Chapter 138: The Strong Adapt to the Environment; The Laozu Sect Teaches You to Change Your Fate

Jiang Nian had nothing better to do, so he stared at the quest panel for a while.

The prompt gave no information, yet the reward was terrifyingly generous.

It was a full fifty thousand yuan! Directly boosting his assets by a quarter! Roughly equal to three-quarters of an Enyang Gift! What is an Enyang Gift? Don't ask—it's just tradition.

Still, Jiang Nian was mildly curious—what was this segment of Zhang Ningzhi's memory?

Finally, Baby Zhizhi replied.

A whole essay, way too long, not reading it.

Jiang Nian went straight to the opening, skimmed the middle, then read the ending. Then he composed his reply around those three points, waited a few minutes, and sent it.

It wasn't that he was brushing her off—it was that only a sweeping, high-level reply would do.

The point wasn't the essay, nor Zhang Ningzhi's thoughts, but her anxiety.

She was afraid something would go wrong on exam day.

She worried both about herself and about Jiang Nian.

Plenty could go wrong—sudden illness mid-exam throwing off her performance, or catching a fever the day before, burning up at thirty-nine degrees, unable to read the words on the test paper.

If she missed the exam, or dragged herself in sick, the outcome was obvious. The academic office wouldn't make exceptions—after all, the rule only applied to those moving up a class.

This batch was only twenty or thirty people; if something like that really happened, there was nothing to do but blame bad luck.

In short, Zhang Ningzhi feared something going sideways, just as Murphy's Law says. Put plainly, whatever you're afraid of is exactly what happens.

Western psychology's approach is to regulate emotions.

The Laozu Sect's approach is—fortune-telling, fate-changing, luck-shifting, talisman-chanting!

Jiang Nian thought it over and chose the latter, typing out a reply.

"You usually score over six hundred, so even if you lose one subject you're still over five hundred. Plus the exam schedule mirrors gaokao, so even if something happens there's plenty of time to deal with it."

"Tomorrow I'll bring you a talisman, one blessed by a Taoist temple."

A worst-case fallback argument + real-time analysis + a blessed talisman for you—rather than change yourself, change the environment.

Far more useful than any emotional regulation.

"Talisman?" Zhang Ningzhi was clearly a bit confused too.

"Yeah, very effective, when I was little—" Jiang Nian half-truthfully made something up.

The little Miss was dazed and clueless, thoroughly snowed.

"For real or not?"

"How should I put it—" Jiang Nian typed back, "Guaranteed to work (thumbs up), I'll bring it tomorrow."

Half a minute later, Zhang Ningzhi sent a message.

"Then what about you?"

"Oh right, this thing comes in pairs." Jiang Nian climbed out of bed, got up, pulled open the drawer, and snapped a photo. "【Image】 See? I'm not lying, am I?"

He really did have them—bought casually on the roadside during New Year, ten yuan a packet. The stall had sold one extra set, so it was buy-one-get-one-free and he got the second.

No real craftsmanship, but convincing-looking.

"Aren't good things supposed to be one-of-a-kind?" Zhang Ningzhi's message popped up in a flash, with a confused sticker attached. "How come there are two?"

"That's a narrow way of thinking. Whose good things only come in one?"

Zhang Ningzhi: "(cute) Okay, thanks."

"No problem, go to sleep, and remember to bring me a drink tomorrow." Jiang Nian sent a Minion sticker.

Zhang Ningzhi: "(mm-hmm)."

After ending the chat, Jiang Nian let out a long breath.

He had just put down his phone when Lin Dong sent him a long string of messages.

"Wu Jungu and Yu Zhiyi broke up."

Jiang Nian was getting sleepy. He rolled over and replied with drooping eyelids.

"Doesn't that just work out perfectly for you."

Lin Dong: "Don't talk nonsense, I'm not that kind of guy. Besides, now that Yu Zhiyi's broken up, she's single! You know what that means?"

Jiang Nian didn't bother opening his eyes, only catching a glimpse of the last message with a question mark.

So he pressed something, but he was too sleepy and only typed an abbreviation. The word "what"—on chat apps it's pure muscle memory.

Jiang Nian trusted his touch-typing skills too much, so he hit enter right away.

"sm."

On the other end, Lin Dong froze for a full minute.

"??????"

"No way, Nian-ge, you're acting weird!"

However, Jiang Nian didn't reply.

He was asleep.

Before morning reading, Yu Tongjie arrived at the classroom forty minutes early and set down his backpack.

Seeing the nearly empty classroom, he was instantly energized.

Today, he'd won again.

In two more days, the joint exam would begin.

He felt that during this stretch he had lived up to the word "effort"—while others were goofing around, he was studying. While others slept, he was still studying.

So how could six hundred points be far off?

Switching groups required meeting one condition: scoring above six hundred on a major exam. The other party had to agree voluntarily, and the boy-girl balance within the group couldn't be disrupted.

Class Three's mixed groups had always been two-to-one, girls to boys. Under such harsh conditions, switching groups was almost an impossible task.

Yu Tongjie was full of confidence about this; he only cared about the score.

The additional condition that came after was no problem for him at all. He had specifically made inquiries about the preferences of the four boys in Li Qingrong's group.

One of the boys came from a relatively poor family and had always loved playing basketball.

As long as he gave him a pair of basketball shoes worth over a thousand yuan in the name of friendship, could the other guy refuse? The kind of shoes one could afford but wouldn't specifically go out of their way to buy.

All it took was switching groups, and he could have them right away.

