Chapter 4
When Ji Zhixing got back to the dormitory, he tried to turn the handle but couldn't open the door. Was it locked from the inside? He knocked on the door.
"Who is it!" Xu Dongyang's voice sounded very wary.
"It's me."
Then there was a sound from inside the door. Ji Zhixing heard the door bolt being turned and the door opening.
"What are you doing in broad daylight?" The door to their dormitory is never locked, not even when they are sleeping at night.
Xu Dongyang pulled Ji Zhixing inside, then quickly closed the door as if facing a formidable enemy.
"What are you doing?" Ji Zhixing asked.
"It's all your fault!" Xu Dongyang pointed at Ji Zhixing's desk. "You should have taken your watch with you when you left, instead of leaving it there. Everyone heard about it and insisted on coming to see it, crowding around in groups. What if it got bumped or broken? Who are you going to complain to?"
Ji Zhixing patted Xu Dongyang on the shoulder: "Thanks, brother!"
"Hey, tell me, what's going on with your family? Why were you like this before..." Xu Dongyang asked curiously. It was definitely true that Ji Zhixing's living conditions were so difficult before. The young men of the 10th grade only had one steamed bun and a bowl of free soup from the canteen for each meal.
But if his family is so wealthy that they can casually throw away 100 million yuan to buy a watch, then why is Ji Zhixing living such a frugal life?
Ji Zhixing rubbed his nose, unsure how to explain. He couldn't very well say that a group of filial and successful great-grandchildren had suddenly appeared, insisting on giving him a gift. So he could only vaguely reply, "It's a long story..."
Seeing this, Xu Dongyang didn't press the matter further. Every family has its own troubles, and his own family was a mess too. Rather than inquiring about Ji Zhixing's family, he was more concerned about whether Ji Zhixing's future living conditions could be improved.
Will you still go to work in the future?
Ji Zhixing said with a smile, "I won't go. My family wants me to focus on my studies from now on, and they'll provide me with living expenses." 500 a day.
"That's great! Now that you have some money, why don't you buy a few outfits?"
Ji Zhixing only wore two or three outfits in the summer, and he was very clean and washed them frequently, so the fabric was worn out. For example, Xu Dongyang felt that he could tear the T-shirt Ji Zhixing was wearing with just a light flick of his little finger.
Ji Zhixing looked down at himself and realized it was indeed time to change. He had been so focused on studying and accumulating points that he hadn't paid attention to other trivial matters.
"Also, what are you going to do with your watches? You can't just leave them in the dorm."
Last semester, the senior dorm next door was burgled, and several laptops were stolen. Although they were eventually caught, the laptops had already been formatted, and the most important graduation theses inside couldn't even be found, not even the titles. Several senior students were heartbroken and cried their hearts out.
The news about Ji Zhixing's ten watches has spread far and wide. A popular post titled "A Small Goal, Only Those Who Understand" is prominently displayed on the school's public forum. Several people he knows have also come to ask about them, including those from the neighboring school. Sooner or later, this will attract the attention of thieves.
"I suggest you either keep it at home or rent a safe deposit box at a bank."
Ji Zhixing would never spend money on these watches again. He has a free safe deposit box with the system, so he can just find an opportunity to have the system take them.
I spent the whole afternoon at the police station; I still have two side quests to complete today.
Ji Zhixing, using the excuse of being tired, went to bed early, drew the curtains, and opened the task panel in his mind, selecting a set of 36 Stroop images as today's "Attention" branch task.
The psychological principle of Stroop diagrams is to use the difference between discrimination response and visual recognition to interfere with non-dominant response with dominant response, making it difficult for test subjects to respond accurately and quickly to non-dominant stimuli.
When Ji Zhixing first practiced the Stroop diagram, he slowed down considerably halfway through, and his error rate increased rapidly. However, after a month of attention training, he is now quite proficient at doing the Stroop diagram exercises.
After successfully completing the first task, Ji Zhixing selected a set of visuospatial training exercises to finish the "memory" branch task. Then he went to bed early; this afternoon had been quite an ordeal.
...
Because one student in dormitory 310 changed majors and moved to another dormitory, only three people lived there. Lin Lang didn't arrive until two days before the start of the semester.
As soon as he entered the door, he threw himself at Ji Zhixing: "Brother! Don't forget me when you become rich and powerful!"
Ji Zhixing staggered from the stench of sweat emanating from him: "You're trying to murder me for money!" The stench was almost tangible.
Upon hearing this, Lin Lang moved his armpit even closer to Ji Zhixing's nose.
The guys in dormitory 310 got along well, and Lin Lang had always worried that Ji Zhixing might faint from hunger on his way to work. Now, things were finally looking up. Thinking of this, he emotionally grasped Ji Zhixing's hand: "Your good fortune is yet to come!"
