Mu Lingfeng took a taxi back to the Mu Family Old Residence located in the suburbs.
The Mu Family Mansion grounds are vast. The grand villa, complete with front and back gardens, boasts beautiful scenery. Set far away from the bustling city, it is a comfortable and tranquil place to live. The area surrounding the Mu estate is filled with similarly sized villas, all inhabited by prominent and influential figures of the city.
In reality, the true Mu Family Old Residence is the country villa right next to the farm that Mu Lingfeng currently manages. The Mu family began their climb to prosperity during the time of Mu Lingfeng’s great-grandfather. Once they became wealthy, they bought a large plot of land in the suburbs and built a much larger, more luxurious, and better-situated mansion, where the whole family moved in.
After Mu Lingfeng was born, his great-grandmother, nostalgic for the life she once knew, insisted on returning to the countryside for her retirement and brought Mu Lingfeng with her. In her youth, the great-grandmother had been a brilliant woman who accompanied her husband as he built their empire. Long before they had struck it rich, she had purchased a significant amount of land back in their hometown, developing it into a farm. She kept horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, dogs, and pigs, and contracted several mountain slopes to grow fruit.
At a time when many people had lost interest in farming, the Mu family used their wealth to lease large tracts of fallow land. They planted seasonal vegetables, turning it into a massive agricultural operation whose produce was sold far and wide. By the time the family reached the generation of Mu Lingfeng’s father, the Mu family had become a multi-billion-dollar dynasty with companies scattered across the country.
After his great-grandmother passed away, Mu Lingfeng—the young master who had grown up running wild in the countryside—returned to his parents. He found that he disliked the suffocating rules of the grand mansion, which everyone now called the Mu Family Old Residence, and insisted on returning to the countryside. He continued to manage the empire he had helped build alongside his great-grandmother, spending his days tending to his livestock and fruit trees. His life was fulfilling, and he earned a substantial income.
Having had such a formidable great-grandmother as a role model, and having watched and learned from her since childhood, Mu Lingfeng was also quite adept at investing and business. Though he appeared to spend all his time on the farm, he actually held numerous assets, and his personal net worth reached into the tens of billions. He was a true tycoon—albeit an incredibly low-profile one.
In the eyes of outsiders, the eldest young master of the Mu family was just a "country bumpkin" who had grown up in the sticks and still lived there. Because he held no position in the Mu Group, they viewed him as someone who couldn't be taken seriously in polite society. Mu Lingfeng had little fame in A-City’s high society, and those who had actually met him or knew him well were few and far between. Families with daughters of marriageable age set their sights on the other Mu young masters; nobody was interested in marrying their daughter off to Mu Lingfeng.
Because of this, the thirty-year-old Mu Lingfeng found his mother’s constant pestering about marriage dizzying. Madam Mu felt both heartache and anger: heartache because her eldest son was exceptionally handsome and yet not a single girl from a distinguished family wanted him; and anger because those people were blind and failed to recognize her son’s worth.
Of course, even if no elite heiresses were willing to consider Mu Lingfeng, Madam Mu refused to lower her standards for a daughter-in-law. Every candidate she arranged for him was the daughter of a wealthy and powerful family. She had only agreed to the marriage with the Zhang family because the Zhang Group was becoming increasingly powerful, and she deemed the daughter of the Zhang family worthy of her eldest son.
What Madam Mu hadn't expected was that Zhang Mutian would let his eldest daughter—born to his ex-wife—marry her son. It had infuriated her to no end. But as Lingfeng pointed out, the marriage certificate was already signed, and he had decided that Zhang Ling was his wife; he refused to swap her for anyone else. What could Madam Mu do? She had no choice but to hold her nose and accept Zhang Ling as her daughter-in-law, though it never sat quite right with her.
The taxi pulled up to the gate of the Mu Family Mansion. A security guard room sat at the entrance, with guards on duty twenty-four hours a day. The guard on duty was suspicious at the sight of a taxi, but when he saw the eldest young master step out, he quickly stood up, hurried out of the guard room, and opened the small side gate.
"Eldest Young Master, you're back." The guard was all smiles. The eldest young master rarely returned; no matter how much the old lady and the mistresses nagged, he always stayed in the countryside.
"Mm," Mu Lingfeng acknowledged. After paying the fare, he asked, "Are the Old Lady and the eldest mistress at home?"
"They are. The Old Lady didn't know how many times she called to ask if we’d seen your car since she heard you were coming back. Eldest Young Master, why didn't you drive?"
Mu Lingfeng carried the bag containing his new clothes and began walking inside. "I let Tang Xiaoxu use the car; he needed to go back to the farm to look after things." The guard knew that Tang Xiaoxu was the young master’s capable assistant and close friend.
Mu Lingfeng didn't say much more to the guard. Once inside, he strode away quickly, his pace long and purposeful. He reached the entrance of the main house in no time.
The housekeeper happened to be coming out just as Mu Lingfeng stepped onto the porch. She paused, and upon recognizing him, her face lit up with a wide smile. She turned around and hurried back inside, calling out, "Old Lady! Mistress! The Eldest Young Master is back!"
The mother and daughter-in-law had been waiting anxiously, and finally, they received the news. The Old Lady rose happily, eager to go out to meet him.
"Grandmother." Mu Lingfeng had already entered.
Looking at her tall, handsome, and mature grandson, the old lady felt as if she were seeing her husband in his younger years. It was no wonder the old man had doted on this grandson most; he was the one who resembled him the most. She also felt that her eldest grandson was fulfilling the filial piety that she could no longer provide for her own late mother, so she always wanted to compensate him, showering him with extra affection.
"Lingfeng is back! You brat, you wouldn't come back even if I begged you a dozen times. This is your home, too. Your family is here—how can you be so heartless as to stay away year after year?" Though she was smiling, she couldn't help but complain about how rarely he visited. Madam Mu, meanwhile, was brimming with joy, though she surreptitiously wiped the corner of her eye.
"Grandmother, I’m back now, aren't I?" Mu Lingfeng walked over to the Old Lady and gave her a hug. That single embrace dissolved all of her complaints.
"Mother." Once he released his grandmother, Mu Lingfeng greeted his mother.
Madam Mu responded, secretly hoping for a hug from her son as well, but Mu Lingfeng did not offer one. Ever since he could remember, he had been by his great-grandmother’s side. While his parents and grandparents visited him often, he always preferred to be with her. He never shared a deep emotional bond with his parents; his relationship with his mother remained polite and distant, lacking the natural intimacy found in other families.
Madam Mu sometimes regretted letting her son accompany his great-grandmother back then. She blamed her younger self for being too caught up in her intense romance with her husband. With her grandmother-in-law there to help raise the boy, she had been free to continue her private life with her husband, so she had let Mu Lingfeng go to the countryside. Later, after she had her second child, her focus shifted, and she didn't mind her eldest son remaining in the countryside—after all, she assumed his grandmother would raise him well.
By the time she realized how distant they had become, the opportunity to cultivate that mother-son bond had passed. Now, the two of them were nothing more than polite, even in their own home.