Why bother with dating when you already have a cat?

"Let's play Monopoly!"

Upon hearing Xiao Youqian's voice, Ai Qing finally withdrew her hand from Xiao Yu's chest, still feeling somewhat unsatisfied.

"I'm here," Ai Qing replied, then asked, "How long will we play Monopoly? I'd also like to go to the hot springs with Xiaoyu later."

"I guess it'll take a few hours?" Xiao Youqian glanced at the time and then said, "Monopoly can be played for a long time."

"But you can wait until the early hours of the morning to soak. You just finished eating, and you soaked for so long this afternoon, so what's the rush?"

Hearing this, Ai Qing turned to look at Xiao Yu. Seeing her nod, she took Xiao Yu's hand and walked upstairs: "Let's go play then."

At this moment, the other five people had already taken their seats at the long table in the entertainment room on the third floor.

Xie Qiaohe sat at the head of the table on the narrow side of the long table, carefully sorting through the banknotes in the Monopoly book.

As a chemistry teacher, she's quite good at math; she'd be more than qualified to be a bank manager here.

Xie Qiaohe preferred watching from the sidelines rather than participating in the game herself, making her the perfect person to manage the money.

Wu Yong sat to Xie Qiaohe's right, while the other three sat opposite him.

So Ai Qing pulled Xiao Yu to sit next to Wu Yong, which meant they were sitting face-to-face with the three people opposite them.

The Monopoly map has a pretty good texture; the material feels like cardboard, and it lies flat in the center when unfolded.

Ai Qing glanced at it; it was basically a list of some of the world's most famous cities.

The characters that each player can choose are quite interesting, including cows, horses, motorcycles, and cars.

Ai Qing picked a relatively normal sheriff character from among them. Xiao Yu, who was next to her, originally wanted to take the cat character, but Li Qiqi took it first.

So they had no choice but to choose the horse next to them.

The rules of Monopoly are simple and straightforward: everyone starts with a sum of money, rolls the dice, buys whatever they can find, and whoever goes bankrupt at the end is eliminated.

Generally speaking, it's more fun with more people.

Because if there are too few people, everyone can buy a lot of land, and no one will be short of money in the later stages, so the game can basically go on for a very long time.

But with so many people, some unlucky individuals might end up catching exhaust fumes from other people's exhaust pipes, and end up paying fines and rent until they go bankrupt.

Wu Yong and his two companions were lucky; they rolled the dice first, and Wu Yong got the highest number, so the game started with him.

Moving clockwise, the second one is Ai Qing.

If you can start ahead, and if you're lucky, you can stay ahead step by step.

In the early stages, when you have plenty of money, you just have to buy things and accumulate assets.

However, since there are two dice, it's easy for someone who's lucky to catch up later.

Xiao Youqian and Li Qiqi were both lucky, and soon they followed suit and bought several plots of land.

"Hey, wait, how come you all have land now?" After playing around, Kong Fugui was dumbfounded when he looked at the Monopoly cruise ship he had barely managed to buy, which could only collect money but not build houses.

By this time, everyone else had an average of three or four plots of land.

There are only about twenty plots of land on the entire map that can be used to build houses, and now only two or three are left empty. Whether they can even reach them is still a question.

"Five five five! Five five five! Nice!" Kong Fugui rolled a five and finally bought a piece of land.

And it's in Sydney, not bad at all.

Although it's not as expensive as the top-tier cities, it's still in the second tier. Once houses are built, the toll fees alone will be in the millions.

At the start, each person's initial capital is only 15 million.

But at that moment, Kong Fugui glanced at the opposite side, where Ai Qing was spreading out the pieces of land in his hands one by one.

One, two... six!

"Holy crap!" Kong Fugui couldn't help but curse. "You're really good at buying things, kid. You've got six plots of land already! I only have one!"

"That shows you're loyal," Ai Qing said with a smile. It was now his turn. He picked up two dice, threw them onto the map, and rolled a six.

Holding his sheriff character, he took six steps and arrived at the opportunity card slot.

"Draw a chance card," said Xie Qiaohe, the bank manager.

So Ai Qing reached out, drew a chance card, glanced at it, and read its contents:

"The acquisition card allows you to acquire any undeveloped land at double the original price. If the land has already been purchased, the landowner cannot refuse."

Wow~

Ai Qing laughed after reading it.

He looked down at the land in his hand, then at the scene around him.

This Monopoly game has a mechanism where each plot of land has a color, and two or three adjacent plots often belong to the same color.

If one person owns all the land plots of the same color, then the toll for everyone else will be doubled.

Simply put, Jerusalem, Hong Kong, and Beijing are all depicted as yellow areas on the map.

If there is only one piece of land in Jerusalem, the toll would be 24.

However, if someone owns all three properties, then anyone else coming to Jerusalem will have to pay a toll of 48.

