The girl’s hands, limited by her petite frame, were also quite small and delicate.
But her fingers were long and slender, with beautiful lines, and her knuckles were clearly defined.
Red-jie, being observant, even noticed a few small calluses.
“You’ve done hard labor before?”
“Yeah, I have,” Shen Ning answered truthfully. “I did it before I started school.”
“That’s a good thing, means you’re strong,” Red-jie said with a laugh. “Your girlfriend must really like that about you.”
Shen Ning nodded, unconsciously straightening her back and puffing out her chest, but quickly shrank back down.
She had wanted to brag about how last time, she managed to knock her girlfriend out just with brute strength alone, but then thought about it and realized there wasn’t really anything worth showing off about that.
“Strength is just the foundation. You might be lacking a bit in skill,” Red-jie turned her head and called out, “Xiao Xia, bring that beginner’s manual over here.”
Shen Ning had assumed the beginner’s manual would be an entry-level handbook, but when the book was handed to her, she realized its title was “Beginner’s Hands”.
The “manual” simply referred to a book.
As soon as she opened to the first page, the girl was stunned. It was filled with illustrations and annotations, as if a whole new world had suddenly opened up before her.
“Now this is a true secret manual,” the Sexually Repressed Shadow sighed.
Those little books are just for fun anyway. After all, you have to draw both characters and plot, and the artists themselves might not even have any real experience.
Like I said, the real skills are here.
“You take a look first,” Red-jie said with a cheerful grin as she got up. “I’ll go pour you a glass of water. If there’s anything you don’t understand, just ask.”
The lone wolf was lying on the ground.
Stars spun before his eyes, his head was dizzy and buzzing, and he’d lost two teeth.
He should be thankful for his own off-kilter aura. Even though it got torn apart, it still dampened the impact of those little pink fists. Otherwise, that punch could have killed him.
But standing up again in the short term was definitely out of the question.
“I thought you were supposed to be tough,” Xu Chuyao flexed her small hand. “You only know one move, and you still act all high and mighty.”
Seeing the boss sprawled on the ground, the little lackey surrendered on the spot, raising his hands higher than the trees on the roadside.
“Don’t kill me! I surrender! I’ll tell you everything!”
Xu Chuyao called out to two male students: “Tie them up and bring them back.”
When they returned to the little music hall from before, the battle here had already ended.
The three rookies had only reached the first stage, not even one at the peak, and under the suppression of two second-stage leaders, they hadn’t even managed a spark of resistance.
The only real member could tell he was no match and surrendered without hesitation.
As for the audience members in the seats, none of them got involved, but they weren’t exactly cooperative either.
“I came to listen to music, what are you all doing!”
“Don’t fight, don’t fight, what’s happening!”
“Fine, I must’ve gone to the wrong place. Can you let me through? I haven’t even brought in my laundry from this morning.”
It wasn’t until Xu Chuyao returned with her group and took out a little loudspeaker: “Everyone be quiet, come back to Shengling Academy with me, or I’ll tell the teacher!”
“A third-stage peak teacher!”
At the last sentence, the crowd fell silent instantly.
While reading the book, Shen Ning did come across a few parts she didn’t understand.
But she was too embarrassed to ask.
“How is it, anything you don’t get?”
Red-jie came back, startling Shen Ning, who quickly pressed her skirt down to block a sudden draft.
“No, nothing I don’t get, just skimmed through a bit,” she said earnestly. “This kind of book is better read back at home.”
“Ah, you don’t have to be that serious… Want another drink?”
“No, um, by the way, does this place usually get a lot of people?”
To avoid dwelling on the book, the girl decisively changed the subject.
With all the hints and implications, she already understood—this was a girls’ bar.
Red-jie sat down across from her. “Depends. Sometimes it’s lively, sometimes not. Some people keep coming, some stop showing up after a while.”
“Why?”
“Many reasons, but mainly because they go off to have kids.”
Shen Ning was a bit taken aback. “Go off to have kids?”
Why would that be? Isn’t this a girls’ bar?
“Some people are just like that by nature, others want to try their luck,” Red-jie picked up an empty wine glass and wiped it, speaking helplessly. “You know, hoping for that one-in-ten-thousand chance.”
There are no gates to awakening Spirit Power—if you’re born with it, you have it; if not, you don’t. Anyone can take a shot at the lottery by having a child. If you win, the whole family instantly prospers, and the entire neighborhood will scramble to get a connection.
“In our city, it’s not so bad,” said a passing shop assistant. “But in those mountain villages, especially the really poor places, families will have a dozen kids or more, and if none of them awaken, they just keep having more, until they can’t anymore.”
Shen Ning was shocked. “That many children, how do they even feed them all?”
She knew that the miner uncles’ families usually had only one or two kids, and it was already a struggle to provide for everyone.
“They manage,” the shop assistant replied offhandedly. “Pick up whatever they can to eat, at least a few of them will survive.”
So that’s what “managing” meant.
Then Red-jie suddenly said, “Some families don’t even bother raising them. If the child doesn’t awaken, they just find a place to get rid of them.”
Shen Ning opened her mouth, hearing the thumping of her own heart.
The miner uncle who first found her had said that when he discovered her, she was still a baby, lying in a shabby bamboo basket. The basket had been placed in a place like a daycare, and the staff thought some miner had left her there temporarily, so they brought her in.
She ate communal rice porridge for years, and since no one ever came for her, they realized she was an abandoned orphan.
Maybe she really was from a residential area near some mining district, born to a couple hoping to change their fate by having a child, only to give birth to an ordinary baby after ten months, and, disappointed, left her on that hopeless patch of land.
“It doesn’t matter,” the Sexually Repressed Shadow suddenly said. “Just a thorn in your heart, that’s all.”
When Shen Ning heard this, she wondered if maybe she would find out in the future.
“I can’t tell you, temporal continuity principles. Anyway, you have a wife now, why worry about other things… Hey, speaking of wives, yours just showed up.”
The Sexually Repressed Shadow said this because the girl’s phone had just rung.
[Chuyao Doesn’t Want to Eat Hands: @Everyone, today’s operation was a huge success, the triumphant return!
@Shen Ning, you come back too!]
“I have to go.”
Red-jie only charged her for the pickled radish water. The book, no matter what it was about, was a gift, and she even said the shop had a huge collection, and Shen Ning was welcome to come back for more advanced reading anytime.
After stepping out of the shop, the girl took a deep breath, hid the “Beginner’s Hands” manual under her clothes, and hurried to the roadside to catch a ride.
“I’m just a little, little, little bird~ I want to fly, fly, but can’t fly high~~” “When I search and search, search and search, for a warm embrace~ Is that too much to ask?”
The Broken Shadow clung to the car window, singing, reminding the girl and the other shadow that it was now noon.