Chapter 2: The First Bronze Mission
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation
[Random Mission Completed: Random Points +1]
After circling around half of the neighborhood, Su Yang arrived in his bas.e.m.e.nt. He tossed his bag to Gru which extended two withered branches out to catch it accurately before placing it on the floor.
Su Yang changed into his slippers while humming a melody. He went to the bathroom to wash the brick and his hands.
As he washed his hands, he complained, “Always saving a damsel in distress…It was fun at first, but it’s getting boring. Does the system have any innovative missions?
“Can’t I help an old lady cross the road? If not, why can’t I send some blessings to some aunties? Anyhow, I got 21 yuan from this, so I guess tomorrow’s meals will be settled.”
After he realized that the girls he saved never repaid him by marrying him, with the most they did buying him a meal, Su Yang applied the rule of ‘a million changes in a single method’, thus he started to collect fees.
First of all, he was poor. Secondly, he had been extra poor lately.
However, he had his own principles as well. While collecting the fees from the girls, he would pick up some taxi receipts as proof at least, so the girls that he saved could claim it from their companies.
After all, Su Yang had practically protected the employees of the respective companies.
This was much more practical than buying him a meal. The girls could save money and Su Yang could earn a little money, hence it was a win-win situation.
After he dried the brick and wiped his hands, he tidied up and checked the system. In the Random Points column, his points had increased from 0 to 1. He then went to bed in silence.
On the morning of the second day, Su Yang was woken up by notifications from his Wechat. He slowly opened his sleepy eyes and picked up his phone beside his bed. He tapped it and saw a message from Chu Xia, the secretary of the cla.s.s committee.
Chu Xia was a beautiful girl who was 172 cm tall. Slightly slender, had a palm-sized face and delicate facial features. She had always been told that she was photogenic, so her closer cla.s.smates always teased and encouraged her to enter the entertainment industry and said that she might even become a famous actress overnight.
To be honest, her features were really attractive. During the first day of military training, she was spotted by a faculty lecturer and was immediately invited to host the welcoming dinner as a freshman with the fourth-year seniors. This made her famous among the freshmen and first-year students of the faculty of arts. Whilst she captured the hearts of many men, she also painstakingly s.h.i.+elded herself from the harsh sun.
Therefore, after the military training ended, everyone was deeply tanned, but she alone remained as fair as a rose which made her the target of the girls in the cla.s.s for a while.
Su Yang recalled many other girls in the cla.s.s getting together and isolating her. Be it during lectures, meals, or even back in the dorm, no one wanted to be friends with her. However, sometime later, Chu Xia was accepted by the other girls again although no one knew why.
This matter became a mystery that the boys in cla.s.s hoped to find out, but the other girls in the cla.s.s kept their mouths shut no matter how the boys bribed them for an answer.
Su Yang was quite close to Chu Xia, or rather, she was quite close to everyone in the cla.s.s. She was earnest and responsible. She even cared for her cla.s.smates and was a beautiful secretary of the cla.s.s committee, so everyone liked her.
Su Yang unlocked his phone and tapped on the Wechat app.
[Chu Xia: Don’t try to escape English cla.s.s today. There’s a new lecturer. Names will be taken one by one.]
‘A new lecturer?’
Su Yang’s blurry mind slowly cleared up. It seemed like he could no longer skip cla.s.s today.
‘I was thinking of going to work today. Fine, I guess I’ll go to cla.s.s. It’ll be bad if I fail the subject…’
With that in mind, he replied with ‘thank you’.
He was truly grateful for Chu Xia because since he was working part-time, he always skipped cla.s.ses. She was the one who covered for him all the time. Otherwise, he would have failed the subject due to his lack of attendance.
After he replied Chu Xia, Su Yang suddenly noticed a new contact in his friend list with the nickname ‘Puffy Qu’.
The profile picture was the side profile of a girl’s face. She resembled the girl whom he saved last night. Su Yang tapped on her profile and saw the transfer record.
‘Yeah, it should be the girl from last night.’
The girl was just a pa.s.serby and would remain as such in the future, so Su Yang deleted the contact.
After he deleted the contact, he tidied up and told Gru to take care of the house and not let strangers in before he headed out for his English cla.s.s.
English was a major subject in university and the cla.s.s was held in a lecture hall of the main faculty building. When Su Yang reached the lecture hall, many students were already inside, including Chu Xia.
Her black hair tumbled over her shoulders. Wearing a beige coat with a black T-s.h.i.+rt inside, she appeared simple but fas.h.i.+onable. She was chatting happily in the middle of several other girls. The presence of youth overflowed from her delicate features.
When she saw Su Yang enter, she waved at him by way of greeting.
Su Yang nodded and sat down in an empty seat at the last row of the lecture hall. While he was scrolling through his phone, he was thinking about where he should use the Random Point from last night.
‘Should I add the point to a pen? The pen might automatically write down the location of a treasure, or maybe it can become a fairy that can predict the future! Even if the pen fairy can’t predict the future, I can use it to perform a magic trick and earn some extra money.
‘Close-up magic! A pen that moves by itself! Hmm, that’s quite catchy…No one will be able to find its flaw!
‘Or should I add the points to my bank card? Will I be able to withdraw endless money? Then, I’ll become the CEO of a famous company, marry a rich and fair bride, and reach the peak of my life!
‘I won’t be arrested by the bank, will I?’
The more Su Yang fantasized about it, the more excited he got.
