CHAPTER 625: CHAPTER 608: CHAMPIONSHIP BATTLE 2

Last night, the character stayed up not for anything else but because as soon as she got home, she heard something infuriatingly intolerable and was too angry to sleep.

Last year, she heard that their village was going to develop a tourist area, which would open by next year’s National Day. For their family, this was an excellent opportunity as they were planning to take advantage of it to renovate and expand their agritourism business.

Previously, it was just a small building where they ran their business, called an agritourism site, but in reality, it was just a place that served authentic rural cuisine, with the only specialty being the free-range chickens raised by their family.

Mu Ying had always cared about their family business; even when she was studying, she researched a lot and had many ideas. Last night, she happily brought up this topic, only to see her parents’ faces suddenly turn sour.

She hastily asked what the matter was, but that question unexpectedly revealed a problem.

The money for expanding the business was gone.

A few months ago, her grandmother suddenly fell critically ill, and her uncle came asking for money to save her life.

Her mother usually liked to save up Gold as an investment. Although she didn’t have much cash on hand, she had invested in some gold bars and gave some to him, but it was agreed those were a loan to her uncle, and they even made a loan receipt.

But no sooner had she loaned out the gold bars than her grandmother passed away. At that time, Mu Ying had returned home for the funeral and was completely unaware of the loan of the gold bars.

After her parents were done dealing with her grandmother’s funeral, her uncle still hadn’t returned the gold bars. Logically, since her grandmother had passed away so quickly, that money shouldn’t have been used at all.

Her mother brought it up, only for the uncle to say that before approaching her, he had already borrowed a lot of money from others because he had no other choice. He claimed he repaid most of them with the gold bars the same day, and the rest was used for their grandmother, so he couldn’t repay them yet. However, he promised that he would return the money as soon as he could.

But how could her grandmother, who was critically ill and only stayed in the hospital for a couple of days, have borrowed so much money?

The uncle then said that her grandmother had been ill for a long time but kept it from her daughter to avoid worrying her, only revealing it when he couldn’t hide it anymore.

In a nutshell, there was no money left; it had already been spent, and even showed them his bank account balance, which indeed was empty.

Recently, there was also news from her uncle’s family about starting an agritourism venture. Her parents went to inquire, and the uncle mentioned that he wanted to borrow money to start it, but hadn’t begun construction yet because he hadn’t raised enough funds, though it would be soon.

He said he also thought the agritourism would make money, gritted his teeth, and decided to start one in hopes of earning money soon to repay the money he borrowed from them.

This reason, their family couldn’t refute.

Wasn’t their grandmother’s illness quick, not costing much money? The uncle could produce a pile of prescriptions and several hospital visits from the past to block their arguments.

Although they strongly suspected that their uncle had swallowed their money to fund his own agritourism business, how else could he say he needed to borrow money, yet stayed at home every day without acting? Was he borrowing all that money over the phone? Isn’t it too risky for others, fearing it might be a scam?

Clearly, they were from the same village. Although the two families lived a bit apart, they had frequent interactions previously, and had no clue that their grandmother had been ill for some time.

And since the uncle had made a loan receipt, it indicated he indeed intended to repay the money. It sounded reasonable to outsiders, and nothing seemed incorrect about it. To report him for scamming would be unjust, as there was a loan receipt proving it was just a loan, not a scam.

Now their family was in a very passive position, extremely frustrated. The money meant for expanding their agritourism was gone. If it had really been used on their grandmother, that would have been one thing, but now, it seemed they had been tricked into lending the money out.

What was it for? Wasn’t it just to seize the opportunity to make a profit by running this agritourism business? By the time they manage to pay off the debt they owed to her family, he would possess his own agritourism business, while her family would have missed out on this developmental opportunity, not knowing how much money they could have made.

With her uncle’s usual spendthrift habits, where could he have saved any money? Without relying on deceit, his agritourism business probably would never have taken off.

Considering Mu Ying’s temperament as she remembered it, she was most likely going to storm into her uncle’s house today and confront him openly. Her parents, concerned about maintaining face, had not made a scene, but she, a student still in school, was completely typical in possibly creating one. Wasn’t her uncle, despite his age, still acting foolishly?

So last night, her character felt both the frustration of her uncle’s scheming and the excitement of about to cause trouble. Too agitated, she couldn’t sleep and stayed up all night, right?

However, Mu Ying was pondering, this character had such vivid memories of last night, even clearly planning today’s quarrel, and the emotions felt very real. Could there be another motive?

With just a month to break through her own social class and find an "evil object" in this vast world, it was almost impossible. Perhaps there were hidden clues about the "evil object" in the character’s own social relationships that just needed to be unearthed.

If that were the case, the urgent matter concerning her uncle was very distinctive.

Mu Ying decided to follow the character’s original plan and see for herself.

"Yingying, are you awake yet? Come eat!"

Hearing her mother’s voice, Mu Ying flipped out of bed and quickly changed into clothes that matched the character’s usual style, responding in her manner, "Coming!"

Having played the original owner all morning, Mu Ying felt much more familiar with the role, and her parents noticed nothing unusual.

After breakfast, she followed the original owner’s plan to stir up trouble at her uncle’s house, though she only told her parents she was going out to play.

Once she left her neighborhood, Mu Ying, sticking to the original owner’s habitual practice of taking a weapon when anticipating a quarrel, picked up a handy stick from a grove of trees.

On the way there, she rehearsed the vocabulary for the original owner’s quarrels several times and even practiced mentally a few times. She had no choice — she personally had very little experience with quarrels, far less than the original owner.

Given Mu Ying’s own temperament, if she encountered such a situation, she would definitely collect evidence quietly and then approach with confidence and justification to achieve her goal.

But the original owner was different. Affronted, she didn’t care if a major confrontation was effective; she needed to make the other party feel as bad immediately before considering anything else. Regardless of whether it could ultimately achieve her goal, and without any assurance, she would rashly confront and scold first, utterly disregarding the need to collect evidence quietly and patiently.

As Mu Ying walked, she wondered if her choice was correct — could those experienced Trialists, strong and strategic in real life, endure acting like an irrational shrew?

She imagined her stepfather quarreling and shuddered at the thought.

Her stepfather was a Trialist too, she wondered if he was in the competition.

Alas, this contest still didn’t make any sense!

Mu Ying sighed, and arriving in front of a house, raised the stick in her hand.