Chapter 2 Everyone has a childhood sweetheart.

After the second semester of sophomore year, perhaps due to growing up, the relationship between the two sides eased quite a bit.

Now, in a blink of an eye, it was already senior year, and they still didn’t quite get along.

“Are you crazy, Jiang Nian!” The girl put her hands on her hips, glaring at him indignantly. “Why are you knocking on the door in broad daylight? I’ll tell Aunt Li to give you a good beating!”

Jiang Nian stared at Xu Qianqian, or more precisely, at the light blue translucent panel in front of him.

Sure enough, only he could see it.

“【Re-establish contact with your estranged childhood sweetheart Xu Qianqian, Reward: 300 RMB (Completed).】”

Hmm, has it arrived?

Xu Qianqian angrily scolded Jiang Nian for a while, then suddenly noticed that he seemed to be staring at her in a daze. Her hair stood on end, and she instinctively took a step back, covering her bulging chest.

“Why…why are you looking at me like that?”

Then, she saw Jiang Nian take out his phone from his pocket and glance at it, completely ignoring her. Immediately, he was overjoyed, threw out a “Hee hee!” and ran off.

Watching Jiang Nian’s retreating figure as he went back to the house opposite, Xu Qianqian couldn’t help but pout.

“What’s wrong with him?”

In the living room.

Jiang Nian held his phone, looking at it repeatedly, immediately filled with joy.

There really was an extra three hundred yuan in the card, and the balance changed from 305.23 to 605.23. The transfer note said “Game Experience Officer Remuneration.”

At this moment, the panel reappeared, “【At thirty-eight, you are in financial distress, unemployed, divorced, and having lost almost all your property, you can only rely on your parents for support.

Task: Urgent Need.

Having received your first reward, pay off the outstanding utility bills (water, electricity, gas) for your rented apartment. Reward: 500 RMB.】”

He thought this should be a beginner’s task and opened the APP to pay the bills. He didn’t rent an apartment, so paying his own family’s gas, water, and electricity should also count as completing the task.

At the same time, he felt a deep sense of melancholy, wondering if his future self would really be so miserable.

Buzz! Five hundred yuan arrived.

So far, the System tasks were relatively easy, and Jiang Nian checked his bank card balance. Paying the bills cost over one hundred seventy, bringing the cumulative balance to 935.45.

He was a pragmatic person, and after the five hundred arrived, he gradually calmed down.

Two five-hundred-yuan transfers were small change; as long as it didn’t exceed five thousand a day, no one would care. But if it exceeded that in the future, it would be very troublesome.

Not only would his bank card be frozen, but large transfers might even lead to an investigation.

The transfer party was displayed as Tianguang Game Co., Ltd. Jiang Nian checked and found that this company not only existed but was also a listed company, and it only had one “Game Experience Officer.”

Jiang Nian, of course, wasn’t foolish enough to believe that this “sinecure” actually existed, not to mention that current technology couldn’t achieve a portable panel like this.

Moreover, he wasn’t some chief experience officer; it was purely the System patching up a real-world bug.

In other words, the source was legal and legitimate.

Awesome.

As soon as he finished checking, the System panel reappeared, and a new beginner’s task came.

“【When children want to support their parents, their parents are no longer there. At thirty-eight, you realize your parents have grown old. Looking back at half a lifetime gone, you resolutely embark on the journey home, yet can’t help but feel a little homesick.

Task: Prepare a lavish dinner for your parents.

Reward: 800 RMB.】”

Looking at the task requirements, Jiang Nian couldn’t help but rub his chin.

It was afternoon now, so he had time to prepare dinner; otherwise, he would have to wait until tomorrow. These two days were school anniversary holidays, and he had to go back for evening self-study tomorrow night.

Cooking wasn’t a problem; almost no one in the Jiang family couldn’t cook.

His grandfather had worked as a chef in a Guangzhou restaurant when he was young, and his father and uncles, this generation, all knew how to cook a few dishes. It was just that the taste was not always satisfactory, and by the time it reached his own father—

As his own grandfather would say, it was like a pig sticking its nose into a spring onion—utterly useless.

