Damn, y'all rich people using Macs. But why is Chrome the most used browser...Firefox gang rise up! Also, I've been trying to avoid using the word retard, but sometimes it just really isn't natural. Hopefully I don't offend anyone..
Huang Ji had learned a few secrets about the human body. The reason he was able to defeat Wang Zhen and Hu Feng was precisely because he could spot their weak points. Humans were still too fragile. Even a person who appeared very fit still had a variety of deficiencies and weak points all over their body.
While saving Dr. Liang on the mountain, Huang Ji had learned to search for weak points. He could clearly sense the resultant effects that would be created from hitting certain parts of the body; what part of the body would cause a sudden loss of breath upon impact, or what part would cause a muscle cramp. It was like pressure points, he could easily find vital striking points!
A lot of vital points were not very well known and disregarded. People were all familiar with vital points like the brain, heart, and throat, but Huang Ji able to find hundreds of other bizarre vital points on the human body... One of such points was a true dim mak1--the death touch--and there was more than just one!
Huang Ji didn't want to kill anyone, but if he'd really wanted to, all he had to do at the time was give a heavy strike to a certain point on Wang Zhen and Hu Feng's bodies. As long as the angle of his strike was accurate enough, they most likely would have died from a stroke! Even if they didn't die, they would have been paralyzed for life... In more extreme scenarios, people with frail bodies even had terrifying vital points that would result in instant death upon contact! Lu Zongmin, for one, had two such fatal vital points on the surface of his body. One point was always present, while the other would appear and vanish at times; both of which would result in instant death upon contact!
Some of the locations of these death points were very obscure and varied from person to person; they weren't always in the same spot for every person. As a matter of fact, even the time of day and the position of the body would result in a shift of the location of this 'death point'. Sometimes, they would even temporarily vanish, or the chance of death would be reduced, resulting in only injury or paralysis. This was why is was impossible to compile the vital points into some 'secret manual'. All Huang Ji could do was react on the spot, finding and using them on the fly.
"If there are vital points, or maybe I should call them negative junctions, then the human body must also possess positive junctions. There are a few dozen of these beneficial junctions on the surface of the body, but if you include the ones located within the body, there are hundreds of them! It's just, their precise effects are still very vague. I need to systematically study medicine to learn them."
These thoughts ran through his mind as he swiftly opened the safe. Taking out ten thousand RMB, he then dragged the safe to a different area and buried it into the ground again.
It was simply too heavy. There was three million in the safe. The money alone weighed 91 pounds! Not to mention the additional weight of the safe. Huang Ji could only drag it around behind him. Considering it was impossible to take home all this money, he was just here to move the cash to a different location...and grab a bit to use while he was at it.
"I need my own private residence, but with my current situation, I can't use any of this money. Even if I won the lottery, grandpa would put away the money that I'd won. I need to think of a way to gain independence first."
Huang Ji took care of the scene and then went back home to hide the ten thousand RMB. He knew that the most pressing matter right now was to gain independence; but as an intellectually disabled teen, how could he convince his grandfather?
His grandfather was an extremely stubborn man, but also loved him deeply. It would be very difficult to sway his mind. As for pretending that his intelligence had improved and his brain had slowly gotten better; this would have been fine originally, but due to getting involved with the kidnapping case, it wasn't a good idea for him to suddenly recover any time soon.
The biggest reason he was able to walk away from the kidnapping case without any trouble was because of his identity as an intellectually challenged individual. If he was suddenly a normal person again, it might create complications. Therefore, he had no choice for now but to continue playing the role of a slow-witted child with an IQ below eighty and a mild intellectual disability...
"School! I didn't participate in the High School Entrance Exam. I won't amount to anything in the future and will be fully dependent on Grandpa. He's always been worried about this. There's no one left in the family. Grandpa is worried that I'll have no one to rely on once he's gone... I need to think of a way for Grandpa to agree to let me go to school in the city."
The school Huang Ji was thinking of attending was honestly just any school in the city. A lot of vocational schools didn't even require a National College Entrance Examination2 (NCEE) score. With a junior secondary school academic record, the only other thing they needed was tuition. Worst case scenario, even some place like the New East Cuisine School or Blueshit Institute of Technology3 was fine!
