Chapter 41: Temp Tong
Translator: Oneshotwonder Editor: Tehrn
“So in essence, Einherjar Wannabe had subdued Wang Ben’s brute force with his own? That’s unthinkable! Who could have done that?” Ma Xiaoru asked incredulously.
“We have already excluded the Dowers and the Lis. It might be too early to suspect anyone else. After all, Benny had been using the virtual EMF, making him an unreliable source to gauge Einherjar Wannabe’s power.” Samantha was the heir of the DREAM corp., therefore she had gathered some first-hand information about this fight. “I really hope that Wang Ben would be over his failure soon,” Samantha said.
“Hehe, so you can recruit him and have him under your thumb?” A smile touched Ma Xiaoru’s lips.
Samantha smiled back at her and said, “Everyone seemed to have abandoned him after his operation, making it a perfect time to recruit him now. It would be much more effective than head-butting against S-class academies later. With some help from my connections in the Military, we should have a pretty good chance of winning him over once he opened his mind in later operations.”
“What you are counting on has the success rate below one percent. There will be more serious implications, should he forced it too hard,” Ma Xiaoru reminded Samantha about the risk involved.
“Bak. It’s our day off, let’s talk about something else. How about a trip to the beach?”
The scenery around her changed as she spoke. Tall and lush palm trees sprouted out about them, and the green grass beneath their feet turned into white and warm sand, stretching out to kiss a pool of turquoise-blue that had appeared as if out of nowhere. Samantha jumped into the lake, and turned to Ma Xiaoru, gesturing her to dive in with a seductive curl of a finger.
A grin flashed across Ma Xiaoru’s face as she took off her gym coat. Her milky skin emanated a radiant hue under the sunlight and looked particularly attractive. It was an effect of the Tactics of the Enchantress; it not only increased the EMF but also improved the appearance of the cultivator. Only a genius like General Zhou Zhi would have concocted such a melange of beauty and power.
Meanwhile, on the moon. Miao Xiu stared at the screen with eyes wide open. He was engrossed in the actions on the screen and didn’t even notice the smirk on Luv Ma’s face.
“Konn.”
Excited by what he saw, Miao Xiu pounded a fist on the desk. He raised the fist and was ready to relieve his excitement again, but he was stopped by Luv Ma who tried to save the desk from its doom.
“That Fist of the Racing Tiger was so f*cking… awesome! I wanna try it too! Bak… what a shame that he had failed the operation!”
“Miao Xiu, that’s not why I showed you the recording.”
“Yes, I know. I think your previous guess was correct. Einherjar Wannabe had learned some kind of tactics that allowed him to turn his arm into a weapon. You should dig into it.”
“Already did. There are a few tactics purported to have the same effect, but none of which has remotely the same intensity. Einherjar Wannabe waited until Wang Ben reached his peak EMF before subdued him, he is quite confident of his own power if not too much so, don’t you think? “
“Tell me about it; the worst is that he kept on ignoring my invitation, and showed up only when I wasn’t there. It’s annoying.”
Luv Ma cracked a smile, “He showed up only on weekends, you were too busy wooing girls then.”
“A life without love is not worth living, but…” Miao Xiu paused to allow a smirk crept onto his face. Luv Ma pulled a face that said, “spit it out.”
“But love without a bro like you is not true love.”
“F*ck off, you f*g.”
“Pff. Einherjar Wannabe, you think you are so cool… I will show you what’s cool when you hand your a*s over to me,” Miao Xiu hissed.
Wang Tong never had time to play cool. Without any financial support, he had to learn to look after himself; a job would be more useful than playing cool to that end.
After lamenting over his destitute situation, Wang Tong followed it with actions. He applied at a Chinese restaurant close to school and quickly got an offer to handle miscellaneous tasks. The pay was good, and the restaurant would pay him daily which was the icing on the cake to Wang Tong.
Wang Tong’s task today was to prepare and clean vegetables. Looking at the pile of vegetables in front of him, Wang Tong was perplexed. In this day and time, even cooking could be done by robots, but some fancier restaurant had insisted using manual labor as their marketing gimmicks. However, gimmicks aside, some connoisseur were convinced that there was a particular satisfaction when eating a meal that was prepared by hand.
Wang Tong never understood that particular desire, but he welcomed its existence nonetheless; without it, he wouldn’t get this job.
Wang Tong changed into his work-cloth and started to pick out the bad leaves, cleaned the vegetables, sorted them on the table, then rinse and repeat. Despite the large amount of vegetables he had to sort through, his EMF had allowed him to keep a good pace, and soon, he was engrossed in the activity. Unlike Samantha and Ma Xiaoru, who were born with silver spoons in their mouths, life had never been kind to Wang Tong. However, he had learned to make a lemonade whenever the Gods had decided to give him a lemon.
After two hours, Wang Tong walked out of the work area and reported to the manager: “I am done.”
“Ok… Oh, what? You are done? Everything?” the manager asked in surprise. He had assigned him a week worth of workload. He walked into the prep room, fearing that Wang Tong had made a mess, but surprisingly, he found out that all vegetables had been cleaned and were set neatly on the counter. The manager picked one up to examine it closely; he could hardly find a fly-speck on it.
The manager was impressed. It appeared that this student of A-Class Academy was worth his salt. “Well done! Excellent! Due to your exceptional performance, I will double your wage from now on. And, I will give you a free dining coupon in our restaurant.” Joy was written all over the manager’s face. His generous gesture would make up only a small portion of the expenses that Wang Tong had already helped him saved.
Wang Tong nodded. The manager’s profit did not concern him, this was just a temporary job to keep himself busy and make some extra cash. Wang Tong hadn’t realized how hungry he was until he received the dining coupon, so he decided to satisfy his gluttony right then.
As the waiter laid out five dishes in front of Wang Tong, each lusher than the next, the sight had exhilarated him. He waved his chopsticks in the air and said, “Eat your heart out, Old Fart, these are all your favorite dishes! Haha”
Wang Tong quickly buried his face in the food. He could hear jibes floating in the air and felt a few pairs of eyes staring at him with disgust, but he didn’t care to slow down, shoveling food into his mouth.
“Truly happy people don’t care what others think” had always been Wang Tong’s motto.
