CH 95

Chapter 95: Six Years Later

What could be seen here was an enormous spider beast with a length of about four meters. It moved very quickly. It could easily hunt Mantis beasts, and what was more, it was also highly toxic.

This cave-dwelling spider beast was named the tiger-striped birdeater spider. It grew in the south and was very ferocious. When the female spider was first discovered, it had been eating a male spider’s flesh and blood. This tiger-striped birdcatcher spider would eat the male during the mating process. Generally, after the mating was over, only half of the male spider would remain.

Now, more than ten people surrounded by this spider beast. They were divided into two groups, and each group would separately attack the spider beast. Once one group of people attacked and irritated the spider beast, they would immediately retreat, and then the other group of people would attack from the other side.

These people tacitly cooperated with each other and had good strength. It was easy for them to kill this spider beast. Currently, it seemed that they intended to catch it alive.

“Keep your distance and be careful of the spider’s poison!” Shi Qingyang stood on top of the mobile fortress parked at the side, and did not take any action.

“Master, what you actually mean is that you don’t want us to make this spider beast waste its posion, right?” A man who dextrously attacked the spider beast shouted. “For Master’s sake, you have to send the spider poison to Shifu’s mother! We’re going out of our way now!” [T/N Might be some kinda wordplay here; the word they’re calling Shi Qingyang is ‘shifu’ (teacher/master), but the word itself is made up of Shi Qingyang’s surname Shi, and fu for father. Funny coincidence]

“If you don’t like it, you can go back.” Shi Qingyang glanced at the man.

“Yes, yes, I’m very happy! Master, it’s not easy for you to give us a chance to get experience. How can we not make good use of it?” the man hurriedly said, with a sad face–why did he always say the wrong thing when he wasn’t paying attention?

They had dealt with several tiger-striped birdeater spiders before, but Shi Qingyang had done it all by himself. He directly beat them to the ground without giving the others a chance to exercise. It wasn’t easy for them to do this now. How could they not seize the opportunity?

Shi Qingyang didn’t continue to speak, but just watched the spider beast to make sure it wouldn’t hurt people as it pleased, and at the same time he controlled his desire to kill.

In his last life, he died under the attack of a spider beast. Naturally, he was very disgusted this kind of creature. He usually immediately dealt with any spiders when he saw them. This time, since he planned to send the spider poison to Cheng Ran, he became even more excited to deal with several of them alone… If he didn’t suddenly realize that the people who followed him hadn’t hunted for several days, he would have robbed the spider beast directly. After all, it was a gift to Cheng Ran, so doing it all himself would show his intentions best.

Of course, he didn’t end up dealing with this spider beast. In fact, there were other reasons involved, such as that he’d made another breakthrough in power. A spider beast like this used to be a little interesting to deal with, but now it couldn’t really retain his attention.

It had been six years since Cheng Ran’s birthday, when he told Cheng Xuze that he would go out to practice. It would be Cheng Ran’s 24th birthday soon.

In the beginning, he had been promoted to level-3 and level-4 in the ant nest, and the speed was very fast. It was naturally impossible to think he’d continue to grow so fast later, but even so, his speed of breaking through was far faster than the ordinary person.

At the age of 20, after two years of accumulation, he reached level-5 from level-4. At the age of 22, he reached level-6. At the age of 24, he reached level-7 in last month’s training!

A 24-year-old level-6 rad-energy warrior still existed in the history of the country, but a 24-year-old level-7 warrior… This had never been seen for as long as the country had existed. If nothing else than because it became more and more difficult to upgrade after level-6.

Even though many people had good talents, they still stayed at level 6 their entire lives and couldn’t reach level-7… Shi Qingyang smiled at the people who cooperated with tacit understanding below. In his last life, he stayed at level-6 for five years, but he had reached level-7 and even reached level-8…

For others, they might encounter all kinds of problems when upgrading, but for him, as long as there was enough radiation in his body, the upgrade would come naturally.

