When they exited the school gate, they ran into Zhao Yutong's mother, Zhu Zhengwen.
She drove a white sedan, bought years ago and now a little worn. Aunt Zhu worked at a hospital and was sharp, efficient, and capable.
Although the two families lived across from each other and Zhang Wuyong and Zhao Yutong were technically childhood sweethearts, they had only really gotten to know each other in junior high.
Back in elementary school, all Zhang knew was that across the street lived a very quiet, introverted, skinny little girl. In a city, even neighbors across the hall might not be true acquaintances.
It was not until "that incident" that the two families truly became familiar.
Afterward, Zhu Zhengwen felt deeply guilty toward her daughter. Only then, in the few spare moments allowed by her busy schedule, did she learn that her daughter had been bullied at school.
Her impression of Zhang changed as well.
He might not be a good student, but he was certainly a good kid.
The white sedan pulled into their residential complex and came to a stop in the parking lot.
The three of them chatted as they took the elevator up. The building had twenty floors; they lived on the ninth.
"Goodbye, Aunt Zhu," Zhang said, waving to mother and daughter as he stepped out.
The elevator doors slid shut behind them, the lights inside slowly dimming.
When he reached his own door, the motion‑sensor light above flicked on automatically.
Zhang took out his key, opened the door, and stepped inside.
"You're back!" his mother called from the kitchen. "How was school today?"
"The same as always," he replied.
A question that could not be more cliché, and an answer that could not be more cliché.
There were no surprises in it, but it was reassuring all the same.
After dinner, Zhang studied in his room.
"Mom, can I borrow your phone for a bit?" he called. "I want to ask someone about our homework."
He had a phone of his own, but it was a basic feature phone. It was not that his family refused to buy him a smartphone; he was the one who had refused. Once he had internet access, he feared he would not be able to control himself and would waste all his time watching videos and chatting.
He envied those people who could play with their phones and games all day and still get top grades.
But since he could not manage that himself, he could only stay away.
Now, he wanted to test whether "cultivation assistance" from his female classmates could be triggered through the phone.
If that worked, things would become much easier.
Soon, his mother handed him her smartphone.
Zhang logged into QQ and messaged a girl in his class—one with excellent grades who was always on her phone.
He snapped a picture of that night's homework and asked her how to solve it.
In response, she sent a download link to a homework‑help app and told him to look it up himself.
If it were that simple, why would he have come to her?
He had no choice but to offer a cup of milk tea in exchange for a proper explanation.
In the end, it was a wasted cup of milk tea.
Even with voice chat on, the system's task bar did not move at all.
The system only recognized face‑to‑face contact.
Fine.
He would just have to wait until tomorrow to find someone in person.
"I still don't really get it. Can you explain it again tomorrow morning at school?" he typed, setting up an appointment in advance.
A "?" came back. "Explain it again tomorrow?"
"I still don't understand even after the teacher went over it," he replied. "Please help me. I'll owe you another cup of milk tea."
She sent a "shocked" emoji. "Are you just finding an excuse to send me milk tea? Do you have a crush on me?"
"Don't flatter yourself, shrimp‑brain," he answered. "I just want someone to teach me."
"Good thing," she replied. "For a second I thought I'd have to fight the prettiest girl in the next class over a guy. Thank goodness he's such a jerk."
Zhang closed the app and handed the phone back to his mother.
That night, he lay in bed and again practiced the breathing technique from the introductory chapter of the Heavenly Demon Bliss Technique.
He had tried it for the past two nights and did feel more refreshed the next day—though whether that was psychological or simply the elasticity of youth, he could not say.
Either way, he might as well do it every night.
What if he really did manage to absorb spiritual energy one day?
A full cycle of the breathing exercise took four hours—two shichen.
No spiritual energy flowed through his body during those hours. It was only controlled breathing and meditation, imagining "spiritual meridians" running through his limbs.
But when he opened his eyes around four in the morning, it always felt as though he had enjoyed a deep, solid sleep. He was no longer drowsy at all.
So he got up early to read.
Even if it all turned out to be futile effort, it was still effort.
In the future, at least he could say it was not that he had not tried—only that he lacked talent.
He opened the system interface and stared at it for a while.
If he really did transmigrate one day, would he also start off as a useless good‑for‑nothing?
With wretched talent and a frail body, relying on the Heavenly Demon Bliss Technique to nourish yin and yang day after day, constantly improving his constitution, advancing by leaps and bounds, shocking both the righteous and demonic paths, and ultimately becoming an unparalleled Demon Buddha?
He closed the interface and looked back at the English vocabulary in his hand.
Suddenly, he found himself missing the dump truck.
When dawn broke, he went to school and first found the girl he had arranged to meet the night before.
After fifteen minutes of explanation, her progress bar finally filled.
"This isn't worth a cup of milk tea," she complained. "Talking to you is like talking to a brick wall."
"Don't underestimate an ox," Zhang said. "The ox's perseverance in plowing the fields is something all men can only envy."
"Is that why the prettiest girl in the next class has her eye on you?" the girl mused, as if seriously considering whether she should compete with that "prettiest girl" for him.
"Don't talk nonsense. There's nothing between us," Zhang said. He could joke around, but he did not want Tongtong dragged into it.
Not that he flirted with just anyone either—this particular girl was notorious for her raunchy, suggestive way of talking.
"So there's nothing between you," she said. "As expected, men are all talk and no action. Empty words, no courage."
Unable to stand her teasing, Zhang retreated to his own seat.
Checking his task list, he saw that he still needed ten more "female disciples" to help him cultivate.
Those last ten would not be easy.
Class Two was a physics‑track class, so there were more boys than girls. The girls sitting nearby had already helped him cultivate, and he had already asked those he was most familiar with.
Not all classmates were that close, after all.
From here on out, he would just have to thicken his skin and grab whoever he could.
And they did not all need to be from his own class.
A rabbit could graze the grass near its burrow, then wander over to nibble the flowers by the roadside.
Whenever class ended, he wandered the corridor, asking anyone he could corner.
The class next door was the experimental class, filled with academic elites. It was perfectly reasonable to "seek cultivation assistance" from them.
If he did not understand something in the hallway, he would follow the other student back into their classroom to ask. That only demonstrated how eager he was to learn, did it not?
With his thick skin, he managed to get five "direct female disciples" from the neighboring class to complete their progress bars.
Each time he stepped into Class One, there was one particular girl whose gaze followed him.
He did not dare meet her eyes.
"Tongtong!" After school in the afternoon, he hurried after her on his crutch. "Is your aunt picking you up at the gate today?"
"Yes," Zhao Yutong said coolly. "What does that have to do with you?"