"In the first place, Grandpa's hope for me is to learn something that'll allow to to make money and take care of my in the future. The key is making Grandpa feel safe about letting me go to the city by myself and stay at the school dorm..."
First of all, Huang Ji could eliminate the possibility of him taking the train by himself and attending school in an unfamiliar city. There was no way that was happening. He needed at least one person from his village to take him there, and they would have to be able to watch out for him at school or in the city. This was essential for him to persuade his grandfather.
"But who..." Huang Ji found that it was impossible for him to think of anyone by sitting around. He needed to go do a bit of observation.
The next morning, Huang Ji could be seen strolling around the village, looking around everywhere and occasionally blanking out on the spot. Everybody was already used to it. How many years had they lived around him, who didn't know his circumstance? He was always like this, so they just greeted him with smiles. The occasional person would even invite him in for a cup of water or some snacks. Despite this, even after a few days, Huang Ji was still unable to find a suitable candidate; that is, until the 15th of May, when the village chief's youngest daughter brought her boyfriend back home.
The village chief's youngest daughter was named Fan Lingli. She had good looks and an outgoing personality. She had studied in Shanghai, and then found a job in the same city. At the moment, she was the manager of a Heilan Home4 clothing store in some mall.
She was already 28 years old. The reason for this trip home was because she'd found a boyfriend. They'd been going out for two years already and the chief had always wanted to meet him. So, Fan Lingli came home together with her boyfriend.
"Huang Ji? Come on in. Have a seat." Fan Lingli had brought with her a lot of snacks and small gifts. She was surround by a group of children. Upon seeing Huang Ji spacing out at the entrance, she dragged him into the house.
Huang Ji realized that she was probability the best candidate, and so he pretended to talk to her in a slightly slow-witted manner. Fan Lingli didn't show any annoyance, listening to him patiently and even occasionally asking him about how things had been in the village. Huang Ji answered all of her questions in an orderly manner, though his vocabulary was a bit rough and his tone of voice was blunt. He also mentioned how his strange illness had gotten better and that he wasn't always fainting now. In the later conversation, he expressed his nostalgia of his school days.
"What, you're not in school anymore?" Fan Lingli gave Huang Ji a pat on the shoulder. Huang Ji stopped there and didn't continue with the topic.
Her boyfriend walked over at this moment. Seeing an older child like Huang Ji, he said with a smile, "Who's this, Lingli? Introduce us!"
"Oh, he's a child from my village. Huang Ji, say hi to Uncle Zheng." Fan Lingli introduced with a smile.
The man was having none of it, "Am I that old?"
But Huang Ji still called him in a well-mannered fashion,"Uncle Zheng." In reality, this wasn't wrong either. Fan Linli was a generation older than him, she just preferred if Huang Ji didn't call her Aunt.
"My name's Zheng Xuan. Call me Xuan." Zheng Xuan said, lowering himself down a generation5.
Huang Ji looked him over, already gaining a general understanding of him.
"Well well well...a hacker." Huang Ji knew crystal clear about Zheng Xuan's true occupation. He was a hacker, and a very good one at that. The kind who could easily blackmail an elite stock brokerage firm from Wall Street.
"The dark web? What's that?" Huang Ji could also see that Zheng Xuan had a dark web account containing seventy thousand bitcoins, along with a JP Morgan bank account with one million US dollars.
This was his first time seeing someone with a dark web account. Huang Ji started searching through his memories, hoping to understand what was the dark web. If he had enough time, he also wanted to gain some knowledge related to computer skills. Unfortunately, his memory reading speed was still too slow. He could only read one second of memories per second.
It was possible to learn knowledge like this, but it really wasn't very efficient. Key knowledge could be acquired through this method, but when it came to more fundamental knowledge, it was faster for him to flip through books.
Building a strong foundation by studying normally first, and then observing experts to learn more high-end, critical knowledge, allowing him to 'breakthrough bottlenecks'; this was the most efficient method Huang Ji could think of.
