Chapter Ninety: What You Said Makes Perfect Sense [Please Tip]

The thing he feared most was the air suddenly falling silent, the room losing its voice forever.

By then, Ye Ping’s professional smile had already stiffened. This question had never once been stored in his mind.

Their department’s elite squad was the kind of place where everyone fought to squeeze in. Every member eligible to join was either a prodigy, a person of special talent, or someone who had made a tremendous contribution. Yet now Tang Shen was actually saying he did not want to participate?

For a moment, Ye Ping felt the urge to swear. No, he had already frozen solid; his mind was frantically processing the message, and the CPU was running beyond capacity.

And then there was that sentence:

“Cash it out.”

“Cash it out.”

“Cash it out.”

It echoed through his mind. Before one piece of information had even been digested, another was thrown at him, and he suddenly felt that his own brain was not quite as brilliant as he had believed.

The others in the room all stared wide-eyed at Tang Shen, their expressions so incredulous they looked as though they had seen a ghost.

They had never seen anyone so shameless as to ask for the training fund to be converted into cash.

In truth, every training fund was a major force’s support for a genius, a deliberate tilt in resources. Investment meant return: if they invested in you and you became stronger, your own faction would benefit greatly.

But Tang Shen actually wanted them to cash it out, and brazenly said he liked money. Never had they seen anyone so direct, and the most infuriating part was that he actually said it out loud.

The director of the special department, watching from another room, also had his face frozen. No one had expected Tang Shen to say something so astonishing.

Especially because he said it with such perfect righteousness, without the slightest hesitation. There was not a trace of embarrassment on his face, no earth-shattering excuse about needing funds to cure someone or save someone, nothing of the sort. He simply liked money. Just that direct.

Seeing the crowd left speechless by him, Tang Shen remained calm. He gave them a little time to recover, then picked up a pastry from the table and kept eating at an unhurried pace. The more he ate, the better it tasted. The pastry chef was clearly a master.

Was Tang Shen foolish? Of course not. Elite training? What a joke. Such training would surely take a great deal of time and was probably fully closed off. Then what time would he have left to play games?

As for those training funds, even if not all of them, there must certainly be some that would be useful to him. But he was sure most of it was prepared for gene warriors, and he was not one of those. Cashing it out was far more advantageous to him, wasn’t it?

The room stayed silent for a full dozen seconds.

Only then did Ye Ping speak again. “Well, Student Tang Shen, perhaps you still do not know the benefits of our elite squad. In that case, I can explain them to you in detail...”

Tang Shen raised a hand to stop him and, after swallowing the pastry in his mouth, asked directly, “Your department’s elite squad must train very strictly, right?”

“Of course. At least twelve hours of training a day, instructors covering every ability, plus all kinds of auxiliary recovery methods to prevent physical problems, fully stimulating your potential and abilities so as to help you develop stronger strength and become powerhouses standing at the peak of humanity,” Ye Ping said with a solemn expression. Using the most polished and concise language he had, he delivered the most stirring speech he could muster.

Every gene warrior wanted to become a powerhouse standing at the summit of humanity, because then anything you wanted would be within easy reach.

The unspoken meaning was: such excellent elite squad training, how could you not want to join?

Any newcomer would be tempted, and the old hands who had been in the department for years would be even more frenzied than the newcomers, because they knew just how immense the help and improvement would be for their strength.

Right beside them, the eight gene warriors, all of them class C, were already filled with envy. The待遇 was simply too good. They wanted to go too.

The temptation of becoming stronger was just too great.

Everyone was staring fixedly at Tang Shen. With such a huge temptation, surely you could not refuse it.

“That’s exactly the problem. I don’t have time,” Tang Shen said with a shrug. “So you should just cash it out. I’m not joining any of this training. My time is mine to spend. Don’t assign me tasks either unless it’s truly unavoidable and mandatory, like one of the contracts, say, participating in a unified combat exercise. That would be fine.”

Ye Ping: “...”

Everyone else: “...”

The director behind the surveillance screen: “...”

Yes, that was right. They had crashed again, and into the filthiest ditch imaginable.

If asked who the strangest person they had ever met in their lives was, they might have needed to think about it before. Now, without hesitation, they would point to the calm and composed Tang Shen standing before them.

A million alpacas thundered through their minds, and not just once, but in an endless back-and-forth loop.

I have no time. You should just cash it out.

That was the key message they had heard, and everyone was dumbfounded.

Had Ye Ping not made himself clear?

Of course he had. Those gene warriors with plenty of combat experience were clearly envious, yet Tang Shen not only remained unmoved, he had also revealed even more: ordinary tasks were not something he would take part in, only mandatory missions with hard requirements.

Ye Ping remained silent for a long while before finally forcing out a line. “Student Tang Shen, what do you normally do? You only get contribution points by taking missions, and only then can you become stronger!”

All gene warriors rushed to take missions. Missions were scarce. Most of the time, they simply formed teams and went out to hunt fierce beasts. That was a standing kind of mission: even the factions behind them would purchase fierce beast cores in exchange for contribution points, as well as the meat of the beasts.

And of course, the most important things were the outside world, certain special secret realms, rare herbs, and the occasional stroke of luck.

If you became a gene warrior, naturally you had to grow stronger, because only by growing stronger could you obtain more: power, wealth, beauty, all of it.

Tang Shen said, “Of course I stay home and play games! What else would I do? Going out is so troublesome. And it’s dangerous.”

Ye Ping: “...”

Everyone else: “...”

The director behind the surveillance screen: “...”

Stay home and play games. Going out is dangerous.

What you said makes so much sense. Why was it that they wanted to refute him, yet could not find the strength to do so?

Tang Shen was probably the most unambitious gene warrior they had ever seen. He clearly possessed such terrifying talent, and yet... and yet...

Ye Ping did not know whether to laugh or cry. He admitted that in the past thirty-odd years, he had never met anyone so exasperating. The key was that you could not even refute him.

Because the outside world truly was dangerous. Death could come at any moment, which was why gene warriors had to form teams and go out exploring.

But if they did not go out, how were they supposed to become stronger? Where were contribution points supposed to come from? Where was the money for resources and the contribution points to buy them supposed to come from?

These were simply the daily realities of gene warriors, things ordinary people would never dare imagine.

Standing at different heights, with different identities, one naturally faced different things, and one’s ideals would never be the same.