Chapter 3: Vicious Dog
Seeing that he was getting nowhere trying to convince Lin Yi to sign, Luo Qian changed the subject. His gaze lingered on Lin Yi’s face for a moment before he spoke with a mix of teasing and admonishment:
"I heard that little student of yours, Zhou Meng, did incredibly well on her placement test. She shot straight into the top three of her class! Heh, if all goes well, Uncle Zhou will be in a great mood, and the bonus he’ll give you definitely won’t be small!"
"Lin, when that happens, you really should splurge on a few Qi Blood Pills. Raising your Qi and Blood is what really matters! Otherwise, how can you stand being one-upped by that smug jerk Liu Yang, who’s so full of himself his tail’s about to touch the sky?"
Lin Yi was visibly stunned by this. "Zhou Meng... got into the top three?" he asked in disbelief.
Luo Qian slapped his forehead, looking thoroughly exasperated.
"Oh, come on, Teacher Lin! Zhou Meng is your direct student! Can’t you, her master, pay a little more attention? Your disciple does this well on a test and you didn’t even know?"
Lin Yi scratched his head, a bit sheepish. He gave a helpless smile and explained,
"I just go to Uncle Zhou’s house every weekend to give Zhou Meng a couple of tutoring sessions. As for her specific exam rankings and progress at school, I’m just a part-time tutor, so I’m really not in the loop."
Zhou Meng was in her second year of junior high and was the student Lin Yi tutored on weekends.
It was Luo Qian who had pulled the strings to get him this part-time job, which provided a stable income.
Since Luo Qian was the one who made the introduction, it was a given that the Zhou family was wealthy and influential.
Initially, Zhou Meng’s father had been set on hiring a genuine Martial Artist to begin his daughter’s training and had completely dismissed the young, still-a-student Lin Yi.
It was only because Luo Qian had talked himself blue in the face, personally vouching for Lin Yi, that the man had reluctantly agreed to give him a trial run.
Lin Yi had never forgotten this debt of gratitude.
The tutoring sessions were fixed for Saturdays and Sundays—two classes per day, each an hour long, at a rate of three hundred yuan per session.
All told, Lin Yi could earn 4,800 yuan a month from the Zhou family.
After covering his necessary daily expenses, this income was enough for Lin Yi to afford the luxury of purchasing one expensive Qi Blood Pill each month for his Cultivation.
This was a significant source of income in his financially strapped life.
After packing his bag, Lin Yi walked out of the classroom side-by-side with Luo Qian, heading across the campus and toward the school exit.
Not far from the school gate, a sleek black luxury vehicle was parked quietly by the side of the road.
The driver had a sharp eye. As soon as he spotted Luo Qian, he hurried over and respectfully opened the rear door. "Young Master."
Luo Qian nodded at the driver, then turned to Lin Yi. "Lin, want a ride? I can give you a lift part of the way."
Lin Yi waved a hand, declining in a relaxed tone. "Thanks, but we’re headed in opposite directions. I’ll just run back—it’ll be a good warm-up, a chance to loosen up."
"Alright then. See you tomorrow." Luo Qian didn’t press the issue, ducking into the comfortable vehicle.
The luxury vehicle slid silently into the stream of traffic and quickly disappeared into the distance.
Lin Yi stretched his body, performing a few simple warm-up movements before setting off at a steady jog in the direction of home, as he remembered it.
As a transmigrator whose soul had only just occupied this body, he still felt like a stranger in this new vessel. Although he had absorbed the original owner’s memory fragments and understood the fundamentals of Martial Dao Cultivation, the body itself was unfamiliar.
This run was the perfect opportunity to get acquainted with it.
His pace wasn’t fast, but his steps were exceptionally steady.
After a full ten minutes of running, his forehead was only slightly damp with sweat, and his breathing was so even it was hard to believe he was running at all.
This left Lin Yi inwardly amazed.
In his past life, forget running for ten minutes—even a one-kilometer run would have left him gasping like a broken bellows.
’Is this the physical constitution of a Senior Martial Disciple?’
He couldn’t help but marvel.
’If I’d had a body like this in my past life, I might not have lost that ultimate showdown with the dump truck...’
If a mere Senior Martial Disciple was this formidable, what kind of world-shattering power would a true Martial Artist possess?
An indescribable sense of anticipation began to quietly blossom in Lin Yi’s heart as he jogged on.
「About half an hour later.」
A cluster of old, crowded tenement buildings appeared in his line of sight.
Greenery was scarce here. The concrete buildings were packed together as densely as building blocks, their mottled outer walls telling tales of the years that had passed.
That’s right—this was Lin Yi’s current home.
He had originally owned a property after his parents passed away.
But he had gritted his teeth and sold it long ago to exchange it for the expensive resources needed to support his Martial Dao Cultivation.
After all, even if he had a talent for Cultivation, a genius still needed to be built upon a mountain of resources. Otherwise, on what basis could he, with talent alone, hope to catch up to the children of wealthy families who could advance at lightning speed just by paying their way and using enhancers?
Unfortunately... the money from the house had been completely spent by his second year of high school.
The tenement apartment he rented now was cheap, only five hundred yuan a month.
With practiced ease, Lin Yi turned into the building entrance marked "Unit 7."
He lived on the eighth floor of Unit 7, in apartment 802.
Old tenement buildings like this, of course, didn’t have elevators, only a narrow staircase.
But for his current body, a mere eight flights of stairs didn’t even count as a warm-up. It was as effortless as strolling on level ground.
Lin Yi stepped through the building’s main door.
A peculiar, mixed odor, characteristic of old residential buildings, immediately flooded his nostrils—a combination of dust accumulated over many years, the faint smell of mold from damp walls, and the greasy scent of cooking that stubbornly seeped from beneath each apartment door.
He headed up the stairs, his steps light and brisk.