Another Modifier fragment?

"It's finished, Sister Shiyu."

Yan Huan picked up the exquisitely finished cloth pouch from the table and handed it to Ye Shiyu beside him for inspection.

Ye Shiyu took it, examined it, then nodded.

But since she had said nothing, Yan Huan kept looking at her. After a pause, she opened her mouth to offer an assessment.

"It looks nice."

Only then did Yan Huan look away, asking in passing,

"Aren't you going to put your name on it, Sister Shiyu?"

"..."

At that, Ye Shiyu looked not at the little cloth pouch in her hands, but at Yan Huan's profile.

Her gaze roamed over the neck and Adam's apple exposed above his collar, as though searching for a possible empty spot.

Only when Yan Huan turned to look at her again did she withdraw her gaze and shake her head.

"No. We made this together."

"Then is it okay if you hold on to it, Sister Shiyu?"

"Mm."

They still had to hand the little pouch to the teacher for grading later. Looking around at the other students in handicrafts class, he found practically nothing but disastrous sights.

Ye Shiyu really dominated this class. Her extensive handicraft experience was no joke.

After finishing the little pouch the teacher had requested, she had even had time to make him a yellow Pet Scarf at Yan Huan's request.

One could say Yan Huan had found someone to carry him. Getting an A at the end of the term would be no problem.

For Yan Huan, the core subjects that required exams were a sure thing. The real challenge was the assortment of bizarre electives with their chaotic grading systems.

"All right, class is almost over. Everyone, stop for now, no matter how your finished piece looks. Once I come around and check, you'll be free to leave."

"Okay~"

Yan Huan sat in his seat, took out his phone, and snapped a picture of the little pouch.

Just then, a message arrived.

"Something came up tonight. The Tavern won't be opening, so you have the day off."

It was Tong Yingying.

Yan Huan sent back an "Okay" sticker.

He had intended to open the Mahjong Club group chat, but after some thought, he returned to Sister Tong's chat window and typed,

"Sister Tong, what's up? Is your family pressuring you to get married again?"

The other person was typing.

"Children shouldn't ask about adult business. Be good~"

Well, he had known she would reply like that, yet he had still bothered asking.

Sister Tong was actually rather mysterious. She often disappeared and left the shop closed, saying she had things to do.

Yan Huan thought she most likely just didn't want to get out of bed, so she gave herself the day off.

As far as Tong Yingying was concerned, Yan Huan only knew that she had come from the Dragon Nation to study in Linmen long ago, and had even attended university in Linmen. She qualified as a top student.

She might have practically given up trying now, spending every day smoking, drinking, and sleeping, or being pressured to marry by her parents far away in another country.

But Sister Tong was actually quite rich.

Even in the South District, that street-facing Tavern premises cost no small sum in Linmen, where every inch of land was worth a fortune.

And she wasn't renting it to run her business. She had bought it.

She was generous with wages too, and even gave Yan Huan and the others cash gifts and bonuses on holidays.

She said she had earned all that money trading stocks in her early years. He had no idea how she had managed that, given her status as a legendary queen of harebrained ideas.

Did it really take a mighty figure like Sister Tong to dominate a stock market packed with suckers?

Yan Huan couldn't understand it at all.

Forget it. He would go home and study today.

He hadn't properly used Learning Conqueror since obtaining it, and he happened to have an idea he wanted to try.

"Mm, this group did well."

The teacher came over, examined their finished work carefully, and offered that praise, for which Ye Shiyu deserved most of the credit.

"By the way, Sister Shiyu, are you in any clubs?"

As Yan Huan packed up, he turned and saw Ye Shiyu also gathering her things to go home, so he asked curiously.

Ye Shiyu shook her head expressionlessly and asked in return,

"Joining a club... is there any point?"

"It's not exactly that useful. On a personal level, you get to do things with students who share your interests."

Yan Huan folded the Pet Scarf Ye Shiyu had made as he explained,

"From a more practical standpoint, joining a club gives you a faction in the upcoming Club Wars. If your club places, you can win rewards and things."

"Rewards?"

Ye Shiyu's eyes shifted upward as she pictured competitions held in the Dragon Nation.

Were there any rewards for placing?

A certificate.

That was it.

