A Fortuitous Encounter Trumps All

At eight in the evening, it was dinner time for the people of Yang City.

Feng Jun walked out of the dormitory building and through a small alley to a hole-in-the-wall restaurant he often visited.

Yang City's cost of living was not low, but deep in its alleyways, there were still little eateries with very affordable prices.

On ordinary days, a huge bowl of fried noodles, a plate of chilled tofu, and a chicken leg were enough to fill Feng Jun up. To be fair, that was already quite an appetite.

Yet today, he ordered three huge bowls of fried noodles, two vegetable dishes, and five chicken legs. Later, he extravagantly added a plate of sliced beef and offal in chili sauce before his stomach stopped feeling quite so hollow.

At last, he asked for two big bowls of noodle soup—just to fill the cracks—and only then did he feel a slight fullness.

After paying, he left with his belly sticking out, utterly unconcerned by the restaurant owner's astonished stare.

However, the moment he stepped out of the restaurant, Feng Jun froze. "Hm? Mobile payment... can't enter the space?"

It seemed the most urgent matter was still figuring out what benefits this fortuitous encounter could bring him.

Of course, first he had to understand how the encounter had happened. Had his phone changed, or had he changed?

Sitting beneath a bright streetlamp, he carefully examined his phone, then looked at his left hand. He was left-handed, and when he had been struck by the electricity, he had been gripping the phone in his left hand.

His left palm was slightly swollen. He did not know whether it was from being struck by lightning or from grabbing grass too many times.

But on the surface, there really did not seem to be much unusual about it.

When he turned his wrist over, he suddenly discovered a faint pale-blue mark on his forearm near the back of his wrist. "Fuck, where did my Stone Ring go?"

Three years earlier, during his university internship, he had traveled to Bingzhou City with his roommates for a few days. In Ningpo Mountain east of Bingzhou, there was a rarely visited valley, and a group of hot-blooded college students had gone in to explore it.

There was a ruined forest of pagodas in the valley, said to have a history of more than a thousand years. Feng Jun had picked up a dark indigo stone ring there.

The Stone Ring was flat and round, with an outer diameter of more than two centimeters and an inner diameter of roughly three millimeters. It felt cool in the hand and was remarkably heavy, almost comparable to iron in density.

The Stone Ring looked utterly ordinary, but it had one advantage: even in summer, it remained incomparably cool.

Feng Jun had originally picked it up just to play with it, thinking he might lose it someday. But after bringing it back to Xiayang University, he discovered that in scorching Jiangxia, the thing made him feel very comfortable.

That faint coolness was actually more of a subjective sensation, perhaps nothing more than psychological suggestion. But Feng Jun feared the heat and thought the thing was pretty nice, so he threaded it onto a red cord and wore it around his wrist, never taking it off even when showering.

Now, the Stone Ring had mysteriously vanished, along with the red cord. Combined with the pale-blue mark on his wrist, Feng Jun had reason to believe that after being struck by electricity, the Stone Ring had undergone some rather... what-the-hell kind of change.

He could not explain exactly what that meant, but he could assume that after being struck by lightning, the Stone Ring had merged into his body.

That explanation was extremely unscientific, but fortuitous encounters... trumped everything!

If it could be explained scientifically, how could it still be called a fortuitous encounter?

Having sorted out the chain of events, Feng Jun decisively gave up on investigating the source—he believed that in the short term, he would never find another Stone Ring like that.

Better to first figure out what this encounter had given him. Hopefully, it was not merely the ability to grab grass.

First, he needed to find somewhere with no people and no surveillance cameras, then experience that miraculous feeling again.

He could not determine whether, when he entered Liaoliao Farm, only his consciousness had gone in, or whether his physical body had gone in as well.

In a city blanketed by electronic surveillance, a living person suddenly vanishing under a camera could cause all sorts of unnecessary trouble.

Feng Jun disliked trouble, and he disliked even more the thought of someone else snatching away his fortuitous encounter.

Such a place was actually not hard to find. For example... the restroom at Hongjie Club.

The afternoon lightning had blown out the transformer outside Hongjie Club. Fortunately, the club had its own generator. There were still quite a few customers coming to work out at night, and the generator was rumbling away.

Feng Jun had not gone to work that afternoon, and many of his coworkers knew it, but no one stopped him from using the restroom. Times had changed—pedestrians on the street could come in and borrow the restroom, so why could he not?

The restrooms at Hongjie Club were fairly upscale and befitted the club's image—at the very least, they had stalls and doors that could be locked from the inside.

Feng Jun entered one of the stalls. Half an hour later, he emerged with a grim expression.