In his seat, Yu Tongjie revealed a smile of absolute certainty.

He usually liked to accumulate good words and phrases in his notebook—on one hand, to use them in essays. On the other hand, it was also to motivate himself, to not fear the high mountains and distant roads.

He picked up his pen, brimming with heroic spirit, and wrote in his notebook.

【When a person strains on tiptoe to get close to the sun, the whole world cannot block his sunlight.】

The fly in the ointment was that his astonishing perseverance had no audience.

He'd been busy studying this whole period and hadn't really made friends. However, the atmosphere in this class really wasn't anything great—either Nantong types or just weird people.

After working on problems for a while, Yu Tongjie got up to get hot water.

Late October, the temperature dropped in the south.

Carrying his cup from the corridor toward the classroom, a gust of wind blew past, and he couldn't help but tighten his jacket, lamenting how the temperature difference between morning and evening was getting bigger and bigger.

Turning his head, he saw Li Qingrong coming up the stairs, a phone still in her hand.

"Hm?" Yu Tongjie was stunned.

In his memory, Li Qingrong seemed to rarely bring her phone to school. It must be that he remembered wrong, or maybe today wasn't an ordinary day—school anniversary, or—

He thought it over and figured it was his own problem.

Sigh, studying too intensely had even messed up his memory.

Maybe Li Qingrong had always kept her phone close, just didn't use it in the classroom—so what was he making a fuss about?

Shaking his head, Yu Tongjie slowly entered the classroom.

His gaze instinctively searched for Li Qingrong, glancing over. She was the same as always, sitting in her seat, seriously playing with her phone.

Hm???

Playing with her phone?

Yu Tongjie's eyes immediately went wide, as if he'd seen a ghost.

Was this his own problem?

Li Qingrong would never play with her phone in the classroom—was she... something going on? Today was Wednesday, the last period at noon was PE, nothing else.

He couldn't help being curious, and when passing through the aisle, he deliberately turned back for a look.

Was she using her phone to study? Recently there really were people buying online courses, squeezing time after evening self-study to go home and cram on weak subjects, or getting up early to watch online courses in class.

Looking carefully, it seemed to be a QQ chat interface.

Who was she chatting with so early in the morning?

"She sent a message so early in the morning—why does it look like she's in the classroom?" Jiang Nian muttered to himself, passing the third floor and slowly climbing up to the fourth floor along the stairs.

Influenced by Xu Qianqian, Jiang Nian had also developed the early-to-bed, early-to-rise schedule of a Gao San student.

There wasn't really anyone along the way, and the corridor upstairs was also empty. With the talisman prepared for Zhang Ningzhi in his pocket, he sauntered toward the classroom.

After entering, he indeed saw Li Qingrong.

There weren't many people in the classroom, seven or eight. She just sat in her seat, openly holding up her phone and playing.

It made Jiang Nian break out in a cold sweat—not, you this

Although Old Liu really was old and past it. Occasionally bullying him for being old and weak was fine, but could the class monitor really be this brazen?

Jiang Nian went to his seat and casually said something.

"Class monitor, why are you playing with your phone in the classroom? Hand it over."

Before he had even put down his backpack, a phone appeared in his field of vision. The screen was off, and judging by the model it was the latest iPhone—the kind that definitely wouldn't lag playing King of Glory.

Damn, he had never even used an iPhone in his life.

No, that's not the point.

"Hm? Class monitor, I was just kidding." Jiang Nian said somewhat awkwardly, extending his index finger to push Li Qingrong's phone back. "Go on playing."

Who would dare confiscate your phone? You'd give your bros a hard time later.

"Mm." Li Qingrong lowered her eyes.

Jiang Nian turned around and took his water bottle out of his backpack.

He basically never brought homework home; carrying a backpack was purely out of habit, and secondly for convenience. Just as he was about to organize the test papers on his desk, his back was poked.

He instinctively turned around and looked at Li Qingrong in the seat behind.

"Class monitor, what's up?"

Li Qingrong thought for a moment, then pointed at her phone.

"Reply to the message."

"Huh?" Jiang Nian's face was blank with confusion as he fished his phone out of his pocket and took a look.

Li Qingrong really had sent him a message, but—

【Morning.】

Jiang Nian opened his mouth, then glanced at Li Qingrong who was right there. Suddenly he felt like he couldn't quite understand this world anymore—had Gao San gone this crazy?

The last time he was speechless was the time before that.

The class monitor's antics were even more abstract than the ungrateful Li Hua.

Li Qingrong, seeing that he wasn't moving, just looked at him with a puzzled face. That curious gaze seemed to ask: Did you see it? Aren't you going to reply?

"Never mind." Jiang Nian lowered his head and replied to her with a 【Morning】.

Twenty minutes later, Zhang Nianzhi arrived. She carefully took a plainly styled needle-and-thread pouch from Jiang Nian's hands; the talisman was inside.

She was nervous and asked in a small voice.

"Can I open it and take a look?"

"This, um… under normal circumstances it's not encouraged," Jiang Nian said. "But if you want to look, just open it for a peek, then pinch it shut right away."

"Oh."

Zhang Nianzhi pursed her lips and carefully opened one corner. The moment she saw the yellow talisman stained with cinnabar, she blurted out "Mama mia!" and then quickly pinched the pouch shut.

As if the next second, this thing worth five yuan would let its spiritual energy leak away.

Jiang Nian found it funny, then turned his head and noticed the class monitor watching the pouch with curiosity.