Making Money Like Breathing

After leveling up to Lv.2, Han Luyi opened the freelance developer platform on his first full workday.

Things were different from before.

Previously, when he used Sight to scan the list of requests, he could tell whether the client was reliable, whether the budget was inflated, and whether there were hidden extra requirements. That information let him precisely pick out high-paying, high-quality jobs. Making over ten thousand a day was no problem.

But that was only "seeing."

Now, he could "fix."

The first job was backend optimization for a mid-sized e-commerce platform. The client's description read, "The system occasionally freezes for unknown reasons." The offer was 15,000.

Han Luyi opened the code repository access provided by the client and activated Sight.

A layer of translucent highlights appeared across the code.

In the past, he would have needed half a day to analyze a single bug himself. Now, Sight directly provided the fix path—what file to change, what line to change, and how to change it—all laid out on the panel. He only had to apply the remedy.

Forty minutes later, all three bugs were fixed. He wrote a concise repair report and sent it to the client.

The client replied: ???

The second message said: Dude, that was way too fast.

The third message said: Our own team spent two weeks investigating and never found the cause.

The fourth message said: Awesome.

The fifth message said: Can we add a bonus?

Han Luyi replied with a smiling emoji.

The second job was an app crash issue for a startup. The offer was 8,000. There were seven bugs, the worst of them a memory leak. He finished it in half an hour.

The third job was an abnormal payment callback in a mini-program. The offer was 3,000. It was no big deal, and he wrapped it up in fifteen minutes.

By eleven-thirty, all three jobs had been delivered, for a total income of 26,000.

That was about what he took home after tax for half a month of work at Dingsheng.

Of course, freelancers had to pay their own taxes and social insurance, but even after deductions, earning half a month's pay in half a day was profitable no matter how he calculated it.

By then, the clients' positive reviews had already appeared on the platform.

"Fastest delivery in history. Flawless quality."

"Did this guy use cheats? He solved bugs that had stumped us for two months in half an hour."

Han Luyi looked at the words "used cheats," and the corner of his mouth twitched.

You really got that right.

He closed his laptop and leaned back in his chair.

This was the first time in five years that Han Luyi had finished all his work.

When he was at Dingsheng, there had never been the word "free time" on his schedule. He arrived at nine in the morning and left at nine at night—if he was lucky. When rushing a release, getting off at eleven or twelve was routine; two or three in the morning was nothing unusual. He wolfed down a few bites of takeout at his desk for lunch and ate bread in the conference room for dinner. Occasionally, he got one day off on the weekend, but messages could pop up on his phone at any time.

He had already forgotten what weekday afternoons were like.

Han Luyi stood up and walked onto the balcony.

The February sunlight streamed in, warm and bright. In the small garden downstairs, several retired old men were playing chess. On a bench nearby, a young mother scrolled on her phone while the child in her stroller slept. Auntie Wang from the convenience store had moved a stool to the entrance to bask in the sun, cracking sunflower seeds.

Those people were there every day. He had simply never seen them at this hour.

He stood there for a while, then went back inside and opened the refrigerator.

It was empty except for half a bottle of Lao Gan Ma and two cartons of expired yogurt.

Han Luyi took his keys and went downstairs. There was a vegetable market at the entrance to the complex. He had passed it hundreds of times, but had never gone inside.

He went in and bought tomatoes, eggs, and a bunch of scallions.

Then he went home and made a plate of scrambled eggs with tomatoes.

It did not taste good.

But at least it was not burnt.

He ate lunch standing in the kitchen, washed the dishes, then returned to the balcony and stood there for a while longer.

A strange thought surfaced in Han Luyi's mind: So this was what freedom felt like? It really felt unfamiliar.

Suddenly, he heard a knock at the door. The moment he pulled open the security door, a small figure nearly crashed into his arms.

"Brother Luyi!"

Lin Duoduo hugged a pink tablet, her eyes red and her little face still streaked with tears that had not dried.

"What's wrong, Duoduo?" Han Luyi crouched down.

"My tablet is broken..." Lin Duoduo held it up before him. The screen was frozen on a colorful interface and would not move at all. "The cartoon froze halfway through. Restarting doesn't work, and Mom can't fix it either..."

As she spoke, her mouth began to pout again.

"Let me take a look." Han Luyi took the tablet.

The door to apartment 501 next door was open. Lin Wanqing stood in the doorway with a paintbrush in one hand, her hair casually tied into a bun and a little paint still on her face.

"Sorry. Duoduo insisted on coming to find you. I told her Mommy would fix it tomorrow, but she wouldn't listen." Lin Wanqing looked a little embarrassed.

"It's fine, Sister Lin. It's nothing."

Han Luyi looked down at the tablet and casually activated Sight for a second.

[Repair Recommendation: Force boot into Safe Mode + clear the app cache + downgrade to the stable v3.1.8 version]

Han Luyi turned off Sight and followed the repair recommendation. He held down the volume and power buttons to enter Safe Mode, cleared the cache, and rolled the buggy cartoon app back to its previous version. The entire process took less than two minutes.

The screen lit up, and that pink little pig began bouncing around again.

"It's fixed."

Lin Duoduo's expression changed with textbook precision. She went from teary-eyed to stunned to ecstatic in a total of half a second.

"Brother Luyi is amazing!" She hugged the tablet, then hugged Han Luyi's leg. "You're a hundred times better than Mommy!"

"...Thank you for your hundred times better." Lin Wanqing rolled her eyes from the doorway.

The panel flashed.

Lin Wanqing took Duoduo's hand and returned to apartment 501. Before the door closed, Duoduo poked half her head out and waved at him.

Han Luyi's week settled into a fixed rhythm.

He accepted two or three jobs in the morning, choosing ones with interesting problems, and finished before noon. The afternoons were his own.

He began doing things he had never had time to do before.

On Thursday evening, he went for a run. The last time he had run might have been in college. He ran two laps along the river outside the complex. He had assumed five years of 996 had ruined his body, but Sight's upgrade had apparently boosted his physique.

It rained lightly on Friday. He sat on the balcony reading and listening to the rain. Next door, Duoduo's soft, childish singing drifted over, muffled by the wall between them.

They were all tiny things, so small that he would never even have thought of them when he was at Dingsheng.

But strung together, they formed something Han Luyi had nearly forgotten.

Life.

A week came to an end.

Including private jobs from the platform, his total income was 65,000.

He earned 50,000 a month after tax at Dingsheng. In one week, he had made more than a month's salary.

The money issue was solved, but Han Luyi discovered a new problem.

On the Sight panel, his experience was still stuck at 15.

More than a dozen jobs, 65,000 in earnings, and zero experience. Fixing Duoduo's tablet, on the other hand, had earned him three points.

Paid work did not count.

The rules of this system were simpler than he had thought. Making money was one thing, but if he wanted to level up, he had to help people—without charging them.

Han Luyi closed the banking app and opened his computer.

He had an idea he wanted to try.