Chapter 6: Flag-Raising Check-In

Time turned, and it was now the early hours of August 1st; a cool breeze blew against the skin, dispelling much of the sweltering summer heat.

Qin Yun was already waiting at the security checkpoint, but there were still quite a few people in front of him, and they were really going all out to grab the C-position. And while he waited, more and more people kept rushing over, and the line grew visibly longer.

Among the several flag-viewing spots, the Square flag-viewing spot had the best location; if you were in the very front row, you could watch the entire flag-raising ceremony without any obstruction, and even catch every detail of the flag-bearer's movements.

"Handsome guy, are you here to travel in Beijing too?"

Just then, a voice came from behind Qin Yun.

He turned his head and saw a girl who looked seventeen or eighteen, carrying a backpack on her back. She was wearing a T-shirt, had a nice figure, fairly fair skin, and at least an eight-out-of-ten in looks — a genuine beauty.

The girl showed no shyness at all, sizing Qin Yun up and down.

Qin Yun shook his head: "I work here, I've just never come to watch the grand flag-raising ceremony before, so I came to see it before leaving Beijing. What about you?"

"Oh, I took advantage of the gaokao being over and the summer vacation to travel. I heard the Square flag-viewing spot is the best, so I had to come early to queue up. I didn't expect the line would already be this long at this hour."

"Then you're wise — come any later and there'll be even more people."

"Hehe, handsome guy, what should I call you? I'm Chu Xin, let's get to know each other." The girl extended her hand.

Qin Yun smiled and reached out to shake it: "You're quite the social butterfly — are all the young ones like this nowadays?"

"Not really, mainly because you're good-looking. If you were ugly, I wouldn't bother talking to you — looks are justice. And coming to watch the national flag-raising ceremony means we're all successors to socialism."

Qin Yun couldn't help but laugh out loud.

Idle hands are idle hands; having someone to chat with was pretty nice. Most importantly, Chu Xin was good-looking too — chatting with a beauty versus a tank is naturally a different experience.

For the rest of the time, Qin Yun chatted with Chu Xin on and off, and time slipped away second by second.

Qin Yun noticed that many people had brought small stools with them — after all, having to stand for several hours was really too much for the average person. When his legs grew tired, he simply sat down on the ground; seeing this, Chu Xin followed suit, quite carefree.

After enduring the whole night, the sky finally turned the pale grey of dawn, and the security check finally opened. The crowd began to flow, and those drowsy, yawning tourists quickly perked up one by one.

Chu Xin was young — kids this age fear staying up the least — and she still looked full of energy, while Qin Yun was somewhat worn out. Fortunately, he had years of experience working overtime, so he was managing.

Qin Yun followed the crowd through the security checkpoint and soon entered Tiananmen Square. At this point, it was time to sprint. The advantage of queuing ahead earlier would amount to nothing if it wasn't converted into actual results here.

He glanced at Chu Xin and couldn't help but shake his head: "You're done for, carrying such a heavy bag."

Chu Xin was bewildered, and then saw Qin Yun take off running. It wasn't just him — everyone else had started running too. At this moment, the era was calling, the charge was sounding, and the revolutionary forebears were waving at them.

In the blink of an eye, Chu Xin lost sight of Qin Yun, and only then did she react and immediately start running.

"Damn, wait for me!" Chu Xin wailed, stumbling along with her big pack as person after person overtook her.

Qin Yun hadn't run in a long time; although it was only a short two hundred meters or so, he was wrecked halfway through. But to grab the very front of the spot directly south of the flagpole, he went all out.

The people beside him were startled by his ferocious expression.

"Holy crap, bro, is it really worth it? It's just watching a flag-raising ceremony."

"Hiss… this guy looks like he's about to bite someone."

Qin Yun succeeded — through sheer grit he seized the front of the directly-south position, gripping the railing, panting nonstop, looking like a stray dog.

After he finally caught his breath, the National Flag Honor Guard began to enter, and the previously noisy square instantly fell silent. Neat footsteps, forceful commands, every movement as if copied — the standard was extreme.

Then the honor guard arrived beneath the national flag, the commander called out the order, and the flag-raising ceremony officially began. The national anthem sounded, and the national flag rose slowly into the sunlight.

