Chapter 2951 - 1169: The Selfish One

Chapter 2951: Chapter 1169: The Selfish One

The Yellow Flowered Cat took the Xuanhuang Fruit with a touched expression.

The gentleman’s icy voice sounded leisurely beside him: "A reminder for you — when it was my proxy before, it was a bit arrogant, offending quite a few people. While I was around, they would spare it for my sake, but after I’m gone, I don’t know whether they would trouble it... Although they won’t go too far, enduring some hardships is inevitable."

No wonder the Yellow Flowered Cat is so eager to ascend to a legend!

Zheng Qing visibly showed a regretful expression.

However, the Flower Cat reacted even faster; just as the gentleman was halfway through speaking, it quickly grabbed the fruit and stuffed it into its mouth. Then, with a flick of its ears and tail, it vanished in front of the two wizards.

Without a trace of hesitation.

"——You should have told me earlier!" Zheng Qing sighed heavily.

"If I told you, would you have had other choices?" The gentleman casually laughed: "In this world, it’s hard to find perfect things. Your time is limited, and the targets to choose from are few... Giving the fruit to it is the least bad choice."

Zheng Qing considered this for a moment.

Then he felt relieved.

"Indeed, although the cat’s personality is awful, relatively speaking, it’s still quite reliable." The young wizard smiled self-deprecatingly and then shifted the topic to the gentleman’s previous comment about the Xuanhuang Fruit: "——You said earlier that the way I handle this fruit would determine whether I accept those three ’small’ troubles... how does that determine it?"

He emphasized the word "small" heavily.

The implication being that these things might be trivial for the gentleman, but for him, they weighed as heavily as Mount Tai and weren’t small at all.

"I was actually planning to confirm your handling style one last time." The gentleman didn’t directly answer the young man’s confusion but instead brought up something from Zheng Qing’s slightly distant past: "——Do you remember when you first entered Edge Academy, during your freshman year, and went to the Wandering Bar for the first time? The Wandering Wizard recommended you buy some trinkets; how did you handle them then?"

Zheng Qing hesitated for a few seconds.

After carefully recalling, the memory of that drunken night flooded back.

His expression turned slightly dazed, and his gaze inadvertently shifted to a bookshelf, where he saw a small tree stretching its branches within a glass orb.

The gentleman noticed his expression.

"Miss Jones’s recovery speed was faster than I expected, probably because the Magic Tide I triggered upon my ascension accelerated the evolution of the entire world slightly." After comforting him, the gentleman shifted tone with a hint of teasing: "——But have you really made plans for her return?"

The young wizard awkwardly withdrew his gaze.

"I distributed them to everyone."

His voice sounded dry, dodging the gentleman’s latest question while answering the earlier one: "——I remember Zhang Ji Xin took the Flying Centipede, I bought a Mount Tai Stone for Dylan, Xiao Xiao got the Feilengcui Cross, and the fat guy got the Five-Color Peach Talisman... There’s also a Black Donkey’s Hoof that was mine."

The young man counted on his fingers, remembering every detail clearly.

"Were you very wealthy back then?" The gentleman probed.

"What?" Zheng Qing raised his head in confusion: "——I wasn’t rich at all; I sold all the talismans I’d saved for a long time at the Wandering Bar and barely scraped together fifty jade coins..."

His voice grew smaller and smaller.

To him now, fifty jade coins were inconsequential—just from his Blood Talisman Bullet transactions with Trident Sword each month, he could earn over seven hundred jade coins, plus the invitations and rewards from the hunting competitions, and D&K’s dividends and other sources. So fifty jade coins were really nothing.

But two years ago, when he had just entered the academy with only a twelve jade coin scholarship, fifty jade coins were a significant amount.

Yet that day, he spent it without blinking, completely unfazed by the fact that he was being immensely generous.

Why?

Was it because he drank too much that day? Or was he enchanted by the Wandering Wizard’s magic? Or perhaps he wanted to leave a good impression on the newly acquainted friends, hence pretending to be more affluent than he was?

"Because you’re indifferent to things that don’t belong to you." The gentleman softly offered a slightly abrasive answer: "To put it more precisely, you are selfish enough."

Zheng Qing couldn’t accept this reasoning.

"I’m not selfish!"

His face blushed slightly as he tried to argue, but for a while, he couldn’t find an appropriate example. Finally, he managed to say: "Why aren’t those fifty jade coins and the amulets I bought mine?"

"Because you don’t belong to this world. Or rather, at that time, you hadn’t formed a true sense of belonging to the Wizard World yet. So you were urgently seeking ways to deepen your connection to this world... Looking from another perspective, at that time, you didn’t have a true concept of the value of jade coins or amulets in the Wizard World. They weren’t genuinely yours. Only when you truly comprehend its value can you truly own an item."

"...You previously mentioned I possess a sacrificial spirit; is that a quality a selfish person can have?"

"Sacrifice and selfishness aren’t antonyms."

The gentleman seemed pleased Zheng Qing brought this up and reassuringly patted the young man’s shoulder, explaining: "In fact, selfishness is not a negative term to me. Extreme selfishness can make one appear extremely selfless. Knowing how to handle problems with the coldest, most selfish approach is the best mindset a seeker should have. Just like I mentioned before, ’Heaven and Earth are unkind, treating all things as straw dogs.’ In your eyes, Xuanhuang Fruit and maltose don’t differ in essence. If you were like the Gluttonous Beast, wanting to gather all benefits into your arms, I might reconsider my arrangements."

These reasons sounded sophisticated.

Yet Zheng Qing still couldn’t accept the gentleman’s evaluation of him.

He suspected that even if he had crushed the Xuanhuang Fruit into pulp just now, the gentleman might still find reasons such as ’unaffected by external things’ thus ’perfectly suited for significant responsibilities’ to explain it.

"If I’m selfish, why didn’t I eat the Xuanhuang Fruit myself?" the young man muttered.

"Because you know that fruit was mine."

The gentleman spoke bluntly: "As the saying goes, ’Great treachery resembles loyalty, great selfishness resembles public-spiritedness.’ If you weren’t selfish, in handling relationships with Su Councilor, Jiang, and Miss Jones, you wouldn’t try hard to treat them equally. Similarly, if you truly had no personal intent, you should have given it to Miss Korma, Professor Yi, or even Professor Emma. But instead, you gave it to your cat..."

"I’m not anyone’s cat!"

From the depths of the bookstore came the slightly displeased voice of the Yellow Flowered Cat, though somewhat muffled, seemingly still processing the fruit in its cheeks.

The two wizards at the window paid no attention to the Flower Cat’s complaints.

"——How is this conclusion related to those three matters?"

"I trust you will treat this bookstore, the Edge Academy, and the Forbidden Curse like the fruit. You’ll use them when needed, protect them when unnecessary, and hand them over to the right people when necessary."

"These choices don’t sound selfish at all..." Zheng Qing was still somewhat resentful over the gentleman’s evaluation.

The gentleman chuckled lightly: "Don’t use ordinary people’s concepts to deconstruct that word; human nature is inherently selfish. Being able to achieve this, you would count as a ’True Person.’"