CH003

The living conditions in Jing City were not that great. At least compared to what this town was going to turn into in the future, it was like comparing a straw to a thick oak tree.

It was too different.

His house was in the better parts of town and they had better access to many things in the town.

It was still early in 2009 and land was not as expensive and valuable, but it was not cheap either.

The 3000-square-foot plot was divided into sections with the house covering most of the plot. That is huge, but if you consider that much of that space was occupied by the restaurant, it was not much.

But it was enough for his mother and him.

The only problem was that soon, the rent would go up and they were bound to be forced to move somewhere else.

Lu Fan looked at the small vegetable garden that his mother maintained and could not help but grow a bit emotional.

He missed the taste of these seemingly insignificant 'weeds', as he used to call them in his 'younger' days.

Putting his nostalgic feelings aside, Lu Fan used the back stairs to go to the upper floor which they used as their living space.

His mother was busy and it was best not to disturb her now. She was still young and could handle everything with relative ease.

The living room was very plain but the cheap and improvised decorations made him feel at home. Most of these things were destined to be sold or disposed of to save on space in the near future.

But that was that. He found his way to his bedroom and with a few steps his image was reflected by a mirror.

Were his looks always this good? Mmh, maybe they could be put to use somewhere.

He looked above his head and was left speechless.

An Xing'er was a monster and he did not think that he could compare to her even in his prime, but was the difference between people so big?

Leaving aside the fact that he had no talent whatsoever, what was the meaning of having only four skills?

And they were basically everything he had done since he came to.

[Memory +50], [Deduction +3], [Observation +2], [Walking +5].

What was this? Even if nothing else counts, shouldn't he have basic skills like [Reading] and [Writing]?

Lu Fan did not believe it. Or rather, he did not dare believe it. Was he going to have to start working from zero? Impossible!

He hurriedly pulled the books in his bag as he scattered them on his bed and with a solemn look started reading a passage.

Everything was fine and it did not feel like anything changed. So why was there no tag?

Looking at his reflection again, Lu Fan saw a white [Reading +1] tag and he sighed in relief.

It looked like his skills were still there and it's just that his cheat did not recognize them. He had to put them to use if he wanted a tag.

But this also raised another question. Just how proficient would one have to be to get a tag? It would be best if it was like those novel MCs who just need to touch something to get proficient enough but Lu Fan highly doubted it.

If that was the case, he would have already had these measly skills.

But that could wait.

Lu Fan went to the corner of his bed and with a raise of his mattress, he retrieved a rather worn-out envelope. This was his piggy bank.

Counting, he had somehow managed to collect 3700 Yuan. That was a huge sum. Sad that it could only afford a month's worth of tutoring.

Lu Fan carefully held the cash as he used his reflection to interact with his tags.

Of all the skills he had, there were barely any that he could actively feel a difference in, but he figured that it was just fine. What he needed to find out was the cost of changing the attributes of the tags.

With bated breath, he clicked on the plus sign beside [Reading] and he saw the cash on hand disappear.

It was truly shocking.

Luckily, a tag appeared above his head [3690] while his [Reading +2], seemed to have gone up by an attribute.

*Phew*

He did the same to all the other skills and was basically sure that one attribute only cost 10 yuan.

This was a seemingly cheap price to pay for an increase in attributes, but one had to know that every action one did would somehow turn into a skill.

At least at this point, all active actions and reactions that required a certain level of proficiency had turned into a skill.

That meant that he could get hundreds of thousands of tags if he set his mind to it. If all tags required 10 yuan per attribute, then that was too expensive.

Now that that was out of the way, it was time to address the elephant in the room.

HIS CASH TURNED INTO A TAG!!

There were so many things that could be deduced from this but the most important thing was that this meant that he could use tags as inventory.

How sick was that? And that was not the end of it.

Simple things like pens and pencils only had labels, but he had noticed some things.

Something like the bulb above him had a plus sign too [Simple Light Bulb +1]. It was too amazing.

What was going to happen if he tried adding attributes? But Lu Fan did not hurry to add attributes. What would he tell his mother if the bulb somehow turned into a futuristic LED bulb?

It was also a waste of money. He did not have enough to begin with. It was better to save for tags that he really needed.

Something like [Memory] and [Deduction] were worth investing in. He needed to think of ways to make money, ways that would work well in 2009-2010.