But every night her mother went to Lin Tingwan’s room, supposedly out of concern, but really to probe and see how things stood.
According to her mother, the dead fat pig did nothing but eat and sleep, sleep and eat, every single day.
Of course, to maintain her image as a good mother, Su Wanyi hadn’t told her daughter the real reason she carried “calming tea” up to the second floor every night.
Mother and daughter had actually both been fooled by the false front Lin Tingwan had put up.
Such careful scheming, Lin Yuexuan felt she’d underestimated her before.
Jiang Suizhou, who should have been catching up on sleep in class as usual, perked up a little because the little fat girl had actively raised her hand and asked the teacher to let her go up to the board.
He stared intently at the little fat girl standing up there, her eyes really were completely different from before.
And Lin Yuexuan, who’d been keeping an eye on Jiang Suizhou’s every move all along, of course didn’t miss this either.
Jiang Suizhou, who always liked to sleep in class, especially in English class, didn’t sleep this period, and kept staring at Lin Tingwan the whole time.
What was he looking at, all that fat on her body?
Lin Yuexuan felt her mother was simply too kind, her father, busy at the company every day, never bothered about this dead fat pig at all.
Her mother, of all things, had to go and play the good stepmother, sometimes even treating Lin Tingwan better than her, Lin Yuexuan felt she was jealous!
Hmph, she’d just go home and tell Uncle Huang, and let Uncle Huang help her think of a way to deal with this dead fat pig.
Very often, Lin Yuexuan felt Uncle Huang was better to her than her own father even.
Too bad Uncle Huang was just a driver, without much money.
At first Lin Tingwan had thought completing one day’s daily study task would be easy, just answer the teacher’s questions in two more classes, wouldn’t that do it?
But what came next was physics class.
For the Best Actress, who in high school had chosen to be a liberal arts student because physics and chemistry were too hard, most of what the physics teacher taught went right over her head.
It seemed she’d need to spend some time after class properly catching up, she wondered if the system’s exchange store had any relevant tutoring materials.
Still, she listened carefully and worked hard to remember every word the teacher said, taking notes.
In the two classes after that, the teacher didn’t call on anyone to answer questions either.
Lin Tingwan started to worry a little.
No way, was she going to get off to a bad start on day one already?
If the task failed, she’d be punished, and have life value deducted!
Lin Tingwan felt this couldn’t go on like this, she should negotiate with the system about whether to change the content of the daily task, or add other daily tasks.
When she’d first named the system “Xiaobai,” Lin Tingwan had just blurted it out casually.
After she was hospitalized, knowing no one at home would take good care of her pet dog, she’d specially entrusted it to her best friend.
By the later stage of chemotherapy, Lin Tingwan’s own body had already been tormented by the illness beyond recognition, and on top of that, Xiaobai’s fur seemed to be bad for her health.
So her best friend never once brought Xiaobai to visit her, and Lin Tingwan had missed him quite a bit.
Even having spent just a bit over a day with the system, Lin Tingwan had only one gut feeling:
This Top Student System she was bound to was itself a total novice, negotiating with it might actually be possible.
By the time school let out, Lin Tingwan and Xia Xiaoman held hands and went to the cafeteria to eat together.
Friends were about quality, not quantity, having a classmate at school rare enough to show the original owner genuine goodwill, Lin Tingwan still treasured it.
And after getting to know Xia Xiaoman more deeply, Lin Tingwan pulled up more content from the original owner’s memory.
Only then did she learn why Xia Xiaoman was the only classmate in the class willing to talk to the original owner.
Actually, the two of them had been shunned and disliked by their classmates together.
Both of their grades were terrible, hovering basically between last and second-to-last place.
Both of them were also on the heavier side, of course, Lin Tingwan was severely overweight.
Xia Xiaoman, though, was only mildly plump, because she loved eating and hated exercise, her build looked slightly bigger than her peers’.
And for fifteen-, sixteen-year-old girls, loving beauty was human nature, women generally pursued a slim kind of beauty.
The fat woman Lin Tingwan and the plump girl Xia Xiaoman had thus both become targets of ridicule in Class 6 of the first year.
Partway through, Xia Xiaoman needed to use the restroom, and had Lin Tingwan wait for her at the cafeteria entrance.
So, pretending to be resting from all the walking, Lin Tingwan leaned against a pillar to the side, actually, she was communicating with the Top Student System.
【Xiaobai.】
【Host, this system is here.】
The system’s readiness to respond at any call had made Lin Tingwan a little happy at first, but a question immediately came to her mind.
No helping it, after becoming famous in her past life, she’d spent all her time surrounded and hounded by media reporters and paparazzi, now she only wanted to enjoy the peace of an ordinary person’s life.
【Xiaobai, you’re not watching my every move and thought at all times, are you?】
Rarely, the system’s calm mechanical voice showed a change, actually displaying a hint of indignation:
【Host, how could you think of this system that way? The Top Student System is a good system that respects personal privacy. It only reads thoughts in your mind related to this system or to studying, anything else, this system ignores entirely.】
【That’s more like it.】
Lin Tingwan, who’d been a little upset, was immediately placated, but then a new question came up:
【Xiaobai, are you just a series of brainwaves, with no physical form?】
【Not yet, for now, because this system also draws energy from the tasks the host completes. If the host keeps completing tasks excellently, once this system levels up, its abilities will grow much stronger.
By then, this system will be able to manifest a physical form, and will also develop richer emotional changes as it levels up.】
So that was how it worked, Lin Tingwan chuckled to herself, it seemed the system itself hadn’t even noticed that its energy had already grown a bit stronger than at the start.
Because Lin Tingwan clearly felt that the sound the system made now was much more pleasant to listen to than before.
Then she brought up the concern she’d had earlier to the system:
【Xiaobai, this kind of setup for the system just isn’t reasonable at all, what if there’s an assembly that day, or the teacher doesn’t call on me to answer, doesn’t that mean my task automatically fails?】
【But the tasks each branch system’s host needs to complete are all set by the main system.】
OK, Lin Tingwan had gathered her first piece of information related to the Top Student System itself.
【Xiaobai, look, if my task fails I’ll be punished, and that’ll affect your leveling up too, right?】
And then the Top Student System was successfully, ahem, no, persuaded, by its host.
The Top Student System had also learned its host’s method of communication, it told Lin Tingwan that, thanks to its unrelenting efforts, the main system had finally revised the rules.
Besides daily tasks, stage tasks, and challenge tasks, the system would also occasionally issue random tasks to the host.
Completing a random task would also earn the host a certain reward.
【Congratulations, host, for completing the task of memorizing 100 English words. Should the reward be added to health value, or wealth value?】
【Add it to health value.】
Only with a sound, healthy body could she consider anything else.
And for a student, knowledge itself was the greatest wealth, for now, aside from worrying about possibly dying at any moment, Lin Tingwan wasn’t worried about having no money in her pocket.