The Big Landlord - Chapter 88.1

These days, An Zi Ran was very busy.

It took him several days to draw up the interior blueprint for Feng Hua Gambling House. He didn’t just consider the immediate future, but also long-term development.

Counting all the gambling houses in Jun Zi City, there were over a dozen of them. Among them, ten had the highest competitive strength. But now there were only nine.

Support the translator. Read this on vmnovels (dot) com

If you wanted to stand out from these gambling houses, you didn’t just rely on financial resources, but on innovative ideas.

The type of gambling house that An Zi Ran wanted to create wasn’t some shady place where crooks mixed in with the honest folk, but a high-end atmosphere and top-grade casino. Creating this type of gambling house required more painstaking thought and attention, but he had people helping him so he didn’t need to worry too much, but this type of innovative idea was slightly troublesome.

There were several types of gambling games in Da Ya.

In terms of animal games there were turtle racing, cricket fighting, cock fighting, quail fighting, etc. Such games would not be appearing in his gambling house. These games were common among the masses and were considered lowbrow gambling games.

Card games and guessing games were the most varied and were the fundamentals of every gambling house, games such as wu mu, ye zi*, dices, and dominoes. The use of dominoes could be expanded upon to create several types of gambling games. Of course, there were also games that An Zi Ran had never heard of before, for example chu hong pu and jiao sheng tu**.

[*T/N: 五木 wu mu “five wood,” 叶子 ye zi “leaf.” Not sure what kind of games these are, so I can only give you the direct translation of the Chinese characters.]

[**T/N: chu hong pu: 除 chu “to get rid of” 红 hong “red” 谱 pu “chart.”

Jiao sheng tu: 搅 jiao “mix” 胜 sheng “victory” 图 tu “drawing”]

But in An Zi Ran’s eyes, a lot of these gambling games were rather complicated and not suitable for popularizing.

He knew of several gambling games from later eras that were very popular and thus suitable for his purposes. It was only that the manufacturing process was a bit troublesome.

While the gambling house was still under construction, An Zi Ran sent Steward Zhou out to help him buy some thicker paper, as well as color paints and tools for cutting thick paper. Although this time and space was still behind in times, these things could still be found.

Steward Zhou was able to purchase everything in one trip.

An Zi Ran took these items and shut himself up in the study room. Until Fu Wu Tian came back, he still did not come out.

Fu Wu Tian thought that he would see his wang fei in the dining room as usual, instead, he saw the laowang ye, who was still being grounded. He asked the servants and found out that An Zi Ran was still in the study.

This was the first time he didn’t even care about eating meals.

“What is wang fei doing in the study?” As Fu Wu Tian headed towards the study, he asked this question to Steward Zhou who was following behind.

Translations by Vanilla Muse.

Steward Zhou immediately replied, “This servant is not sure. In the afternoon, wang fei took some things with him into the study and has not been out since. And he also didn’t let the servants go bother him.”

Fu Wu Tian arched his eyebrow and did not ask again.

After sending the steward away, he opened the door to the study. As soon as he took a step in his attention was attracted to the things scattered on the floor. On the floor was a bunch of paper scrunched into balls. The deeper in he went the more paper balls he saw.

Fu Wu Tian parted the bead curtain and saw his wang fei holding a brush. His gaze was focused on the things atop the desk. He seemed to be hesitating over how to draw what he wanted. Fu Wu Tian looked at the desk and saw that it was a bunch of strange pictures. To the side there were red and black pigments for painting.

An Zi Ran knew that it was him, but did not give him a bit of attention.

There were a total of fifteen pictures that he wanted to draw, but he was stumped by five of them. From afternoon till now, he still could not draw it properly. Although he was also well aware that he had no talent for drawing.

“Wang fei, what are you painting?”

Fu Wu Tian was particularly curious about the black things he painted on the paper. It looked like some random graffiti. Just for this thing, he even delayed dinner?

An Zi Ran was silent for a long while. “…I also don’t know.”

Fu Wu Tian almost laughed out loud.

Fu Wu Tian took the brush from his hand and set it on the edge of the ink stone. “Since you don’t know, then let us eat first. You can continue after dinner. Grandfather is already waiting for us in the dining room.”

An Zi Ran rotated his shoulders. He has been drawing for four hours. It was really tiring. Unfortunately, the five most important pictures have not been drawn and could only be abandoned.

In the dining room, the lao wang ye couldn’t wait and already started to eat. He was an elder; moreover, he was an elder with some mental problems, so no one said anything to him. During the grounding period he was very well behaved, probably because he was afraid of the head steward, so he kept to the grounding restrictions.

An Zi Ran was very surprised that the lao wang ye would be afraid of the head steward, and later Fu Wu Tian told him about the head steward.

On the surface, Fu Yi Ming was the head steward of the Imperial Fu Palace, but he was actually the lao wang ye’s biological son, meaning that he was Fu Wu Tian’s paternal uncle, Fu Xiao’s biological older brother. But there was one critical point. He was an illegitimate child.

Da Ya was not tolerant of illegitimate children, not even one of the royal family.

The identity of the illegitimate child was such that they could never stand in the sun, so Fu lao wng ye felt very guilty towards Fu Yi Ming. Because of his mistake, Fu Yi Ming could not pay respects to his ancestors or be recognized as part of the family. He could only stay in the Imperial Fu Palace with the identity of a foster son and become a steward.

Due to his regret, before he got dementia, the Fu lao wang ye who was usually cold and calm was very bias towards Fu Yi Ming*. After the illness, his personality changed, and his memory was a mess, but concerning the matter with Fu Yi Ming, nothing changed.

[*T/N: Sometimes the author writes his name as Fu Yi and sometimes as Fu Yi Ming. I’m not sure if it’s a typo or not, but I decided to go with the full name just in case it gets confusing.]

However, Fu Yi Ming has the status of head steward on the surface, but he never really took care of the trivial affairs of the prince’s palace like a real housekeeper would. Basically, most of these things were left to the second steward. What he really handled were the industries and businesses under the name of the Imperial Fu Palace. Therefore, he was often absent from the prince’s palace.

After dinner, An Zi Ran went to visit the little bun again.

For the servants taking care of the little bun, asides from the nursemaid and the original maids, there were also Chun Lan and Qiu Lan.

Originally, Chun Lan and Qiu Lan were his personal maids, but he was overly worried for the little bun, so he temporarily assigned them to the little bun’s side. These days he’s been busy, so he didn’t get to visit as much.

“Young Master?” Chun Lan was very surprised when she saw him come over.

An Zi Ran nodded at her and asked, “How is the situation with the second young master lately?”

When Qiu Lan heard them, she immediately came out carrying the little bun. The little bun was no longer like how he was when he was just born – only knowing how to eat, sleep, and then eat again. His two grape-like eyes were always very spirited. When they landed on his brother, the two small paws immediately waved happily.