The Crisis of Being Kept

Even though Chen Nan was living quite comfortably now, he felt deeply stifled inside.

He had a house to live in, someone to cook for him, someone to drive him around. If he had not insisted on taking on part of the housework himself, he would have been no different from some spoiled young master.

Yet all of this had come at the cost of a year of his time.

After Wang Bodan had lodged a complaint against him, his chance to enter Wu City Preparatory Academy had vanished. And as though disasters never came singly, another matter had also condemned Chen Nan to a year of idleness.

Preparatory Academy held its entrance assessments and admissions on October 1 every year, and Chen Nan had already missed that date by far.

Even with his tremendous merits, they were not enough to shake such a rule.

That was the source of his inner anguish.

He had no idea how to get through this entire year. Moreover, his longing for the Transcendent was scarcely less intense than a young man's love for his sweetheart. Now that it was beyond his reach, he truly tossed and turned, nearly unable to sleep at night.

After brooding for several days, he realized that he could not continue sinking into such despair.

Though he had wasted a year of his time, that reality could no longer be changed. Rather than that, he might as well turn this bad thing into something good.

The first thing Chen Nan thought of was making money.

He already knew that studying at Preparatory Academy for several years would require a huge sum of money.

He could use this year to find a way of earning money that suited him, so he could support his later studies.

Although Jiang Lili had already said that she could keep him—oh, no, he was still a child, so at most it would count as raising him—but with the mindset of an adult, he still could not bear the thought of living off a woman.

Though soft rice really was delicious—soft and hot, full of moisture, nourishing enough...

Still, he could not bring himself to show such shamelessness. It made Chen Nan sigh inwardly: living without shame was so much simpler and more comfortable. Living with pride was simply asking for suffering.

But the heart of a man would not allow him to do that, so he could only find his own way.

Unfortunately, for a ten-year-old child to talk about making money was simply the dream of an idiot.

Though making money off children was something that existed in secret in this world, under the light of civilization, child labor was absolutely forbidden.

Thus, Chen Nan's path of earning money through work was completely blocked.

Besides, could working ever make someone rich? Who could rely on honest, steady labor to build a fortune? Being able to scrape together food and clothing was already society's greatest mercy.

Look at those wealthy elites. Once material possessions became abundant enough, a qualitative change emerged from quantitative accumulation, and material wealth transformed itself into spiritual wealth.

Thus, those speculators, merely because they had once ranked high on the money lists, became figures akin to masters of life.

To keep grassroots workers from feeling spiritually hollow while they had enough to eat and wear—and to stop them from rising up in rebellion—they concocted endless bowls of chicken soup and force-fed them into their minds.

Chen Nan thought, if he did not even like soft rice, then he liked chicken soup that did not need chewing even less. So he had never believed in that sort of thing.

A man could not grow rich without windfall wealth, and a horse could not grow fat without midnight fodder. The first half could also be put this way: a man could not grow rich without crooked wealth.

In any case, if one wanted to make a fortune, conventional paths were absolutely impossible.

He surfed the internet at home and went out to observe and ask around, but Chen Nan still found no unusual path that suited him.

One day, he accidentally entered an unsavory website, where a pop-up advertisement caught his attention.

It was an advertisement for card gambling, naturally claiming that as long as one played, one would only win and never lose.

Chen Nan was not stupid enough to believe such an advertisement, but it did give him an idea.

Right. Gambling was certainly not a desirable shortcut to getting rich overnight, but one could use gambling to accomplish it!

That was surely a contradictory statement, but contradiction did not mean it was wrong.

If gambling could not make people rich overnight, then how could lotteries, stocks, and casinos make some people suddenly wealthy?

As before, as long as one followed the rules within that trade, it was impossible to get rich overnight.

That was why gamblers all ended up losing their fortunes and destroying their families.

If he wanted to become rich through gambling, he absolutely could not be an ordinary gambler who walked the usual road. Chen Nan had not come up with this idea on a whim; he had a certain foundation for it.

That foundation was his own AI System.

The first thing Chen Nan thought of was using the abilities of his AI System to see whether stock trading would work. But once he opened a stock-trading interface, he discovered that he simply could not fit into it.

The main problem was that his AI System did not have sufficient computing power to analyze stock trends.

That did surprise Chen Nan somewhat.

