【Ding! New System mission—Review the seventh-grade curriculum and activate the memories in your mind. Reward: 50 points and 100 energy.】
【Ding! New System mission—Review the eighth-grade curriculum and reach top-student level. Reward: 50 points and 100 energy.】
【Ding! New System mission—Study the ninth-grade curriculum and reach top-student level. Reward: 50 points and 100 energy.】
【Ding! New System mission—Preview the tenth-grade curriculum. Reward: 50 points and 100 energy.】
【Ding! New System mission—Study yoga, shape a perfect figure, and reach beginner-level proficiency. Reward: 100 points and 300 energy.】
【Ding! New System mission—Learn to cook and reach beginner-chef level. Reward: 100 points and 300 energy.】
【Ding! New System mission—Learn taekwondo and earn a first-degree black belt. Reward: 100 points and 300 energy.】
【Ding! New System mission—Tidy your room, make it cleaner and neater, and develop the good habit of keeping it organized. Reward: 20 points.】
【Ding…】
Early in the morning, Song Cheng was nearly overwhelmed by the constant dinging in her head. Thinking it was still her alarm, she fumbled around for it before remembering that she had come back. She sat up in bed and checked the System missions in her mind. What she saw startled her.
“Why are there so many missions all at once?”
【Dear host, the pursuit of a happy life starts now! These are all missions you should complete over the next two months. Time is short—how can you spend your precious youth sleeping? The early bird catches the worm, so start working hard right now! Let’s go!】The System sounded brimming with enthusiasm.
“…55? Did I get a different System?”
【No.】The System’s tone returned to its usual seriousness.
“You’re so full of energy this early in the morning. It’s freaking me out. Just act normal.”
【Don’t people on Blue Star like to start the morning with a little inspirational pep talk, then stay motivated all day?】
“Couldn’t you give me one task at a time?”
【I just want to put a little pressure on you. Once I have energy, I can upgrade and serve you better. No need to thank me.】
Song Cheng: …Thanks, but no thanks.
After washing up, she pulled open the curtains. Summer had arrived in the city. It was only seven, but the sun was already up. Song Cheng stepped out of her room and saw that her mother had already brought back breakfast.
The Song family’s apartment complex was nearly twenty years old and sat in Chengdong District. The eastern part of the city had only begun to be developed more recently. The complex had originally been built for employees of the Aerospace Machinery Factory, who were offered discounted prices on the apartments. After graduating, Dad Song had been assigned to work at the factory, and when it was later restructured, he and the others were transferred to the company where he worked now.
Mom Song had once worked at a textile factory in the industrial district. After being laid off, she opened a clothing shop at the nearby night market, selling goods she brought back from the wholesale market in the north of the city. She was energetic and outgoing, and quite pretty, too, so business at her shop was decent. The Song family’s comfortable finances over the years owed a great deal to her.
“Chengcheng, you’re up! Come eat. I bought buns from Auntie Zhou’s place. By the way, what were you doing up last night? Were you reading your novels again? I saw your light on all night,” Mom Song asked.
Song Cheng felt a little guilty. “No. I was just a bit hot, so I took a shower and then read for a while.”
“Don’t stay cooped up at home all the time. Go out and get some sun and fresh air,” Dad Song said, having gotten up as well.
“Dad, it’s so hot outside. What if I get tanned?”
“Staying in is fine, then. The summer sun is scorching; you don’t want to get burned. But…have you gotten a little paler?” Mom Song studied Song Cheng’s face.
“Have I? Maybe it’s because I haven’t gone out these past few days. I haven’t been in the sun, so my face got paler,” Song Cheng said guiltily.
“Keep yourself occupied, then. For lunch, go eat at Uncle Zhang’s noodle shop again, or call and ask him to deliver. We’ll settle the bill at the end of the month. If you don’t feel like cooking tonight, leave it to me,” Dad Song said as he drank his soy milk.
Song Cheng remembered. Before they moved, she used to eat across the street all the time. Everyone in the neighborhood knew one another.
“You two eat up. I’m off to open the shop!” Mom Song said, picking up her bag as she headed out.
“Bye, Mom,” Song Cheng said around a mouthful of food. A little while later, Dad Song left too.
After breakfast, Song Cheng checked the time and decided to tidy her room, wash her dirty clothes, and then clean every corner of the room. Sure enough, her stamina had improved. She worked for two hours straight without feeling tired.
When she finished, the clean, gleaming floor lifted her spirits, filling her with a sense of accomplishment.
She sat down for a drink of water and checked her System missions.
“System, I have to review my middle-school courses, learn yoga, taekwondo, and cooking. There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”
【Please check the System Mall.】
Puzzled, Song Cheng opened the mall. More than ten additional pages had appeared. Beyond the beauty, body-care, and skincare products on the earlier pages, there was now a makeup section. Song Cheng’s eyes swam as she browsed. Further on, she found some instructional books: Beginner’s Yoga, for 30 points; Beginner’s Taekwondo for Teens, for 50 points; and The Complete Guide to Home Cooking, for 30 points.
“How come your mall has so much more stuff than it did last night?”