Qin Yun had attended several ordinary flag-raising ceremonies before, and each time it gave him an inexpressible surge of emotion.

And this time was the same — that hot-bloodedness welling up from deep within, goosebumps rising in the middle of summer, a heartfelt sense of pride.

This pride made his gaze grow much firmer.

His eyes followed the red flag as it climbed inch by inch. When the flag reached its highest point, the system's prompt sounded at just the right moment, but he didn't attend to it right away.

Only after the flag-raising ceremony ended and the crowd began to disperse did Qin Yun, leaning on the railing, finally calm his stirred emotions and find time to check the system's check-in mission.

【Congratulations to the host on a successful check-in. Random reward obtained: Motor Vehicle Repair +1】

【Motor Vehicle Repair Skill LV1: Dissecting Cars Like a Master Chef, Instant Fault Diagnosis, Fix Any Car in the World with a Wave of the Hand】

The next moment, a flood of knowledge suddenly appeared in Qin Yun's brain — all about motor vehicles: cars, motorcycles, trucks, tractors… the structure of internal combustion engines, chassis design, transmission blueprints… and so on and so forth.

He stood before the railing; even with the experience of his first mission reward, going through it again still left him dumbfounded.

The sheer volume of this knowledge — for any single person to achieve expertise in just one field is already an extraordinary feat. Yet Qin Yun had reached a terrifying level across every motor vehicle domain. It took him nearly two full minutes to absorb this enormous body of knowledge — twice as long as last time.

Moreover, with such a vast amount of knowledge merging into his body, he felt no discomfort whatsoever — it was silky smooth, as if this knowledge had always been in his brain, in his muscles, and now it had merely been unsealed.

Qin Yun stood for a long while longer, facing the sunlight and the cold wind, watching the five-starred red flag flutter, his emotions slow to settle.

*Slap! *

His shoulder was suddenly patted, and Qin Yun snapped back to himself.

"Handsome guy, I've already been around the whole place and come back — why are you still here?"

The girl's voice sounded beside his ear; Qin Yun turned his head and saw it was Chu Xin.

Qin Yun smiled: "I was just contemplating life, pondering the great thoughts of great men. Your pat just now interrupted my moment of enlightenment."

"Pfft—!"

The girl burst out laughing.

"You're so funny — then tell me, what did you figure out?"

Qin Yun tightened his backpack, looked up at the sky, and struck a passionate, impassioned pose: "I figured out that being alive means being happy, experiencing things, and enjoying life. So I've decided to start a trip around China."

"…………"

Chu Xin blinked, looked at Qin Yun, and said: "Pfft, I thought you were about to say something earth-shattering. Does that even need enlightenment? Isn't that something everyone already knows? Shouldn't the prerequisite for all that be having money?"

"Vulgar!"

Qin Yun walked past Chu Xin and strode away.

He still needed to stay in Beijing for another month. During that month, he planned to carefully plan his route home, trying to include as many check-in spots along the way as possible.

And before that, he had to get himself a vehicle.

If before he had still been torn between a new car and a used one, now with the Motor Vehicle Repair skill, he no longer needed to agonize.

Beyond being able to repair cars, the most basic ability of the Motor Vehicle Repair skill was judging a car's condition. With his current ability, he could tell a car's state just by listening to the engine sound, and know whether the transmission had problems just by feeling the gear shifts.

So for him, the cost-effectiveness of choosing a used car far exceeded that of a new one.

It was still early, not even eight o'clock yet. Qin Yun took a car back to the used car market. This time he didn't need a salesperson's introduction either—skill in hand, whether a car was any good was clear at a touch.

But after the whole morning, he found the waters of this used car market ran far too deep.

Cars in good condition were absolutely expensive; junk cars were cheap, sure, but if you had to repair one, it simply wasn't worth it.

So after picking and choosing, he actually couldn't find a single car that matched what he had in mind.

"Damn, this is it for a used car market this huge?"

Qin Yun was a bit helpless. He wandered around the market and came to another used car shop. Parked at the door of this shop was a Land Rover Defender with extremely severe collision damage.

He took one look and roughly judged that this car must have crashed into a concrete pier—the engine bay had been seriously intruded upon; any fool could tell the engine had suffered massive damage.