His AI System was, after all, an extremely high-end existence. How could it fail to handle such simple data analysis?

Since the AI System had already fully merged with Chen Nan's brain nerves, when he had that thought, the system gave him a prompt.

The prompt read: HW-NX-96T Intelligent System is only 9.5% developed. It currently does not possess powerful computing or data-processing capabilities and can only strengthen the neural reflexes of the host's organs. If the Intelligent System is to possess basic computing and data-processing capabilities, it must be developed to 20%.

After learning this, Chen Nan felt somewhat lost.

So he could not yet fully use this Intelligent System. But the issue was that it had merged into his central nervous system—how was he supposed to improve it?

It seemed obvious that if he wanted to improve this Intelligent System, he would have to improve his own brain.

But the problem was that it was difficult for a person's brain to undergo tremendous improvement. Once puberty passed, the level of one's brain was basically fixed, and there would be no major changes afterward.

That was why top students would forever be top students, and poor students would forever be poor students. No amount of effort could change that.

But perhaps there were other methods on Kabudan Planet, and he would have to wait until he became a Transcendent to find out. If it truly was possible to improve his brain, then only a Transcendent's methods could probably accomplish it.

That was merely a guess, and Chen Nan naturally could not be completely certain.

Without sufficient data-analysis ability, stock trading had to be abandoned. As for buying lottery tickets, Chen Nan would not even consider that. That stuff was even less transparent than stock trading.

It seemed that such lofty, grand, high-class gambling was beyond his reach for the time being.

Was this warning him that he simply was not suited to taking the high-end route?

Did he really have to become a gambler and play cards and roll dice with people?

But even if he shamelessly degraded himself, casinos did not allow minors inside.

Sigh, this was the trouble with being a child. Trying to do anything was just too difficult.

Yet Chen Nan did not lose heart. Although the law stipulated that minors could not enter casinos, there were far too many things that violated the law.

The official casinos in this city naturally would not let children in, but who could guarantee that there were no underground casinos?

To earn enough money for his schooling, Chen Nan could only set his sights on such a path.

He began spending long periods outside, asking around everywhere about underground casinos. Naturally, his method of gathering information was very special: he had rats, cats, dogs, and the like scatter about and eavesdrop on such matters.

However, the results were minimal.

After thinking it over and over, someone suddenly popped into Chen Nan's mind. He cursed himself for being too stupid to have failed to think of this person.

So he immediately contacted her by phone.

"Hello, Butterfly Loves Flowers, I want to ask you something," Chen Nan said into the phone in an impatient tone.

"I'm not called Butterfly Loves Flowers anymore," she said with a laugh over the phone. "I changed my name to Chen Xiao now."

"Ah, all right. Congratulations," Chen Nan said speechlessly.

"What did you want to ask me?" Chen Xiao asked obediently.

"I want to ask," Chen Nan said, feeling somewhat uneasy, "do you know of any underground casinos where a child like me can go in and gamble?"

Even through the electromagnetic waves, Chen Nan could sense her surprise. Chen Xiao asked in astonishment, "What are you going to a place like that for? It's a place that eats people without spitting out their bones!"

Chen Nan smiled. "Don't worry. I'm not going to let anyone eat me. After everything that has happened, don't you have even that much faith in me? I'm just short on money and want to get some."

Chen Xiao immediately said, "How much do you need? I've saved quite a lot of money. I can give it all to you. Just don't do anything reckless."

Chen Nan was helpless. Back on Earth, he had never received such treatment from a girl. For someone as utterly ordinary as him, no girl had ever paid him much attention.

After crossing over, things had become great—every woman he met seemed determined to keep him.

He said with utmost sincerity, "I can't use your money, and I'm capable of doing it myself..."

Before he could finish, Chen Xiao erupted and cut him off. "Chen Nan, do you think my money is dirty? Is it because I earned it doing that?"

Chen Nan suddenly realized that coming to Chen Xiao had been a mistake. He began comforting and explaining himself over and over. Fortunately, Chen Xiao had not intended to stay angry with Chen Nan to the bitter end, and she soon calmed down.

However, she still insisted on giving Chen Nan money, leaving him caught between advancing and retreating. Only with great difficulty did he dispel Chen Xiao's idea of sending him money. Chen Nan tossed aside his phone and lay wearily on his bed.

He discovered that dealing with women seemed far more difficult than uprooting an evil force.