Chapter 3

"Since I'm already back, I won't go back on my word. But how exactly am I supposed to collect Faith Power?" Qin Yi scratched his head. Was he supposed to set up a stall by the roadside and tell fortunes?

"Of course not. I'm a god, after all. How could I be that pathetic?" the voice said unhappily.

"Right, what's your name?" Qin Yi suddenly remembered to ask. It looked like they would be together for a long time to come. He couldn't keep calling him "that voice."

"...You can just call me God." After pondering for a while, the voice answered proudly.

"God—damn lunatic! Hurry up, what's your actual name?" Qin Yi snapped. A god, his ass. At most, he was some creature from another plane. To put it plainly, an alien. What was with all this nonsense?

"My name is Andre," the voice said aggrievedly.

"..." That name really was cliché. Qin Yi grumbled inwardly. "Andre, how am I supposed to help you regain Faith Power?"

The Qin family's motto was: if someone entrusted you with a task, you had to see it through. A businessman had to keep his word. Whether or not it was business he wanted, once he had agreed, he had to do his best.

"The way we obtain Faith Power is by developing followers, then setting up statues for people to worship. Build me a temple first!" Andre said casually.

Oh, for fuck's sake! A temple?

"I don't have money!" Qin Yi rolled his eyes. "Building temples and developing believers isn't my forte, and I don't have money to develop anything right now."

"Why do you need money?" Andre asked incredulously.

"What doesn't require money these days?" Qin Yi felt powerless. "Can't you come up with a more reliable method?"

"But that's how we did things where I came from!" Andre sounded wronged.

"...Forget it. I'll think of something myself. You don't understand how things work here." If he tried to establish a church, the C Party might mistake it for Falun Gong and wipe him out. That wasn't very safe.

"Oh." Andre responded dejectedly. He had been perfectly fine in his own palace when some bastard had used Space-Severing Art to send him to this backward planet. The only commoner he had encountered had no faith at all. The more he thought about it, the sadder he became.

"Let me out first," Qin Yi said, negotiating with the cloud of black mist. After everything he had gone through, he was desperate to see his family.

"Fine," Andre said listlessly. As soon as he finished speaking, Qin Yi found himself standing once more on an old street in S City.

Beside him stood an elderly woman, staring wide-eyed with her mouth hanging open, unable to make a sound. One trembling hand pointed at Qin Yi. After a long while, she let out a piercing scream. "Ghost..."

Qin Yi took off running. After racing through several narrow, shabby alleys, he finally stopped, bent over and gasping for breath. Once he looked back and made sure no one had followed him, he slowly turned onto the main road and headed toward the home he remembered.

S City more than a decade ago had yet to develop. Old streets and low, single-story houses were everywhere. Qin Yi followed the route from his memories, turning this way and that, and reached his front door twenty minutes later.

It was a square courtyard, the most common kind of northern single-story house from the nineties. When he pushed open the peeling iron gate, he saw a spacious, clean yard paved with cement. A neatly stacked pile of firewood stood against one wall. A large black dog lay beside it. Seeing Qin Yi from afar, it wagged its tail and came over to rub against his pant leg. Qin Yi instinctively bent down and patted the dog's head. Memories that had long been sealed away came flooding back like a flood.

The furnishings of the old family house he had forgotten, the taste of mulberries by the roadside, even the popsicles that cost twenty cents each. The gaze of the big black dog that had died who knew how many years ago. The book rental shop beside the school, with its wuxia novels rented for fifty cents apiece. His father's young, handsome, energetic face. His mother, with two braids, dressed in a hideously unfashionable cotton shirt and black cloth shoes. His childhood friends, covered in mud and filthy all day long...

"Qin Yi, you came home but didn't go inside to eat. What are you standing in the yard thinking about?" Qin Rong's voice broke through Qin Yi's overflowing memories. When he came back to himself, he saw the young Qin Rong standing in the doorway with a bowl of rice.

"Brother, I missed you!" Qin Yi said emotionally. Remembering how his brother had practically spoiled him with care in his previous life, Qin Yi suddenly felt that being reborn was truly wonderful. Andre really was a good person!

"Cough, cough!" Qin Rong choked on his food. He hurriedly patted his chest, swallowing the food stuck in his throat with great difficulty. After belching twice, he looked at Qin Yi, whose face was twisted into an expression that made him look like he was having a seizure, frowned, and pulled five yuan from his pocket. "Here, go spend it."

"Brother!" Qin Yi had finally managed to get emotional, only to see five yuan held out before him. He shouted in extreme dissatisfaction.

"It's no use shouting. This is all I have!" Qin Rong turned out the pockets of his school uniform pants, using his actions to show Qin Yi that he really had no money.

"Brother, is that really what you think of me? Every time I say I miss you, you think I'm asking you for money?" With Qin Rong's interruption, Qin Yi's sudden sentimentality had fled all the way to the Southern Hemisphere. Annoyed, he took a piece of chicken from Qin Rong's bowl and started gnawing on it.

Smack! Qin Rong slapped the chicken from his hand. "How many times have I told you? Wash your hands before eating. Haven't you had enough diarrhea yet?"

"Yeah," Qin Yi answered with a roll of his eyes. He walked over to the water vat beneath the window, scooped up a ladle of water, casually rinsed his hands, then reached into Qin Rong's bowl again, grabbed another piece of chicken, and began gnawing on it.

