Touch of Riches Chapter 4

"Master Thirteen, are you drunk again? Why did you come out alone?" The woman said in a teasing tone. She smelled of powder and cigarettes. Nathan Xiao looked up along the woman's snow-white thighs and saw her exquisite figure wrapped in a gorgeous cheongsam.

The woman lowered her head, and he could see that it was a heavily made-up face.

"What's wrong? You look at me as if you saw a ghost? Am I that scary?" The woman had a permed hairstyle that was popular during the Republic of China period. She had a tortoise-shell cigarette holder in her mouth and a small gold velvet wallet in her hand.

A typical Republic of China style!

Not only that, the surroundings seemed to be no longer so dim and quiet. There were the sounds of wheels rolling over the cobblestone road, and the sounds of people walking and talking. He turned his head to look at the street. The ancient buildings on the road were all lit up, various shops were still open, and people wearing Republic of China clothes passed by him in twos and threes.

He was so shocked that he fell to the ground again, staring blankly at everything in front of him.

What's going on here?

Hallucination?

He held his head with his hands and scratched his scalp, trying to wake himself up.

"Oh, I think you are really drunk. Why do you act like a possessed person? Okay, I'll be a good person for once. I was planning to go back." The woman took a puff of her cigarette, called a rickshaw driver who was waiting on the roadside, gave him a few words of advice, and gave him two dollars. The driver nodded and bowed and ran away.

After a while, an old man in a long gown and a jacket came over with several servants, carrying a chair.

"Young Master Thirteen, oh, how come you are so drunk again!" The old man with round-rimmed glasses squinted and stamped his feet. He ordered several servants to help Nathan Xiao to the chair.

Nathan Xiao sat in the chair and smelled his clothes, then asked blankly: "Do I look drunk?"

"Yes, yes, you are not drunk, go home quickly." After the old man said this, he asked the servants to carry him away first, and then he stayed there to talk to the cheongsam woman. Nathan Xiao turned her head in the chair and watched the old man take out some money from his arms and give it to her, not knowing what he was saying.

He was carried into the Xiao family mansion through the back door. The moment he entered the door, his heart skipped a beat.

I didn't expect that I would enter the Xiao family in this way!

Everything in the mansion was so new and beautiful, with bright lights everywhere, carved beams and painted buildings, and winding corridors, just like the Grand View Garden in Dream of the Red Chamber!

His mind was completely blank until he was carried to a bedroom with a private courtyard. Several maids and servants came to help him change his clothes and wash up. Only then did he come to his senses and think:

Have I traveled through time?

When he was pushed into the room in an old-fashioned wheelchair, he suddenly saw the dressing table behind the screen. He stood up from the wheelchair and hopped on one leg to the mirror.

The face of myself in the mirror is clearly my original one, so why am I thought to be the Thirteenth Young Master of the Xiao Family?

Thirteenth Young Master, isn't he the young master whose leg was chopped off? !

He turned around and saw the maids hanging up their coats, and a few people came to help him take off his shirt.

"Master, you are really fashionable. This coat must be a foreign style from the foreign goods store in West City!" The maid complimented him while holding up his coat and hung it on the hanger.

Nathan Xiao looked around at the house's interior design, which was a mixture of Eastern and Western styles. He took a deep breath to calm himself down and reminded himself to observe carefully.

This may be the experience that every archaeologist dreams of. He may be getting closer to the "truth" of the changes in the Xiao family mansion!
 
The maid in the room helped him take a bath before leaving.

It has to be said that the wealthy families in the Republic of China period were truly luxurious. Even in this ancient mansion, there was a very advanced water pipe system at the time, its own boiler room, and the bathroom was completely Western style.

The Thirteenth Young Master preferred Western lifestyle, and almost all the small furnishings in his room were Western style, except for the large items such as the bed and cabinet, which were still exquisite traditional Chinese mahogany creations.

He changed into silk pajamas and lay down on the big bed. After lowering the bed curtains, the bed seemed like an independent space. After the maid turned off the lights and went out, he was finally able to think carefully about what he had encountered.

He just wanted to see the old house of the Xiao family, how could he have traveled through time so miraculously? How could he return?

In fact, even if he could not return to the 21st century, he would have nothing to be nostalgic about. It was just that the Internet and information technology were more advanced at that time, his career had come to an end, and he had not been touched by any hypocritical feelings such as family and friendship - he only had an aunt who was crazy about him getting married quickly. That aunt was not really doing that for his own good, because before his death, his father had asked a lawyer to notarize that if the aunt could raise him until he got married, then a large sum of property under his father's name would officially belong to the aunt as a thank you.

Although he was young at the time, he knew that in addition to this money, his father also entrusted his aunt and her husband to manage the wealth left to him. After his parents passed away, his uncle, who was originally a small figure, suddenly became a wealthy tycoon. Over the years, he took all his parents' property for himself and lied to him that it was the result of his self-made wealth.

As long as he got married, according to his father's will, everything in the Xiao family would belong to his uncle's family, and he would become a mediocre middle school teacher, living his life in obscurity.

However, Nathan Xiao didn't really care about these injustices. He didn't want to cause himself unnecessary trouble, and he was really not suitable for business. If his parents' business inheritance was left to him, it might be better to let his uncle run it.

Thinking about it this way, maybe it’s not bad to stay in this era.

Amidst his complicated thoughts, Nathan Xiao gradually fell into a deep sleep.