“I’ve finally caught it!” Just at this moment, the person who just called Shi Qingyang ‘Master’ shouted. Shi Qingyang immediately jumped down from the top of the mobile fortress, and then easily suppressed the spider beast. Then he took out a bottle and began to extract spider poison.

“Master, if you give master’s wife the spider poison, will he like it?” Some noisy young person came over again, the face under his mask looking very handsome. [T/N he says shiniang (big boss’s wife, elder sister, like anego in Japanese) to refer to Cheng Ran]

“Of course he will. Who knows better than me what he likes?” Shi Qingyang was a little proud.

“Master, we’re all bachelors. You can’t show off your love in front of us like this!” the young man said again.

“Zheng Gaoyuan, if you can’t bear to watch, why don’t you find someone for yourself?” Shi Qingyang stretched out a finger and tapped the other person, making the man immediately fly backwards.

That’s right, the young man in front of him was once that same fat boy. Of course, now he wasn’t fat at all.

“Master, you can’t do this to me…” Zheng Gaoyuan cried.

“Who asked you to follow me.” Shi Qingyang was somewhat helpless. When he began his training, he asked those who had practiced with him if they were willing to go with him. As a result, all of them agreed. Even Fu Xiaoyang joined the team after sending his grandmother to the sanatorium. Zheng Gaoyuan naturally wouldn’t be left behind.

Zheng Gaoyuan’s weight loss journey was a long process. It took him two years to recover to his normal shape under both exercise and medicine. Once that happened, everyone realized that he wasn’t bad-looking.

Think about it. The Huofeng company had been passed down for several generations. With such a large company, the Zhengs must have married beautiful women. After generations of good genes, how could Zheng Gaoyuan be ugly?

After Zheng Gaoyuan lost weight, he not only did his looks improve, his mind also grew clearer. He even made great progress in strength. By that time, he even reached level-3.

At that time, Shi Qingyang asked him if he wanted to go back to Central City, but he never agreed. Instead, he followed Shi Qingyang for four years. Of course, he didn’t waste his time in these four years.

Among the people Shi Qingyang brought out from Anhang City, Zheng Gaoyuan and Li Jiajia were the highest in terms of power. Both of them had reached level-5. Even Zheng Gaoyuan reached level-5 earlier than Li Jiajia.

This situation made everyone look at Zheng Gaoyuan with new eyes, and Zheng Gaoyuan’s grandparents were extremely excited. At first, they wanted to let Zheng Gaoyuan go back, but now they couldn’t wait for Zheng Gaoyuan to follow Shi Qingyang. Not only that, they also paid Shi Qingyang daily for six years. Finally, even Zheng Gaoyuan’s pocket money began to be transferred to Shi Qingyang’s account…

Zheng Gaoyuan was the highest status person in the team, but now he was definitely the poorest one.

Of course, although Zheng Gaoyuan’s money belonged to Shi Qingyang, he didn’t treat Zheng Gaoyuan harshly. After Zheng Gaoyuan refused returning to Central City and insisted on staying, he accepted Zheng Gaoyuan as an apprentice. Since then, he never lacked in all kinds of medicines. Those medicines made by Cheng Ran had always been valuable in the market!

“Shifu, I always want to follow you! Shifu, you are the light of my life, you are the beacon on my path forward, you are my… Cough, how can I go on without you…” Zheng Gaoyuan wanted to sing Shi Qingyang’s praises in a parallel sentence structure, but suddenly realized that he had forgotten his words, so he had to give up.

“If you’d finished your last sentence for me, I would have been very happy… You sure you don’t want me to send you flying again?” Shi Qingyang collected the spider poison and immediately refrigerated it. At the same time, he directly killed the spider beast in front of him.

“It’s said that this spider’s poison is one of the most venomous things. Master’s wife really has a strong taste.” Zheng Gaoyuan coughed a few times and changed the topic.

“You should learn Chinese well and stop saying things that make people feel they have ambiguous meaning.” Shi Qingyang glanced at Zheng Gaoyuan.

