Role-Playing a Dual Personality as a Background Character in a Manga

Chapter 115

At 6:07 p.m., inside Huangtie City.

Ji Qing and the others arrived smoothly in Huangtie City. After saying goodbye to the three of them, Xie Chang’an hurried off to the place where he was meant to meet the client. Even before leaving, he still remembered to turn back and shout, "You have to tell me where you’re meeting up!"

Xie Chang’an sounded rather excited. Hearing that, Ji Qing could only tug helplessly at the corner of his mouth. He thought: Why does it feel like I’m the only one who isn’t excited right now? Is running into acquaintances and then teaming up with them for a commission really that thrilling?

Ji Qing suddenly felt old.

Jiang Cuo proposed eagerly, "In that case, shall we get something to eat first?"

"Other than eating, can you think of anything else?"

After hearing that, Jiang Cuo hesitantly raised a hand. "Um... sleeping?"

Ji Qing: "..."

Jiang Cuo’s life might actually be going rather comfortably. Ji Qing cast him a weary glance, then sighed softly. "Then let’s eat first. Xie Chang’an should be back soon enough. We can just send him the restaurant location when he returns."

"All right," Jiang Cuo answered promptly.

At that moment, Zhou Que, who had been scrolling through his Terminal the whole time, finally raised it and said excitedly to the two of them, "I’ve already been looking for a place for us to eat! Ji Qing, what do you think of this one? You should both be able to handle spicy food, right? This place has an extreme-spice challenge, and I think—"

"No," Ji Qing refused mercilessly.

"No, no. Absolutely not!" Jiang Cuo shook his head like a rattle-drum.

He wanted to enjoy a good meal, not ask for trouble. Life was already hard enough. If he had to torment himself even in food, clothing, shelter, and travel, he might as well run straight out of the city and face Aberrants head-on. At least Aberrants could be killed.

Zhou Que felt deeply regretful at that response, but he did not say anything more.

After all, not everyone liked challenging themselves, and he knew that his tendency to do whatever came to mind often caused trouble for other people. Though in most cases, the mess was cleaned up by Shao Huayu, and after that Zhou Que would suffer through one of Shao Huayu’s lectures.

Come to think of it... Zhou Que belatedly realized that this seemed to be the first time he had teamed up with people other than Brother Huayu since parting ways with him. But could Xie Chang’an and the others even count as "other people"?

Zhou Que only half understood.

At Jiang Cuo’s suggestion, the three of them headed toward a Chinese restaurant on the Terminal network that was receiving wave after wave of glowing reviews. Thinking about how the last time he had deliberately gone to a Chinese restaurant had also been with Jiang Cuo, Xie Chang’an, and the others, Ji Qing could not help feeling a trace of nostalgia.

Once they were seated in a private room at the restaurant, Ji Qing casually skimmed through the menu. Relying on instinct, he read out, "Guobaorou, candied sweet potatoes, Di San Xian... what do you two want?"

"Two bowls of rice," Zhou Que said simply, raising his hand.

"Let me see..." While scanning the menu, Jiang Cuo muttered hesitantly, "Eh, there do not seem to be many green vegetables here. Then how about we add a plate of vegetables with dipping sauce? It looks pretty green, so it should be nutritious, right?"

"Mm." Ji Qing nodded calmly.

He closed the menu with one hand and said casually to the waiter beside him, "We’ll have those dishes we just mentioned, plus seven bowls of rice."

The restaurant waiter nodded at once and soon left the private room.

A long silence immediately settled over the room.

Ji Qing leaned back against his chair by reflex and let out a long breath. Although it was late spring now, the weather in the north was still cold. The private room was filled with warm heat, and the air carried the fragrance of chrysanthemum tea.

Ever since the second semester began, the wallets of the Class S students had gradually grown much fuller.

Once a Hunter commission was completed, the client would pay a certain sum of money or exchange it for items of equal value. In most cases, however, the odds of encountering the latter were very low. One function of the Hunter’s Guild was to serve as a middleman and provide transaction guarantees, while another was to rate the difficulty of commissions, so that novice Hunters would not die needlessly.

Ji Qing was already more or less familiar with this entire process.

In some respects, Xie Chang’an was exceptionally suited to becoming a Hunter, and also exceptionally suited to advancing into Class S. Although Xie Chang’an had enrolled in Ability High School, he actually had no Ability, and the teachers there also lacked the ability to teach someone like him. The Hunter system, on the other hand, did not impose the same strict Ability requirements that government institutions did.

