After Qin Siyang had walked away, Lin Yaman asked, "Principal, you think very highly of this lucky fellow."
"How could you tell?"
"I've never seen you explain so much to any student. Even Duan Chongfang has never received such painstaking guidance from you."
Zhao Longfei took out a cigar, clipped the end, and calmly lit it. He drew deeply, then exhaled in contentment.
"Secretary Lin, this was your first time meeting him. What was your impression?"
Lin Yaman held her folder against her chest with both hands and analyzed him seriously. "My impression? I can't say whether it was good or bad. He was a little presumptuous when he first came in, but as we talked, he seemed to rein himself in. How should I put it? His personality is complicated and hard to read. He doesn't seem like an eighteen-year-old boy."
"Duan Chongfang is one of the finest students I've ever seen at our university, but he doesn't give me that strange feeling."
Zhao Longfei smiled. "You're right. Qin Siyang is different."
"Your initial assessment was that he was a lucky fellow. Perhaps you thought getting the Vine Heart and the Crimson Crystal one after another was just good luck. But then he hunted a Thunder Snow Wolf and a Corrosive Black Centipede alone, and obtained a Titan Reed Inner Leaf Fragment. How would you explain that?"
"A lucky fellow with heaven-defying luck," Lin Yaman replied coolly.
Zhao Longfei disagreed with her answer. "Secretary Lin, I think you're still prejudiced about people's backgrounds. You see Qin Siyang, a bumpkin from a rundown district on the edge of the Safe Zone, as worthless mud unfit for polite company."
Lin Yaman adjusted her glasses without confirming or denying it.
"But don't forget, my brother and I were once bumpkins too. Worthless