"Yea, I could use some magic in my life right now." Jin bitterly laughed as he reached the derelict plot of land near the shopping street which Ming bought from. He had completely forgotten about the existence of this humongous plot of land near the Tiangong Shopping District.
To this date, it was in ruins from an unsolved arson, and the previously abandoned building was still an eyesore to many. The Tiangong Shopping District had suffered a poor streak of business due to that particular plot of land as people had been avoiding it.
The land was previously owned by a pachinko franchise business, and they were earning a fair share of the money. One of the shopping street district store owners was rumoured to have frequented there and lost a great deal of money.
Unable to pay his debts, the loan sharks and bank officers had been visiting his shop to get collect money. The ruckus was enough for him to not earn any revenue and made his shop neighbours lost their customers too.
It was up to the point where the bankrupt store owner eventually became fed up with everything in life and decided that burning the pachinko was the best revenge he can get for ruining his life. (He did not think it was his fault in any way.)
However, the store owner did not wish to admit it at all.
The funny thing was, the night he wished to burn the pachinko down, the pachinko boss was having an affair right in his office with his daughter. Grief-stricken, the store owner had decided to burn the Pachinko boss without shedding any light on the matter, causing his daughter including him to be burnt to death on that very same night.
Little did he know his precious daughter was actually 'sacrificing' herself to get money from the pachinko boss to pay the debts of her father. Her father refused to believe her excuses and set the whole place alight.
The daughter and the boss attempted to run away, but the store keeper had already locked and blocked all the exits, rendering their escape attempts useless.
Thus, the boss desperately tried to call 119, but luck had it that the phone battery died out the moment he had connected to the fire department. (Mainly because he had been videoing the entire scene from the start of the affair until the time he tried to call 119.)
Fortunately (or unfortunately) the video was consistently being uploaded to data cloud servers, allowing post investigation to reveal that the daughter eventually gave up all her hatred for the moment and embraced her dad as they suffocated to death from inhalation of smoke.
Separately, the Pachinko boss was not giving up and struggled to survive. He tried to put the fire out with any extinguishers he could find. Yet, it seemed like the Grim Reaper was feeling uncharitable that particular day, as he was killed by a falling ceiling, which he had cut corners when building the store.
Ever since then, the pachinko incident made that large plot of land undesirable. Anyone in the vicinity knew that the property was bad news. Some even assumed that the ghost of the store owner continued to live on in the place to haunt any newcomers.
It was five years since then, and once a highly valued plot of land was now at a new low. Many housing developers were itching to get this conveniently located piece of land, but they were scared of the history of it.
So, no one had offered to buy it until Ming came along. He probably realised that with the help of the System, Jin might have a chance to strike big with this large plot of land and inadvertently helped revitalise the Tiangong Shopping District.
It might be wishful thinking on his part, but one can only dream and pinning his hopes to his grandson.
"So Yun, how is the System going to help with this burnt piece of crap here. It probably needs days to clear all this junk, and the reconstruction work will cost a hell lot of money. Aside from the locked inheritance, even the leftover money of 48,000ish Yuan in the bank, it is not enough to up a proper storefront." Jin had a dreadful headache upon seeing this abandoned building.
His phone vibrated, and the screen automatically shifted itself to 'Store Layout' App. The starting screen was a panda wearing a construction hat and holding multiple rolls of blueprints near its chest, making Jin to be amused by the panda related starting screens.
"Pick one of the three layouts provided by the System, I will do the rest for you while you keep yourself busy with the optional mission objective," Yun explained to him without revealing too many details.
There were three layouts aptly named Layout A, B and C. The blueprints were similar except for where the storefront was located at. At the west of the plot of land? At the centre? Or perhaps the far east?
While Jin majored in computer engineering, he dipped his feet wet into general engineering and civil engineering since his previous ex was in civil. Hence, he figured out the layout in the blueprints was fairly logical after analysing them.
There was not much difference in the blueprint layouts as well so he decided to pick it at the west of the land which coincidentally faces one of the exits of the Tiangong Shopping District. At least, customers would see the shop as compared to the centre or the east where they were more secluded.
By choosing Layout A and a few pictures popped up, including the options of the interior design for the store. With the experience Jin had after wandering into many dungeon supplier stores, he already had a picture of what he wants in mind.
He recalled how some were downright fanciful, while the others were just cluttered with weird junk to make it hippy. Hence, Jin had decided to go with something clean and minimalist.
Most dungeon suppliers had individual rooms for their customers' privacy to battle, but Jin had a deep impression of a dungeon supplier store in an outlying town area where the business owner places the dimension spaces in the open and had a magic eye overseeing the battles inside the dimension space.
The magic eye then streamed the battle on the TV outside for people to view and it became a trait for that dungeon supplier store.
Jin figured that method could potentially help distract the customers waiting for their turn while allowing fellow cultivators to deduce battle tactics against the monster they were going to fight. Besides, it might help to create hype for the customers waiting.
The new System User briefly explained to Yun that none of the interior layouts fits the criteria he wanted and told her that he wished to implement the Magic Eye concept instead.
"Hmm, what you wished for is indeed reasonable and within the budget of the System. Alright, I can approve of it. Here are the sample pictures of various interior designs of the criteria you mentioned to me." Yun spoke to him via his head.
Jin excited looked at his phone again as the screen refreshes. After ten to fifteen minutes of consideration, He decided on a specific layout and tapped on the option. "Jin, you sure you want this layout? After today, you will not be able to change your layout that easily unless you opt for a major renovation. Do you need more time to think about it?"
"Yes, I decided to go with this." Jin subconsciously nodded his head to agree with Yun.
The moment he agreed verbally, the Panda with the construction hat appeared again and bowed towards Jin. A small text bubble appeared on top of the panda "Thank you for your patronage."
Suddenly construction related barricades like acoustic echo barriers fell from the skies without a single sound onto the plot of land. The echo barriers covered the whole plot of land and were at least fifty meters tall. If Jin had not been there to witness it, he might have thought he had become insane. At the same time, he quickly looked around to see if anyone saw the same event he did.
To his surprise, there was no one around despite the late evening, and it was probably due to the poor business in Tiangong Shopping District.
"Jin, come back tomorrow. Have a good shower and rest, you will have busy days ahead. I think. Hahaha!" Yun gave a cheeky emoji smile.