Chapter 692 Unlimited (1/2)

After the sudden heavy blow, the old clam's surface glittered with light. A shapeless multicolored light spread in all directions.

Boom. The view in front of Gao Peng changed. The whole world suddenly changed. He could smell nature, the scent of flowers from all seasons, plus he heard the roar of airplanes and the whizzing sound of cars.

Cars? Gao Peng became alert. I must be in a dream.

With Gao Peng's realization, all the sounds and visions around his ears disappeared, and Gao Peng reappeared in the cold lake. Suddenly, the sky darkened overhead. Time seemed to be solidified and static.

When Gao Peng regained alertness, he found his chest had been pierced by a platinum spear. What the… Gao Peng felt weak all over, and his strength was seeping away.

Blood gushed out from the wound while Gao Peng lowered his head. There was a wound that was bleeding heavily where the platinum spear pierced.

Gao Peng summoned Xiao Cao to help him heal, but when Xiao Cao's milky white light shone on the wounds, there was no effect. When Saint-level healing was used on wounds caused by the Metal rule, it usually didn't have much effect. It required at least a Quasi God-level ability to have any effect.

Is this my end?

Gao Peng closed his eyes and despondently sat at the bottom of the sea, waiting for the end of his life. He felt very tired, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

Muddleheaded, in a daze, and not knowing how long he had slept, Gao Peng suddenly woke up with an additional memory in his consciousness.

I'm Gao Peng? No, no, aren't I dead?

Voices by his ear started chattering increasingly loudly. Gao Peng opened his eyes and several nurses looked at him kindly. ”It's a boy.”

One of the older nurses with a fierce look came up, looking around at the attitudes of the other nurses. Her position didn't seem low. She could have been the head nurse or something of the like.

The head nurse grabbed Gao Peng's tiny hand, took a test tube from the side, and dripped a purple medicine on the back of Gao Peng's hand. Gao Peng felt a burst of pain on the back of his hand. Several nurses around him popped their heads over to look.

”Ah.”

”Oh?”

”What a pity.”

”Well, this is bad.”

Several nurses chattered.

The voices gradually became smaller, and Gao Peng was rather tired, so he closed his eyes. Young bodies always needed more rest.

Am I traversing or reincarnating after death? Gao Peng wanted to think, but every time he deepened his thoughts, other ideas would suddenly appear and interfere with his thinking process. Slowly, Gao Peng seemed to give up his deep thinking to just live and let live.

As time went by, Gao Peng grew to understand why the nurses had shown such expressions and said those words. This was a cruel world, but also a world with distinct classes. From birth, everyone generated a number. This number represented a person's talent and status.

From birth, talent determined his life.

The numbers were 0 through 9, with 0 being the weakest, akin to mentally retarded, 3 an ordinary person, and 9 the greatest genius.

Unfortunately, Gao Peng's talent was 0. When Gao Peng first learned of the news, it was like a bolt from the blue. Fortunately, though Gao Peng had little talent, his family background was very good. His father was a senior official of the government, and his mother was also from a political family, so he had a respectable background. This saved Gao Peng from many setbacks. Of course, there were unavoidable rumors in the process.

The adults' attitudes allowed Gao Peng to ignore the naysayers and made him tougher. But he could sense his anomalies.

According to logic, a person with 0 in talent should have been the most incompetent in everything they learned, yet Gao Peng found himself learning things very quickly. He could understand lot of things just by him looking at them.

Had he been labelled as an alternative kind of failure? Gao Peng sometimes thought about it, but always laughed it off in the end.

On one dark rainy day, his father didn't return home from work as usual. Gao Peng sat on the windowsill of their villa. The sky outside the window had darkened. The rainstorm became a curtain of water that hindered one's view so only a hazy fog was visible. Lights penetrated the rainstorm, and a black car stopped in the driveway in front of the villa.

A figure with a black umbrella hurried inside. When the door of the villa opened, a tall, thin woman with long wavy yellow hair came into Gao Peng's room. Her black clothes were wet, clinging to her body like spandex and outlining all her curves.

”I was entrusted by your father to take you away. He was caught for corruption, had offended many, and has many enemies. You'll be in danger if you stay here, so I'm here to pick you up.”

Gao Peng was silent and didn't really believe her. The woman who claimed to be entrusted by Gao Peng's father seemed to have anticipated this. She took out a series of identity cards from her bag, photographs of Gao Peng's father being arrested, and a certificate of custody and transfer signed by his father.

Gao Peng stared at the photograph for ten minutes. Thirteen years after he came into this world, Gao Peng had established some tacit understanding with the man.

Perhaps he couldn't be onsidered a qualified father, since he hardly spent time with Gao Peng, and they only shared a few memories, but ever since the death of his mother after childbirth, the two men depended on each other. He had never mentioned finding a stepmother for Gao Peng. He had never brought a woman back from outside. It was hard to say how outsiders judged him, but it could be said that he was, at least, trying to be a father.

Gao Peng finally believed her and left with the woman. He said goodbye to the place he had lived in.

The woman with Gao Peng roamed around with him, and he grew to truly appreciate the pain and harshness of the world. The number of talented people didn't have much impact on the upper class, because even a paralysed person could be well cared for under such power, but for the bottom and middle classes, talent was really what determined fate.

Gao Peng had originally had a private teacher. After losing his original identity, Gao Peng could only go to public or private schools, but because of Gao Peng's talent level, even private schools wouldn't accept him. Although they wanted to make money, they wouldn't spoil their reputations for a meager amount of money.

Time flew by. In a blink of an eye, ten years had passed. In the past decade, Gao Peng and the woman had left their home country to keep their identities hidden and hid in neighboring countries.

Of course, it may have been because Gao Peng's talent was at 0, but the former political enemies of his father didn't look for him.

”Ah Tang, bring the boiled water down,” the woman shouted towards the canopy behind her. The woman had tied up her hair, no longer with big wavy hair. Her black shoulder-length short hair was easier to brush.

”Here you go.” A young man with a stubbled beard wearing flip-flops and a tattered singlet came out of the house holding a big pot.

One could vaguely tell Gao Peng's original appearance. To survive, he had changed his name to Ah Tang. Without a degree, he couldn't do most work. They could only make food in the slums and become hawkers for a living.

Fortunately, she and Gao Peng were diligent. They woke up at 3:30 in the morning every day to prepare food and roll noodles. The stall opened at 4:30 and sold from noon to 1:00 in the afternoon, then they would go to the market to purchase ingredients and return home to marinate them.

Every day was repetitive, and though boring, she and Gao Peng were used to this kind of life. Although they weren't legally husband and wife, both of them lived as a couple.

As a talent level of 0 made for a useless person, the government forbade these people from marrying. They didn't want this gene that didn't help society to continue and spread.