Off to the Trial Grounds

Ye Jiang said nothing. Her boss looked up at her, her expression serious. "Did you hear..."

"No other boss pays more than you," Ye Jiang said flatly.

The corner of her boss's mouth twitched. "Which matters more, money or safety?"

Ye Jiang found it hard to compare, because she didn't think she was unsafe. Taking her silence for stubbornness, her boss said, "Then you've got me wrong. I'm a much more mean-spirited boss than you think."

She pointed at the smashed counter and said, "Waitress, this counter got damaged because of you. You admit that, right? I'll deduct it from your pay."

Ye Jiang: "..."

She put down her chopsticks, her eyes darkening. "You're going to make me work for free?"

Her boss said, "Now you know there's no such thing as a boss who isn't heartless, right?"

Ye Jiang suddenly moved, her hand shooting out like a claw. Startled, her boss dodged aside, but actually failed to avoid her. Her apron was torn, and something in her breast pocket was snatched away, landing in Ye Jiang's hand.

Silence.

Her boss remained in her dodging pose, staring at Ye Jiang in surprise. This child's skills were actually even better than her own...

Her boss lowered her eyes, her hawklike gaze sweeping over Ye Jiang's hands. They were pale and flawless, with no Blood Moon mark.

Several thoughts flashed through her mind. Finally, her shoulders slumped, and she resumed her lazy posture. "Waitress, give that back. It's not worth anything."

Ye Jiang examined what she'd snatched. It was a little stone, utterly ordinary, without the brilliance of a jewel. It really did look worthless. She pressed her lips together and held the stone without speaking. Her boss held out her hand and changed her tune. "I'll pay you for today as usual. You can keep coming to work tomorrow, too."

Because this child didn't seem to have any safety issues.

Only then did Ye Jiang return the stone.

Her boss curled her fingers around the stone, enclosing it in her palm. Ye Jiang picked up her chopsticks and resumed eating. Her boss watched her, complicated emotions flickering in her eyes.

Business at the little restaurant had become terrible, though whether that group of students was responsible was unclear. Her boss didn't care, and Ye Jiang cared even less. Once her working hours ended, she took her pay and left. Staying even a second longer would have been a betrayal of workers everywhere.

With another hundred yuan in her pocket, even her steps home grew lighter.

Passing a women's clothing store, she stopped, looked in from outside for a long time, then entered.

Before long, she emerged with a gloomy expression, tightly clutching the wages she'd earned that day. She'd intended to buy her friend some clothes, but instead of buying anything, she'd learned about prices. She suddenly realized that the hundred yuan she'd earned... was very little.

So little it wasn't enough to buy a single piece of clothing.

She needed more part-time work to earn money.

Thinking this, she used the method her friend had taught her to search online for part-time jobs on her phone.

An app caught her eye-Part-Time Cat.

Its slogan: a simple task bounty platform for making big money.

Ye Jiang's eyes lit up. With absolutely no awareness of scams, she downloaded the app on the spot.

The app downloaded quickly. Access required registration and identity verification, and after registering, she received guest status. Ye Jiang named herself "A Turbot." Browsing the app, she discovered that making money here really was simple. The interface was straightforward, with just one section called the Task Hall, filled with part-time tasks available to accept. A search bar and filters at the top allowed targeted searches for the kind of work she wanted.

Ye Jiang opened a random part-time job.

Task details: recruiting a daily living assistant for the trial grounds. No level restriction. Accompany students for half a month.

Task issuer: Ability Control Bureau City A Branch.

Bounty: 50,000 yuan.

Fifty thousand?

Dazzled by the zeros in the amount, Ye Jiang pressed the "Accept task" button without a second thought.

[Notice: you do not have permission.]

Seeing that she hadn't successfully accepted it, Ye Jiang tapped again.

[Notice: you do not have permission.]

Only then did Ye Jiang notice the message. She frowned. Permission? What permission?

She felt slightly displeased, and a trace of blood-red actually surfaced in her inky eyes. In the instant that red flashed past, the air seemed to twist and churn under some pressure, and her phone grew slightly hot. Suddenly, the screen flickered, and red and green blocks appeared across the interface. Several seconds passed before it returned to normal.

[Notice: data error. You may accept this task.]

[Accepted successfully.]

Ye Jiang glanced at her platform level: Lv0.

Was that what permission meant?

Luckily, the task she'd accepted had no level restriction, so she had sufficient permission.

She happily looked at the task she'd accepted.

Meanwhile, at the Ability Control Bureau City A Branch.

"Holy shit, someone finally accepted the task!"

The Ability Control Bureau clerk monitoring the bounty task gave an excited shout. Finally, finally, someone had accepted their bureau's task!

Part-Time Cat wasn't an ordinary part-time job platform, but the name of a civilian ability user organization. Operated by that organization, the app granted guest status to ordinary citizens who registered after identity verification, allowing them to post bounty tasks on the platform. Ability users had to visit the organization's office to be entered into its records. Besides identity verification, they also needed to register their abilities to enter the app as bounty hunters.

