been very hungry.
“Whoever told you this spot has good feng shui was lying to you. There’s no water in front, no mountains behind, it’s in the middle of a field, and it has no life energy. It’s exposed to the sun every day. Not only will it not nourish the yin energy, but it’s worse than an average grave site. You also had the audacity to build your family’s grave on top of someone else’s. Did you only think about making it tall without considering if you could handle the pressure? You’ve broken every single feng shui rule in the book and you still think it’s going to bless your descendants? Dream on.”
Jiang Si held nothing back, laying it all out. The man’s face turned green, but he didn’t dare say a word. He knew Jiang Si was a person with real abilities.
Thinking of his sick son and daughter, he gritted his teeth, a deep hatred for the half-assed geomancer boiling inside him.
“Then… what should we do?”
Jiang Si lowered his eyes, saying nothing. A red mark on his exposed arm was already starting to bruise. The man saw it and felt a little embarrassed. How is this person like a porcelain doll? All I did was pull his shirt.
He thought for a moment, then lowered his stance and offered to hire Jiang Si. “I was out of line earlier. Please, help my family. I’ll pay any amount. Just help us resolve this.”
Jiang Si looked up at the sun overhead, his long eyelashes drooping slightly to block the light. “Go find someone. Move the grave at this time tomorrow. You just need to find a place that’s shaded, well-ventilated, and not too empty.”
“Move it tomorrow? Isn’t that too soon?” The man hesitated. He had just buried his mother last week. Moving her now would cause a lot of gossip in the village.
“For every day you delay, your children will be in more danger,” Jiang Si explained the consequences clearly. “It’s your kids, so it’s your call.”
As expected, children were a parent’s greatest weakness. The man no longer hesitated.
“We’ll move it! I’ll go find someone right away. Do you have any other requests? Like spirit money? Should we prepare some?”
Jiang Si’s heart stirred. His second business deal was here!
He cleared his throat, lifting his chin slightly. “You can just get two sets of funeral goods and burn them there.”
“Can I buy them anywhere? Do you have a shop you’d recommend?”
Luo Yan knew this was her cue. She immediately stepped forward to promote Jiang Si. “You should buy from Boss Jiang! His goods are very good; he makes them all himself.”
“Okay, then I’ll follow you back to get the items later.”
The man agreed.
Jiang Si’s mood improved, and he looked at the man more kindly. The man, with things on his mind, quickly exchanged contact information with Jiang Si and left with his people.
After they were gone, Luo Yan realized it was all over just like that.
“Boss Jiang, you’re amazing. I really thought we were going to have to fight.”
Jiang Si nodded slightly. “We live in a society with laws. Fighting is bad.”
In reality, he just couldn’t win.
Luo Yan agreed. She then remembered something and asked, “They’ve already left. What do we do if the police come?”
Jiang Si turned to her with a helpless look. “I didn’t tell them where we were. How can they come?”
“Wait… you didn’t call the police?” Luo Yan was shocked. Jiang Si’s serious expression had completely fooled her.
“I don’t know where we are. How could I have given them the address?” Jiang Si replied. He knelt and went back to the pile of half-burnt ingots, relighting them.
They had already been bought; he wasn’t going to let them go to waste. Jiang Si considered himself a responsible, conscientious boss. Looking at the dazed old woman, he said in a low voice, “I’ll help you move tomorrow. Just bear with it for one more day.”
“Boss Jiang, who are you talking to?” Luo Yan asked, curious.
“No one. Just talking to myself,” Jiang Si said. He lit the items, watched them burn to ash, and only got up to leave after making sure the fire was out.
On the way back, Luo Yan kept asking Jiang Si how he knew the man’s family secrets. Since Jiang Si couldn’t tell her the truth, he made up a reason.
“I was just guessing. I didn’t expect to be right.”
“Really? You’re that good? You managed to guess all that information?” Luo Yan didn’t believe him. She tried to probe further. “I heard that people in your line of work can see things. You said that grave site had bad feng shui. Should our family’s grave be moved too?”