Then a trace of disinterest appeared in her eyes, but since Yan Huan was still explaining, she didn't let it show and listened as he continued,

"First place gets the right to make a wish to the School Committee. Second place gets a large amount of club funding, plus the right to organize schoolwide club activities. Third place only gets funding."

A wish, huh.

Ye Shiyu considered it. An idea that interested her suddenly surfaced, and she abruptly asked,

"Does the Student Council answer to the School Committee?"

"Ah, strictly speaking, no. We have a lot of autonomy. We're fully responsible for the Club Wars, the sports meet, and lots of other events."

Hearing that, Ye Shiyu withdrew her gaze in disappointment, apparently losing all interest in the Club Wars.

Still, she didn't dampen Yan Huan's enthusiasm, merely saying,

"Later... I'll look into it."

"Okay, Sister Shiyu."

Yan Huan finished packing and got up to leave. After learning that Ye Shiyu planned to catch a ride home shortly, he parted ways with her and prepared to take the school bus back to the South District.

The bus was neither crowded nor empty. Yan Huan found a quiet place to sit in the very back row, where nobody else would pay attention.

"Meow-chan."

"Meow~"

After his soft call, a chubby black cat leaped out from who knew where, landed beside him, and sat down primly.

Yan Huan took out the yellow cloth scarf Ye Shiyu had made and said,

"Look at this, Meow-chan. I got you a scarf to wear."

The fat cat tilted its head, reached out a paw pad to touch the scarf, and asked in confusion,

"Hmm, what's the point of this, meow?"

"Mostly because you're black all over. Sometimes I can't see you at all at night. A yellow scarf will make you much easier to spot, and cuter too."

"Meow?"

Meow-chan watched speechlessly as Yan Huan wrapped the scarf around its neck, then tied a pretty knot on one side.

Strangely, once the scarf was around Meow-chan's neck, it seemed to become intangible too, so that nobody would notice it unless Meow-chan wished them to.

Mm, kitty looked pretty darn good.

Yan Huan gathered Meow-chan into his arms and looked out the window. The bus was starting, and the sound of the engine reached him.

"Oh, right, Yan Huan. Yesterday, I found this in the place where you work."

After sitting there a while, Meow-chan suddenly remembered something and turned to look at Yan Huan.

Just as Yan Huan looked over inquisitively, it suddenly lowered its head and began retching.

"Urk, urk."

Its movements looked rather like a kitten coughing up a hairball.

"What is it?"

Afraid it would vomit some indescribable substance onto him, Yan Huan tried to put it on the seat beside him to throw up.

But the next second, it spat out a scale shimmering with a milky-white glow.

The scale was entirely insubstantial. It looked as though Yan Huan couldn't touch it at all.

"This is..."

"A Modifier fragment, meow. The same kind of thing that fell from Ye Shiyu's Modifier before," Meow-chan explained.

"Huh?"

Yan Huan was startled to hear that.

He had wanted to pick up the snake scale and examine it, but when he reached out, his hand passed straight through it. It seemed completely untouchable.

"I told you, meow, I can't interfere with the world. Since I can interfere with these fallen fragments, you obviously can't touch them."

"...Is that so?"

Yan Huan blinked, then stroked his chin in puzzlement.

"Wait, could this have fallen from Bai Yi's Modifier yesterday? I did give her the acknowledgment she wanted yesterday, but it shouldn't have dealt that much damage, right?"

"I don't know either, meow. But this fragment looks a lot bigger than the one I swallowed last time. It should represent a serious blow to a Modifier."

Meow-chan circled the fragment, then lifted its adorably large eyes to Yan Huan with an expression that said, "That's you for you."

No, no, no.

The main thing was, he had absolutely no recollection of doing anything like that.

Yan Huan really didn't think what he had done with Bai Yi yesterday had worked all that well. At most, it had been emergency damage control. It hadn't even matched what he had done with Ye Shiyu last time.

But now such a large fragment had fallen off. No matter how he looked at it, it didn't seem like the result of his actions.

"Why does this fragment look so much like an animal scale? A lizard's or a snake's, something like that. Did the one Ye Shiyu dropped last time look like this too?"

"A scale?"

Meow-chan tilted its head and looked at the fragment before it with some confusion, then suddenly understood.

"Ah, because Modifiers are essentially the power of gods from another world. You can't comprehend their true form. So when you see one, it turns into something you can understand."