Jiang Nian was an exception; his grades were average, but he found another path, showing a small talent in cooking. Others found difficult tasks like making pastries or cooking meat dishes not difficult at all.

Every summer vacation, he would invariably stay at his grandfather’s house, enjoying good food while intermittently learning several major dishes, and the taste was quite decent.

Since it had to be lavish, the ingredients naturally had to be the freshest.

In the afternoon, Jiang Nian made a trip to the wet market and returned disappointed. He forgot that there were hardly any fresh vegetables in the afternoon, and a group of middle-aged vendors, seeing he was young, tried to pass off inferior goods, first raising prices then lowering them.

Indeed, all merchants are cunning; damn it. There’s a reason why young people prefer supermarkets; these people at the wet market judge people by their appearance, and it serves them right that their sales are poor.

After preparing the ingredients, it was already four o’clock when he got home.

On the kitchen’s quartz countertop lay a deboned, sliced Yangshan chicken. A famous specialty chicken from Guangdong, it cost over thirty yuan per jin, while frozen ones were enough for one or two hundred.

Higher quality live chickens, freshly slaughtered and processed, were in high demand but short supply, selling for a forty-yuan per jin premium in Zhennan.

One chicken weighed seven jin.

The meat was crisp and tender, firm to the bite, and fatty but not greasy; it was indeed worth the price.

He planned to make steamed chicken with lotus leaves. This dish, with its tender and expensive meat, surely qualified as lavish, right?

The rest would be simpler: he planned to make a plate of stir-fried seasonal vegetables, a plate of stir-fried yellow beef, smashed cucumbers, roasted peanuts, and a pot of pork rib soup.

Logically, a family of three definitely wouldn’t finish all these dishes.

Jiang Nian considered that Xu Qianqian lived next door, and in some sense, they truly were childhood sweethearts.

Xu Qianqian came from a single-parent family; her mother passed away a few years ago.

Her father, Director Xu, was a master in the county hospital’s reproductive andrology department, having performed castrations and cured impotence. He always wore rimless glasses and had a gentle smile for everyone.

After his wife’s death, he never quite recovered, constantly numbing himself with work.

In recent years, when the Jiang family faced difficulties, Old Xu privately helped out a lot, and the two families had a deep relationship.

So, even though his parents had been busy working to pay off debts in recent years, whenever they had good food at home, they would definitely invite Xu Qianqian, even cutting her the sweetest part of a melon.

Jiang Nian was already used to it and subconsciously included Old Xu and Xu Qianqian’s portions. It was just right for five people, both lavish and not wasteful on average.

In the afternoon, Li Hongmei had just gotten off work and hurriedly tied on an apron, rushing to the kitchen.

“Dinner will be ready soon. You go read a book; don’t always play on your phone. You’re almost in your senior year, and let me tell you, the college entrance exam is like thousands of soldiers crossing a single-plank bridge.”

Jiang Nian was lying on the sofa, sucking on a popsicle and playing on his phone, not even raising an eyebrow.

“Oh, I know, Mom.”

“You child.” Li Hongmei wiped her hands on her apron, and as soon as she entered the kitchen, she froze, looking at the warmed dishes, then turned to glance at Jiang Nian.

“Who made the dishes?”

“I did. How is it?”

Hearing this, Li Hongmei’s expression instantly became wonderful. It wasn’t that she doubted Jiang Nian’s cooking skills; the old man had a special affection for his grandson and wished he could teach all his lifelong skills to his beloved grandson.

“Where did you get the money? This meal… Yangshan chicken, beef, it must cost at least several hundred, right?”

“Uh, didn’t I earn some money playing games?” Jiang Nian touched his face a little guiltily, holding his breath and staring motionlessly at his mother, Li Hongmei.

Li Hongmei frowned, and the atmosphere in the kitchen instantly froze.