Chapter 71: Deliberate and Proceed

Since he had money now, Zhou Chen was not going to be stingy. He directly withdrew ten thousand yuan, put away his card, and left.

Humming a tune all the way back, with money in his pocket, even riding an electric scooter felt like cruising on a Harley-Davidson.

As for the source of the money, he wasn't worried at all, because the system had already informed him that it was profits earned from overseas investments—completely legal and legitimate.

Naturally, Zhou Chen did not doubt the system's capabilities.

Twenty minutes later, Zhou Chen arrived at an old residential complex. This was where he lived, a neighborhood with a history of more than twenty years, and the buildings inside all looked quite dated.

There was no other choice. He only had that much money when he bought the apartment. Being able to buy a place in the city was already difficult enough; he couldn't even dream of a new development. Managing to buy a two-bedroom, one-living-room apartment in this old complex was already quite an achievement.

Parking the electric scooter downstairs, Zhou Chen climbed the stairs to the sixth floor. This building had a total of six stories, no attic, and no elevator, which made the sixth floor the cheapest one.

Opening the front door, he found the apartment reasonably clean and free of any strange odors, which left him quite satisfied.

Remembering back when he had just started working in the real world, he lived in the factory's dormitory building where eight people shared a single room, filled with all sorts of smells. But back then, when he was just starting to earn money, his heart was full of passion and enthusiasm, completely ignoring those imperfections. However, if he were asked to live in that kind of environment now, he certainly couldn't accept it.

After tidying up briefly and lying down on the bed, Zhou Chen began to review the events of the day.

This was already his second time time-traveling, so he was no longer as shocked as he had been the first time.

His mission was to get married within a year. If it were someone he had never seen or heard of, Zhou Chen wouldn't have been very confident.

However, he had watched the television drama and had a fair understanding of Yang Tao. In the plot, Yang Tao was in her early thirties and actually yearned deeply for marriage; otherwise, she wouldn't have almost been deceived by a scumbag.

Since Yang Tao also wanted to get married, his chances were very high. It was just that succeeding within a year still required a plan and a strategy.

Thinking of this, Zhou Chen immediately flipped over and sat up, found some paper and a pen in the room, and began to write and sketch.

He certainly couldn't just walk up to Yang Tao out of nowhere and tell her he wanted to marry her—that would surely get him cursed out. Therefore, a proper strategy and plan were essential.

Before that, however, he first needed to actually find Yang Tao.

He only knew that Yang Tao was a hotel lobby manager, but he had no idea which specific hotel she worked at. Beijing was so vast; trying to find someone based on just that little bit of information would undoubtedly take a lot of time and effort.

Having been through one world already, Zhou Chen had matured quite a bit and understood the importance of making a thorough plan before taking action.

Since he had confirmed that he didn't know Yang Tao yet, Zhou Chen wasn't in too much of a rush and decided to sort out his own affairs first.

As a government administrative agency, the Civil Affairs Bureau was actually a very good workplace. If it hadn't been for suddenly acquiring over twenty million yuan, Zhou Chen certainly wouldn't have given up such a job with great salary and benefits.

The problem, however, was that he couldn't stay in this world for long. If he kept working at this agency, it would hinder his actions.

After all, it was a government institution; they wouldn't let you just take leave whenever you pleased according to your whims—that only happened in television dramas. If he wanted to get things done, he would inevitably need frequent time off, which would naturally cause conflicts.

Therefore, Zhou Chen was contemplating whether he should resign from this job first, but after some thought, he decided to slow down and wait until he understood this world a bit better.

Thus, Zhou Chen temporarily continued working at the Civil Affairs Bureau, greeting all sorts of couples wanting to get a divorce every day. Although it was sometimes annoying and awkward, he gained valuable life experience and heard many interesting stories, until his term ended and he was transferred to the marriage registration office.

Compared to the divorce registration office, the marriage registration office was a much more joyful place. The men and women who came in were all beaming with joy, their faces blooming with radiant smiles.

It was lively enough, but the problem was that Zhou Chen didn't really care for this kind of work. Compared to this job, he would rather go home and write web novels.

Of course, this time around, he had no intention of writing novels because writing was too exhausting. Besides, it was currently only the year 2012, and the web novel industry was not as developed as it would be later on. It was even harder for newcomers to break through, and since he only had a year, he simply didn't have the energy for it.

Most importantly, he now had over twenty million yuan in savings, which was temporarily more than enough for him, so there was no need to write novels anymore.

With this kind of money, wouldn't starting any business make money faster than writing novels?

During this period, aside from going to work, Zhou Chen also did a lot of things. For instance, he sold the apartment in the old complex and instead rented a place in the downtown area.

In his previous world, he had grown accustomed to living in spacious apartments, and now that he had money, he naturally wasn't going to mistreat himself. Thus, he simply sold that old property and rented a large, flat-floor apartment of over two hundred square meters, with an annual rent of several hundred thousand yuan.

Yet Zhou Chen didn't feel like he was losing out at all. Everything in the rental apartment was fully furnished and ready to use, making it much more comfortable to live in than his previous home.

Besides the apartment, Zhou Chen also took a few trips to the stock market. Before time-traveling, he had deliberately checked historical stock trends and memorized some explosive stocks—every single year had them.

What depressed him, however, was that out of the stocks in his memory, only a minority appeared in the stock market, while most were nowhere to be found. Moreover, the few that did appear behaved very differently from the trends in his memory, which made him too hesitant to make a move.

Since stocks were a no-go, he tried other ways to make money. He went to buy lottery tickets—specifically the New Year's Day lottery for January 1st—because his memory was limited, and he only remembered the lottery numbers for January 1st of each year.

Fearing that he might draw too much attention, he didn't dare to buy many, purchasing only three tickets. To his dismay, none of them won.

These consecutive blows made him realize just how lucky he had been in the first world he experienced; the Bitcoin trend hadn't changed. If it had undergone drastic changes like this world, he would have been utterly doomed.

Zhou Chen didn't quite know how to describe it. He wondered if it was because his previous trip was his very first time-traveling, so the system had lowered the difficulty for him—much like a beginner's gift pack handed out in a game.

Aside from the apartment, he had also bought a car: a BMW 5 Series, which cost less than seven hundred thousand yuan in full.

The reason he hadn't bought real estate or an even more expensive car was because he wanted to be frugal. Who knew whether, upon completing the mission in this world, he would receive a reward allowing him to carry his remaining balance over to the next world? The probability might be small, but he still had to prepare for it.

With his equipment ready, the next step was to scout out the 'enemy's' intelligence. He remembered that Yang Tao was the lobby manager of a four-star hotel, so whenever he had free time, he browsed the websites of major four-star hotels in Beijing.

Although Beijing had quite a few four-star hotels, as long as he took his time and searched slowly, he would eventually reap results. Just like Zhou Chen, who spent over a month searching unhurriedly until he finally found his target: Yang Tao.

"This is the one. There's no other lobby manager with the same name across all four-star hotels, so this must be it."

Standing in front of a four-star hotel, Zhou Chen lifted his foot and walked into the luxuriously decorated hotel lobby.

Once inside, Zhou Chen scanned his surroundings and noticed several women wearing identical women's suits; they were presumably hotel attendants or receptionists.

As the hotel lobby manager, serving guests and maintaining order in the lobby were Yang Tao's responsibilities. Seeing a man looking around the lobby, she assumed he needed assistance and immediately walked over.

"Sir, I am the lobby manager here. Is there anything I can help you with?"

Zhou Chen watched as a tall woman walked up to him, his gaze sweeping past her name tag, where he clearly read her name.

"Yang Tao!"