"Get lost!" Ji Zhixing kicked him, and the two joked around for a while before Ji Zhixing picked up his bag and headed out.
"Where are we going? It's so hot outside in the middle of the afternoon!" Lin Lang was drenched in sweat as he walked from the school gate to the dormitory building.
"The library." Ji Zhixing still went to the library every day without fail.
"Damn it! School just started!" Lin Lang lamented, accusing him of being a jerk.
Ji Zhixing said that there is a wealth of knowledge in books, and you mortals don't know anything about it.
He spent an hour studying in the library and finally finished reading the rest of "Engineering Graphics". Just as he closed the book, he heard a system notification sound.
[Friendly Reminder: The host has completed the first stage of the task, and their comprehensive learning ability has successfully advanced.]
[Task Reward: One set of clothing for each of the four seasons. These were pre-arranged by your great-grandchildren—]
This is great, this is great! This reward is so practical, it suits his taste much better than those watches. As for the style, he's not picky, as long as it's wearable.
Ji Zhixing was secretly delighted for a moment, then opened the task panel in his mind. The title had changed to "Level 2 Tasks." He browsed through them briefly; the tasks under the five branch lists were all more difficult than Level 1 tasks. However, each task now only awarded 2 points, meaning that if things went smoothly, he could earn a thousand a day!
...
The seasonal clothing rewards for completing the task were procured online by a professional clothing consultant arranged by the system. The consultant was highly efficient, completing the purchase according to the sizes and requirements provided by the system the very next day, and then loading it all onto a truck and delivering it to dormitory 310.
Several staff members unloaded the goods and carried them upstairs one trip after another, burying Ji Zhixing in the dormitory layer by layer with all kinds of clothing bags, shoe boxes, and accessory bags.
Ji Zhixing stretched out Er Kang's hand: "Um... are you sure you didn't make a mistake?" He thought "one set of clothing for each season" meant one set of each, and even if the top and bottom were complete, there should only be 8 pieces, right? But the packages piled up in the dormitory were overflowing into the corridor outside, and the staff were still coming and going.
The fashion consultant was a smart and stylish long-haired woman. She handed the delivery slip to Ji Zhixing, who was buried in a pile of packages, and explained that one set was a dozen, totaling 48 sets for all four seasons. She added that one set meant a complete outfit from head to toe.
Ji Zhixing took the list and scanned it; sure enough, it contained all kinds of clothes, pants, shoes, and socks. He even saw...
"Long underwear?" Even in the dead of winter in the South, the temperature is above 0 degrees Celsius, so why would you need long underwear?
The fashion consultant coughed lightly. Actually, she also felt it was unnecessary; after all, he was a twenty-year-old young man, not a seventy or eighty-year-old man, but…
"This is something the customer specifically requested when placing the order."
"Oh..." The still very young ancestor Ji Zhixing signed the receipt without saying a word.
After the clothing consultant carefully collected the delivery slip, they thoughtfully provided after-sales service, unpacking all the packages with several staff members. Unfortunately, the dormitory was too small to organize them properly, as there were 48 pairs of proper shoes alone, not counting various slippers and cotton shoes.
After they left, Ji Zhixing had to ask the system to help pack up the other three seasons' belongings, barely managing to squeeze the 12 summer outfits into the small wardrobe in the dormitory. There were also more than a dozen pairs of shoes with nowhere to go, so they had to be stuffed into the gap between the table and the wall, stacked up one by one, higher than Ji Zhixing himself.
Ji Zhixing looked at the pile of brand-new shoe boxes, and then at his only pair of sneakers on the shoe rack.
He bought these shoes when he was in his first year of high school. He wore them for four or five years, from spring to winter, and the soles came unglued countless times, only to be glued back together with superglue. Now, suddenly having dozens more pairs of shoes, Ji Zhixing felt a mix of guilt towards his great-grandson and the simple joy of an old farmer with a bountiful harvest.
The constant stream of staff naturally attracted another crowd, and the previously buried post on the school forum, "A Small Goal," was brought back to the top. Everyone racked their brains to guess the complicated family background of Ji Zhixing. Some said he might be someone's son, others said he might be someone's grandson, but no one guessed that his true identity was actually the patriarch!
Of course, there were also negative comments in the post:
"Didn't I hear they were so poor they ate only steamed buns every day? How come they suddenly have such wealthy family members? Could it be... that she's actually being kept by a sugar daddy...?" (Disdain.JPG)
"Objectively speaking, it's not impossible."
"It seems like he worked for a long time before, I guess he worked in some kind of...unmentionable place." (Meaningful.JPG)
"Tsk! People like this are corrupting the school's atmosphere."
...
Lin Lang was engrossed in the forum, following the gossip, when he noticed the unfriendly comments. He looked closely and realized they were from two alternate accounts, constantly trying to steer the conversation towards discord with sarcastic remarks.