【Because now I have energy, I can unlock more functions. When I have even more energy later, I’ll be able to upload images directly into your memories, making the material more intuitive to learn.】
So that was how it worked. She needed to get those missions done quickly. Song Cheng checked her points and found she had just enough to buy the yoga book.
She tapped to redeem it. Her vision blurred, and a number of yoga poses and practice tips appeared in her mind.
“The material here is more detailed than the books at the bookstore.” Song Cheng had seen some yoga books there before, and had occasionally flipped through them out of curiosity, but they hadn’t been nearly this detailed.
【The System’s materials are also compiled from resources on Blue Star. The difference is that the System combines different versions according to your body’s characteristics to generate the best fit for you, making your practice twice as effective.】
“But I don’t have enough points to buy the cooking and taekwondo books. Can I put them on credit?” Song Cheng teased.
【…You’ll have enough points once you finish studying the middle-school curriculum. And with your current intelligence, you’ll learn quickly.】
Song Cheng thought about it. That was true. The most important thing now was to finish learning the middle-school material.
It was only eleven. Song Cheng pulled the seventh-grade textbooks out of a box and decided to start with math.
Song Cheng had always been pretty good at math. She was weaker in Chinese, while in English she could handle everything except listening. To put it plainly, she had studied English just to pass exams.
After she started working for a foreign-owned company, she used English so often at work that she became fluent. So Song Cheng wasn’t worried about English at all.
After an hour of math, Song Cheng felt full of confidence.
It was probably thanks to the gene optimization fluid: her memory and comprehension were on a completely different level from before. In just one hour, she had already gotten through half the book, and the material was already fixed in her memory, making it even easier to learn.
Song Cheng put the book down and got ready to go out for lunch.
She hadn’t gone outside at all since returning the day before. As she walked along the familiar yet unfamiliar streets, she saw hardly anyone out in the midday heat. A warm breeze brushed her cheeks, dispelling the distance she had felt inside.
When Song Cheng reached the noodle shop across the street, there were only two or three customers inside. Before she even entered, the owner smiled at her.
“Chengcheng, you’re here! Your dad said this morning that you know how to cook now. I wondered if you’d made yourself something to eat, but here you are. What’ll it be? The usual—fried rice with long beans and egg?”
Yes, Song Cheng loved egg fried rice. She’d still loved it at thirty, but after moving away, it had been a long time since she’d eaten the kind from this shop. Now she remembered that she’d loved their food ever since she was little.
“Then I’ll have the fried rice with long beans and egg, Uncle Zhang.” Song Cheng went in and sat beneath the electric fan.
“Sure. Wait a bit, and help yourself to some water.”
Watching Uncle Zhang’s cheerful smile, Song Cheng picked up the teapot and poured herself a cup. It was roasted buckwheat tea. Mm, the familiar taste.
The noodle shop had been across from Song Cheng’s apartment complex for many years. In her memory, it seemed to have been there for as long as the complex itself. Most of the customers were people from the surrounding neighborhood, and the owner was generous, too, making it one of the few old establishments still around.
Just then, the middle-aged man seated in front of Song Cheng turned around. “Chengcheng, you just finished your high-school entrance exams, didn’t you? How did you do? Your dad said your grades were pretty good. Do you think you can get into No. 1 High School?”
Song Cheng looked at the man and searched her memories, but she couldn’t place him right away and didn’t answer.
Honestly, if the girl had still been sixteen-year-old Song Cheng, she probably would have snapped at him. She hadn’t felt good about how the exam went, and now he was pestering her with questions. She would have blown her top.
But the Song Cheng now was an adult inside, and she knew the man. He meant no harm.
“Oh, it’s Uncle Wang! Isn’t your son Xiaoduo taking the high-school entrance exams next year? Which school is he hoping to get into? Sigh, I didn’t do too well on my exams. Getting into No. 1 High School might be a stretch.” Song Cheng put on a sigh.
“That kid’s never been much good at studying, and he’s always playing video games. He drives me crazy. But there’s nothing I can do. He’s grown up, so I can’t beat him every day. I can only wait for him to come to his senses.”
“That’s true. Kids these days want to be treated like equals in everything. They say parents aren’t allowed to hit them because it’s against the law, and that we shouldn’t use harsh methods to raise them. Honestly, who knows how we’re supposed to bring them up anymore?” Uncle Zhang said. The two men soon moved on to talking about raising children. Song Cheng silently cheered. Topic changed—success!
After lunch, Song Cheng went to the fresh-produce shop next door to buy some vegetables, then headed straight home. She spent the afternoon studying, and in the evening she made dinner and waited for her parents to come back.
Song Cheng felt that every day was packed with things to do. After a week, she had finished the entire seventh-grade curriculum. She had also bought The Complete Guide to Home Cooking from the System, and tonight she planned to make steamed sea bass, spicy stir-fried pork intestines, and a soup.
Mom Song loved fish and was always telling Song Cheng to eat it, because, she said, people who ate fish were smart. Song Cheng’s sixteen-year-old body was still growing, so she had a big appetite—nothing like the birdlike appetite she’d had in her later life when she was trying to lose weight.
The System’s products were clearly top-notch. At dinner that night, Dad Song kept praising Song Cheng’s improved cooking, and even Mom Song, who rarely praised her, chimed in.