Fairy Leon

The moment he added the point, his muscles began undergoing an incredible transformation. Some of the bad posture and habits he had developed were washed away and corrected by a gentle yet irresistible force.

Li Wei felt a warm current merge into his body. Then, every part of him began to tingle and ache slightly. It gradually subsided more than ten minutes later, and the soreness in his muscles from doing push-ups had completely vanished.

"Could something this unreasonable really exist in the world?" Li Wei muttered. "So the system is real."

Li Wei flexed his muscles slightly and clenched his fists.

The size and mass of his muscles had not increased, perhaps because he had not added any points to strength.

But the exhaustion in his body and the soreness in his arms had been completely swept away.

"Let's test it again and see how much it improved."

"1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8... 9... 10~"

Even though he had already done ten push-ups ten minutes ago, after his constitution rose by just 0.1, the improvement was worlds apart from before.

If the previous ten push-ups had consumed half his maximum stamina, then doing another ten now consumed only a third, perhaps even less.

Though his constitution had only risen from 0.8 to 0.9, his maximum stamina seemed to have increased not by a little over ten percent, but by nearly half in one go!

His previous subpar health probably played a role, but the improvement was still enormous.

Li Wei stared heatedly at the system panel in his mind. For a moment, even the arguing and shouting upstairs no longer sounded so grating.

The next day, just after seven in the morning, Li Wei was awakened by Don Quixote's voice.

"Get up, kid! Unless you want to rot away in this moldy basement on your first day here!"

Don Quixote's booming voice, coupled with the sounds of him dressing in the cramped space, was even more effective than car horns outside. Li Wei rubbed his throbbing temples and opened his eyes, taking in the unfamiliar ceiling—and the system panel that he could summon at will within his vision!

This was all real. He had not been dreaming!

Li Wei sat up and pulled open the curtain, seeing Don Quixote slipping on a reflective vest splattered with plaster and paint, half of what looked like a fried cake clenched between his teeth.

His eyes were clear but weary, as though the vigorous knight from three in the morning had been someone else entirely.

"Listen, I'm going to a construction site in Queens to haul bricks," he said indistinctly as he tied his shoelaces. "Since you don't need me to take you to school—damn it, I haven't even contacted a school for you yet—just stay put, or take a walk around 8th Avenue. Don't go too far, don't cause trouble, and come find me at the site at noon. Don't make eye contact with people on the street, especially Black people."

"Uncle," Li Wei called out to Don Quixote, who was about to push open the door. His hand instinctively pressed against the coin in his pocket. "Is there... anywhere nearby that buys old things? Or a pawnshop or something?"

Don Quixote paused and turned to Li Wei, his eyes lighting up. "What contraband good stuff did you bring? Or are you trying to sell some watch your father left behind?"

"No..." Li Wei decided to tell a small lie. "I brought some winter clothes before. Since it's summer now, I might as well sell them for some money."

Following his gaze, Don Quixote saw the open suitcase by Li Wei's feet, packed full of clothes.

"Ha! Smart decision." Losing interest, he snorted and pushed open the iron door. "Turn right when you leave the alley and head onto 8th Avenue. There's a recycling shop called Leon Pawn and Secondhand Shop that takes everything. Tell them Don Quixote Cervantes sent you. It's relatively safe to sell things there; they won't rob you blind. But you'd better speak English. If you speak Chinese, they'll think you're a fresh-off-the-boat fat sheep and rip you off hard."

With a bang, the iron door shut.

Li Wei went to the bathroom and turned on the faucet. After waiting for quite a while, he found that the water still ran yellow and murky, so he gave up on washing up in this house.

He changed into an inconspicuous T-shirt, put on a baseball cap, locked the basement door, and followed Don Quixote's directions to 8th Avenue.

Sunset Park in the morning displayed a strange, chaotic vitality.

The moment he stepped out of the dark alley, blinding sunlight and noisy voices rushed toward him.

8th Avenue was known as Brooklyn's Chinatown. It was crowded with immigrants from Fujian, along with many Latin Americans.

As Li Wei walked, he found 8th Avenue packed with all kinds of stalls: vegetables, seafood, cheap daily necessities. The air was filled with the mingled smells of fish, car exhaust, and some kind of fried food.

He lowered the brim of his cap. After walking two blocks, he spotted a storefront with the English words "Leon Pawn and Secondhand Shop" written on it, with a faded neon sign hanging above.

At that moment, another voice sounded in his mind:

[Adventurer Li Wei, you have arrived at "Fairy's Shop"]

[Fairy Leon is a notorious profiteer known far and wide. He treats people according to their worth and devours them without even spitting out the bones. Few have ever managed to pry any benefit from his jaws.]

