Bam!
At that moment, the sound of the door opening came from the living room.
The apartment had three rooms and a living room; Li Feng's room was on the left, Zou Anmeng's on the right.
They both walked into the living room, exchanged a glance, and then looked at the fridge, clearly both intending to find something to eat.
"It smells so good," Zou Anmeng said. "I wonder which neighbor is cooking mushrooms. It's really inconsiderate, making me hungry like this."
Li Feng opened the window and inhaled the aroma, "It seems like it's the family of nine upstairs. Having parents around feels good; at least they bring us some nice food from time to time."
"Reminds me of those high-end matsutake mushrooms from the restaurant,"
Zou Anmeng swallowed his saliva, his face showing a look of longing:
"Fragrant, sweet, tender, smooth! Do you still remember the luxurious matsutake mushrooms our parents used to bring back from the restaurant when we were kids? The three of us probably will never forget that..."
"No worries, we'll have better days ahead," Li Feng mumbled. "I'll take you all out for a good meal in the future! Live in a big house every day, become academic authorities, and read good books together!"
Liu Jun wasn't bothered by the noises of the two hungry ones outside. Instead, he weighed the pros and cons and made a phone call.
"Si, is that you? This is Liu Jun, I'd like to request a ten-day leave... Yes, I'm feeling slightly unwell."
A gentle voice came from the other side, from Si Anhe,
"Please be careful. As the college entrance exams approach, the school won't care if you attend or not."
"But your grades are your own, your life is your own. After the exam, it's hard to find such good cultivation grounds, and you won't enjoy the 20% student discount on books anymore."
"Do your best and work hard!"
"Don't worry, after you graduate from high school, you'll all be given work assignments. I'll assign you to a good unit so that you can strive to break through to Tier 3 before you're thirty..."
After talking for about ten minutes, Liu Jun hung up the phone.
It always feels like teachers are like bosses in the workplace, very skilled at making promises. Do they say this to every student?
Truthfully, most of the third-year high school students here are Tier 2 Rain Realm Telekinesis Masters.
In other cities, they would be considered elite office workers.
But this city is different.
Here, Tier 2 Telekinesis Masters have no nurturing value.
Because they die by the time they're in their thirties, their prime period lasts only about ten years.
Thus, after graduating high school, they don't go to college but work for the city's development.
They earn cultivation resources to break through to Tier 3 while repaying the boon of the city's free acid rain benefits.
This perfectly achieves a win-win for the city and the students.
This unique economic model has fueled the rise of Rehe City.
Thoughts wandered.
"Later, I need to get the [Low Symptoms] talent to hide any abnormalities." Liu Jun pushed open the window, looking at the brightly lit metropolis.
If someone discovers that he's different, it would be nearly impossible to die peacefully.
The mechanical superpowers, big corporations, crazy scientists, they would surely be very interested in anomalous beings like him.
...
...
Time passed by.
After taking leave, a few days went by peacefully for Liu Jun.
He casually redirected attention when it came to the duo and used his enhanced Telekinesis Mental Power to mask their perception.
Subsequently, they didn't notice any more fragrant mushroom aromas, rushed off to school every day, and came home exhausted by dusk, bringing back the school's free meals for him at night.
In these few days, Liu Jun's focus was on this great pot of mushroom soup, which was his ticket to stability!
Idling away at double speed
The mushrooms evolved faster with the [Mushroom Soup] talent boost.
Liu Jun even poured in household trash, tissues, fruit peels, books; this huge pot of soup could slowly digest them all.
Like a cheap trash bin.
However, the idle speed multiplier was too low, leaving him somewhat dissatisfied.
Several tests led Liu Jun to believe that he needed higher-grade energy materials to fuel the fire and cook the soup, thereby boosting the multiplier.
Moreover, the second discovery was:
The volume limit of the mushroom soup was quite unique.
Yes, this was another big surprise!
After throwing in various items like beds, tables, and chairs, the mushroom soup pot would expand to the size of the room!
Currently, this pot of soup could be as small as a bowl, or expand to fill a room. No one knows how large it can become, perhaps big enough to contain the sun and moon? It's practically a super treasure.
It seems like anything can be boiled into the soup, used for evolution, to extract talents!
Perhaps I should consider opening a landfill?
Help clean up waste, engage in environmental protection to make money? And brew talents from trash?
After all, being a heavy industrial city, this place produces a lot of garbage.
Despite my excitement, what leaves me quite speechless is that after conducting the mushroom soup size test, the items retrieved from the "mushroom soup," like beds and chairs, were soggy, turned into mushroom-corroded wood scraps.