“Master, in fact, I haven’t even graduated from primary school. At the start, I said that my grandparents had to pay a lot of money to get me to high school. You can’t force me!” Zheng Gaoyuan immediately said.

“…” Shi Qingyang thought of Zheng Gaoyuan’s inability to read any words before, and suddenly he didn’t know what else he could say.

“Boss, shall we take a walk around again or go back directly?” Fu Xiaoyang asked while cleaning up the corpse of the spider beast.

“Go straight back.” Shi Qingyang didn’t think about it, but immediately said with a soft expression: “It will be Ranran’s birthday soon…” It was also his wedding anniversary with Cheng Ran.

In the past, Cheng Ran would follow them when they went hunting. They hunted outside while Cheng Ran practiced preparing medicine in the mobile fortress. But this time, it was different. Not long ago, Cheng Ran’s laboratory made a breakthrough in the research of the queen ant. As an important person in the laboratory, Cheng Ran had to stay available and did not go with him.

After careful calculation, the two people had not seen each other for 43 days and 9 hours… Shi Qingyang sighed and missed him even more. Unfortunately, he had gone a little far this time, and his people hadn’t sent any news yet.

When Shi Qingyang had planned to go out for training, he thought about developing his own strength of influencce. Naturally, he didn’t waste these six years.

Now, there were dozens of people around him, all of whom are loyal. In addition, the Qinghe Foundation [T/N green grass] he founded had also invested in many enterprises and subsidized countless rad-energy warriors with life difficulties in the past few years.

The Qinghe Foundation mainly subsidized rad-energy warriors who were injured outside the city and couldn’t continue to work. Shi Qingyang always thought that it was better to teach a man to fish rather than to give him a fish. Unlike some foundations, which only gave money, his provided jobs–the Qinghe Foundation had established Qinghe Taverns in every city, and all employees were rad-energy warriors who had lived in hardship and even had deep disabilities.

The Qinghe Tavern was completely different from previously available bars. While other bars all employed handsome men and women to serve people, many employees of the Qinghe Tavern were equipped with artificial limbs and covered with scars.

At first, everyone thought that such a bar couldn’t stay open, but the final result was unexpected to everyone.

As long as someone went out of the city to hunt, it was impossible for them not to encounter danger. They naturally had some sympathy for the injured people, and those who had been injured in the past still knew many people. Just because of this, the reputation of the tavern had spread.

Then, people found out that there were songs and dances in other bars every night, while in Qinghe Tavern there were people every night explaining combat skills and their experience of fighting against enemies in the wild. After that, the people in the bar would help answer questions… These things were really nothing for those who were well-born and had good talents. They could learn these things in school and from their elders, However, Qinghe Tavern was originally for low-level rad-energy warriors. These things naturally made those people feel like it was a treasure.

In addition, there was another reason for Qinghe Tavern’s prosperity, which was that it was “clean”. There were few people in Qinghe Tavern who looked above average. These people were generally not young, and they were all three portions big and five portions thick rad-energy warriors. Naturally, there would be no such thing as trading in looks and lust here.

After a tiring day outside, the rad-energy warriors would always want to find a place to relax. When they wanted to go to other bars, their wives would stop them, but when they came to Qinghe Tavern, no one would stop them. They could even bring their wives and children here to let their families know how hard they worked…

Nowadays, there were Qinghe Taverns across all the cities in China, and there were even more than one in most cities. Each tavern was under the responsibility of a person trusted by Shi Qingyang. In addition to income, the greatest benefit these bars brought to Shi Qingyang was all kinds of intelligence.

Moreover, with the constant explanation of combat skills every night, more and more low-level rad-energy warriors had a sense of belonging to Qinghe Tavern. Some people even felt uncomfortable without a cup of wine as they observed the explanation of combat skills…

Qinghe Tavern, like a huge net, covered the whole country and had made a great impact among low-level rad-energy warriors.

