Chapter 60: Open Your Eyes to See the World

Chapter 60: Chapter 60: Open Your Eyes to See the World

His aunt had arrived weighed down by her thoughts, and she left the same way.

Chen Xiuyun and her husband didn’t stay long either, following his aunt back to her parents’ place first.

"I can finally get a good rest," Chen Jingle sighed deeply as he closed the front door. He had been running around non-stop all morning and only now had a moment to breathe.

To him, dealing with relatives and elders was an exhausting ordeal—even more tiring than running five kilometers. Despite disliking social interaction, he had to bite the bullet, force a smile, and cater to everyone by making seemingly fitting small talk.

No wonder the post-90s generation universally preferred cutting ties with relatives.

"I’ll take a shower first." He went to grab a towel.

Between cooking and eating, his body had inevitably picked up the smell of food, especially the greasy smoke. He wouldn’t dare lie directly on his bed; he had to wash up before sleeping.

It was already past 12:30, approaching 12:50. If today hadn’t been special—requiring constant coordination with the system—he would have probably been rushed multiple times by now.

After his shower, he returned to the bedroom. He turned on the air conditioner, setting it to 26 degrees on silent mode.

"Sleep, sleep! System, play a lullaby for me. It’s the middle of the day, so it’s a bit hard to fall asleep," Chen Jingle said, dragging his slightly exhausted body and collapsing onto the bed.

[Understood. What would the baby like to hear?]

"Play... ’Grandma’s Penghu Bay’."

[Right away.]

As the system’s voice faded, a melodious and familiar background music began to play.

[The evening breeze gently brushes Penghu Bay]

[White waves chase the sandy beach]

[No coconut groves silhouetted against the setting sun]

[Only a vast expanse of blue sea]

[Sitting on the low wall in front of the door]

[Fantasizing over and over]

[...]

Every song the system sang had a significantly slower tempo than the many versions Chen Jingle had heard before, and its voice was much softer. It sounded like it was specifically meant for coaxing a child to sleep.

Fortunately, he was just a baby too.

For a moment, Chen Jingle felt as if he had been transported to a seaside under the setting sun. The evening breeze, tourists, ocean waves, sandy beaches, wooden cabins... Everything was perfectly beautiful!

He had never been to Penghu Bay and wondered if the sea there was any different from the one here.

"Though, the sea around here doesn’t seem to have any cactuses..."

This was Chen Jingle’s last thought before he fell asleep.

An unknown amount of time passed before Chen Jingle slowly woke up. He checked the time—it was two in the afternoon. Well, punctual as always.

"I really did need a nap. I finally feel much more energetic." He stretched lazily.

[Great job, baby! You have successfully completed the afternoon nap quest. Reward: Removal of one acne scar on the forehead.]

Chen Jingle didn’t even bother looking in the mirror. Checking once a day was enough; looking too much would make him seem vain, even though he was undeniably handsome now.

For his afternoon study session, Chen Jingle didn’t continue with the Outline of National History, switching to Japanese instead. Studying history every day could get tedious, so he decided to take a break and change his mood.

His goal in learning Japanese was to broaden his horizons. This way, when watching videos introducing foreign cultures and customs, he wouldn’t have to stay glued to the subtitles and miss out on the actual footage.

Nowadays, everyone was opening their eyes to the world. Places like Seattle, Okubo, and Pattaya were actually quite fascinating. However, many of them came with a language barrier. Without learning foreign languages, it was impossible to truly grasp their meaning.

Therefore, he had to learn.

"It’s definitely not just because I want to be lazy and make watching anime easier later on!" Chen Jingle thought, his face not turning red in the slightest.

Furthermore, when he used to play video games, he had encountered some foreigners who weren’t exactly friendly. Once they found out Chen Jingle’s nationality, they would hurl nasty insults at him. Among them were plenty of Neon people.

Chen Jingle would get very angry. He knew they weren’t saying anything nice, but when he wanted to curse back, he could only use English. It was incredibly annoying. At the very least, his verbal attacks didn’t reach their maximum potential.

"If my foreign language skills were even 80% as good as my native tongue, I could curse them out until their mothers exploded!"

So, he absolutely had to learn foreign languages! He had to learn the foreigners’ skills to defeat the foreigners!

Chen Jingle had taken Japanese classes back in college, but his proficiency was limited. Having not used it for so many years, he didn’t remember much. It was essentially like starting from scratch.

However, compared to other languages where he would be completely in the dark, he at least had two semesters of foundational Japanese. He still remembered some very basic vocabulary, such as "good morning," "good night," and "big sister."

The internet was a wonderful thing. He could easily find the teaching materials he needed, whether in pure text or video format.

The order of learning was crucial. It was best to relearn the fifty-sound syllabary first, and then move on to vocabulary and phrases. Once his vocabulary reached 12,000 words, he would be roughly at the highest proficiency level. This was already the highest level a regular person would ever need to use.

Chen Jingle didn’t have high demands. As long as he could read everyday books, news, and comments, understand what the other party was trying to say, and fluently express his own thoughts, that would be enough.

To be honest, Japanese wasn’t as difficult as imagined. Some of the vocabulary pronunciations were similar to his local dialect, so treating it like a dialect wasn’t a bad approach.

The hardest part was probably the massive pile of katakana added to de-Sinicize the language. Even the Neon people themselves got headaches looking at it. But for Chen Jingle, it simply meant spending a little more time to memorize this extra batch of words.

However, fully mastering a language relied heavily on reading, listening, and speaking more. In his current situation, he could only practice speaking more through the internet; in his daily life, ensuring he could read smoothly was sufficient.

If Chen Jingle wanted to, he had every opportunity to become the person who mastered the most languages in the world and then work as a diplomatic translator or something similar. Unfortunately, his ambitions didn’t lie there.

Nowadays, smart glasses could provide real-time translation; human translators losing their jobs felt like just a matter of time. His language learning was driven more by interest rather than a means to make a living.

In just half an hour, Chen Jingle had successfully crammed over ten thousand Japanese words and phrases into his mind.

Now, at the very least, when watching a video with all-Japanese introductions, he no longer needed to divert part of his attention to the subtitles; he could focus entirely on the video content.

At this moment, he was in the comment section of a short video platform, having a text conversation with a Sakura Girl.

There were actually quite a lot of Neon people who came to China to study, travel, or settle down. Not all of them were popular influencers, nor did everyone possess the language skills for barrier-free communication. In the comment sections of videos with fewer fans, even if the creator asked a question, they might not necessarily receive a reply or a solution.

Whenever Chen Jingle scrolled past them via hashtags, he would drop a sentence or two in Japanese.

Some people would reply to express their thanks, while others chose to ignore him—or perhaps they just didn’t have time to reply promptly.

It didn’t matter; it was all just practice anyway.

For those who replied, he took the opportunity to chat a bit more. He felt that his language proficiency was completely on par with theirs.

However, this made some bros who liked surfing the comment sections a bit antsy. This was especially true in the comment sections of pretty little Sakura Girls and Japanese high school girls whose looks were enhanced by beauty filters.

"No way, bro, do you actually know the language?!"

"Don’t tell me this is machine-translated?"

"Obviously machine-translated at first glance!"

"Bro, give it a rest. If you actually manage to date her, I’m going to have a total meltdown."

"It’s not fair! Why does she ignore my machine translations, but replies to yours?"

"..."

Seeing these replies, Chen Jingle genuinely couldn’t help but laugh.