Meow-chan retched again, then spat out a tiny bit of insubstantial matter resembling spider silk.

"Look at this. This is the fragment Ye Shiyu dropped last time. It should look very different from this one, right?"

"Mm. To me, this one looks like spider silk, and this one looks like a snake scale."

As Yan Huan looked, he seemed to understand something, and said to Meow-chan,

"Wait. According to what you're saying, Meow-chan, Modifiers can't be detected, right?"

"That's right, meow."

"Then could someone else have done something to a Modifier's host or the Modifier itself despite that, causing it to drop a fragment?"

"Theoretically, it's possible. But to accomplish that without knowing anything, that person must be..."

Hiss.

There was no criticizing that. This was a real expert.

But the problem was that when Bai Yi had left the Tavern yesterday, she had still shown no signs of improvement. Yan Huan didn't think this fragment looked like something Bai Yi had dropped either.

In other words, another Modifier might have appeared in the Tavern earlier.

Was it the fourth, or the fifth, which had yet to show itself?

And who else could have appeared there...?

Sister Tong?

At that thought, Yan Huan shuddered.

If Tong Yingying got her hands on a Modifier, with her terrifying prowess as the queen of harebrained ideas, wouldn't that mean...

Never another peaceful day?!

At that thought, Yan Huan hurriedly opened Plane and sent Tong Yingying a message.

"Sister Tong, are you there?"

A kitty sticker.

Yet the name on the other end remained unchanged, and even after quite a while, there was no reply.

Ugh, how annoying.

Like WeChat in his previous life, Plane didn't let him check whether the other person had read his messages!

Well, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with that design, especially when your boss messaged you in the middle of the night to ask whether you were asleep.

Yan Huan put down his phone, rubbed the space between his brows, and sorted through his thoughts.

Don't rush.

So far, three known Modifiers had appeared.

Spencer's Plunder System.

That thing was incredibly powerful. Not only could it alter people's consciousness, but it could also create bizarre sealed spaces. It was just that its host seemed to be an idiot.

Ye Shiyu's Hypnosis App.

Mm, also very powerful. That kind of sudden hard crowd control was practically impossible to dodge. But through his efforts, Ye Shiyu's possessiveness had been brought well under control (?).

Then there was Bai Yi's Indifference.

This one felt like the weakest. He had plenty of room to maneuver, and had gained some understanding of the host herself. All he could say was that the future looked promising.

Then what about the remaining two?

One was the Modifier that had ambushed him at noon today and seemed capable of manipulating pleasure.

One might have been the source of the snake scale in the Tavern. Was it connected to Tong Yingying?

Sister Tong, please answer my message. Mostly because I missed you. Nothing to do with Modifiers.

"Forget it."

Tong Yingying still hadn't replied, and she hadn't answered his call either. He didn't know whether she had fallen asleep.

Yan Huan could only leave it at that and look at Meow-chan.

"So this fragment can strengthen my Modifier too, right?"

Meow-chan nodded and said happily,

"And this fragment is bigger than the last one, so it'll definitely strengthen it more than last time! You'll find out this weekend. I'll hold on to it for now."

"Good, then. Honestly, I never really made proper use of Learning Conqueror last time. I just felt refreshed after studying for a while. I've got plenty of time this afternoon, so I want to see just how powerful the effect is at full stacks."

"Meow~"

Yan Huan stroked Meow-chan's head and was just about to open his phone to watch some videos when the school bus suddenly stopped.

Honk, honk!

It wasn't just the school bus. Every vehicle around them had stopped too, while the drivers behind them, unaware of what was happening, kept honking impatiently.

"What's going on?"

"Looks like the road ahead is closed."

Yan Huan frowned and looked ahead.

The school bus had stopped before an intersection that had been cordoned off, and several traffic officers were directing vehicles onto alternate routes.

"Emergency traffic restrictions. The intersection ahead is closed. Please detour to either side. Thank you!"

Yan Huan leaned against the window and glanced at the blocked intersection, only to discover that one floor of a building beside the street was on fire. Firefighters were working to put it out.

Not only had Linmen's firefighters arrived, but ambulances, criminal investigators, and traffic police were all there too.

What was going on?

