Late that night, after Gu Jia had fallen asleep, Wang Yan went out onto the terrace.
He faced the cold night wind and looked across at The Bund, alive with revelry every night, and the Huangpu River rushing eastward.
He opened the System Panel and selected Return.
Blue light flashed, and Wang Yan disappeared from where he stood.
When he opened his eyes again, Wang Yan was lying in the bed in his shared rental in Beijing.
The information in his mind interwove, but this time he was doing much better. It had barely affected him at all. The main reason was that he hadn't spent long in Nothing But Thirty. Those memories didn't hit him very hard compared with the forty years of experience he'd accumulated in his own life.
After lying there for a while to settle himself, Wang Yan got up and drank a glass of water.
He lit a cigarette, went to the window, and drew back the curtains, looking out at the night.
He opened the System Panel.
Wang Yan Attributes: Strength 20 Agility 20 Constitution 20 Spirit 18 Unallocated Points 4 Storage Space 2m Skills: Fighting LV3 Computer Skills LV2 Chinese Classics LV2 Philosophy LV2 Calligraphy LV1 Cooking LV1 ...Many more skills omitted.
His attributes hadn't changed. He hadn't spent long in that world, and his skills hadn't changed much either. Management, sales, and the like were still at LV3. It was just that he'd spent so much time writing and coding that he'd gotten his foot in the door with calligraphy and reached LV2 proficiency in computer skills.
With his current computer skills, if he prepared for a specific job and talked his way through an interview, he figured he could earn five or six thousand yuan. Plenty of people who'd gone through training could make that much after just four months. He'd studied longer than they had, learned more, and picked things up faster, so earning five or six thousand wasn't unreasonable. He might even manage more.
Besides that, to make things easier for him in the future, the system had given him the ability to control whether he conceived a child. He could have one when he wanted, and avoid having one when he didn't. To be honest, Wang Yan didn't want to have children casually in the fictional worlds. A child would be his own flesh and blood. He couldn't look after one for long before leaving, and once he returned to the real world, he'd inevitably miss the child. What would be the point? He'd only be making himself suffer.
The system had never said he could return to worlds he'd already visited, so he figured there wasn't much chance of that. If he couldn't stay in a world for twenty or thirty years, he definitely wouldn't have a child there.
(The author forgot about the issue of leaving his property to someone else's child, even though some readers brought it up last chapter. They've been saying this author writes from an outline, but the truth is, he doesn't have one. Honestly, he'd forgotten all about it. Yesterday, while writing, he kept feeling like something was missing, but after thinking it over, Gu Jia really wasn't the right person to have a child with. This is a bit of a fix, since he'll be an emperor later and ought to have an heir of his own. As for why this was written here, it's because the author never reads author's notes in novels.)
After finishing his cigarette, Wang Yan washed up, tidied himself up, and went to bed.
The next day, he got up full of energy, exercised, and ate breakfast.
Wang Yan began another day of hustling to make a living: trading stocks and making cold calls.
After a week of this, Wang Yan finally got some good news.
His commission had come through.
He withdrew fifty thousand yuan, taking home a little over forty thousand. He didn't dare withdraw it all, mainly because the taxes were too steep and he couldn't quite stomach paying that much.
Besides, he still had to keep working for a while. He'd deal with the rest later. Either way, he wasn't going anywhere, and even a little less in taxes was better than nothing.
He transferred five thousand to his boss and kept five thousand for living expenses.
There was no rush to pay off his credit card. The priority was to earn more. He moved the remaining thirty thousand through his credit cards, then invested it all in the stock market.
That day, one of his college buddies announced in their group chat that he was getting married. The wedding was on the fifteenth of the month, the following Friday.
There had been eight guys sharing one room, counting him. Usually, there were four or six to a room, but Huaxia Qingbei University hadn't accepted him, so he'd ended up at that lousy school.
Of course, having a lot of roommates had its benefits. Things were lively every day.
After graduation, everyone had scattered far and wide and was living like a dog. It was hard just to meet up once. So every now and then, they'd hold a reunion and catch up. Usually, they drank, reminisced about their glorious past, and talked about the future—which, to be honest, they didn't have much heart for anymore. They mostly just bragged.
Everyone in the group agreed they'd go.
It had been years since they'd all seen one another, so they'd get together this time.
He wasn't the first one among them to get married. Two others had already tied the knot, and they even had kids.
That was another little jab at Wang Yan.