“No—” Jiang Si immediately denied it. “Absolutely not. Don’t think about it. I’m a staunch Marxist-Leninist and a materialist who believes in science.”
He thought for a moment and added, “I made up all that feng shui stuff. Your family has nothing to worry about. If something was going to happen, it would have happened a long time ago. Why would you have to wait until now?”
Luo Yan: “…”
That makes sense.
Jiang Si secretly breathed a sigh of relief. He couldn’t exactly tell her that he figured it all out by seeing the old woman, could he? The man clearly hadn’t burned any offerings for his mother. The old woman looked emaciated, and while her resentment might not have had much effect on adults, it would definitely impact young children. The man looked like he had both a son and a daughter, so Jiang Si had taken a shot in the dark. Who knew he’d be right?
“Have you been in this line of work for a while? I feel like there aren’t many young people doing this anymore,” Luo Yan continued to ask.
Jiang Si said with a straight face, “That’s exactly why I decided to quit my job and come back to my hometown to develop this business. It’s a traditional culture, after all. We can’t just let it die out.”
Traditional funeral culture was a traditional culture.
Jiang Si felt no guilt at all. After his parents passed away, his grandfather had wanted him to take over the family business, but at the time, Jiang Si was devoted to art and wasn’t interested. He was determined not to come back to his hometown. Now, after being ground down by society, Jiang Si had fully transformed into a modern-day wage slave. It was illogical for a wage slave to pay for his own plow to pull the mill.
After spending six months buying his own coffee to stay awake, Jiang Si finally had an epiphany.
So, he cursed out his boss, quit his job, and went home, all in one day—accomplishing something that countless others like him dreamed of but could never do in their entire lives.
“That’s true,” Luo Yan said. Hearing his words, her impression of Jiang Si skyrocketed. “Recently, Rongcheng has been planning to launch a special cultural tourism project. I’ll talk to my supervisor. We shouldn’t just focus on opera and tea ceremonies. This kind of funeral culture needs to be seen too.”
Thinking about it, she sighed softly. “It’s a shame our department doesn’t have enough talent. Promoting with short videos isn’t new anymore. It would be great if we could showcase it through other art forms.”
“It’s also a competition with a prize of 200,000 yuan. Boss Jiang, if you have any suitable friends, you can ask them to submit an entry.”
Jiang Si’s heart was stirred by the money. His eyes lit up, and he looked at her intently. “Are you serious? Is it a rigged competition?”
Luo Yan: “…I can tell you’ve had a job before.”
After reading the files Luo Yan sent, Jiang Si was genuinely tempted. But making a half-hour animated film all by himself was too much work. From the script to the storyboards, and then to the animation and special effects, it was all a huge problem.
He was an expert in 2D animation, so his primary concern was the production time. A half-hour film, with frames shot on twos, would require over 20,000 frames. Looking at the bolded, red deadline on the screen, Jiang Si shook his head regretfully. Even if he worked himself to death, he couldn’t finish it on time.
When it came to money versus his life, his life was more important.
He closed his laptop and was about to go to bed when his friend, Wang Zhao, called. A furious, sharp voice instantly filled the room, as if it intended to rip the ceiling off with sound waves.
“That scumbag Zhang Shuo! I’m so mad I could die! This can’t be the end of it!”
Jiang Si threw the phone aside. After Wang Zhao finished venting, he asked lazily, “What’s wrong with Zhang Shuo?”
Wang Zhao was silent for a moment, then said quickly, “Don’t you know that Zhang Shuo is the director of your film now?”
Jiang Si’s eyes, which had been closed, snapped open. He stared at the light on the ceiling, stunned. “What did you say?” he repeated.
“Remember Zhang Shuo? The World Averted was your graduation project together. But after you quit, he immediately put his name on it. Now they’ve even announced the release date.”
“You were the director of that film. Now it’s his project.”
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