In the past six years, Shi Qingyang had achieved this step, which was beyond his imagination. Of course, it was all due to the tireless support of Cheng Xuze.

Today, the Cheng family, whether it was its pharmaceutical factory or its factory producing special face masks, could be said to be making huge profits every day. Not only would a small part of these profits be directly transferred to Shi Qingyang’s account, but Cheng Xuze would also use his relationship to help Shi Qingyang develop his influence.

Shi Qingyang knew that he had embarked on a completely different road from his previous life.

Yangtze City was a first-class city, much larger than Anhang City. As the largest first-class city in the south, it had dozens of entrances and exits. Even so, every entrance and exit was still very busy.

In the Spark City, when some large mobile fortresses approached, everyone glanced at it, but no one really paid attention to it.

Because more and more people followed Shi Qingyang, Shi Qingyang had bought another mobile fortress in addition to his original mobile fortress. The entire group disembarked from the two mobile fortresses and saw the city they had been separated for a long time.

All kinds of things had been prepared on the mobile fortress. Therefore, although they had been out of the city for over a month, they were all dressed neatly. However, they were still somewhat uncomfortable after spending more than a month outdoors.

After swiping the contact terminal and entering the city, almost everyone immediately opened their contact terminal and began to check the news.

Shi Qingyang was not as anxious as other people. He still remembered his business. He contacted Cheng Xuze first and then looked at all kinds of information in the contact terminal.

Most of these messages were sent to him by Cheng Ran, and others came from various people. There were also many messages that Cheng Xuze sent to I don’t want to starve.

Shi Qingyang read the important things given by his subordinates first, and then immediately opened the messages sent by Cheng Ran.

Cheng Ran’s messages would come in from all times of day. Basically, as long as there was something he wanted to say, he would send a message, that’s all. Shi Qingyang liked it very much.

If it wasn’t for the fear of affecting Cheng Ran’s experiment, he would really like to contact Cheng Ran immediately.

“Master, big news! Someone in Central City has become a level-6 powerhouse before reaching 24!” Zheng Gaoyuan suddenly said: “Master, it says that he is a once in a hundred years genius, the next level-9 powerhouse, and that he is the best of the younger generation in China… What the hell is this? Master, you’re the one who’s the best!”

“Don’t talk nonsense.” Shi Qingyang glanced at him and said, “He’s really outstanding. What rank were you by the age of 24?”

Zheng Gaoyuan was still a little angry. When he had been 24 years old, he was only level-4, but he’d wasted five years of his youth… More importantly, Shi Qingyang was now level-7… Although he only upgraded after he was 24 years old, if the person in Central City wanted to reach level-7, how many years would it take him?

“Besides, I’m level-5 now, and you’re level-4, remember?” Shi Qingyang looked at Zheng Gaoyuan. He needed to improve his strength to ensure his safety, but he couldn’t expose such strength. If he really did, he would definitely cause himself great trouble.

“I know.” Zheng Gaoyuan shrunk his neck. Although he had reached level-5, he had not said much about it. He was afraid that there would be trouble after he revealed it. Even his grandparents thought he was level-4.

“However, it’s normal for you to look down on him. Even if that person is a genius, he’s nothing,” Shi Qingyang said again.

The level-6 rad-warrior who was less than 24 years old was naturally Feng Linqiu, who had sent him to the Research Institute in his last life. In his last life, he didn’t have any resources, and he hadn’t been in good health, so he hadn’t been able to defeat Feng Linqiu. This time, naturally, there would be no accident.

“Master, it’s not like you to say that.” Zheng Gaoyuan looked at Shi Qingyang with some surprise. Shi Qingyang had been very low-key in recent years and highly praised some people who weren’t strong. How did his style suddenly change this time?

“I have different attitudes towards different people,” Shi Qingyang said. Feng Linqiu was really powerful. In his last life, he also spoke highly of Feng Linqiu, because it was impossible for him to break through level-9 at that time, but Feng Linqiu could. However, Feng Linqiu unexpectedly sent him to the Research Institute… “Alright, here comes our car!”

