Earning Money on the Side

Jiang Yiming couldn't stand watching anymore. He cut off a large piece of pork belly and tossed it over.

In less than half an hour, it was devoured again!

"Fuck! Who can afford to feed freakish bugs like these?!"

Thinking of the slightly more than 2,700 yuan left in his phone account, he hesitated.

He normally earned over 4,000 yuan a month, but he had to send 2,000 home. His grandparents said they were saving it for him to get married someday.

Of the 2,000-odd yuan left, 500 went to rent, leaving him with just over 1,000. Luckily, the factory provided meals, and Jiang Yiming saved wherever he could, managing to put away a few hundred yuan each month.

But now he was home injured, and the little private factory didn't offer any compensation for workplace injuries.

It was almost time to send money home again, so he had to set aside 2,000 yuan for his family first.

And the rent was nearly due again...

By his calculations, if he wanted to get through the month without trouble, he had only a little over 200 yuan to spend!

A little over 200 yuan was enough to keep him going for two weeks. But if he fed these big eaters, they would probably starve to death within a few days.

Just as Jiang Yiming was considering whether to give up on these Gu insects,

The spiders and centipedes on the floor finished the meat and lay motionless!

"What's wrong? What's..."

As he wondered, a thin crack suddenly appeared on the back of each spider. The cracks slowly widened, revealing tender, smooth, almost transparent shells beneath!

In the blink of an eye, the spiders emerged from their old shells, each a size bigger, as large as a chestnut! Their new shells hadn't even hardened before they opened their mouths and begged Jiang Yiming for more food!

The centipedes also shed their shells one after another. Their bodies had grown much longer, and the two venomous fangs outside their mouthparts had grown larger! After flexing their fangs a couple of times, they joined the crowd begging for food and drink.

Jiang Yiming had no choice but to toss over all the remaining pork belly and chicken carcasses.

In moments, they tore every scrap of meat to pieces and devoured it.

Now that they had grown bigger, they ate even faster.

"Hey! If you keep eating like this, how am I supposed to afford you?" Jiang Yiming thought of the balance in his phone account and said helplessly, "Find your own food. At worst, once I'm back at work and have money, I'll give you some extra meals."

The spiders and centipedes on the floor received his command and immediately scattered.

For a while afterward, Jiang Yiming felt as though he were watching a blockbuster.

An innocent cockroach fled from a huge spider. It finally turned a corner and escaped, only to find love waiting around the bend: a centipede was waiting there and bit it to death in one bite.

A springtail the size of a peanut used its jumping ability to dodge a centipede's attack. But the spider could jump even better! It pounced on the springtail in midair and brought it down!

After shedding their shells once, they had become much more formidable. They couldn't be judged by the standards of ordinary spiders.

The unluckiest were the slow-moving slugs. They usually hid in out-of-the-way corners where Jiang Yiming couldn't catch them.

Now, there wasn't a single blind spot in the entire room!

Watching the room grow cleaner and cleaner, Jiang Yiming suddenly felt that living across from a garbage station wasn't so bad. At least the bugs had a reliable food source.

He was still pleased when a scream suddenly came from next door.

"Ah~~"

Immediately afterward, someone pounded on his door.

"What is it?" Jiang Yiming helplessly put his Gu insects away.

"Open the door, quickly! There's a huge centipede in my room! Help me..." Sun Qin's voice came from outside.

She was also from out of town and worked as a waitress at a nearby restaurant.

"A centipede? Hehe, I can get another Gu insect."

With that thought, Jiang Yiming opened the door.

"Quick, quick... It's right in there!"

Sun Qin grabbed him and pulled him next door. Once Jiang Yiming entered the room, however, she retreated outside. "It's in the kitchen!"

"What kind of centipede could scare her like that?" he wondered as he walked into the kitchen.

A fifteen-centimeter-long centipede was lying in the corner of the stovetop.

Jiang Yiming froze. "Isn't this my own Gu insect? How did it get over here? Could it be that there wasn't enough to eat in my room?"

Seeing that it was his own centipede, he felt a little ashamed.

Sun Qin spoke again from outside. "Do you see the centipede? There's a knife in the kitchen. Go ahead and chop it. If you damage the knife, I'll buy a new one."

Chop it to death?

Jiang Yiming couldn't quite bear to do it.

This was a Gu insect, more obedient than a pet dog!

A moment later, he came out of the kitchen and smiled at Sun Qin. "All right, I've caught the centipede."

Sun Qin was about to thank him, but the moment she saw his hand, she jumped back several steps in fright.

"Y-you're holding it in your hand? It didn't bite you, did it?!"

Jiang Yiming hurriedly explained, "It's fine. It's already dead."

Only a ghost would believe him! The centipede was clearly still wriggling away happily!

But then something strange happened. As soon as he finished speaking, the previously lively centipede suddenly stopped moving and hung stiffly downward. It was quite good at playing along.

Sun Qin rubbed her eyes hard, completely bewildered.

"Um... you have quite a few cockroaches in your place. They might attract more of these things in the future."

Jiang Yiming figured that as he raised more Gu insects, they would run next door again, so he gave her a warning in advance.

To his surprise, Sun Qin grew frightened as soon as she heard that. "What am I going to do?! In a cheap place like this, there's no getting rid of all the cockroaches! There's nobody around here who can help exterminate them, either. Even if I wanted to pay someone, I couldn't find anyone!"

The moment he heard her mention paying someone, Jiang Yiming's eyes lit up.

"This... might be a way to make money!"

With that thought, he shamelessly said, "Um, I can help get rid of the cockroaches in your place."

"Really? That's great!" Sun Qin said generously. "If you can really get rid of them, I'll transfer you fifty yuan!"

Fifty yuan!

Jiang Yiming didn't know the market rate, so he said conscientiously, "No! That's too much. I can only take forty!"

Sun Qin was stunned. She knew that a house call for cockroach extermination usually cost at least one or two hundred yuan.

Before she could react, Jiang Yiming shut the door and called from inside, "Wait outside for a bit. I'll open the door when I'm done."

Meanwhile, as soon as Jiang Yiming shut the door, he went straight to the kitchen and released all his Gu insects.

"Free food! Hurry up and eat! But you're not allowed to leave this room!" The centipede had crawled over because he had forgotten to set clear boundaries earlier. He wouldn't forget this time.

With a thought, all the Gu insects appeared in the kitchen at once.

Just then, he felt movement in his hand. He looked down and saw the centipede struggling.

It had been playing dead under Jiang Yiming's orders for so long. Now that there was food, it finally stopped pretending.

"I almost forgot about you, my meritorious servant. Go on!"

With that, he set the centipede down.

Half an hour later, the cockroaches in the kitchen had been almost completely wiped out. The flat-bodied centipede had pursued them straight into their nest and cleared out every cockroach inside.