Guests only had permission to post tasks, not accept them. Bounty hunters could both post and accept tasks, giving them higher permissions than guests.

The Ability Control Bureau maintained a long-standing partnership with the civilian ability user organization and had a Part-Time Cat account. When the bureau was short-staffed, it posted bounty tasks to enlist the help of civilian ability users.

A week earlier, the Ability Control Bureau had posted a task recruiting an assistant to help at the trial grounds. To ensure they could recruit someone, they'd even deliberately imposed no ability level restriction. Unfortunately, despite being posted for a long time, no hunter had accepted it. The reason was simple: the Ability Control Bureau's tasks were always high-risk and low-paying.

Now, the bureau clerk looked at the accepted task with tears streaming down his face. It had to be a newbie. A newbie had accepted their task!

Wonderful.

May innocent, naive newbies keep coming in an endless stream.

He immediately sent a private message to the hunter who'd accepted the task, providing the time and meeting place.

Chapter 12: Off to the Trial Grounds

The bounty task Ye Jiang had accepted required her to report for duty in three days. Three days-that was still a while away. A well-paid part-time job was certainly welcome, but she couldn't pass up little bits of extra income, either. She didn't give up her job waiting tables at the little restaurant and went every day to collect those two hundred yuan.

Business at the little restaurant hadn't improved since Ye Jiang arrived, but the problem wasn't the students who'd caused trouble. It was the boss. Her cooking was terrible.

Despite business being so poor, her boss didn't consider improving her cooking. Instead, she grew lazier, spending her idle time observing Ye Jiang. Ye Jiang let her watch. Whenever there were no customers, she wore a blank expression and watched TV on her phone without a shred of professionalism. She'd already become quite proficient with it.

On her fourth day at work, her boss looked at the deserted storefront and finally couldn't help asking Ye Jiang, "Can you cook?"

Ye Jiang was watching TV. Finding her boss's question utterly pointless, she turned around and presented her back to her.

The corner of her boss's eye twitched. For the umpteenth time, she lamented having hired someone she had to wait on hand and foot.

Ah, I kind of miss the previous...

Before the person she missed could take shape in her mind, the word "miss" itself made her freeze.

She hastily diverted her attention, feeling only how uncomfortably the stone pressed against her breast pocket.

After another day of slacking off, Ye Jiang took her fourth day's wages and left the restaurant without a backward glance. Her steadily growing wallet put her in an excellent mood. City A seemed to have fallen into a strange atmosphere. Passersby could hardly exchange a few words without mentioning the Blood Moon or the trial grounds. When discussing these things, some even looked up at the sky with reverent expressions. Ye Jiang had a habit of automatically tuning out things she didn't understand, but after hearing these things so frequently, she still paid them a little attention.

She didn't know what the Blood Moon was, but the term "trial grounds" appeared in her task. It was probably a place. She would soon find out exactly what it was.

Ye Jiang had no interest in wandering around outside and headed straight home. Not far from the little restaurant, she passed an alley outside a school and heard a commotion inside. Several students had surrounded a girl their age and wouldn't let her leave.

"Ming Xia, have you considered not going to the trial grounds tomorrow?"

The boy in the lead had a face covered in freckles. He wore a pitying expression, as though he were thinking of her welfare. "You should stay away. Someone doesn't want you there."

The girl they surrounded had a strikingly beautiful face, but her expression was cold. She stared at the freckled boy, seeing straight through his false concern, and curled

her lip. "Gao Peng, your hypocrisy makes me sick. Someone like you actually got selected and given a spot. What rotten luck."

The freckled boy froze, then looked hurt a moment later. "I'm thinking of you..." he stammered.

The girl couldn't be bothered to say more. Her gaze secretly swept her surroundings, searching for an opening.

The people surrounding her were the school's Young Master Jin's lackeys. She knew Jin Hong disliked her, but she hadn't expected him to stoop so low as to send people to "persuade" her to give up before the trial grounds opened.

There was no way she would give up, so this couldn't end peacefully. More words would be pointless.

The freckled boy still wanted to try persuading her, as though talking things out suited his noble status as a future ability user, while violence was too barbaric. But the boys and girls behind him couldn't stand his dawdling any longer. They shouted, "Gao Peng, why waste your breath on her? Just break her legs so she can't even crawl to the trial grounds. Wouldn't that do it?"

As they spoke, they cracked their knuckles and flexed their wrists. "There are so many of us, and she hasn't awakened. Can she really take on a whole group alone?"

"Haha, so what if her potential's high? What damn good is it if she can't awaken?"

Sometimes, teenagers' malice was simply that irrational. Lacking potential themselves, they envied those whose potential was high. Previously, they'd feared that this girl with double-A potential, whom they'd bullied, would awaken and make them her first targets. But they'd been thinking about it wrong. Couldn't they just stop her from awakening?

"Exactly! Just stop her from awakening and let her keep living like dog shit. Problem solved!"