It was gone. The fortuitous encounter was gone. Everything was gone. Even after opening Liaoliao Farm again, he could no longer enter that space. Left with no choice, he scattered a handful of pasture grass seeds.

He planned to wait until the grass matured, then see whether he could grab grass again.

Over the past half hour, he had tried every possible method, but unfortunately, an old phone was still an old phone. Nothing surprising happened at all.

His phone had only 83% battery left. The two circles in the percent sign seemed like a pair of eyes, coldly watching him and silently radiating intense mockery: I'm just a phone. Aren't you overthinking this?

However, Feng Jun was a very confident person. He did not believe that his encounter that night had been an illusion.

Something must have happened that I failed to notice!

As someone with two degrees, he was not lacking in a spirit of inquiry. In fact, he loved challenging all kinds of difficult problems.

Feng Jun quickly adjusted his mood and headed for the exit. Just as he was about to leave the club, a glamorous woman in her thirties hurried toward him.

The woman was quite tall, a full one meter seventy, with a graceful figure and exquisite curves. She wore a light-brown office-style summer outfit.

Feng Jun stopped and respectfully greeted her. "Hello, Sister Hong. Coming over so late?"

The woman was none other than Zhang Weihong, general manager of Hongjie Culture and Entertainment Co., Ltd. She disliked being called General Manager Zhang and preferred people to call her "Sister Hong."

It was said that Hongjie Club had been given its name because it sounded like "Sister Hong."

Sister Hong wielded tremendous influence in Yang City, and her background was exceedingly mysterious. One could imagine it: a woman, and a glamorous woman at that, managing to establish herself in the entertainment industry... well, the cultural and sports industry—how could she possibly be someone to trifle with?

Rumor had it that Zhang Weihong had opened this fitness club in the first place simply to give her close female friends somewhere to pass the time. It was their own place, so they could have fun without any reservations, and they could work out besides. Why not have the best of both worlds?

Hearing him, Sister Hong merely tilted her head and glanced at him. She gave no response at all, as though she were looking at thin air, then quickly walked inside.

Feng Jun did not take it to heart. Leaders had always been this cold and aloof toward their own employees, and everyone was used to it. Everyone knew she was a woman with her eyes above her head; words like "kindly" and "motherly" were her natural enemies.

Feng Jun returned to his dormitory and fiddled with his phone for another two hours. Only when its battery had dropped to 40% did he shove it beneath his pillow and drift off in a daze. His final thought before sleep was: I need to buy a charger tomorrow.

Yes, he had already made up his mind to continue working the next day.

As for why? It was simple. He could not be sure whether the encounter was related to the room he lived in, and before he understood the cause, he absolutely should not leave rashly.

Compared with the fortuitous encounter, those troubles at work were truly not worth mentioning.

Early the next morning, he arrived at the club and began the preparations before opening: turning on the air conditioners and water dispensers, checking the cleanliness, and personally cleaning up any spots that had not been properly dealt with.

By the time he finished all that, it was already seven-thirty in the morning. Four or five members had arrived at the club for their morning workouts.

Feng Jun was about to grab something to eat when he reached the club entrance and happened to see the young receptionist walk in from outside. When she saw him, she called out, "Two Degrees, are you going to buy breakfast? Get me a portion too."

The young woman's surname was Li. Her relationship with him had always been decent. Although "Two Degrees" was somewhat teasing, at least she did not call him "Graduate Student."

Feng Jun hesitated. He was not annoyed by the nickname; rather, he suddenly remembered that the reception desk had phone chargers. They were a convenience service for guests, though club staff used them occasionally as well.

But in the end, he did not ask to borrow a charger. He was going to buy one anyway, so why covet such a small convenience?

After eating breakfast and bringing one back for Xiao Li, it was nearly seven-fifty. He had eaten quite a lot that morning, more than twice his usual amount.

Yet his poor old phone had received no energy replenishment. It now had only twelve percent battery left, definitely not enough to last through the morning.

At this hour, some members were already leaving the gym for work. Feng Jun made a round through the area under his responsibility and found sweat stains on a treadmill, so he immediately fetched a rag to wipe it down.

Afterward, he took the rag to the staff room to wash it, only to suddenly spot a light-green phone charger on the windowsill.

That non-mainstream-colored charger belonged to Liu Shuming. Someone had once mocked it, but Coach Liu had smugly replied, "Making others wear green hats is green too. You losers... how could you understand the mentality of a successful man?"

Since it belonged to that bastard, there was no reason not to use it. Feng Jun picked up one end of the charging cable and plugged it into his phone, then picked up the charger plug and inserted it into the wall socket.

The next instant, there was a loud bang, and sparks flew everywhere.

Immediately afterward, someone outside shouted, "Fuck! The transformer was just repaired—how did it blow up again?"