Chapter 11: The Ancestor's Perplexity

Xia Xin: "..."

He seemed to have no recollection, not quite remembering whether his master had said anything, suddenly feeling incredibly awkward.

Jiangli glanced at him and was completely disappointed in her apprentice.

She didn't understand why the old Taoist had chosen such a disciple. Out of the blue, she asked, "Xia Xin, are you a blood relative of the old Taoist?"

Xia Xin didn't know why she suddenly asked this and replied puzzled, "No, not at all. Why does the great ancestor ask...?"

"It doesn't look like it."

Jiangli murmured to herself, actually knowing full well whether Xia Xin was related by blood to the old Taoist or not at a glance.

However, she really couldn't understand, if they weren't related by blood and Xia Xin hadn't gotten hold of any leverage over the old Taoist, what the old Taoist saw in Xia Xin.

Forget it.

The old Taoist had already passed away.

Jiangli didn't want to think ill of him anymore. She tossed the little ghost back into Xia Xin's arms and said, "Let's stop talking about this, let's go inside and take a look."

Xia Xin caught the little ghost, growing accustomed to it now and no longer feeling much fear, diligently said, "Great ancestor, please come in, please come in!"

He opened the door with one hand, obsequiously making a gesture of invitation.

Jiangli stepped inside. The Taoist Temple was still the same Taoist Temple, but after not seeing it for eight hundred years, times had changed, and there were some differences here.

Jiangli said softly, "It truly feels like a lifetime has passed..."

Xia Xin didn't hear clearly, set the little ghost down, and considerately asked, "Great ancestor, are you hungry? Do you want me to make you something delicious?"

"I'm not hungry right now," Jiangli had just come out of closed cultivation and didn't feel hungry.

Moreover, someone at her level of cultivation no longer needed food to sustain themselves.

And more importantly, there were more urgent matters at hand, things she wanted to ask Xia Xin about.

She grabbed Xia Xin by the collar and asked, "I want to ask you now, you just mentioned owing that Mr. Cao six million taels, is it gold or silver?"

"It's not..." Xia Xin stumbled as he was yanked and said with an awkward laugh, "Great ancestor, we don't use gold and silver anymore...I mean, we don't use gold and silver as everyday currency anymore. We use RMB in our daily lives!"

Jiangli was suspicious, "RMB? What's that?"

"It's money!" Xia Xin said, realizing that the great ancestor really had been out of touch with society for eight hundred years, not even knowing what the currency was. He pulled out some money from his pocket, "This blue one is ten yuan, the green one is fifty, and the red one is a hundred yuan!"

Jiangli still didn't quite understand, "Just tell me directly, what can six million buy?"

"That's... roughly enough to buy a pretty nice house here in our area..." Xia Xin scratched his head, struggling to come up with a comparison.

A house?

Jiangli remembered something else, "Right, you mentioned earlier that the house and money I left behind were confiscated. What does that mean? Is confiscation something that was stolen?"

"No..."

Xia Xin felt a bit drained, realizing it was imperative to educate the great ancestor. His mind raced, and he quickly darted back into his room, returning with a general history book, a collection of Marx and Lenin, and a selection of Mao's writings, and handed them to Jiangli.

"Great ancestor, take a look at these, and you'll understand after reading them!"

Jiangli looked at the unfamiliar characters, "What are these characters? Why do they look incomplete?"

Xia Xin: "..."

He realized he had forgotten, these days they use simplified characters.

The characters familiar to the great ancestor were probably traditional characters.

Xia Xin was close to shutting down, took a deep breath, and began painstakingly explaining, "Great ancestor, we now use simplified characters, which are simplified from ancient characters..."