Fleecing the Flock / What Exactly Did His Past Life Bring Him?

Children's jealousy was like that, arising for no reason at all.

Of course, some adults were the same.

By comparison, children really were innocent and adorable.

Chapter 6: Fleecing the Flock

Qing He Miao wore a smile as he looked down at the young Four-Legged Gold-Swallowing Beasts.

Resting his chin on his hand, he began to lay out some serious reasoning, whether they could understand him or not:

"You'll understand when you're older. Who's going to come and arrest me? And on what grounds? Things in this world don't get done nearly as efficiently as you imagine. Our place is just an out-of-the-way little village that barely stands out on a map.

"Even if I stood on the playground tomorrow with a megaphone and shouted, 'I have superpowers,' what would happen? Even if you excitedly ran off to tell your teachers and parents, they'd most likely just think you had too little homework or were teaming up to pull some prank. They'd scold you a little, and that would be the end of it."

He spread his hands, his tone calm, looking like someone who had been there before:

"Even if—and I mean even if—the whole world became dead certain I had some kind of precognitive ability, so what? According to the way I just 'set it up,' this ability of mine is completely random and uncontrollable.

"The next thing I 'see' could be a man named Zhang San going up a mountain to chop firewood hundreds of years ago, or a stranger on the other side of the Earth taking a bite of bread at that very moment. An ability that works only now and then, shows trivial things with no pattern, and can't be directed to obtain valuable intelligence at all—what practical use would it be to the state or any organization? Would it be worth mobilizing everyone over?"

That string of rhetorical questions, mixed with an adult's practical considerations,

plunged this group of youngsters, who still blindly believed in "superpowers" and "individual heroism," into a quagmire of thought.

Naturally, none of them could come up with a convincing answer for the moment.

After a brief silence, the classroom instead erupted with a "boom," everyone whispering and discussing it among themselves.

At their age, they had yet to suffer the all-around battering of exam-oriented education; their thoughts were at their most freewheeling, and inspiration often overflowed.

Their imaginations galloped across the sky as they dreamed up every possibility and raised all sorts of bizarre questions and objections, chattering like dozens of ducklings all opening their beaks at once.

Among them were quite a few childish remarks full of innocence yet unexpectedly sharp, which occasionally surprised even Qing He Miao.

He couldn't help marveling to himself that children's perspectives really were unique sometimes.

But discussion was discussion, and a lively scene was a lively scene.

In the end, it still came down to the same question:

Who would really believe a group of middle-schoolers making a solemn report?

Not only would it be hard to convince anyone, but the child who insisted on exposing him might instead be thought by the adults to have seen too much random nonsense and become a little "obsessed."

If things went badly and the parents got anxious, instead of sending the child to the hospital, they might bring the child and some gifts to the doorstep of his home, that of the locally well-known "Half-Immortal Qing," and beg him to "take a look."

Had the child run afoul of something unclean and needed to have the evil "driven out"?

The world really was absurd.

The corners of Qing He Miao's mouth lifted in a faint, subtle curve.

Youngsters of this age were bound to be unable to ponder such profound questions.

Within minutes, the chaotic discussion began to go off the rails, quickly shifting to other topics.

Then the long class bell rang, its "ding-a-ling" interrupting the din in the classroom.

The homeroom teacher walked in with her lesson plan and textbook tucked under her arm. Her brows knitted slightly as her customary words slipped out:

"Class is starting! Our class is the noisiest of them all. I could hear you buzzing like a pot boiling over from the other end of the corridor."

The students gathered around Qing He Miao instantly scattered like startled birds, quickly lowering their heads and pretending to be quails.

Qing He Miao, on the other hand, remained unhurried. He barely even changed his posture, merely uncrossing his casually crossed legs and lowering his eyelids halfway.

He already looked ready to "rest his mind and enter meditation."

The teacher at the lectern took it all in, but said nothing more.

Teachers were people too, and naturally they also "served different dishes to different people."

Qing He Miao was mature beyond his years, and he spoke and acted with a propriety of his own.

Though that also made him harder to manage, and his little faults never stopped.

He often failed to hand in his homework, and it was common for him to zone out or simply sleep in class. Occasionally, he would even expose some of the school's darker little schemes in a single remark.

They hardly ever saw him study.

Yet, strangely enough, his grades remained consistently near the top of his year, leaving no solid fault to pick with him.

And most importantly,

she was a local herself and had long since heard the rumors about Qing He Miao.

His unconventional behavior in everyday life seemed to lend further credence to those rumors.

The other teachers in the office had often talked about him privately as a curious bit of gossip.

The boy had also shown them a trick or two when he had nothing to do, leaving the teachers utterly stunned at the time.

