I'm Your Older Cousin!

The Chu Family held a secure position among the four great families and had deep pockets. Growing up, Chu Ge had never had to worry about cultivation resources or money.

At his coming-of-age ceremony last month, his father had given him a five-hundred-square-meter apartment overlooking the river.

As soon as the ceremony was over, he had moved out of the family estate and into his new home, where he lived alone.

Xiao Yan had been born on the same day, month, and year as him, only a few minutes earlier. She now lived alone too, and her new place was right below his.

Only one floor slab separated their homes. When they argued, they didn't even need to call each other. A stomp of the foot would do.

After following Chu Ge upstairs and into his apartment, the first thing Xiao Yan did was press him for the truth about his trait awakening.

Chu Ge had already prepared his story. In a casual tone, he said,

"Probably a delayed awakening."

"I see." Xiao Yan nodded, and actually believed him.

Awakening on the spot after touching the awakening stone was the norm, but a handful of delayed awakenings occurred every year, so it wasn't unusual.

Chu Ge walked over to the refrigerator and pulled the door open. Looking back, he asked,

"What do you want to drink?"

Xiao Yan's eyes lit up.

"Can I have one of everything?"

"Are you stocking up at my place? Of course not." Chu Ge rolled his eyes.

"Cheapskate," Xiao Yan muttered.

"Do you want a drink or not?"

"Yes! I want cola!" Xiao Yan bared her teeth at him, looking utterly brazen.

Then, as if something had occurred to her, she sucked in a sharp breath and stumbled back several steps, clutching her chest with a wary look.

"I get it!"

"Wait... what do you get?" Chu Ge looked as if he'd seen a ghost.

"There's only one truth!"

Xiao Yan pushed up the nonexistent glasses on the bridge of her nose. With a wise look in her eyes, she raised a hand and pointed at Chu Ge.

"What do you want to drink? That's a scumbag's trick!"

"You're trying to find out if I can drink something cold. As soon as I say yes, you'll come up with all sorts of excuses to keep me here overnight!"

"Things like 'my kitty can do backflips' and 'the moon is beautiful tonight' are all excuses!"

"Then you'll do all those naughty things to me!"

"And say things like 'I won't put it in'!"

"A scumbag's mouth is a lying ghost!"

"That's right, you filthy-minded pervert!"

The more she said, the more worked up she became, and the more horrified she looked.

"Chu Ge, you've got some nerve! How dare you set your sights on me!"

"Doesn't your conscience hurt? Nothing could ever happen between us!"

"...I really misjudged you!"

Chu Ge looked at her stupid face, her imagination running wild, as if he were looking at a silly roe deer.

This world was beyond saving.

Let it be destroyed.

He cursed her outright.

"Fucking idiot."

"I think you've drawn so much porn your cerebellum's shriveled up, and you can't tell the big joker from the little one anymore."

"Even if I liked sows, I wouldn't like you."

It was against the law to like idiots.

Chu Ge was at least that self-aware.

He could brave the ends of the earth.

But he could never fall into the corners of the sea.

Chu Ge couldn't be bothered arguing anymore. He casually grabbed a can of cola and tossed it over.

"Catch."

"Hey! Don't just throw it!"

Xiao Yan immediately put aside all her wild imaginings and hurriedly caught it, giving him a resentful look.

"Don't you know you can't throw cola?"

"Why are you so troublesome?"

Chu Ge pulled the tab on his can, sprawled on the sofa, crossed his legs, and took a sip. His gaze fell on Xiao Yan, who was still waiting for the bubbles to settle, and he casually asked,

"Seriously, did you awaken a trait?"

He'd played too much Genshin Impact last night and had still been tucked up in bed when Xiao Yan stood on the awakening platform, so he didn't know whether his older cousin had awakened a trait.

"Of course I did."

"Who do you think I am?"

Xiao Yan had already forgotten the earlier misunderstanding completely. She swaggered over to the seat across from Chu Ge and sat down, copying him by crossing her legs. The corners of her mouth lifted high.

"Guess how many stars your cousin's awakened trait has."

"Looking at how smug you are, at least two stars."

"At least you have a good eye." Xiao Yan's grin widened, and she spoke with complete confidence. "More than two stars. I awakened the three-star trait [Enhancement]. Once activated, it boosts all my attributes by thirty percent."

"Well, look at you. Nice luck," Chu Ge said. "There are only ten or twenty three-star traits among this year's freshmen, and you actually got one."