Once a house is successfully built in Jerusalem, the toll will rise to 120 million, and if it doubles, it will become an outrageous 240 million.

If a hotel is built later, and the toll is doubled, the toll alone would be 2400 million, which would be enough to take someone down.

If rolling dice in the early stages is like traveling the world, then rolling dice in the later stages is like walking through a minefield.

If you're unlucky, you might be a multi-millionaire before the lap, but after the lap, you won't even have your underwear left.

With the idea of ​​acquiring land of the same color scheme in mind, Ai Qing held the acquisition card in her hand and looked at the players present with a smile.

Then he glanced at the six plots of land in his hand, four of which were scattered and each only had one color.

Only the red plots are really good. There are three red plots in total, and I only own two, one in New York and one in London.

If we take the remaining red plot of land, we can connect them into a chain and collect double the toll fees.

Thinking of this, Ai Qing glanced at the map, pointed to the last red piece of land, and asked, "Bank, is Sydney still there?"

“Sydney was just bought by Kong Fugui.” Xie Qiaohe pointed at Kong Fugui, then tried hard to suppress her laughter.

But the others couldn't help but laugh out loud, and Xie Qiaohe couldn't hold back any longer either, bursting into laughter as well.

A burst of cheerful laughter echoed from the entertainment room, leaving only Kong Fugui, his face flushed, handing over the Sydney he had just acquired and barely had a chance to enjoy, and tearfully accepting Ai Qing's double acquisition fee.

To be fair, Kong Fugui just spent 220 million to buy Sydney in the last round, and now, before the round is even over, he has already made back 440 million.

In the short term, it's not a loss.

But in the game Monopoly, it's all about who owns more land, who builds more houses, and who collects the heaviest tolls.

He currently has no land, so in the future he will be completely at the mercy of others.

When you're traveling, it's better to commit a crime and stay in prison; prison is warmer than home.

"Comfortable."

Ai Qing lined up the three property cards for London, New York, and Sydney, clapped her hands, and nodded in satisfaction.

If houses are built on all three plots of land, it would be fantastic to double the toll fees.

Unfortunately, Ai Qing's joy was short-lived. Li Qiqi, on the other side, had already picked up the dice, rolled a seven, and landed in the welfare card slot.

"Draw a welfare card," said Xie Qiaohe, the bank manager.

Li Qiqi took out a welfare card and then read the words on it aloud:

"Same color card: Select any color of land and you can buy all the land of that color at once. If other players have already purchased the land of that color, you can buy it back at the original price."

"Holy crap, that's amazing!" Kong Fugui, who had no land to his name, exclaimed in surprise.

Since he had nothing of his own, Kong Fugui immediately became gloating.

The others, however, changed their expressions and tightened their grip on the property cards.

Kong Fugui still felt it wasn't interesting enough, so he quickly offered Li Qiqi some advice: "Qiqi, this game isn't about who's the most miserable, but about who's currently the most powerful. We need to find a way to drag them down first."

“Look, although the best plots of land on the map are in Sister Qian and Lao Wu’s hands, your cousin has some red plots of the same color.”

"With the toll doubled, his land is worth far more than any single piece of land on the field."

You know what I mean, right?

Ai Qing across from her raised an eyebrow, suddenly feeling a bit of a toothache: "When you give advice, can you please not bring your personal emotions into it?"

"Qiqi, take over that blue plot of land. It's more than twice as expensive as mine."

"Then we'll both make a fortune and bankrupt them all."

Li Qiqi blinked, looked at Kong Fugui, then at Ai Qing, and then at Xiao Youqian and Wu Yong, who held the blue land plot in their hands.

Then she chuckled, waved her matching card in her hand, and took three red tiles from Ai Qing.

Ai Qing: "..."

"Offending one person while pleasing three others—I can still tell the difference," Li Qiqi laughed heartily.

Kong Fugui, who was standing next to her, also burst into laughter. He was happier to see Ai Qing get the short end of the stick than if he himself had gone bankrupt.

Ai Qing looked speechlessly at the four plots of land she had left. Two of them were very cheap, and the other two were only slightly better, neither of them very expensive.

This immediately exposed their true colors.

Ai Qing shook her head, looked at Li Qiqi, and sighed, "You're still too young. As the saying goes, the taller the tree, the more the wind blows. If you had acquired other plots of land of the same color, we would both have been in the limelight, and I could have shared the burden with you."

"Now look what's happened, you've become the richest one on the field, and they'll all have to come after you."

"Do you think that if you don't offend others now, they'll let you off the hook later?"

That's how games are.

Although this game of capital has been simplified to the extreme, the shadows of many capital operations can still be seen in some of the matches.

In the eyes of the wealthy, having too much cash on hand is actually useless, just like Kong Fugui is now.

Because he couldn't buy any land, he didn't spend much of the initial 1500 million he had, and currently has the most cash flow on hand.

But it's also the easiest to lose.

Because they have no assets.