"Huang Ji, are you...sticking around for lunch? Look at how hungry you are!" laughed Fan Lingli. Huang Ji had spaced out for too long. The neighbours had all left already, leaving him as the only outsider. Fan Lingli and the others thought that he wanted to stick around to eat. After all, the family had prepared an entire table of food for her return.
Huang Ji realized that he'd caused a misunderstanding. Collecting his thoughts together, he wiped his drool and shook his head, "I'll go home to eat."
"Hey now, go tell you grandfather...Actually, call your grandfather over too. We'll all eat together here." said the village chief. Huang Ji pretended to decline while following the village chief back home, and then went back with his grandfather for a free meal.
The old man and the village chief had a very close relationship, it wasn't much of a big deal. The two families got a long very well and even had a bit of alcohol. As an outsider and Fan Lingli's boyfriend, Zheng Xuan naturally did his best to present himself. He was truly in love with Fan Lingli, they both loved each other; this Huang Ji was certain of!
Zheng Xuan was originally a very solitary person. It was only after meeting Fan Lingli that he became more outgoing by her influence. Ignoring the legality of his real occupation, he was a pretty great person in all other regards. For the sake of Fan Lingli, Zheng Xuan had even gone out and got a translation job as a cover, translating English works for a publisher.
The village chief's family was very happy with him. Other than not having a very healthy looking body, everything about him was pretty good. Especially the fact that he didn't have any bad habits. He did drink, but he wasn't an alcoholic, and he didn't smoke.
The village chief's family was happy with him, but Huang Ji was also pretty satisfied with him. He was satisfied with the fact that...Zheng Xuan knew a lot! Zheng Xuan was fluent in English and Japanese, and also knew a bit of Spanish and Russian. His hacking skills were ranked #683 in the world while also being knowledgeable about electrical work and some mechanical repair work. Huang Ji could learn a lot of great things from him.
After finishing lunch, the old man and the village chief were in the yard, chatting over some tea. Huang Ji found an opportunity to be alone with Zheng Xuan. He was in the middle of repairing the Fan family's television.
"You're amazing, Xuan. You can do everything." said Huang Ji, pretending to pay close attention.
Zheng Xuan had already taken apart the television, its parts littered across the floor. This was a very old television, there was no point in repairing it; even the chief had said that it was unnecessary. Zheng Xuan did this purely to project himself. He also had the skill to back it up, rapidly finding the key problem and fixing the television.
"Not really. There really is no point in fixing this TV. What I did is just a temporary solution. It's simply reached the end of its lifespan." Zheng Xuan said with a wry chuckle. He then proceeded to reassemble the television.
"Let me help you." said Huang Ji.
Zheng Xuan smiled without saying a word. He knew now that Huang Ji had a mild intellectual disability. He had sensed something off with Huang Ji's speech and had asked Fan Lingli in private. Consequently, he didn't take Huang Ji seriously when he offered his assistance.
The problem was, he had taken the television apart a bit too thoroughly, and it was a very old model. After working on it for a bit, he had to take out his phone and reassemble it following the pictures he'd taken earlier.
"Are you looking for this?" Huang Ji picked up the decoder.
Raising his head, Zheng Xuan saw the decoder and nodded his head, say, "Yeah!", before taking it and putting back in place. Upon finishing, he turned his head around to see that Huang Ji had already handed him the video amplifier. He paused for a moment before taking it over and installing it. Huang Ji then immediately handed him the next component to be installed.
This process was repeated over and over again. Huang Ji acted as an exceptional helper, handing over every part in the correct order. This allowed Zheng Xuan to save a huge amount of time, and the television was soon restored to its original state. Turning it on, the television program played as normal; it was fixed.
"You've...taken a TV apart before?" Zhen Xuan stood up and asked.
Huang Ji shook his head. Zheng Xuan asked again, "Then how did you know what I needed?"
"I watched you take it apart. Don't you just put it back together in the opposite order?" Huang Ji answered with a straightforward tone.
"I mean..." Zheng Xuan couldn't say anything. It's not like he was wrong, everybody knew that. The problem was, not everybody was capable of remembering the order they'd taken it apart, and then reassembling it back perfectly.
