Hurry Up and Level Up!

As for the child's name, Liang Xin had been so caught up in his happiness that he hadn't even noticed the system's notification.

Oh well, it wasn't important!

The courtyard residence wasn't very big to begin with. If someone raised their voice a little, even the people in the neighboring courtyard could hear them.

So when the child called out, "Thank you, Brother Liang," quite a few other children came out.

Why was the child saying thanks?

Someone must have gotten something good, of course!

Why not hurry out and take a look?

"One each, and nobody is allowed to take more! If anyone secretly takes extra, I won't give him any more good things in the future!"

If he could repeatedly farm experience from the same person, he wouldn't have minded.

But apparently, he could only farm it from each person once a day.

In that case, Liang Xin had to count every penny!

No one was going to get the better of me twice in one day!

After hearing Liang Xin's words, an older child immediately raised his right hand high and shouted, "Brother Liang, don't worry, I'll help you keep watch!"

"Mm, me too, I'll help keep... Brother, keep what?"

Good grief. A toddler who could barely get the words out should stay out of this, shouldn't he?

The important thing was, he was so little. If I gave him candy, would he even know what gratitude was?

I'd better not take a loss!

There usually wasn't much excitement in the peaceful little courtyard.

Sure enough, everyone liked to join in the excitement.

So it wasn't just the children who came out; the adults came out too.

As they watched Liang Xin hand out candy to the children, every one of them wore a fond, auntie-like smile.

"Xiao Liang, did something good happen to you? Did you find yourself a girlfriend?"

"Xiao Liang, you've only just started working, and you'll have plenty of expenses in the future. Don't spoil the children too much!"

"That's right, don't do this again. All this candy must have cost several mao, right?"

Liang Xin's gesture not only earned him a load of experience, but also a round of praise from his neighbors.

Relations throughout the whole compound seemed to have grown a little more harmonious.

What a bargain.

Liang Xin handed out seventeen pieces of candy and saw that he had three left in his hand.

He unwrapped one himself and tossed it into his mouth.

It was a little sweet, but that seemed to be about all.

The flavor was so faint it was barely there. By his standards, could this stuff even be called candy?

Had they put just one jin of sugar in every hundred jin of candy?

But that wasn't the point.

The point was that the children liked it!

Seventeen pieces of candy had earned him seventeen expressions of gratitude.

Most were worth between two and four points, averaging three points each. That was nearly fifty points!

Those two mao—no, that one mao and seven fen-had been incredibly well spent!

"Huh, this child actually gave me five points. Was he really that easily startled?"

"No, was he really that outstanding? Looks like I can give him special attention in the future!"

"Huh, whose child is this? He only gave me one experience point? He's not a good child!"

He took stock of what he had gained.

His experience had already passed eighty points!

Aunt He had contributed to it, and so had Jiang Xinxin.

Li Haiyang had contributed too, as had the two coworkers who had received cigarettes.

"This lousy system doesn't even make it clear how much Level-Up Experience I need to level up!"

"Is it one hundred points, one thousand, or ten thousand?"

"Forget it. I'll farm up to one hundred points tomorrow and see if anything changes!"

As Liang Xin thought about it, he bought a jin of meat and a jin of eggs from the System Shop and put them straight into a pot to boil.

It seemed shredded meat really did taste better stir-fried.

When it was boiled, the taste always seemed a little off.

This time he had bought layered pork belly instead of another piece of fatty pork.

The two previous meals of fatty pork had already left him feeling a little stuffed.

He had only eaten fatty pork because his body needed it. Lean meat really did taste better!

He figured that after a few more days, he would switch to eating nothing but lean meat!

By the end of this meal, he had less than twenty-two yuan left in his System Shop balance.

He had only a few fen left in his pocket.

He still had quite a few coupons, though.

Resources were scarce in this era, so a planned economy was in effect, and coupons were needed for everything.

You needed coupons to eat, to buy things, even to take a bath. You practically needed them to drink water.

With money alone, you couldn't move an inch.

Liang Xin could hardly understand what people even needed money for under these circumstances.

They might as well abolish currency and use coupons for everything!

Still, that was just talk.

In fact, it was simply a measure they had been forced to adopt under the extraordinary circumstances of extreme scarcity, in order to ensure the survival of the vast majority of people.

Otherwise, given the current circumstances, most resources would be monopolized by a small number of people.

People starving to death would no longer be something you heard about occasionally; you would probably hear about it every day.

The coupon policy also tightened and loosened as productivity rose and fell.

When productivity was a little higher, coupons played a smaller role.

When resources were plentiful, most things could be bought directly with money.

The higher-ups kept half an eye open and one and a half eyes shut, practically turning a blind eye.

As long as people didn't go too far, nobody interfered.

But whenever natural or man-made disasters struck and productivity plummeted,

coupons would become important again.

The higher-ups would also watch closely, both big eyes wide open and gleaming!

It was like gold.

When the economy was doing well, gold prices were low, and almost no one paid it any attention. You hardly ever heard anyone talk about it.

The worse the economy got, the more importance people placed on gold, and the more sharply its price rose, so you always heard people discussing it.