But he immediately gave a cold laugh.

"Still, it's just an Enhancement trait. Nothing special. Compared to my Blue Silver Grass, it's not even in the same league... I'm not jealous at all."

"Heh." Xiao Yan gave a cold laugh of her own. "Little bro, stop being so sour."

She was just about to mock him some more when her expression suddenly turned serious.

"You might not believe this, but before you arrived, someone on the awakening platform got a four-star trait."

"Oh? And?" Chu Ge responded absentmindedly, spreading open his left hand.

A faint blue light appeared, and a small blade of Blue Silver Grass slowly unfurled from his palm.

Staring at the little plant, he recalled a certain god-killing ultimate technique that had shaken the heavens. Both exasperated and amused, he murmured,

"It does look pretty cute..."

Having seen the Blue Silver Grass appear with her own eyes, Xiao Yan's last trace of doubt vanished. It seemed Chu Ge really had awakened this one-star trait and hadn't lied to her.

She returned to their earlier topic.

"Aren't you curious who awakened the four-star trait?"

"My former fiancée, right?"

He'd guessed right again. Xiao Yan's eyes went wide.

"Come on, bro! Are you cheating? How do you know that too?!"

"Or did you awaken two traits at once, and one of them is mind reading?"

There had indeed been cases in history of people awakening two traits at once.

She now seriously suspected that Blue Silver Grass was just a smokescreen, while mind reading was the trump card Chu Ge was hiding.

"And you, my cousin, are the real know-it-all."

Chu Ge couldn't be bothered to look up and continued playing with the Blue Silver Grass in his palm. "When you asked me, you might as well have written the answer on your face. It was hard not to guess it was her."

"Little bro, it's a shame you're not a detective with reasoning skills like that." Xiao Yan clicked her tongue twice. After that remark, her expression turned serious. "Joking aside, it really was Lin Luyin."

"Her trait is [Evasion], a passive talent."

"It's recorded in detail in the trait compendium. When fighting someone at the same realm, she has a fifty percent chance of evading an opponent's attack."

"If her opponent's realm is higher than hers, the chance of evasion drops."

"If her opponent's realm is lower than hers, the chance of evasion rises."

At this, Xiao Yan's eyes filled with envy.

"A fifty percent chance of evasion. That's a bona fide god-tier defensive skill. It's so broken."

"I was wondering what it was... Turns out it's a gambler's talent."

Chu Ge's expression grew serious as he calmly analyzed the trait's shortcomings.

"With probability-based abilities, as long as the chance of activation is less than one hundred percent, it's no different from zero in my eyes."

"...Of course, if it activated one hundred percent of the time, it wouldn't be a probability-based ability."

"Lin Luyin is far too confident in herself. Paired with this trait, that's bound to be deadly."

"She already dares to fight tooth and nail. With Evasion to fall back on, she'll only get more aggressive, trading blows without thinking whenever she fights. Sooner or later, she'll capsize in a gutter."

Xiao Yan thought it over carefully and nodded in agreement.

"You've got a point."

"I also heard that [Evasion] was originally a five-star trait, but because its activation depends so much on luck and it's so unreliable, the Martial Arts Association downgraded it straight to four stars."

"Why wouldn't they downgrade it? Were they saving it for the New Year?" Chu Ge's tone was even. "It depends on what a probability-based talent is used for."

"If that fifty percent chance applied to talents like stealing or lockpicking, it wouldn't matter even if your luck was pitch-black. At worst, you'd just try a few more times. One success would be a profit."

"But Evasion is different."

"When this ability starts making a check, it means you've already been hit. If your luck is bad and you fail to evade, you'll be seriously injured."

"There used to be a gold-rank expert who also had the Evasion trait. He won almost every fight and was famous throughout the East Sea."

"But in one life-or-death battle against someone at the same realm, his luck was blacker than the bottom of a pot. Evasion didn't activate once, and his opponent instantly killed him with a burst-damage combo."

"By now, the grass on his grave is much taller than you."

"Can you stop using my height in your comparisons?!"

Xiao Yan lost it on the spot. Hearing Chu Ge's veiled jab at her height, she flashed her little canine teeth and lunged at him.

Chu Ge's gaze sharpened, and he laughed coldly.

"You dare bare your teeth at me?"

"Looks like I have to teach you a lesson."

This was the perfect chance to test Blue Silver Grass in actual combat.

He immediately activated the little plant in his palm and shouted,

"Blue Silver Grass Entanglement!"