He'd read quite a bit of off-road vehicle data these past few days. The Land Rover Defender before him appeared to be this year's newly released facelift Defender 90, with a 2587mm wheelbase—a short-wheelbase off-roader with excellent passability, nimble and easy to handle.

Only the price was steep: from 2.0T to 5.0T, prices ranged from seven hundred thousand to one million three hundred thousand, outrageously expensive.

"Boss, what's wrong with this car?"

The shop's boss was lying in a recliner, phone in hand. Hearing Qin Yun's voice, he didn't even get up—just glanced up once, then looked away again.

"Car accident. Engine's dead, transmission's gone too."

Qin Yun nodded, thinking it matched his guess.

"Boss, can I take a look?"

"Be my guest."

The boss, seeing that Qin Yun didn't look like someone there to buy a car, had no intention of getting up to greet him, and just kept lying in his chair.

Qin Yun, having gotten permission, tugged at the bulging hood and flipped it open without effort. Immediately, the gruesome scene inside the bay was exposed before him.

The radiator frame was severely deformed and caved in, the condenser was flattened, the bay's piping and wiring harness were a tangled mess, various clips and mounting brackets had burst off and scattered, the engine guard plate was deformed too, and every screw had sheared loose.

The engine looked almost completely scrapped, but after checking he found no cracks in the cylinder block, no damage to the crankshaft either—the internal core structure would need to be taken apart to know. Most importantly, the car's longitudinal beams and main frame structure were completely unbent; he couldn't figure out how it had been crashed.

As for those messy parts, they were trivial—easily repaired. The problem still lay with the engine and transmission. The naked eye alone couldn't tell; it had to be disassembled.

He hesitated, then opened the passenger door and glanced at the vehicle nameplate. To his surprise, he found this car's production date was actually just one month ago—it could essentially be called a brand-new car. Even if it had been sold a month ago and driven hard for that month, it would top out at a few thousand kilometers.

"Boss, this is a brand-new car?" Qin Yun patted the car and exclaimed loudly, "What a shame."

The boss replied casually: "Yeah, the car had just driven out of the 4S shop and crashed before it even officially hit the road."

Saying this, he put down his phone and asked: "Brother, you buying a car?"

Qin Yun nodded and patted the car beside him again: "How much for this one?"

The boss was stunned for a moment, then his brows immediately shot up: "Brother, don't joke around. This car is already wrecked. I was planning to strip the usable parts and scrap the rest."

Qin Yun smiled and said: "I've looked. The engine's dead, the transmission's on its last legs too, but I really like the Land Rover Defender model. I plan to fix up the exterior and park it at home to admire."

"Are you nuts!"

The boss looked at Qin Yun with a strange glint in his eyes. He could tell what the other was thinking—nothing more than trying to pick up a bargain.

"Brother, I've been in this business over ten years. This car can't be fixed. If you've got that kind of money, you'd be better off buying a used car from me."

Qin Yun shook his head: "Boss, you're joking. I never planned to fix it—I don't know cars. I really just like this car's looks; I want to keep it as a big toy for my collection."

The boss smacked his lips and stood up. He figured this guy was just a greenhorn, but business was at the door—there was no sense turning it away.

"Two hundred thousand. My side will handle delivering it to your destination," the boss added after finishing, "Limited to within Beijing city."

"Deal!"

Qin Yun agreed extremely readily, which gave the boss a feeling of having lost out. Although he'd only spent one hundred fifty thousand acquiring the car, thinking of its gruesome condition, he didn't feel that way anymore.

The two quickly signed the contract; all the paperwork could be easily handled at the used car market, and everything was done within half a day. The boss watched Qin Yun's ready manner, rubbed his chin, and always felt something was off—his heart even grew a bit uneasy.

Without taking it apart, Qin Yun didn't know if he could fix the car, but this was the top-spec 5.0T—original price one million three hundred thousand. He'd bought it for two hundred thousand; what more was there to say? To put it bluntly, just the frame, body panels, interior, and electronics alone were worth quite a bit.

If he couldn't fix it, he was still confident he could strip the car and recoup over a hundred thousand.

At this moment, Qin Yun was in great spirits. And just as he was feeling happy, the company's compensation and wages arrived in his account.

【Your account ending in **** received ¥150,000.00 on August 1st at 16:28, transaction type: transfer deposit...】