[Quest issued: Haggle with Leon and let this fairy profiteer taste the bitterness of taking a loss.]

[Quest reward: Attribute Point +0.1, Gold Coin +1]

Upon pushing open the door, Li Wei found a sinister-looking old white man sitting behind the counter, reading a newspaper while stuffing donuts into his mouth.

Hearing the sound at the entrance, he raised his eyelids above his reading glasses and gave Li Wei a glance.

"Buying or selling?" he asked in Chinese tinged with a southeastern accent.

"Selling," Li Wei replied in English. "Don Quixote Cervantes sent me."

At the mention of that name, Leon paused. Then he snorted with amusement through his nose. Li Wei could tell it was the instinctive reaction one had upon hearing the name of the village idiot. "So it's him. He hasn't been here in a while. I wonder if he still likes reading knight novels?"

"He hasn't been reading much lately." Li Wei stepped forward and casually played along. "He found two jobs, so he's probably too busy."

"Still decided to earn clean money with his own hands... What an idiot..." Leon muttered, taking out a magnifying glass. "Hand it over. What are you selling? A phone, or something else?"

Li Wei took out the gold coin from his pocket. "A commemorative coin I won from a game before. Pure gold. Give me an estimate."

He did not know whether it was truly pure gold. He wanted Leon to take a look first, so that if it was, Leon would know he was not completely clueless.

Leon examined it carefully with the magnifying glass and muttered, "Strange design... Doesn't look like an antique, though."

He took a bottle of acid from a drawer, lightly scratched the edge of the gold coin, then dripped a drop of acid onto it.

A few seconds later, the gold streak remained completely unchanged under the acid. It even shone more brilliantly beneath the lights.

"Very high purity. Twenty-four-karat gold... five grams." He looked up at Li Wei. "There's no official stamp and no proof of purchase, so I can only take it at thirty percent of the gold price."

"Gold is eighty dollars per gram right now. For five grams, you can only offer one hundred and twenty dollars?" Li Wei could not help saying. "Isn't that cut way too deep?"

Leon sneered and spread his hands. "Do you have proof of purchase? Do you have an official gold stamp? How am I supposed to know this thing came from a legitimate source? Besides, I'm already giving you a fair price for Don Quixote's sake. Normally, I buy things back at one-quarter of their value."

Li Wei took a deep breath and nodded. This man was clearly trying to fleece him because he was an unfamiliar Asian teenager with no backing.

This was not some phone or electronic device with a steep depreciation rate. This was fucking gold! A regular, legitimate gold shop could buy it back for ninety percent of its value!

He looked at the skill he had drawn yesterday and could not help speaking again.

"Do you know?" he said. "I suddenly remembered that this thing's origin isn't just a commemorative coin issued by a game company."

On the panel visible only to him, a skill he had drawn just yesterday emitted faint points of light:

[Skill: Clumsy Eloquence]

[Effect: You have a 50% chance of persuading greedy people with weak willpower.]

Suddenly, Li Wei heard a ding in his mind.

Immediately afterward, Leon's expression changed several times.

Then he straightened up from the back of his chair and excitedly slammed a fist into his palm.

"I knew it!" he shouted. "You're absolutely right!"

It worked?

Li Wei was somewhat shocked by the power of the system, but he was not entirely certain. After hesitating, he said, "This is a limited-edition collectible. Only one thousand were issued worldwide."

Hearing Li Wei's words, Fairy Leon picked up the gold coin from the table again and turned it over in his hands.

"No wonder the craftsmanship is so exquisite." He looked up at Li Wei with unfocused eyes. "So you're saying this has high collectible value?"

"That's right." Li Wei gradually became bolder. "And I have insider information. This game will be launching in North America soon. When that happens, these commemorative coins will definitely sell for a high price on eBay or Amazon!"

"I understand... I understand..." Leon completely believed Li Wei's words. He picked up the magnifying glass again and carefully examined the gold coin. "Then... you still want to sell it?"

For Li Wei, there was no use keeping this thing around. And as Leon had said, he could not prove where the gold coin came from, so he could not go through legitimate channels to sell it. Besides, he had a major problem right now: he needed money.

"If I didn't need money right now, I wouldn't sell it." Li Wei looked at Leon. "So make me an offer."

"Then..." Leon muttered to himself for a while before finally making up his mind. "How about three hundred dollars?"

Li Wei shook his head. The quest required him to let Leon experience a loss. Leon would still profit at three hundred dollars.