For the next few days, Wang Yan carried on working as usual. His luck was pretty good; he sold another apartment and earned a hundred and twenty thousand in commission.
Before he knew it, Thursday had come, and Wang Yan boarded a flight to Bashu.
The groom-to-be lived in a county in Bashu. After transferring to a high-speed train, Wang Yan was almost there.
At the station exit, Wang Yan spotted his buddy waiting for him.
He could see him hopping around and shouting from far away, waving at him. You'd have to be blind to miss him.
"Old Wang!"
"Old Zhang!" Wang Yan called back loudly. His buddy was Zhang Guang.
Ignoring the looks from the people around them, he enthusiastically went over and hugged him. "Good grief, who'd have thought you'd be getting married too, you little bastard?"
"Shit, why can't I get married? After that, you'd better lead the charge when we start drinking."
"No problem. First, give your buddy a hint—are there enough bridesmaids?"
"You little bastard. You don't even ask how I'm doing; you go straight to asking about the bridesmaids." Zhang Guang cursed Wang Yan in his distinctive accent.
There was no getting around accents. Wang Yan remembered that Zhang Guang had arrived first when they started college.
Back then, he'd also spoken with a thick Sichuan accent. The first time they met, they'd had this conversation.
"Hey, man. I'm Wang Yan. What should I call you?"
"Hi, I'm... Zhang Guang." The way he pronounced "Zhang" landed somewhere between "Zhang" and "Zeng." It was impossible to make out.
"What Guang? Zeng Guang?"
"Aw, it's Zhang Guang!"
"Here, let me put it in my phone."
That was when Wang Yan finally figured out his surname.
Another time was after military training, one evening. Wang Yan and Zhang Guang had been assigned opposite beds, and Zhang Guang's slippers had ended up under Wang Yan's bed.
"Hey, Old Wang, hand me my... slippers."
"What? You brought your kid with you? How come I didn't know? I've never seen them!" Back then, Wang Yan had been a bit of a doofus and never thought before he spoke.
It took ages for them to figure out that he meant his slippers.
(This really happened to the author. His buddy's surname is Zeng.)
Some of their classmates from Bashu spoke excellent Mandarin, but for some reason, Zhang Guang had always spoken Sichuan-flavored Mandarin.
And since everyone else in their room was from the north—Inner Mongolia, Dalian, Henan, Shenyang—and he was the only one from the south, it was only natural his accent would shift. But damn, it had gotten even stranger. The Sichuan accent was mixed with Northeastern speech. It was truly something. He'd been back home for years, but still hadn't shaken it.
"You've got a wife to dote on you now. Why do you need a rough old guy like me to worry about you?"
"Enough, enough. Look at you, getting all jealous. I'm done talking. Come on, they're all here waiting for you. They wanted to come pick you up too, but I told them to stay put. It was too much hassle."
As he spoke, he reached for Wang Yan's things.
"Don't worry about it. I can carry my own stuff. Let's go."
Zhang Guang drove Wang Yan to the hotel he'd arranged. The other guys were all there.
As soon as they saw Wang Yan, everyone gave him an earful, complaining that he'd arrived too late.
Wang Yan had just one reply: "Your dad always makes a late entrance."
After a round of joking and catching up, they headed off to eat amid a racket.
They had a lively drinking session and talked about how things had been going.
Wang Yan didn't show off too much. Relationships were affected by all sorts of things.
Everyone had their own measure of things. Even among the eight of them, some were closer than others, and there was a pecking order.
Still, they all agreed that Wang Yan had changed the most. He didn't say much about it, quietly steering the conversation elsewhere.
To be honest, these guys were nowhere near his level now. He kept his changes subtle, and they couldn't detect them at all.
The next day, everyone got up early to pick up the bride and make it through several rounds of challenges.
It was mostly just for fun. Zhang Guang kept his word too. Faced with a line of beer stretching from the first floor to the second, he unhesitatingly pushed Wang Yan forward. He didn't hesitate for a second.
Wang Yan's tolerance for alcohol had once been merely above average, but he wasn't the same rookie anymore.
Without a word, he drank half a floor's worth—almost a whole case of beer.
With beer, as long as your stomach can hold it, you can keep drinking without stopping.
The other side had only meant to give them a token challenge. If Wang Yan couldn't handle it, they would've let it go. But then Wang Yan set a fine example.
The other six buddies couldn't back down either. They were all pretty good drinkers, so they drank their share too. On average, each of them drank about six or seven bottles.
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