017 Buying a College Student as a Wife
At that moment, the numbers flickered!
Name: Chen Anquan
Age: 24
Strength: 1.38
Agility: 1.18
Spirit: 1
Constitution: 1.23
Unused Attribute Points: 0.01
What was there to hesitate about? He immediately put the point into Constitution!
In no time, Chen Anquan’s Constitution had reached 1.24!
Right then, he noticed his speed had increased by about five percent!
So it went—whenever his attribute panel saw any improvement, the first thing he did was to add it to Constitution.
As noon approached, Chen Anquan had been harvesting rice for over five hours straight. His attribute panel now read:
Name: Chen Anquan
Age: 24
Strength: 1.45
Agility: 1.25
Spirit: 1
Constitution: 1.38
Unused Attribute Points: 0
His strength now exceeded that of the average person by forty-five percent, his constitution by thirty-eight percent, and his agility by twenty-five percent. With these three attributes combined, he could easily match the work of two ordinary men.
“Young man! Time to eat!”
Just then, Laizi called out from the edge of the field.
Chen Anquan stopped, slowly straightening his back, which had long since gone stiff and numb. Panting, he turned to Laizi. “I’m exhausted!”
Laizi stood on the field ridge, holding a plastic bowl and a water bottle. His gaze swept over his own paddy. “This kid’s speed is really something! But it’s a pity—he only managed to harvest one mu this morning. Even if he does another mu in the afternoon, that’s just two mu. Looks like he won’t finish three as he claimed!”
Laizi wasn’t a bad man at heart; he just found Chen Anquan’s boasting a bit much.
Now, seeing that Chen Anquan had only managed one mu all morning, he muttered under his breath, “Forget it. Anyone who can finish two mu in a day is the best farmhand I’ve ever seen! I’ll give him two hundred yuan as a reward for his hard work.”
At that moment, Chen Anquan came up to stand below the ridge. “Uncle Laizi, could you please hand down the food and water?”
It wasn’t that Chen Anquan was unwilling to climb up the ridge—he was simply too exhausted.
He even felt a wave of weakness sweep over him.
A single mu is about three hundred thirty-three square meters and can yield a thousand catties of rice. Most farmers couldn’t harvest that much by hand in a day.
Laizi noted Chen Anquan’s short hair, soaked with sweat, his clothes stained yellow with perspiration, and his arms and calves flushed red. He felt a pang of guilt and crouched down to hand over the food and water. “Here you go.”
As he bent his knees, Chen Anquan, out of professional habit, noticed that Laizi couldn’t fully bend either knee, maintaining a forty-five degree angle, his face twisted in pain.
Chen Anquan made a silent note. “It seems Uncle Laizi’s knees are shot. No wonder he asked for my help.”
Laizi, still feeling bad, said, “Young man, you’re amazing—the fastest rice harvester I’ve ever seen your age. Tell you what, you don’t have to finish three mu—two will do. I’ll give you two hundred yuan for your trouble!”
“That won’t do!” Chen Anquan shook his head. “We had an agreement!”
“You!” Laizi was exasperated, thinking the boy was crazy. He turned on his heel and left, two large dogs following him, muttering, “Fool—turns down money, insists on working for free!”
Chen Anquan finished his meal quickly, then lay down on the field ridge, avoiding the sun, and drifted into a nap.
He had to admit, with all his attributes nearing one hundred fifty percent of a normal person’s, his recovery speed was astonishing.
Half an hour later, he woke up—his fatigue had vanished and he was back in peak form.
Though the wounds on his limbs hadn’t shown signs of healing, his stamina had returned in full.
By six in the evening, dusk had settled. Laizi returned to the field, dazed. “My god! Is he even human?”
At the very front of the long, crescent-shaped rice field, Chen Anquan had just finished cutting the final bundle.
He plopped down in the field, not caring about the hard stalks pressing into him. Supporting himself with both hands in the dry soil, he gazed up at the darkening sky. “Finally finished!”
Laizi stood trembling on the ground, his eyes vacant. “Are you even human? You finished two mu in a single afternoon!”
He had just witnessed an agricultural miracle.
He recalled seeing a TV show that pitted manual laborers against machines to test efficiency—Chen Anquan could have been a contestant!
He approached Chen Anquan, fished out a wad of bills from his concealed money pouch, counted out three hundred-yuan notes, and handed them over. “Here, I keep my word.”
Chen Anquan grinned, slipping the three hundred yuan into his pocket.
Three hundred yuan a day—he’d earned it with his life!
At that moment, Chen Anquan checked his attribute panel in his mind:
Name: Chen Anquan
Age: 24
Strength: 1.52
Agility: 1.32
Spirit: 1
Constitution: 1.52
Unused Attribute Points: 0
Skill: [Tai Chi LV0 (90/100)]
Strength and constitution were both more than fifty percent above normal. Did that make him superhuman?
Chen Anquan had noticed during the harvest that every time he improved his attributes, his speed increased visibly. As his stats grew, his efficiency didn’t just rise in a straight line—it climbed in a curve.
Pocketing his hard-earned three hundred yuan, Chen Anquan returned to his second uncle’s house.
His aunt had already prepared dinner.
When his uncle saw Chen Anquan dragging his weary steps home, he felt a pang of pity. “Anquan, I told you not to agree to that old bachelor’s request! He’s just a penny-pincher!”
His aunt chimed in, sympathizing with her free labor nephew. “That old man is no good, really—a beast!”
“You’ve both got Uncle Laizi wrong. He’s actually quite pitiful,” Chen Anquan said.
Uncle: “???”
Aunt: “!!!”
Chen Anquan explained, “He’s getting on in years, with no children to care for him, no wife for company, and his health isn’t great.”
He’d noticed, quite by chance, that Laizi’s knees were bad and he walked with a limp—he might even be a candidate for joint replacement.
Chen Anquan pulled three crumpled banknotes from his pocket. “Look.”
His uncle sprang to his feet, eyes bulging. “You finished all three mu?”
His aunt was astonished. “Impressive!”
His uncle spoke seriously. “Keep the money for yourself. You’re out of work now and you’ll need to save up for a wife. Don’t spend it carelessly.”
Chen Anquan gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Uncle, you must be joking. I have no parents, no car, no house—looks like I’m destined to become another Laizi.”
His aunt rolled her eyes. “I remember Laizi’s wife was a college graduate! She was the prettiest girl in our village—maybe even in her class! Sigh, if only Laizi had been more ambitious and let her have a child sooner, she might not have left him.”
Chen Anquan twitched at the corner of his mouth—he hadn’t expected such a remark from his aunt...
In the old days, trafficking in women and children was common. Many bachelors in remote mountain villages had to buy wives just to have descendants.
Some, if they were lucky, could even buy a college graduate as a wife.