He chatted briefly with his mother.
Gu Qing closed the chat window and brought up the panel to check his digestion stats.
[Cumulative digestion +83]
He needed just 17 more points to acquire the attribute-Devouring.
It was Thursday morning.
If I head home tomorrow afternoon, I still have two days and one night to farm stats.
With [Big Eater] Qian Duole's bottomless maw that never stops once he starts snacking, I'll definitely get [Devouring] before I go home.
Time flew.
In the blink of an eye, it was three on Friday afternoon.
Gu Qing tore open a bag of chips and handed it to Qian Duole.
"Here, have some chips."
"No way. I've been eating too many snacks lately. I've gained over ten pounds. I'm turning into a proper fat pig."
Qian Duole said no, but his body honestly reached out and took the chips anyway.
A textbook case of a brain controlled by an enormous stomach.
Seeing that Qian Duole really had gained quite a bit of weight, Gu Qing thought he couldn't keep harming his roommate.
Once he got the [Devouring] attribute later,
he would stop feeding him snacks.
About half an hour later.
[You have eaten together with your roommate Qian Duole for over an hour] [Food intake +1] [Digestion +1] [Digestion has increased by a cumulative 100 points. You have successfully acquired the attribute-Devouring] [Devouring: Your digestive ability is greatly enhanced]
Finally maxed it out!
Gu Qing looked at the text before him, a surge of excitement filling him.
After calming down a little, he studied the description of [Devouring] and fell into thought.
Digestive ability greatly enhanced?
That description is way too vague.
Without specific numbers, there's no way to know how much it's improved.
Once I get home later,
I'll have to eat a big meal to test it out.
Gu Qing's home wasn't far from school.
It was only thirty-odd kilometers away.
With two bus rides,
he could get there in just over an hour.
Traveling light, Gu Qing left the dorm with only his phone.
He had just reached the school gate to wait for the bus when he saw several security vehicles drive onto campus.
Why are security officers coming to school again?
Are they here to investigate those two earlier disappearances?
Or...
Has there been another case?
Gu Qing furrowed his brow and immediately took out his phone to tell Gao Fei about it, asking whether he had heard anything through the grapevine.
Gao Fei soon replied that he didn't know, saying his girlfriend in the external relations department hadn't heard anything.
That reply put Gu Qing considerably more at ease.
No news was the best news.
Just then,
the bus arrived.
Gu Qing thought no more about it and boarded the bus home.
A little after five that afternoon.
As soon as Gu Qing got home, he saw his parents already busy cooking in the kitchen.
He glanced at the labels floating above their heads.
[Designer] [Teacher]
His father, Gu Mingbo, worked in advertising design, while his mother, Wen Wanyi, taught Chinese at a high school.
Both labels suited their identities.
"Dad, Mom, I'm home. Need a hand with anything?"
Gu Qing walked up to his parents and asked.
Wen Wanyi shooed him away. "Your dad and I are almost done cooking. We don't need your help. Go to your sister's room and tell her to come out for dinner."
Yes.
Gu Qing also had a younger sister, three years his junior. She was in her final year of high school and would soon be taking the college entrance exam.
Just like him,
his sister had inherited their parents' good looks. She was very pretty, a renowned goddess at her school.
Leaving the kitchen,
he went straight to his sister's bedroom door and stopped.
Seeing that the door was ajar,
Gu Qing didn't think much of it and pushed it open.
"Idiot Yao, come out and ea-"
Before he could finish, his tongue abruptly stalled, and the sight before him left him stunned.
His campus-goddess sister was sitting in her chair, furiously picking at her feet. Afterward, she even held her fingers under her nose and sniffed hard, wrinkling her brow at the stench.
Gu Yao: "..."
Gu Qing: "..."
For a moment, the siblings simply stared at each other without a word. The silence was terrifying.
"Idiot Yao?"
"Idiot Yao, where are you?"
"Huh, she's not in her room. Where did she go?"
Gu Qing broke the silence first. Pretending not to see his sister in the chair, he called into the empty air a few times, then turned and left rather than stay and make things more awkward.
Good thing she was only picking at her feet. If she'd been picking somewhere else, awkward wouldn't begin to cover it.
Right, I'll definitely remember to knock next time.
No sooner had Gu Qing left than the light drained from his campus-goddess sister's eyes. She slumped weakly against the chair back and went completely still.
[Deceased: Gu Yao] [Date of death: April 3, 2026 CE] [Cause of death: Goddess image utterly destroyed; social death]
In the living room.
The family of four sat together over dinner.
Gu Qing chatted and laughed with his parents throughout, while his sister alone said nothing, silently looking down at her phone.
"Yao, what's wrong?"
"Your brother came home especially to celebrate with you. Why are you just sitting there without saying anything?"
"Are you feeling unwell?"
Seeing her usually chattering daughter so quiet, Wen Wanyi couldn't help feeling puzzled.
Gu Qing held back his laughter beside them.
Dearest Mother.
Your precious daughter just suffered a social death in her room.
And as everyone knows, dead people don't talk.
"Mom, I'm fine."
Gu Yao looked up at her mother and spoke.
Afterward, she didn't forget to shoot her brother a fierce glare, her eyes full of resentment.
While she glared at Gu Qing, he was also staring at her.
Not at her eyes, though, but at the label floating above her head:
-[Novelist]
His sister was still a high school student, but she wrote excellent essays and enjoyed reading novels. There was nothing wrong with a [Novelist] label floating above her head.
Designer, teacher, novelist.
The three labels above his family's heads seemed a little too ordinary. They weren't worth farming at all.
What a shame.
Gu Qing felt a little disappointed.
He had originally thought that if his parents or sister had some awesome label floating above their heads, he could come home often to farm stats.
He could only say he'd been getting ahead of himself.
Without dwelling on it,
Gu Qing soon began eating in earnest.
He positively wolfed his food down.
In less than half a minute, he finished the entire heaping bowl of rice before him.
Then he ate bowl after bowl, rice and dishes alike.
His appetite was frightening.
He wanted to eat as much food as quickly as possible to test the effects of the Devouring Attribute.
His parents and sister, unaware of this, were all momentarily dumbfounded by his outrageous eating.
Eating so much, so fast-had their son/brother been possessed by a pig demon?
Before you continue