The more complex the machine, the harder it was to restore. Unless they were very familiar with the structure, the average person would have to organize the components by order of disassembly to facilitate reassembly. Another method was to take before and after photos to use as references for reassembly.
The components on the ground were scattered about randomly, and Huang Ji didn't have the photos. He knew how to reassemble the television after only watching him take it apart once; this was talent.
"Is he really a retard?" thought Zheng Xuan. He scratched his head and then took out a piece of paper, drawing on it six geometric shapes.
After numbering them, he asked, "Based on the pattern of the first and second drawing, which of these four drawings do you think belong in the same category as them?6" This was a simple intelligence test pretty much anyone with an average IQ could answer.
However, Huang Ji simply blinked and asked, "Huh? What are you talking about?"
Zheng Xuan smiled awkwardly: Man, he didn't even understand the question. He then explained the question in detail a few times, breaking it down and asking it two more times in a simpler format before Huang Ji gave an answer.
"You're correct! It's the last drawing." Zheng Xuan nodded his head. He understood now that Huang Ji may have had an intellectual disability, but he wasn't an idiot. He'd forgotten how Fan Lingli had told him that Huang Ji only had a mild intellectual disability.
"That's right, having a mild intellectual disability just meant that he was a bit slow-witted. In fact, these kinds of people tend to show exceptional ability in a certain area7; some have great musical sense, while others are very sensitive to numbers... Sometimes the talent they exhibit far surpasses the average person." Zhen Xuan thought to himself.
He was different from the villagers with prejudicial views who liked to treat a mild intellectual disability as severe retardation. He knew very well that some of them were simultaneously geniuses in certain areas.
Thinking for a moment, Zheng Xuan pulled out his laptop and quickly took it apart, laying the parts across the table. He then said with a smile, "Huang Ji, can you put it back together?"
"Why?" asked Huang Ji innocently.
"Um..." Zheng Xuan scratched his head. He thought to himself: Never mind, this is a bit too much for Huang Ji. This was just a sudden whim on his part to test Huang Ji.
Seeing that he was going giving up, Huang Ji then said, "Do you want my help?"
Zheng Xuan was surprised: He's a good kid. He's not treating this like some test, the only thing that crossed his mind was whether or not I needed help. It was the same with the TV...
"Yeah, I don't know how to put it back together anymore. Give me a hand." Zheng Xuan answered with a smile.
Huang Ji didn't say anything like, 'Why'd you take it apart if you don't know how to reassemble it', immediately getting to work and concentrating on reassembling the laptop. He moved quickly and steadily, perfectly reassembling the laptop whose parts were once scattered across the table.
Zheng Xuan was fascinated upon witnessing Huang Ji's exceptional affinity with machinery: Who says he's an idiot? While he was slow-witted in other areas, he just might have been a genius when it came to machinery.
......
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1. Commonly seen in Chinese martial arts fiction, where striking certain pressure points/meridians can paralyze or kill a person. Also started a wave of fake martial arts that you might have seen a video or two about on youtube.↩
2. The Chinese version of the SAT, cranked up to a 10. One of the most stressful momements in the lives of Chinese teens and their parents. You don't learn anything new in the last year of high school, it is spent entirely preparing for this test...I think, that's what I read in books...↩
3. One is a culinary school that became a meme after using a different school's vegetable field in an advertisement and pretending it was theirs. One became a meme for supposedly hacking into Google and other companies. Also for their massive advertisement campaigns.↩
4. Very famous Chinese clothing brand and company. I see them sponsor a lot of shows...↩
5. He says to call him something like 'Brother Xuan' which obviously doesn't translate very well into English, unless he's a monk.↩
6. Pretty common pattern recognition test. A more formal version of this kind of test is Raven's Progressive Matrices, where you find the missing piece in matricies of objects following certain patterns.↩
7. Savant Syndrome, where a person with mental disabilities exhibits exceptional abilities in certain areas. Though the context is a little wrong. I think Zheng Xuan/the author is confusing intellctual disability with autism. They are two seperate disorders.↩
Thanks for the chapter!
ReplyDeleteHuang Ji's starting to show his talents slowly but surely.