On paper, Xie Chang’an’s Ability was poor, but since failure in a commission did not require him to pay compensation, quite a few clients were willing to give him a chance.

Once Xie Chang’an made a name for himself in the future, all of that discrimination would vanish like smoke. It would become nothing more than the difficult hardships of the legendary S-rank Hunter Xie Chang’an’s past. Given how people were, someone might even compile it into a biography one day.

"Tsk..." Ji Qing could not help clicking his tongue.

Was he not doing well in every respect? Other than Xie Chang’an’s still rigid and dull personality, Ji Qing could find little else to criticize. But for a hot-blooded shounen comic, what readers cared about was certainly not Xie Chang’an’s future prospects, but what he possessed right now.

What kind of comic was Yuexia really trying to draw?

Ji Qing’s thoughts drifted in that direction. If the point had only been to draw Xie Chang’an’s growth arc, then the first stage had already reached a satisfying completion. But Yuexia’s ambition clearly did not stop at the kind of "completion" that was already within easy reach.

"Valedictorian—"

Jiang Cuo’s voice suddenly reached Ji Qing’s ear, deliberately drawn out.

Ji Qing turned to look. Jiang Cuo waved his Terminal and said casually, "About that commission I mentioned to you on the train—the client says he wants to meet us tomorrow to talk over the details."

That sort of thing happened often after Hunters accepted a commission.

Not every Hunter commission officially began the instant it was accepted. Quite a few required the Hunter and the client to reach an agreement first before the commission formally started. During that process, the client would assess the Hunter’s character and add a few extra conditions to the commission, while the Hunter could evaluate its difficulty and decide whether or not to accept it.

"Then let’s meet," Ji Qing said calmly. "And while we’re at it, we can go to the Hunter’s Guild tomorrow and officially register our team."

"All right~" Jiang Cuo again stretched out the last syllable.

His fingers flew rapidly across the light-screen of his Terminal as he typed out several lines, then cheered frankly, "This is great! It really is better teaming up with your own people!"

The moment Jiang Cuo said that, the other two people in the private room immediately looked at him.

"Hm?" Zhou Que tilted his head in confusion.

"Sigh..." Ji Qing shook his head helplessly.

Ji Qing naturally understood what point was exciting Jiang Cuo so much.

Registering a team at the Hunter’s Guild was one of the guarantees the Guild provided to Hunters. Normally, the payment for a Hunter commission was sent directly to the Hunter Account that accepted the commission. Hunters could form teams on their own, but for teams officially registered at the Hunter’s Guild, the commission reward would be divided equally among all the Hunters who took part.

Ji Qing and the others would not need to haggle over it afterward, so they might as well split it evenly from the start.

But for many Hunters, the distribution of rewards after a team commission ended was a troublesome matter. There were always some Hunters who felt they had done more work, or that others had contributed less, which led to conflicts among team members. There were even cases where the Hunter who received the reward simply disappeared with it.

Even so, equal distribution was still something many Hunters resisted.

Jiang Cuo had clearly experienced something similar, which was why he wanted to grab a classmate and form a team to complete commissions. At the moment, they were still high school students, and many Hunters who had already spent years out in society would use that to push their pay downward. It was far better to team up directly with classmates.

Realizing something at once, Zhou Que asked in a sympathetic tone, "You did not run into something awful, did you?"

"Do not even mention it." Jiang Cuo immediately wilted, then put on a face that looked as though he were about to cry. "Do you think I did not try finding other people to cooperate with before I found Xie Chang’an? The moment they saw I was a high school student, they stopped bothering with me at all, sob sob sob..."

At the end of that sentence, Jiang Cuo turned the question back on Zhou Que. "Didn’t you run into this kind of problem too?"

"No." Zhou Que replied bluntly, "This is my third A-Rank Commission. The first was with Brother Huayu and the others. The second I did alone. But if I have to say it, the client for my second commission did not ask to meet privately either. It just started by default."

"You are impressive," Jiang Cuo said, his eyes lighting up.

He instantly realized that Zhou Que’s strength was anything but ordinary. But if Zhou Que had encountered an A-Rank client who had not required a meeting and had simply treated the commission as having already begun, then presumably his second commission did not require close contact with the client.

Jiang Cuo quickly turned his question toward Ji Qing. "Valedictorian, have you had much contact with other Hunters?"

"No."

Ji Qing answered coldly.

