Chapter 19: Seeking Ways to Make Money

This was understandable; even with running, the effects of jogging and sprinting are vastly different, let alone when he had already adapted to the high-intensity labor of harvesting rice. Days passed in a blur, and Chen Anquan had been eating and drinking at Second Uncle's house. Second Aunt, having collected his commission, essentially received meal fees, and managed to make a small profit herself.

However, by the third day of helping others harvest rice, Chen Anquan discovered that his attributes could no longer improve. His attribute panel was now fixed at:

Name: Chen Anquan
Age: 24 years
Strength: 1.59
Agility: 1.39
Spirit: 2
Constitution: 1.66
Unused Attribute Points: 0
Skills: [Tai Chi LV1 (0/500)] [Wudang 49-style Tai Chi Sword LV0 (6/100)]

That morning, as usual, Chen Anquan had practiced Tai Chi sword for an hour. Watching the occasional passersby on the basketball court, he tossed aside the branch in his hand.

There weren’t many households in Ao Bei Village, and even fewer farmers unable to harvest rice due to health or other reasons. Now, Chen Anquan couldn’t even find extra work harvesting rice for others.

Yesterday, he had already informed Second Uncle and Second Aunt of his intention to go into town to make some purchases.

Second Uncle wanted to lend him his beloved three-wheeled motorcycle, but Second Aunt gently refused.

Her reason was that there were too many cars in town, and Chen Anquan hadn’t driven a tricycle much; she wasn’t comfortable with it.

He had many errands to run in town today, but the most important was to buy basic furniture and appliances.

It wasn’t a market day, so the bus from Ao Bei Village to town was resting. To get to town, he would have to either rent a motorcycle taxi or rely on his own "bus number eleven"—his legs.

As a child, Chen Anquan often walked mountain paths with his grandfather, from town all the way to Ao Bei Village, a trek of two hours.

He hadn’t walked that overgrown path in a long time, and now he wasn’t sure he still remembered the way.

“Run!” Chen Anquan shouted, the strength in his legs bursting forth. With a constitution 66% stronger than ordinary people, he ran at a speed rivaling a small car.

In fact, his pace far exceeded that of a car on a gravel road.

Anyone who’s driven knows: a car moves much slower on gravel than on cement.

After about two hundred meters, Chen Anquan felt a scorching heat throughout his body, yet his mouth remained closed and his breathing was steady.

“It seems these days of rice harvesting have really improved my physical fitness!” he decided to keep running at full speed.

At that moment, he felt like a small rocket, everything around him flashing by in a blur, the landscape whisked away in the blink of an eye.

After sprinting for about five minutes, his legs and breathing could no longer keep pace, forcing him to slow down to about a third of his peak speed.

He checked his attribute panel and saw no improvement.

Strange, no increase!

Chen Anquan, face flushed, heart pounding, neck thick, gradually calmed his breath and muttered, “Is the intensity not enough? In movies and dramas, to improve physical fitness you need high-intensity weighted running. Looks like I need to buy some weighted training gear.”

He slowed to a walk, took out his phone, and searched “weighted equipment” on his shopping app.

Weighted vests, wrist weights, leg weights, sandbags...

He randomly clicked on a store and looked at a set of weighted gear—the heaviest was fifty kilograms, about a hundred pounds.

Fifty kilograms was roughly a big bag of grain, and Chen Anquan could easily carry two of those bags around now. This weighted gear wouldn’t last him long.

Checking the price, a fifty-kilogram set cost over a thousand. Custom orders were likely more expensive.

He planned to custom order a one-hundred-kilogram set, so he messaged the shop assistant, “Hello, is your heaviest weighted equipment only fifty kilograms?”

“Dear, fifty kilograms is already the heaviest on the market. Many people struggle to even lift that much, let alone run with it.”

Chen Anquan smiled. He wasn’t an ordinary person, though for now he was still quite average. He went straight to the point, “Do you have a one-hundred-kilogram weighted set?”

“Dear, that would need to be custom-made by the manufacturer. The price would be over three thousand…”

Three thousand?

Chen Anquan silently closed the app. For that price, he might as well rob someone…

He’d be better off picking up a big rock by the roadside and running with it.

There were plenty around here, from knee-high stones to giant boulders two or three meters tall. Besides, running with a rock would look impressive!

He jogged all the way, spending quite a bit of time before finally reaching the town.

He had grown up in this town; his grandfather had rented a small house here. After his parents’ car accident, he lived with his grandfather until his passing.

Running past his old home, Chen Anquan suddenly stopped.

He gazed at the house where he once lived, feeling a jumble of emotions.

He remembered, as a small child, following his grandfather, wearing canvas shoes full of holes on snowy days, his arms trembling with cold, watching his grandfather carrying a snakeskin bag in one hand and pliers in the other, rummaging through roadside trash for bottles and cans.

Back then, he didn’t understand why he and his grandfather couldn’t stay at his uncle’s house. All his uncles had sons a few years older than him, yet none would play with him.

Thinking back, perhaps his grandfather wanted to preserve his dignity and refused to ask his sons for support.

Chen Anquan forced himself to look away and continued down the street.

Soon, he saw an average-sized appliance store.

The shop was having a promotion, so Chen Anquan bought a double-door refrigerator for two thousand, a sterilizing dish cabinet for three hundred, a gas stove for two hundred, and some small appliances.

He arranged with the shop owner to ride back on the delivery truck when they brought his purchases.

Next, he ran to the network service center to set up internet.

There was no WiFi at Second Uncle’s house, so he couldn’t even browse the web conveniently.

He scrolled through short videos almost daily, and using mobile data was too costly; his only option was to get broadband.

A few dozen minutes later.

Chen Anquan walked out of the service center, stunned by the cost of rural broadband installation.

Eleven hundred per year for a hundred-megabit connection, plus two hundred for installation…

All the money he earned harvesting rice over the past few days was essentially gone.

After paying for the appliances, his savings of twenty thousand was now barely over ten thousand.

Money really flies!

“Looks like I have to find a way to make money, or else this little bit will run out sooner or later!”