A man always had the right to dream.
Even though there was a high chance that the item that he added the point to would turn out strange, his life was already bland enough, so why could he not fantasize sometimes?
While his fantasies ran wild in his head, a pair of high heels click-clacked outside the lecture hall.
A while later, a girl with a doll-like face and average height who looked no older than Su Yang came in.
The students whispered to one another.
“Is this our new English lecturer? She’s cute!”
“Yeah, she’s cute, but she looks younger than all of us!”
Su Yang curiously raised his head and was dumbstruck.
‘I-isn’t she that damsel I saved last night? No, I think she should be the girl I tricked for money.’
Su Yang scratched his head and looked extremely bothered.
‘Great, I just scammed my new lecturer’s money last night. My luck has been sh*tty lately…’
“Amitabha, please, G.o.ds of the heavens and Jesus, save me! Please don’t let the new lecturer notice me!” He lowered his head and started to mumble some prayers.
Qu Xiaomeng did not notice him at all. It was a major subject after all, hence three cla.s.ses from the entire course attended the lecture together. There were a hundred students in the lecture hall, so how could she have noticed the dumb Su Yang?
She took a deep breath and gulped to suppress her pounding heart. She stepped on the podium and placed her lecture notes on the desk beside it. She glanced over the entire lecture hall with a sharp gaze and her doll-like face showed nothing but a serious look.
“Ms. Zhang is on maternity leave from today onwards, so I’ll be her replacement for English until the end of the semester for the first year.”
Her introduction was brief. She then picked up a piece of chalk and firmly wrote down her name on the blackboard—Qu Xiaomeng.
“My name is Qu Xiaomeng. I’m no older than you and I just graduated from university a while ago. You can call me Ms. Qu or just Sister Qu. I’ll be taking your names now.”
In less than a minute, Qu Xiaomeng built her stern and strict image in front of the students.
If Su Yang had not noticed that her stomach and legs were slightly shaking and her left elbow was pale, he would really have believed that the girl, who had been as cowardly as a quail last night, had turned into a lioness.
However, after he noticed the details, Su Yang could not help but feel delighted. It seemed like the new lecturer was very nervous. She made herself appear strict because she wanted to control the situation and the students.
Nevertheless, her efforts were effective. All the students in the lecture hall sat up straight. No one dared to look down on this new lecturer who was just a few years older than them.
After she saw that the students were frightened by her stern demeanor, Qu Xiaomeng heaved a breath of relief. She curled her fist subtly behind the podium and encouraged herself in her mind.
‘Qu Xiameng, you can do it!’
“Chu Xia.”
“Present.”
“Chu An.”
Present.”
…
Taking the names of a hundred students took about 10 minutes. Su Yang’s family name started with S, which put his name in the middle of the name list. Therefore, he made it through the roll call without any problem.
However, maybe because the person he scammed before was giving a lecture on the podium, Su Yang barely paid any attention for a while, but he realized he could not understand anything.
His command of English had been bad ever since his high school days. Therefore, when he had filled in the details for his desired course, he had purposely picked Chinese Literature. Other than having more job opportunities, he thought he could free himself from the clutch of the English language.
In the end, he still ended up in an English cla.s.s!
He really wanted to pry open the lecturer who arranged the course subject and see what was in his brains! Why would the Chinese Literature course have an English subject!?
He recalled only getting 60 marks in his English semester test during the first half of the semester, which was a borderline pa.s.s. He then watched Qu Xiaomeng who started to mess up her lecture and exhibit the quirks of a dorky girl. He somehow felt like he had a grudge against English.
Qu Xiaomeng was really fl.u.s.tered. Right before the lecture, she still had some confidence, but as the lecture went on and she looked at the hundred students in front of her, she started to feel more and more nervous.
The more nervous she got, the more mistakes she made, and the more mistakes she made, the more nervous she got. Her mind was slowly turning blank while she started to mess up her words. There were even a few times when she p.r.o.nounced a word wrongly.
She was starting to regret not listening to her ex-lecturer’s advice last night.
When she visited her ex-lecturer last night, the latter had taught her how to build her image in front of the students. The lecturer also advised her to ask Ms. Zhang to take on this major cla.s.s before her maternity leave.
After all, it was a major cla.s.s with a hundred students. Anyone else with a weaker mentality would have been easily frightened, and it might have been a little too overwhelming for a fres.h.i.+e lecturer’s first day.
However, Qu Xiaomeng believed that Ms. Zhang was in a very important phase of her life, so she did not want to disturb her and she believed she could handle it.
In the end, she started to lose it. The encouraging words in her mind changed from ‘You can do it!’ to ‘Qu Xiaomeng, you must not cry!”
As a matter of fact, most of the students in the lecture hall started to notice signs of Qu Xiaomeng’s nerves, but her harmless doll-like face plus her dorky att.i.tude really discouraged them from disturbing her. Instead, everyone feigned a blind eye and listened to her lecture carefully.
Soon, the cla.s.s ended. Su Yang kept his head low throughout the lecture and did not get noticed by Qu Xiaomeng.
After he realized that stooping was effective, he decided to sit in the last row during English cla.s.s and try his best to avoid eye contact with Qu Xiaomeng. Maybe a week or two later, she would forget that he had scammed her money, then he would slowly emerge as a new person.
Just when he thought he could slip away unnoticed, a voice entered his mind.
‘Ding! Bronze Mission triggered: Help the new English lecturer.’