He had been busy with Dawn Society missions the whole time before, and only squeezed in low-level Hunter commissions when he had the time. He had not had any opportunity to interact with other Hunters at all. Even if Ji Qing did have the time, however, he would still do his best to complete commissions alone.

Jiang Cuo listened quietly and came to a silent conclusion: then something really was off.

On the train, the first thing the Valedictorian noticed had been the client’s name, and only afterward had he looked at the commission itself. Jiang Cuo did not believe that was a coincidence. But since it was not something he had learned from other Hunters, could Miao Weiyong possibly be someone the Valedictorian knew?

Just as Jiang Cuo was preparing to ask, the door to the private room suddenly opened. Xie Chang’an stood outside, poking his head in with some hesitation. "I did not come too late, did I?"

"The dishes are not even here yet," Zhou Que said casually.

"My friend, you got here pretty quickly," Jiang Cuo said in surprise.

After hearing that, Xie Chang’an quickly took the empty seat in the room. He casually took off his coat, hung it over the back of the chair, and then followed Ji Qing’s example by pouring himself a cup of tea.

Ji Qing raised a brow at that, but said nothing.

The very next second after Xie Chang’an entered the room, the waiter arrived pushing their food cart. For a time, the only sounds left in the private room were the clinks of bowls and chopsticks being moved around.

Zhou Que had long since picked up his rice bowl and begun rapidly shoveling meat into his mouth.

Seeing that, Xie Chang’an also simply picked up his chopsticks. Only Jiang Cuo still felt a bit unwilling to let the matter go. He could not help turning to Ji Qing and asking the question that had been nagging him the whole time. "Then, Valedictorian, how do you know Miao Weiyong? Did you take one of his commissions before?"

Ji Qing paused after hearing that.

Putting on a casual air, he said, "I thought you were going to ask something serious. Although I really have not interacted much with Hunters, I still read the Hunter Forum. That client is one of the less troublesome ones."

"If you run into a client who causes fewer issues, then hurry up and rank up. Is that not perfectly normal?"

Ji Qing cast Jiang Cuo a helpless glance. "Judging by how you looked like you wanted to ask but did not quite want to ask, you did not go imagining something strange, did you?"

Jiang Cuo scratched his head awkwardly. "I thought maybe the Valedictorian knew the client..."

"How could it be so easy to run into someone you know in this world?" Zhou Que said around a mouthful of rice after already finishing half a bowl. "If I had to say it, I know someone surnamed Miao too. That does not mean the two people surnamed Miao are related."

Jiang Cuo hesitated. "Miao does seem to be a relatively uncommon surname, though?"

After swallowing his mouthful of rice, Zhou Que blinked frankly and said, "Uncommon? I do not think so."

After saying that, Zhou Que once again threw himself into the business of destroying the rice. Seeing that Zhou Que had no intention of continuing the conversation, Jiang Cuo gave up on pursuing it further as well. Still, he felt that the Valedictorian’s reaction back then had been a little strange...

But the Valedictorian’s explanation sounded reasonable, so was it just his imagination? Jiang Cuo wondered inwardly.

"By the way, Jiang Cuo—" Ji Qing suddenly spoke.

"Hm?"

"You seem not to have said a single word in the class group chat since the day you reported in," Ji Qing said calmly, looking straight at Jiang Cuo. His tone was clear as he asked, "Did something hold you up? Or rather, what exactly were you busy with before you ran into Xie Chang’an?"

The moment Ji Qing said that, the other two, who had been busily eating, both looked at Jiang Cuo at the same time.

Compared with "Ji Qing might know Miao Weiyong," the question of "Why has Jiang Cuo never spoken in the class group chat?" was far more interesting to them as his classmates.

This is bad. Jiang Cuo instantly broke out in a cold sweat.

He hurriedly laughed dryly. "Hahaha, because I’m just naturally not the type who likes chatting online, hahaha..."

Xie Chang’an immediately refuted him. "But I do not think that is the reaso—"

Jiang Cuo instantly surrendered. "My friend, please do not expose me!"

"Huh?" Still failing to understand the situation, Zhou Que blinked in confusion once again. He thought it over from left to right, but still could not come up with an answer, so he could only continue eating honestly. While shoveling down his food, Zhou Que secretly glanced at Ji Qing beside him.

A smile of successful scheming had quietly curved at the corner of Ji Qing’s lips.

Understood.

Zhou Que reached enlightenment at once.

As long as he followed Ji Qing, he would win in the end.

That was the "Acquaintances-Are-Invincible Theory" Brother Huayu had taught him.

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