Halfway through the meal, everyone was sweating from the spicy Hunan cuisine, but that invigorating kick was exactly what they enjoyed. Ren He had already had three bowls of rice.
"Which of Jiang Siyao's songs do you like the most?" Ren He asked curiously while eating.
"We like them all," the two girls turned into fan mode and said, "Every single song of hers is super good to listen to!"
Ren He had also listened to Jiang Siyao and Jiang Chen's songs specifically, and though there were a couple that were indeed pleasant to hear, you couldn't say they were all good. Moreover, the current song styles were still somewhat close to those of his original world about a decade ago; 98 out of 100 songs were about love.
"I heard the entertainment industry is quite messy, is that so?" Xu Nuo asked as he picked up a piece of braised pork with his chopsticks, "Has your cousin told you anything about it?"
"Well... it's quite chaotic," Yang Xi nodded and said, "But she hasn't told me much since it's not nice to talk about others behind their backs. Our family isn't too keen on her singing, so she rarely even comes home."
Xu Nuo and the others didn't think much of this statement, but Ren He gleaned some information from it: what kind of family would not want their child to achieve fame and fortune through singing? Thinking of Yang Xi's father being a diplomat, he felt he could guess a bit.
Yang Xi added, "I actually envy her a lot, being able to sing to so many people—how interesting is that! I even taught myself quite a few musical instruments."
"Which ones?" Ren He asked curiously.
"Guitar, piano, trumpet, drums, erhu!" Yang Xi said with a beaming smile, and Ren He suddenly felt that Yang Xi looked her best when she smiled like that.
"You can actually play so many instruments, so sing a song for us," Duan Xiaolou said excitedly, "We'll be your first audience."
"Let's go, go, go, get your instruments now, and you must know how to sing your cousin's songs, right? It's like getting a preview of a concert!" Ren He egged on, eager to hear what level Yang Xi's singing was actually at.
Unable to withstand their egging, Yang Xi led them to the family courtyard where she and her father lived, went home to grab a guitar, and took Ren He and the others up to the rooftop. There, sitting on the edge, she asked, "What song do you guys want to hear?"
"Your cousin's 'Warm Breeze'!"
"Okay!"
Yang Xi's fair and slender fingers glided across the strings, and the notes fell into everyone's hearts like moonlight, as if the sands of time were slowly spreading out. Besides the music, nothing else mattered.
It was beautiful, Ren He thought from the bottom of his heart. Yang Xi sat quietly on the rooftop, softly singing, and it seemed there was no pleasure greater than listening to her.
But this song didn't suit her.
"Do you want to sing?" Ren He jokingly asked Yang Xi, "I'll write songs for you."
Yang Xi's bright, clear eyes shined with joy, and she seemed quite happy, "Sure, if you write them, I'll sing."
"Then it's settled," Ren He said with a smile.
At that moment, everyone thought it was just a joke, but no one could have imagined where time would eventually take them all. That promise was like the starting point of two intertwined lifelines for a lifetime.
Destiny began to change from that moment on.
...
When I returned home that evening, Mrs. Ren had already left again, just like her countless business trips before—there was no telling when she would return this time.
To be honest, Ren He didn't quite grasp the intricacies of business. Having traveled to a parallel world, he had only hinted a few times, "Real estate prices are about to rise..."
Mrs. Ren seemed thoughtful at the time, but Ren He wasn't too sure whether she had taken his hint to heart. Anyway, he had never planned to rely on his parents to achieve his own life goals. The path he wanted to walk, he could walk on his own!
Just as he was getting ready to go for a night run, the Divine Punishment System suddenly spoke in his mind, "Task: Complete a bare-handed climb of the teaching building from the first to the third floor. Deadline: one week. Failure results in termination."
Huh, why did it suddenly issue a task? Ren He opened his writer's assistant app on his phone and saw that this month's royalties had been paid out. No wonder the Divine Punishment System had suddenly issued a task.
140,000 yuan, plus the savings he already had in hand, amounted to 170,000. For a middle school student, that was no small sum. It included a 100,000 yuan tip from the Drunkard Tycoon of the Golden Alliance. Thanks to the current operational mechanisms, all these tips were his to keep without having to share with the website. 170,000 yuan was more than enough for him to live comfortably for a while. Goodbye to the days when he only had five yuan a month for pocket money. Awesome!
But what's up with this bare-handed climb of the teaching building? Couldn't it have picked somewhere else?!
Ren He recalled the structure of the teaching building. The task didn't seem too difficult. After all, there were plenty of points where one could leverage: exterior drainage pipes on the building, windowsills, and security bars.
As long as he had enough physical strength, he could climb up in minutes.
At that moment, some memories about bare-handed climbing skills had already been instilled in his mind by the Divine Punishment System. It wasn't hard. It seemed that the Divine Punishment System hadn't escalated the difficulty level to that of bare rock climbing yet.
In this period, because Ren He had been consistently doing night runs and push-ups, both his lower body and arm strength had made concrete progress. However, since the Divine Punishment System had started issuing such tasks, he would also need to seriously train the strength in his fingers, as climbing activities demand a lot from the fingers and wrists.
Time to give it a try!
Ren He dressed and went downstairs, eyeing his residential building. The distance between each floor wasn't too great, and every household had security bars, making the climb fairly easy. The key was figuring out how to reach from the security bars of the first floor to the windowsill of the second.
This was when he needed to employ the method the Divine Punishment System had taught him about establishing a three-point stable center.
Ren He wiped the sweat from his palms and began to climb stealthily, gripping the security bars tightly with his fingers. With a vigorous leap, he was already standing securely against the security bars of the first floor.
Then he climbed onto the top of the security bars. With his feet and left hand steadied against the wall, and his right hand stretching towards the windowsill of the second floor.
When his right hand reached the windowsill, he hooked the first joint of his fingers firmly over the edge, and swung himself up, gripping the windowsill firmly with both hands.
With a pull-up motion, he could easily climb onto the second floor. But just at that moment, Ren He suddenly heard something unusual coming from the window of the second floor...
He peeked his head up to see what was going on, and caught sight of a young couple with their upper bodies bare, in the midst of...
"The woman has a pretty nice figure..." Ren He thought to himself.
However, at that instant, the young woman, in the throes of passion, suddenly lifted her head to see outside her bedroom window, only to discover half a head with a pair of eyes intently peering in...
This was the second floor, at night, and that feeling... was terrifying...