Chapter 93 - 81: She Is My Shen Youchu
The weather in Jiangning was exceptionally hot in September. The intensity of the military training left the freshmen dead tired. Who had the energy to fantasize about pretty upperclasswomen? Even Su Ran, who loved looking at long legs, would immediately collapse on the ground the moment the drill instructor yelled "Dismissed!"
Among the four guys, Su Ran ranked last in physical fitness.
He was the type of ’lazy’ person who would rather slouch on the couch reading novels all day than go out and exercise.
In Cao Wo’s eyes, a ’rich kid’ like Su Ran had probably fooled around with too many women and ruined his health. Aside from his powerful core strength, his overall physique was nothing special.
The class president election only served to reinforce this belief for Cao Wo.
At the time, the academic advisor had encouraged all 12 students in the class to go on stage and campaign for the position.
When it was Cao Wo’s turn, he went on stage and showed off his powerful biceps, declaring they were made for a Luoyang Shovel. He said that if he became class president, he would definitely lead everyone to rob—pfft, I mean, to conduct a salvage and protection mission on a rare, grand tomb.
Girls: 4 votes.
Boys: 3 votes.
Total: 7 votes.
Finally, it was Su Ran’s turn.
He looked a little awkwardly at the 11 classmates below the stage, especially at the expectant gazes from the eight girls. He was a handsome guy, so of course the girls liked him. After spending some time together, they also knew that Classmate Su was rich. It was just a fact; he didn’t pretend to be poor only to reveal his wealth later for a shocking face-slapping moment. In short, everyone knew Su Ran was wealthy, but he didn’t constantly flex to show off his superiority.
The students could see that his clothes and accessories were just daily necessities to him. Who the hell would go around showing off their daily necessities?
And after getting to know him, everyone realized Su Ran wasn’t an active person, but a passive one. Unlike Cao Wo and the others, who seized every opportunity to show off their talents, Classmate Su was the type who wouldn’t display his skills unless absolutely necessary.
But they were wrong. The classmates had completely misinterpreted the situation. It wasn’t that Su Ran didn’t want to show off his skills; it was that he couldn’t afford the embarrassment~
At that moment, looking at the expectant gazes from the "little cuties" below, Su Ran asked awkwardly, "Do I really have to demonstrate something?"
"Mhm, mhm! Don’t be shy, Classmate Su. Show us what talents you have."
"Sigh... all right. I’ll just show you something real quick. You’re not allowed to laugh, okay?"
It was incredible!
Girls: 8 votes, a clean sweep.
Boys: 0 votes. They couldn’t allow someone so ridiculously cool to exist.
With a vote of 8 to 7, Su Ran defeated Cao Wo and successfully won the position of class president.
Su Ran quickly stuffed his hands back into his pockets and hurried off the stage.
For context, Zhang Qiling’s famously long index and middle fingers played a crucial role in exploring tombs and locating pressure points.
Cao Wo was thoroughly and completely defeated.
After they got off the stage, Cao Wo, his eyes shining, asked Su Ran how he trained them. Su Ran casually mentioned an "amazing finger trainer" he found online. Sure enough, Cao Wo actually found it and planned to buy one to practice every day, waiting for the day he could show off his own skills.
In reality, Cao Wo had only heard the first half of Su Ran’s sentence, not the second half: ’You can’t master this finger technique just through practice, you know.’
After class, a couple of curious female classmates stopped Su Ran. They shyly asked their class president if he had any other special skills. They wouldn’t let him leave until he showed them, so Su Ran had no choice but to demonstrate another one.
He had already shown his Finger Technique Fragrance. Having already lost all face, ’why would I care about showing off another Skill? As long as the girls like it, that’s all that matters, right?’
"This."
Su Ran then revealed his clover tongue before making a cool exit.
The girls went, "Whoa, that’s amazing!"
Cao Wo almost fell to his knees, begging to become his disciple.
From this, Cao Wo not only found the reason for the class president’s average physique but also understood why so many girls called to check up on him every day.
