Special Era (1)

After yesterday night's lesson, Jiang Feng decided to stop courting death by making Wang Shitou's Pure Meat Wontons.

Those weren't wontons—they were practically biological weapons!

Men fell silent after eating them; women wept.

Jiang Jiankang and Wang Xiulian's combined sonic assault from last night still rang in his ears. Even thinking about it now left Jiang Feng shaken.

After finishing the lunch service, Jiang Feng opened his status panel to check the mission progress. Gain a Foothold had reached (700/1000). He hesitated over whether to spend his experience points raising mathematics, physics, and English to Advanced to handle his studies, or use them to level up and see whether the game would unlock any new features.

Forget it. He should upgrade mathematics, physics, and English. If the game went straight into another half-year update this time, Jiang Feng would have nowhere to cry.

Without the system notification chime for increased proficiency while chopping vegetables, he didn't even feel motivated.

After raising all three subjects to Advanced, he still had over 30,000 experience points left. His status panel became:

Mathematics (Advanced): You had fully mastered all undergraduate-level knowledge. (Cannot be upgraded)

Physics (Advanced): You had fully mastered all undergraduate-level knowledge. (Cannot be upgraded)

English (Advanced): You had fully mastered all undergraduate-level knowledge. (Cannot be upgraded)

Jiang Feng: ...

Suddenly becoming a top student was really hard to get used to.

Scrolling down the status panel, Jiang Feng noticed a mist-like mass in the item inventory.

What was this again?

A segment of Li Mingyi's memory?

Jiang Feng suddenly remembered. This had also been a reward from a previous side quest, and it could be viewed repeatedly.

After he had watched Jiang Huiqin's memory last time, the game had immediately entered an update state. That update had lasted more than a month—long enough for Jiang Feng to forget he even had this item.

He clicked on A Segment of Li Mingyi's Memory, then selected Yes.

In a daze, Jiang Feng found himself in a dilapidated room.

Or rather, a ramshackle shed.

Several wooden poles supported a filthy tarp so messy it was impossible to tell whether it was plastic or some other material. It was covered in patches, and the stitches were fine and close together. The person who had sewn it clearly had skill. Even though the freezing wind outside howled against the tarp with loud bangs, not a trace of wind leaked inside.

It was winter, and the shed was dimly lit.

Although Jiang Feng couldn't feel the temperature, he could still tell the season.

Strange. Where was everyone?

The shed was tiny. Miscellaneous junk had been piled into a mountain of garbage, all seemingly unwanted scraps that gave off a suffocating sour stench. The floor was covered with straw. There was no furniture, not even the most basic table or chairs.

Most importantly, Jiang Feng couldn't see Li Mingyi.

With his previous experience in Jiang Huiqin's memory, Jiang Feng knew Li Mingyi had to be nearby.

Could he be hiding in the garbage pile?

Avoiding enemies?

Surely not.

"Mingyi, look! Look what this is!" A hoarse female voice came from the other side of the garbage mountain.

Li Mingyi and Jiang Huiqin were hidden on the other side of the garbage mountain. Li Mingyi lay on a pile of straw, filthy and disheveled, his hair, face, and entire body covered in mud. A tattered quilt covered him as his clouded, vacant eyes stared blankly at the straw.

Jiang Huiqin looked slightly better than Li Mingyi. She had wrapped herself in layer after layer of ragged thin clothing, her loose hair so dirty it had clumped together. They only had one quilt. Jiang Huiqin had wrapped straw around herself and curled up as her frostbitten hands struggled to strike a damp match that was nearly unusable.

This was the middle-aged Jiang Huiqin and Li Mingyi, yet they looked like two elderly people at death's door.

Jiang Feng could hardly believe that those extremely rough hands, covered in frostbite, cracks, bleeding wounds, and pus, hands that struggled even to strike a match, belonged to Jiang Huiqin.

After struggling for several minutes, Jiang Huiqin finally lit the match. Carefully shielding the flame, she skillfully pulled several pieces of wood from the garbage pile, cleared out a patch of ground, and soon a fire was burning there.

"It's your birthday today. I'll make you something good to eat." Jiang Huiqin carefully helped Li Mingyi over to the fire, then pulled a clean clay pot from the straw pile. "Those people came to rummage through things this morning. They must have thought it smelled too bad to search here. With the wind blowing so hard outside, he won't come. Blind Wu said there'll be heavy snow in a couple of days. I'll collect our grain ration while it's snowing. The New Year is almost here, so we might get a little meat too."

"How is Blind Wu?" Li Mingyi asked weakly.

"He's nearly done for. His leg's rotting and covered in sores. He doesn't have many days left." Jiang Huiqin rummaged through the garbage mountain again and somehow found a piece of Tremella and several bird eggs. "I'll make you a good meal. Your leg needs to get better soon. Don't end up like Blind Wu. His wife and children are all dead, and he stopped wanting to live long ago. We still have Junming. I wonder how things are in the northwest."

"Where did you get the Tremella?" Li Mingyi coughed twice, avoiding Jiang Huiqin's words.

"I traded a gold bracelet for it."

Li Mingyi fell silent.

"Don't look half-dead like that. Tremella is so precious now; it was worth trading a gold bracelet for it. If your leg can heal, then even trading the two little gold bars I hid in the well would be worth it." Jiang Huiqin felt around and actually pulled quite a few good things out of that pile of garbage.

"You're still as good as ever at hiding things." At last, Li Mingyi's face showed a little life.

"Of course." Jiang Huiqin looked proud. "Those people think they can find the things I hid? Dream on. Even the bandits couldn't find them during the War of Resistance. They turned over the whole ground and still couldn't dig up the silver dollars I buried. As for them? Hmph."

A trace of life appeared in the deathly silent shack.

Because of the fire, the temperature in the shed rose. Li Mingyi barely shifted, wanting to see clearly what Jiang Huiqin had taken out. Unfortunately, his glasses had been crushed long ago, and he had suffered from malnutrition for so long that he couldn't see clearly in the flickering light.

"What are you making?"

"It's a secret."

Perhaps because she was in a good mood, Jiang Huiqin even began humming a little tune.

Li Mingyi smiled. Looking at the firelight, he suddenly felt that it was almost New Year again.

This was the first time he had felt that way since his eldest son died.