Qin Rong raised his brows at Qin Yi's dripping wet hands but said nothing more. He shoveled the rest of the rice in his bowl into his mouth in a few bites, then said to Qin Yi, "There's a chicken leg left for you in the kitchen pot. Serve yourself some rice and eat. I'm going out."

"Mm." Qin Yi tossed the bone to Big Black, sucked his fingers, and answered absentmindedly.

"Stop licking them!" Qin Rong finally lost patience and pulled Qin Yi's hand out of his mouth. "Can't you fix that habit?"

He couldn't. He hadn't managed to change it in over twenty years of his previous life.

Qin Yi thought carelessly. Out loud, he habitually brushed it off. "I'll change, I'll change. I'm changing right now!"

"You..." Qin Rong wanted to say more, but he checked the time and realized he would be late. He put down Qin Yi's hand, went back into the kitchen to wash the bowls and chopsticks, then put on his coat and headed out. At the door, he did not forget to turn back and tell Qin Yi, who was digging through the pot for chicken pieces, "Whatever you do, don't wash the dishes after you eat. Just leave them there."

"It's fine!" Qin Yi said impatiently.

"What do you mean, fine? Don't break the bowls and cut your hand." Qin Rong frowned and scolded, "Be good. I'll bring you beef jerky when I get back."

"Yeah," Qin Yi answered.

Author's note: This is Chapter Two.

Mwahahaha!

Starting a new project feels so damn good~~~

☆, Chapter 3: At Loose Ends

Chapter 3

After dinner, Qin Yi returned to his room and lay down, bored out of his mind. At this time, they still lived in the old house that had not yet been demolished. Whitewashed cement walls, blue wooden window frames, and a solid wooden bed with carved patterns. His father had said it was an antique from the late Qing dynasty, but Qin Yi had always thought the bed sucked. After they moved, he had eagerly replaced it with a Simmons mattress. Now, sitting on it again, he felt a little nostalgic—

It was hard as a rock. Just as uncomfortable as he remembered.

A Slam Dunk poster hung on the wall. In front of the window was a messy desk, with a blue wooden chair and a large carved wooden wardrobe against the wall beside it. Next to the wardrobe was a tall mirror, reflecting an innocent-looking boy of twelve or thirteen. Everything told Qin Yi that he had truly been reborn.

"When are you going to help me find Faith Power?" Andre asked impatiently from within the space.

"I just got back. Can you let me catch my breath? Besides, what you want can't be accomplished in a day or two. Even if I help you collect Faith Power, it would be pretty good if I gathered enough to send you home before I die!" Qin Yi said helplessly.

"But—"

"Alright, alright! I promised I'd do my best to help you, okay?" Qin Yi said soothingly. "But other than building a temple, do you have any other methods of collecting Faith Power?"

"Yes," Andre answered casually.

"What?" Qin Yi asked with interest.

"War!" Andre replied decisively.

"..." Never mind. Pretend I didn't ask.

Silence fell between them for a while. After a long time, Andre suddenly asked, "What are you thinking about?"

"I'm thinking about exactly how you collect Faith Power. How the energy conversion works in detail," Qin Yi answered absentmindedly. Though he appeared unreliable on the surface, Qin Yi was actually a very serious person. If he had agreed to something, he would think about it day and night until he accomplished it.

"Faith Power means developing your people until they trust and worship you. Once that emotion reaches a certain level, it can be converted into power for you to use. We call that power Faith Power," Andre explained earnestly. He knew that the more Qin Yi understood, the more Faith Power he could obtain.

"Worship?" Qin Yi muttered thoughtfully. "Then becoming a celebrity might be one way."

"What is a celebrity?" Andre suddenly asked.

"An actor," Qin Yi answered casually.

"...A performer?" Andre did not understand what acting was, but that did not stop him from interpreting it himself.

"You could say that," Qin Yi replied carelessly.

"Can such a lowly profession work?" Andre was deeply skeptical. "Where I come from, this kind of work is the most despised. The only people who can obtain Faith Power from their subjects are powerful heroes and churches. Or rulers who establish a nation."

Powerful heroes, churches, rulers? Qin Yi shook his head pessimistically. In the world he lived in, heroes were synonymous with idiots. They had been atheist for centuries; who still believed in churches? As for the president... he seriously doubted whether everyone even knew the president's name and age. He certainly did not!

"Trust me. If you want Faith Power, being a celebrity definitely has potential," Qin Yi said casually.

Still, he needed to think this path over carefully.

Just as he was pondering, he heard movement at the front gate, followed by Qin Zhenguo's voice from outside. "Qin Yi, are you back?"

"Yeah!" Qin Yi called back. He immediately got out of bed, put on his shoes, and went outside. "Dad, you're back! Where's Mom?"

"Your mom's still at the factory!" Qin Zhenguo took off his coat and walked toward the kitchen. He lifted the pot lid, and the steaming chicken stew with glass noodles gave off an enticing aroma. "Your brother cooked again!"

"Mm." Qin Yi sat on the living room sofa and answered absentmindedly.

"Didn't I say your brother is about to start high school? His studies are getting intense, so he shouldn't be doing housework anymore. Why won't he listen?" Qin Zhenguo said, sounding dissatisfied but actually pleased.

"You need to tell my brother that. He's always worried I'll starve to death. Dad, why don't you give me money so I can eat at school in the evenings from now on? Then my brother won't have to keep running back and forth to cook for me," Qin Yi said.