The people who followed Shi Qingyang would be sent to Shi Qingyang’s residence in Yangtze City. Shi Qingyang and Zheng Gaoyuan, however, got on Wang Qing’s car and went to the Cheng’s house.

Six years later, the Cheng family had become the largest family in Yangtze City, covering an increasingly large area, so that after the car entered, it drove for a long time before it reached the gate.

As soon as Shi Qingyang got off the car, he saw Cheng Xuze standing at the door. Cheng Xuze wasn’t young, but he hadn’t changed much in the past six years. He was very energetic. Seeing Shi Qingyang, he immediately smiled: “Qingyang, you are back.”

“Grandpa, I’m back.” Shi Qingyang smiled and said, “How about Ranran?”

“I knew you’d miss Ranran as soon as you came back, but it’s a pity that he’s not here,” Cheng Xuze smiled. “He had been doing experiments for several days before and said that the day after tomorrow was his birthday, so he had to come back to freshen himself up… When you contacted me, he had just gone to sleep.”

“There’s no need to be so anxious to do experiments…” Shi Qingyang frowned: “How can he not sleep?”

“Xiao Ran also wants to have his birthday and wedding anniversary together with you as soon as possible. All he’s been talking about is you these days,” Cheng Xuze helped his grandson speak.

Naturally, Shi Qingyang liked to hear this, but he was still unhappy: “I will watch him every day in the future!”

“Didn’t you say that you would take a trip around in the wild until you reached a breakthrough?” Cheng Xuze asked curiously, and suddenly opened his eyes again: “Did you break through?”

“Grandpa, I’m level-7.” Shi Qingyang smiled.

Cheng Xuze was shocked, and then suddenly laughed. The wrinkles on his smiling face were crowded together: “Haha, you’ve broken through! That’s level-7! Level-7 at the age of 24, ha ha…”

“Grandpa, calm down,” Shi Qingyang said.

However, Cheng Xuze still kept laughing: “I’ve told all the servants to go back, so let me laugh as much as I want! Haha!”

Shi Qingyang could reach level-9. He was more and more sure of this! As long as he thought that his grandson’s partner would be a level-9 master, he could not help feeling very proud.

Cheng Xuze smiled for a long time before he stopped: “Qingyang, it’s really good that you have reached level-7 so quickly. What’s the Feng Linqiu from the Feng Family? He can only make you seem more outstanding by comparison! It’s a pity that the foundation of the Cheng family is too weak, and this must be hidden…”

“Grandpa, it’s nothing.” Shi Qingyang didn’t think it was bad to hide this.

“Yes, yes, anyway, it’s irrelevant… Qingyang, we’ll inform your master of this good news right away!” Cheng Xuze added. He couldn’t tell others about how extraordinary Shi Qingyang and Cheng Ran were now. He could only go online and tell Not Starving. Therefore, he hoped every day that I don’t want to starve would go online. “Unfortunately, your master spends too little time online, and he seems to have pinpointed whenever you leave the city. Basically, as long as you go out of the city, he rarely goes online.”

Shi Qingyang felt cold sweat on his body: “Grandpa, my master, he should have too many things to do…”

He had borrowed the name of “I don’t want to starve” for a lot of things, but now it was almost unbearable… In recent years, he had contacted Cheng Xuze less and less times. He didn’t expect that Cheng Xuze could still find problems.

Before that, in order to dispel Cheng Xuze’s suspicion, he even sneaked back to the city to contact Cheng Xuze…

Not only that, it wasn’t easy for him to contact Cheng Xuze in the city. Cheng Ran had always been by him. In the end, he could only contact Cheng Xuze when Cheng Ran took a bath or made medicine…

Contacting Cheng Xuze was just as tiring as cheating!

T/N

Surprise time-skip! Yay for them being adults now. The author’s chapters are getting longer now.