It was nothing special—simply a matter of having a well-practiced hand.
It was nothing special—for one skilled in oral techniques, even if a person had a hundred hands with a hundred fingers, they could not point to a single one of its subtleties; even if a person had a hundred mouths with a hundred tongues, they could not name a single one of its parts.
Of the eight girls in their class, Su Ran was "familiar" with seven. The only one he didn’t know well was a female classmate named Shen Qingning.
She wasn’t the type to stun you at first glance; rather, she was the type who grew more beautiful the more you looked at her. However, she had a reclusive personality and was always alone.
In the words of the "knock-off Chen Hansheng," Zeng Cao, ’Shen Qingning is the Shen Youchu of my four years in college.’
Su Ran and Cao Wo rolled their eyes. The guy was obsessed with web novels.
Regarding this, Zeng Cao even warned Su Ran, "Don’t you dare compete with me. Stay as far away from her as you can."
Su Ran was speechless.
But Zeng Cao was serious. He understood how the world worked. As an ordinary person chasing a girl like Shen Qingning—who came from a poor family and was a loner—he knew it would take a very, very long time of persistent effort before she might even become interested in him.
However... the class president was rich. If he really decided to pursue her, Zeng Cao could attack all day and not even dent her HP bar. But the VIP Level 8 class president could just use a basic attack and finish her off in one hit.
It was simple: money increased your attack speed.
Su Ran understood that everyone wanted to find a girlfriend and experience romance in college. He patted Zeng Cao’s shoulder, looked at Shen Qingning’s lonely back in the classroom, and said, "I have a girlfriend."
"I know you have a girlfriend! Since when do rich guys complain about having too many girlfriends?"
"I do."
"..."
Zeng Cao was dumbfounded. ’A rich guy like the class president who complains about having too many girlfriends? Is he for real?’
He just didn’t understand that Su Ran had already wiped out an entire party.
...
On the ninth day of military training, it rained, bringing the temperature down. From then on, the training continued in cooler weather.
After the eleventh day of military training ended, Su Ran made a trip back to Shanglin Fu.
「At the gate of his home.」
A truck driver was squatting by a stone lion, smoking. Seeing Su Ran in his camouflage uniform running over from the stone bridge, he stubbed out his cigarette and went to greet him.
The driver had come from Shanghai. A large wooden crate on the truck was branded with a logo of a pair of wings—Su Ran’s big toy, the Aston Martin, had arrived.
They unloaded the cargo, opened the crate, and lifted the car cover. A sapphire blue Aston Martin DBS appeared before them. It was a cool and handsome supercar that both men and women would love.
Su Ran inspected the car, found no issues, signed the papers, and paid the shipping fee. He chatted with the driver for a bit. The driver assured Su Ran that there were absolutely no bumps or scratches; he often transported valuable items and hadn’t had a single mishap in over a decade. He even mentioned he had transported a person once before.
"A truck this big to transport one person?"
"Who was it?"
"Guan Gong."
"Oh, so that viral picture of the truck transporting the Guan Gong statue was you."
Huh?
A flash of inspiration struck Su Ran, and he suddenly solved a puzzle that had been bothering him for over ten days: ’What kind of Treasure of the Garden should I put inside the room with the five-meter-high glass curtain wall?’
A statue of Guan Gong with his eyes open was out of the question. Open eyes meant he was ready to kill.
After seeing the driver off, Su Ran stood by the glass curtain wall, cupping his chin in thought for a long time. He finally figured out what to put inside.
The Victorious Fighting Buddha!
A piece of jade two by two meters, and four to five meters high, was practically impossible to find.
A wood carving, however, was possible.
So that evening, Su Ran personally prepared some dishes to go with drinks and invited Qi Shan over for dinner to catch up and discuss the matter.
"What?" Qi Shan hissed. "I heard that Zhao Benshan once spent 16 million to commission the world’s largest wood-carved lion—14.5 meters long, 5 meters high, and weighing 39 tons. You want a Victorious Fighting Buddha that’s five meters high and nearly two meters wide? That would probably be the biggest in the world."
