Chapter 3: Setting Up a Fortune-Telling Stall, An Unexpected Encounter with a Fellow Townsman

Fearing that the 200,000 might slip away, Yang Fan immediately returned to the company and finished her resignation procedures in just one hour.

The 200,000 in severance pay and her final month's salary were deposited into her bank account right away. She first paid off all the debts the original owner had accumulated on credit cards, Huabei, Jiebei, and Baitiao.

After paying everything off, she had 6,000 left in her pocket—enough money for her to eat.

Yang Fan found a restaurant that suited her tastes. People from Jiangxi love spicy food, and she was no exception; coincidentally, this body also happened to be from Jiangxi.

In this era, goods are abundant and delicious food is everywhere. As long as you have money, you can eat anything. For someone like her who loves to eat, this was simply heaven on earth.

In the past, her master loved to lecture her, telling her not to focus too much on the desires of the palate and often restricting her from eating too much. Now that no one was keeping her in check, she could eat to her heart's content.

Mapo tofu, boiled fish, kung pao chicken, stir-fried pork with chili, twice-cooked pork... a table full of food.

"Your dishes have all been served. Please enjoy your meal."

She scooped a small spoonful of mapo tofu into her mouth and chewed. Her eyes grew brighter and brighter. Delicious!

The fusion of the smooth, tender tofu and the spicy, numbing sauce was a flavor she had never experienced before.

Every dish amazed her. She ate mouthful after mouthful, unable to stop.

In the end, she finished all six dishes and one soup she had ordered, and even polished off two bowls of rice.

When she went to pay, the waiter was stunned. He hadn't expected such a thin woman to be able to eat so much.

The meal cost over two hundred, leaving her with over five thousand.

"Ring-a-ling..."

Not long after Yang Fan walked out of the restaurant, the phone in her pocket rang. She took it out and glanced at it; the caller ID showed "Landlord."

She had an inexplicable, ominous premonition.

Sure enough, as soon as she answered, a furious female voice came through.

"Yang Fan! Are you still living there or not?! I saw that you were a young girl struggling in Beijing, so I agreed to let you pay the rent late. You've already delayed it for two months! If you don't pay the rent now, move out immediately!"

Yang Fan:...

She had forgotten. The original owner hadn't paid the rent for the past two months.

After paying the landlord the two months of back rent, the current month's rent, and the utilities, Yang Fan only had eight hundred left in her pocket.

...Well, after all that, she was back to square one.

Yang Fan comforted herself: at least she had a full meal.

Making money was an urgent matter. That night, she followed the example of others and set up a stall on the side of the road. On a piece of A4 paper, she wrote in calligraphy: "Disciple of the Three Pure Ones, Fortune Telling, 1,000 yuan per reading."

She had originally wanted to write 10,000 yuan, but from the original owner's memories, she knew that metaphysics in this world had declined and was viewed as feudal superstition. Since many people didn't believe in it, she had to painfully lower the price to 1,000 yuan.

She picked a spot at random. To her left was a vendor selling starch sausages, and to her right was one selling small trinkets. Being squeezed in the middle as a fortune teller looked strange no matter how you looked at it.

Moreover, she only had that one piece of A4 paper in front of her and nothing else. She sat on a small stool, waiting for customers.

She had chosen this spot mainly because of the starch sausage stall next to her. Not long after sitting down, she had already devoured three sausages.

Things in this world were truly delicious!

Many people walked by, each glancing at her A4 paper and then looking at her with an indescribable expression. No one stopped to ask her anything. Just as Yang Fan was eating her fifth sausage, the vendor next to her asked curiously, "Young lady, you are...!!!"

Suddenly, the person at the stall next to her shouted loudly.

"The Chengguan (urban management) are here! Run! The Chengguan are here!"

Before Yang Fan could even hear what they were shouting, the starch sausage vendor shoved the sausages into her hands with lightning speed, then *whoosh*—he pushed his cart and ran away.

It was as if something terrifying was chasing them; the surrounding vendors ran away incredibly fast.

In the blink of an eye, Yang Fan was the only one left.

Yang Fan held the starch sausages, looking blank. Had some ghost or demon arrived?

Two men in uniforms walked over and stood in front of her. "You can't set up a stall here. Pack up immediately!"

Yang Fan blinked, nimbly folded the A4 paper on the ground, tucked it into her pocket, and took another bite of a sausage. "I'm not setting up a stall. I'm just sitting here to cool off."

The two Chengguan: "..."

Did this person think they were idiots?

They had already caught so many fake Taoists from the "Three Pure Ones" lately.

"You can't set up a stall here, you can't sit here to cool off, and you can't leave paper on the ground. Please leave immediately."

A triple-threat shutdown that blocked all of Yang Fan's excuses.

Yang Fan:...Fine, she would just come back after they left.

She was someone who knew how to bend and stretch.

"Yang Fan?" As she stood up, her face was exposed to the light. One of the officers recognized her. "You're Yang Fan, right?"

Yang Fan paused. "You know me?"

He really hadn't mistaken her.

Li Kangping smiled and pointed at himself. "It's me, Li Kangping. From your village."

Li Kangping... Yang Fan searched the original owner's memories and remembered. This person was indeed from her village.

Yang Fan: "Brother Kangping, good evening."

The other colleague looked at Li Kangping with a suspicious expression: You guys really know each other?

Li Kangping: Of course I really know her!

"I heard from people in the village that you were working in Beijing, but I didn't expect to run into you here," Li Kangping said with emotion. "It's been several years since we last saw each other, right?"

"Yeah, it's been several years," Yang Fan said.

"I heard your uncle is starting a business back home," Li Kangping's expression became complicated. "Why didn't you go back home to start a business with your uncle instead of doing this kind of..."

Doing this kind of feudal superstition scam.

As a younger sister from the same village, and since they used to have a decent relationship, seeing her end up like this made Li Kangping sigh.

Yang Fan didn't listen closely to the rest of his words; her attention was entirely on the first part.

The original owner's uncle was starting a business back home! She was a second-generation rich kid with a family business!!

If that was the case, why was she struggling out here? Wouldn't it be better to go home and be a rich kid?

The original owner's parents were both dead, and her father's relatives didn't want her, so she had lived with her bachelor uncle since she was a child.

In her memories, that uncle was an excellent cook.

What was she waiting for? Go home! She had to go back and visit the uncle she had relied on for survival!

"I've been too busy with work these past few years to go back and see my uncle."

Yang Fan looked at Li Kangping and said, "Since we were fated to meet, let me give you a reading."

Li Kangping: "???"

"Don't ride in any two-wheeled vehicles for the next three days, or you will face a bloody disaster."

Li Kangping and his colleague: "???"

Having decided to go home and be a carefree rich kid, Yang Fan contacted the landlord the next day to move out. A simple cleansing spell left the room spotless, and she successfully got back her 1,500 deposit.

She used that money to buy a plane ticket home.

Being able to fly through the sky without riding a spirit beast felt very novel to Yang Fan. Her seat was right by the window, and as she looked at the azure sky outside, she couldn't help but sigh.

Except for the air being a bit worse and the lack of spiritual energy, everything else in this era was better than the world of five hundred years ago.