After that, Liu Jun still shut himself in and didn't leave the house, and nothing happened, except he received a text message.
Ding!
[Rehe Cloud Safety Guard Reminder: Dear Liu Jun, as of March 20, 7791, your cloud memory service has expired. If payment is not made overdue, non-essential memories (such as your first love, anti-corporate protest experience) will be deleted.]
But he didn't really care, he planned not to pay for the cloud service anymore.
On the night of the third day of leave.
The two people, as usual, came back from school and showed concern for Liu Jun's health, then started gossiping.
"Let me tell you, Xu Changsheng is too miserable, today he was again..."
"Li Chengshan is really something else."
Evidently, Xu Changsheng went home to rest due to a serious illness.
Liu Jun was pretending to be sick, while the other was truly sick.
And according to the Little Fatty who visited him, this person had a major change in personality, suspected of being forced into a cyber syndrome, from timid to calm and collected.
"I heard he even made some particularly sinister expressions." Li Feng made a (͡°͜ʖ͡°) face, vivid as if he was there in person.
But no one laughed, instead there was a sense of bitter sympathy like the death of a rabbit causing sadness in a fox, spoken with quite a bit of sympathy.
Liu Jun just listened quietly, although he felt Xu Changsheng's personality change was somewhat peculiar.
Hmm, worth investigating.
Good, feels even more like not going to school now.
"By the way, have you heard? A woman from District 12 gave birth to an Innate Saint child, the baby floated himself up with telekinesis the moment he was born, and the scene was immediately secured by Rehe Heavy Industry's army to protect the entire neighborhood and escort them, it's too scary!"
"Ah! Born at our end point."
"I'm so jealous."
"I'm jealous of his mom! Having such a son immediately elevates her status, turning her into the Eldest Young Madam of a new academic family."
"I wonder when a new model of Intelligent Brain based on this baby will be produced?"
Liu Jun paused his eating, somewhat surprised at the news.
Rehe City produced an Innate Saint?
In this world, people naturally gifted with the ability to cultivate telekinesis are very rare.
Born naturally, one in a hundred billion.
In ancient times, such people were even called Wenqu Stars descending to Earth, and at their birth, purple aura swept from the east, carrying a very strong mysterious aura.
Throughout history, they were extremely rare.
One person could rival a thousand troops, fly and teleport, command ten thousand swords, and gradually form legends of deities.
With the development of the times, ancient humans learned to share their powers, learned their way of studying, and formed similar Confucian scholars, leading to the era of the Supreme Confucian Sage who could kill with their spirit.
Now, today.
Humanity further obtains their power.
In this era, geniuses with Saint's Brain are taken at birth to become core members of major forces for focused cultivation, and intelligent brain models are developed based on their brains.
It can be said that every artificial intelligent brain model we use now has an Innate Saint's telekinesis genius as the original machine behind it.
Yes.
We all use cloned brain modules of Innate Saints, manufactured on production lines into intelligent brains to cultivate telekinesis.
In summary.
At school, someone like Xu Changsheng, now reduced to a primary cognitive impairment group, would not be able to cultivate telekinesis at all without the assistance of an intelligent brain, and his studies would come to a halt.
"Why aren't you saying anything?" Li Feng looked at Liu Jun.
"Not much energy." Liu Jun kept eating, his head lowered.
"Then get more rest." Zou Anmeng said.
"Yeah, yeah." The carefree Li Feng quickly chimed in.
Both of them were a little worried about Liu Jun, but were afraid that saying too much would cause psychological pressure.
Everyone had grown up together in this rental room, and it wouldn't be the same without any of them now.
Even if we put aside emotions and talk about interests, finding another reliable intelligent brain roommate in this city was too dangerous.
The case of Xu Changsheng, the school flower, and Little Fatty trio is an example; when a chain of suspicion forms, the team will inevitably collapse.
But sticking together also had benefits.
Just like Li Feng said, if one of the three successfully breaks through class barriers and reaches a higher tier, they will certainly support the other two as their core team.
After all.
Who would be more suited to be the closest core team than the two who grew up together?
Huddling for warmth, and when one succeeds, everyone rises together, is also an effective means for these children of humble backgrounds to greatly increase their chances of breaking class barriers!
Moments later, Zou Anmeng sighed, "Ai, if only I could have such a child, I'd be the Eldest Young Madam of a wealthy family, never needing to strive again."
At night.
After several days of eating meals brought back by the two from the school cafeteria, and listening to them gossiping about school, Liu Jun finally reached the next stage.
The boiling mushroom soup roiled, for the second time reaching 100% on the progress bar.
The second ability, born!