Even a developer like him sucked in a breath of cold air. Qi Shan might have a net worth of over a billion, but that didn’t mean he had a billion in cash sitting in his bank account. It was all on paper—company stock prices and valuations of various assets.
The ones who could play with pure cash flow were the truly powerful ones.
To be honest, Qi Shan really admired Su Ran. He’d bought this estate for 67 million, invested nearly another 10 million into it, and now he wanted to buy a behemoth to put on display behind the glass wall.
’He really knows how to enjoy life, how to live it up.’
"Alright, I’ll look into it for you."
"Thanks, then. I’ll treat you to a meal when it’s done."
"Don’t mention it."
「Two days later.」
Qi Shan was incredibly efficient. Two days later, a call came in while Su Ran was marching to the "one-two-one" count. The drill instructor was staring at him, so he didn’t dare to answer. He only called back after he was dismissed.
Qi Shan had used his lumber connections in Myanmar to find a Golden Camphor log that met Su Ran’s size requirements. The color was very authentic. He sent a picture to Su Ran, who took a look. The golden hue was beautiful and a perfect fit for Sun Wukong after he became the Victorious Fighting Buddha.
At this size, it couldn’t be measured by market prices anymore. The seller named a price, the buyer haggled, and they finally settled on 11 million. But this wasn’t the final price. Getting it out of the deep mountain forests of Myanmar, transporting it, and shipping it to Huaxia cost another 800,000-plus.
Adding the 17% import value-added tax, the total cost by the time it reached Su Ran was over 13 million.
Still, it wasn’t a loss. Wood of this size was becoming increasingly rare. If the design and carving were perfect, even if Su Ran got tired of it and decided to sell, the price would more than double.
The things rich people played with only became more valuable over time.
The wood needed to acclimate to the local climate to prevent cracking. Su Ran drove his Martin to the suburbs and rented a workshop to store the log. He also hired people from a wood processing plant to kiln-dry it.
Between military training and fussing over the wood, Su Ran lost a few pounds. The workers couldn’t figure out why a young man like him wasn’t out chasing girls and was instead messing around with this big, thick log every day. What was the point?
You simply can’t imagine the joys of the wealthy.
The next step was to find a master to design the Victorious Fighting Buddha statue. Su Ran knew how to draw, but designing a wood carving was a completely different field, so he wouldn’t do it himself.
Qi Shan looked at the big, thick log and refrained from making any suggestions. If the person he recommended made a mess of the design, it would affect their friendship.
For the next few days, Su Ran racked his brains trying to figure out who to hire for the design. Then, as the 20-day military training was nearing its end, he was lying in his dorm and happened to see an antiques appraisal show. A fellow collector had brought in a piece from his collection for the experts to evaluate: a statue of Guanyin seated on a lotus.
When the expert heard it was a work designed and carved by the master Shan Shaoqing, he immediately gave it high praise.
Su Ran immediately searched for Shan Shaoqing online and found out he was Shan Zhentian’s father. ’As expected of the father of a master painter; his artistic accomplishments are truly on another level.’
Although Su Ran was skilled at drawing, that was just technical skill. He still lacked true artistic depth, which was something he needed to cultivate himself.
According to his biography, Shan Shaoqing had retired after his wife passed away. What a pity.
However, Su Ran felt that only Shan Shaoqing could do justice to this piece of wood.
Otherwise, it would be just like that lyric from the song "Wukong": "What use have I for this iron staff?"
After some thought, Su Ran decided to fly to Hangzhou during the National Day holiday to visit Shan Shaoqing in person and give it a shot.
Before that, however, he had two things to do. First, finish the last three days of military training. Second, those four "troublemaker" sisters were coming to visit in the next couple of days.
This had been agreed upon earlier. They had told him that when his military training was about to end, since "you must be so, so tired from training," they would come and help him "relax"...
He wouldn’t dare say it would be relaxing. But exhausting? That was a certainty.