Lin Lang frowned, a vague guess forming in his mind. He opened his laptop, typed in a string of code, and soon found the ports for the two smaller accounts, which were indeed located in Liu Shihui's dormitory.
People on the forum have already refuted the "sugar daddy/sugar baby" theory. Most people with a normal brain wouldn't believe that a sugar daddy would be willing to spend 100 million yuan to keep someone as a sugar daddy/sugar baby. After Lin Lang posted the screenshots of the alternate account and the announcement of Liu Shihui's disciplinary action by the school, everyone would understand the cause and effect.
Before anyone could even start mocking them, one of the alt accounts slunk off the game.
Another account continued to speak: "I am Fan Yongjie, and I have no personal grudge against Ji Zhixing. I simply cannot stand this kind of behavior of excessive consumption despite not having the financial means. I believe that a student should focus on equipping himself with knowledge and skills, rather than adorning himself with luxury goods."
Lin Lang knew that Fan Yongjie and Liu Shihui were related and even shared a dormitory. It would be strange if Fan Yongjie targeted Ji Zhixing without Liu Shihui's encouragement behind the scenes.
He replied in a rapid-fire manner: "You can conclude that he didn't study hard just by talking? He's been spending a whole month in the library. Wasn't Liu Shihui just looking for an opportunity to cause trouble while he was in the library?"
"Studying is not about piling up time. Spending a lot of time in the library doesn't mean anything. It's about grades and honors that speak for themselves."
Lin Lang was a little unsure how to reply, because Fan Yongjie was indeed a top student who had won the first-class scholarship twice, while Ji Zhixing's grades in his freshman year were not very good.
Just then, Ji Zhixing returned from the library, and Lin Lang quickly grabbed him to look at the forum. Only then did Ji Zhixing realize that there was such a post.
He never goes on forums; it's too much of a waste of time. He used to use it to squeeze in time for part-time jobs to earn money, but now it's for studying... and earning money.
In the forum, Fan Yongjie stood on his moral high ground and talked incessantly, belittling Ji Zhixing to the point of being worthless. Of course, there were also those who disapproved of Fan Yongjie's tendency to criticize others just because of his good grades.
So, the onlookers in the post started to urge Ji Zhixing and Fan Yongjie to have a competition!
"I'm indifferent, but I don't know if Ji Zhixing dares to accept the challenge."
Ji Zhixing is no saint. How could he remain silent after being criticized and provoked by name like this? So he quickly registered an account to speak out.
"I am Ji Zhixing. First, let me explain that those things were all kind gifts from my family. Also, I agree to the competition, which will be based on our grades this semester."
Upon seeing the person involved, the onlookers, never ones to miss a good spectacle, began to jeer and jeer.
"Since it's a competition, how can it be without a prize?"
"That's right, let's each contribute something!"
"Isn't the prize already prepared?"
"Just take any one of those ten watches!"
When Fan Yongjie saw this reply, his heart skipped a beat. He was also at the entrance of dormitory 310 that day, so he naturally knew that even the cheapest of the ten Patek Philippe watches, the Twenty 4910, cost two million.
Fearing Ji Zhixing's objection, he quickly typed: "I can also make a watch!"
Ji Zhixing hadn't originally intended to use the gifts from his great-grandchildren as a wager, but he couldn't offer anything of equal value, so after thinking for a moment, he replied, "Then I'll offer a watch."
He can confidently say he hasn't wasted a single day of his summer vacation this month. He spends at least eight hours a day reading in the library, and in the evenings he works hard to improve his learning abilities in all aspects. This semester, he no longer needs to spend time and energy working, so he has plenty of time to study.
"Depend on!"
"You can even get such a good deal!"
"I should have done it myself!"
The onlookers were deeply disappointed.
Fan Yongjie regretted his hasty decision after successfully sending the bet. If he had provoked Ji Zhixing a little more, he might have gotten him to put down the most expensive item as a wager. But bringing it up now would make him seem greedy, which didn't fit his usual image. Oh well, he'd figure out what he could do later if Ji Zhixing won.
After thinking for a moment, I added another sentence:
“My watch may not be as expensive as yours, but I bought it with two semesters’ worth of scholarship money, so I think it’s more valuable.”
Fan Yongjie looked at the sentence several times, felt that he had said it very politely, and clicked send with satisfaction.
The Omega Constellation entry-level model he's wearing on his wrist was bought two months ago on a second-hand website. He's been taking good care of it ever since, but now he feels that this kind of watch, which costs around 100,000 yuan, is too shabby and doesn't suit him at all!
But don't worry, in four months he'll own a watch worth at least a million! If things go smoothly, a watch worth tens of millions isn't impossible!
Fan Yongjie became more and more excited as he thought about it, wishing he could wear the Patek Philippe on his wrist right now!
A note from the author:
The line "The cries rose straight to the clouds" is from Du Fu's poem "The Ballad of the War Chariots".
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