Afterward, however, he had only said it was magic.

If things really came to a head, it was far from certain who would come off worse.

Therefore, as long as Qing He Miao didn't openly disrupt class or affect the other students' studies,

most of the time the teachers were happy to turn a blind eye to his little acts of "nonviolent noncooperation." One less trouble was better than one more.

But the other students in the classroom didn't have Qing He Miao's "composure."

To them, Qing He Miao was someone especially good at telling stories.

Those strange and unusual scenarios sounded real when he described them.

The bell had interrupted them just as they were getting engrossed in the conversation, and quite a few were itching to talk to Qing He Miao, constantly trying to sneak a word with him.

Many students even secretly wrote little notes and tried every way they could to pass them to him.

Qing He Miao, however, ignored them all, too lazy even to lift an eyelid.

Teasing these "little kids" when he was bored was harmless enough.

But as someone with an adult soul inside him, he knew where to draw the line.

Even if he himself had little interest in school, he would never disturb these children when they were supposed to be studying.

[Red Hot Chili Pepper]

With a slight thought, a figure invisible to ordinary people quietly appeared beside Qing He Miao.

The Stand, with its decidedly strange and aggressive appearance, silently circled halfway around the somewhat crowded classroom.

It then turned into a barely perceptible streak of light and, with a "whoosh," plunged straight into the recessed box holding the light switch on the wall behind and to the side of the lectern, disappearing among the crisscrossing wires inside.

Immediately afterward, a weak but steady suction began to draw in a negligible amount of electricity, extremely slowly, like a sponge soaking up water, and store it away.

This Stand had the ability to absorb and store electricity to strengthen its own power and speed.

It could also use electric current as a medium to freely enter any electrified carrier, including wires, batteries, and even motorcycle batteries, and travel through cable networks at speeds approaching teleportation.

Getting a Stand with stealth, mobility, and potential for growth made for a pretty lucky start.

Unfortunately, electricity was still too expensive in a remote area in this era.

To avoid causing trouble or affecting others, and at the same time to keep anyone from noticing anything unusual,

[Red Hot Chili Pepper] could only accumulate energy bit by bit like this most of the time.

It really wasn't much; over the course of a day, it amounted to the electricity needed to run an air conditioner for one extra day.

Its ability had always been difficult to bring out to the fullest.

Chapter 7: What Exactly Did His Past Life Bring Him?

Things would be better in the future.

He could visit a few technology parks and casually let it eat its fill.

Qing He Miao kept his eyes closed, yet he could clearly sense the tingling feeling of that tiny current of electricity flowing into the Stand. He made plans to himself.

[You were perfunctorily taught an analysis and the deeper meaning of a classic text by a teacher with minor attainment in literary cultivation. [General Literature] proficiency has increased by a minuscule amount. Current proficiency: General Literature (proficient)]

The familiar system notification flashed before his eyes.

The Chinese teacher at the lectern wasn't very old, and her teaching career couldn't be called long.

But it couldn't be called short either.

In the system's evaluation, she landed right on the threshold of "minor attainment."

The teachers of the other subjects were much the same.

Even those gray-haired veteran teachers nearing retirement had not been rated above that level by the system.

Perhaps things would be different at better schools, or schools for higher grades?

After all, Qing He Miao attended nothing more than an ordinary middle school near a township.

Still, he inferred from this that even by the final year of high school, the hardest-working students in the class, those with the best grades,

would probably struggle to break through the threshold of "minor attainment" in the proficiency levels of their respective subjects by the system's standards.

That was one reason he wasn't pushing himself at all, even after being reborn.

The system's level assessments had no vague intermediate values like "half-step minor attainment" or "minor attainment at great perfection."

As far as it was concerned, once proficiency filled up, it leveled up directly, simple and blunt.

"Beginner" was beginner, and "proficient" was proficient. It didn't care what the process was like or whether the corresponding conditions had been met.

As long as you broke through to the next level, you could use the abilities of that level.

Of course, a serious attitude toward studying and the right methods could still affect how quickly proficiency increased.

Qing He Miao had made a rough estimate.

At his current pace of listening to lessons on "autopilot,"

the abilities formed from several of his school subjects would naturally break through to "minor attainment" sooner or later, before his final year of high school.

And even if he started studying with all his might right now,

breaking through the system's "minor attainment" level in any subject before the college entrance examination would be almost impossible.

So he simply didn't bother putting in the effort.

With a slight thought, he summoned the system panel that only he could see once more. He mentally swiped over to the status section and sighed.

Several entries were displayed clearly: [Forgetfulness, Dullness, Killing Intent].