Stretchers were carried out of the building one after another, bearing people covered in blood. He could even vaguely make out knives and similar objects clutched in their hands.

A gang clash?

Yan Huan raised an eyebrow at the thought.

There used to be plenty of organized crime in Linmen's South District. It had no direct connection to its current poverty; it was the result of geography and history.

The South District bordered the sea, and when Linmen was first established, many illegal immigrants had slipped into the area to live.

There were all sorts of people, from different countries and cultures, so naturally they formed different groups, establishing numerous gangs to fight over their interests.

Much like Hong Kong before its handover in his previous life, the South District had been entirely gang territory for a long time.

Things were much better now. Once Linmen developed, the government immediately adopted a policy of harsh crackdowns.

A whole lot of gangsters had been executed by firing squad. They'd cracked down so hard that even the eggs in the gang hideouts had their yolks shaken apart.

If you asked whether the South District still had thugs now?

Of course it did. Otherwise, why had he told Bai Yi yesterday not to wander around the alleyways outside so much?

But there were very few organized groups left.

Pretty much all of them had gone off to work. A couple of days hauling bricks had knocked them into line.

He hadn't expected to see such a large-scale clash today after so long.

All he could say was that the shampoo parlors near Sister Tong's Tavern wouldn't be getting much business for a while.

Yan Huan shook his head and followed the school bus's detour, arriving home twenty minutes later than usual.

He didn't cook. Instead, he ate fried rice downstairs while listening to the news through his earphones.

"Breaking news from Linmen. At 3:23 p.m. this afternoon, a fire broke out on the third floor of the Sterling Building on Longyang Road in the South District...

"Eyewitnesses stated that a violent conflict had occurred before the fire. Sources familiar with the matter indicated that it might be connected to the Feather Gang, a gang made up of people from Dragon Nation in the South District. Linmen police are treating the matter with the utmost seriousness and have established a special task force..."

Yan Huan paid before listening to the rest, then bought some juice, cat treat tubes, and canned food before heading upstairs.

Sitting down at his computer, he flexed his fingers, then opened the desktop version of Plane.

He entered the search term "Freelance work-Changsun Studio (ghostwriting)," opened a chat window, and began typing.

"You there?"

A cat meme.

After he waited a while, the status on the other end changed to "Typing..."

"Here."

A moment later, another message came through.

"But there's no work lately. We barely take those papers for easy-credit courses that you can handle anymore. Everyone uses AI now."

Drinking his juice, Yan Huan replied,

"No, I don't need work. I wanted to ask if you have digital copies of university math textbooks, lecture slides, or anything like that. Send me some to look at."

"OK, good timing. I just got advanced mathematics lecture slides from a few top universities. As for textbooks, I've got calculus, linear algebra, statistics, and so on, but they're all from different countries. There aren't many from Linmen, so you'll have to make do."

"Thanks."

He sent a thank-you sticker of a cat nodding.

Before long, the other person sent over numerous digital copies of lecture slides and textbooks.

The other person also sent a "sly grin" emoji.

"You're seriously working your ass off. Fuck, your job doesn't keep you busy enough?"

"It's fine. Not too tiring."

"All right. Let me know when you've finished reading. There are tons of math orders, and plenty of all-inclusive ones from Vulture Nation. They dump all their exams, homework, and quizzes on us. Do you know how much you can make in a semester?"

"You even cover exams?"

"If there's a market, we can do it. Especially with all the online classes and exams lately. They save themselves the trouble and coast their way to a degree, while we get to pocket some money from those rich boys and girls. Who gives a shit about academic integrity?"

It had been a long time since the ghostwriting studio's boss had chatted with Yan Huan, and the boss seemed rather talkative.

"Knowledge is power, baby. Message me when you've learned it all, and I'll assign you orders. You'll have an easier time then too."

"Yeah, let me take a look first."

"No problem, no rush. I'll arrange a test for you when the time comes, just to check your level."

"OK."

Yan Huan gave a perfunctory reply, downloaded the files one by one, and sorted them into folders.

He sipped his juice, his handsome face looking cool and detached in the glow of the PowerPoint slides.

Lines of text, symbols, and theories flickered in his eyes.

Unseen, a wondrous power activated, immersing him completely as his intelligent brain began working as efficiently as a running engine.

Ability: Learning Conqueror, activate!