Chapter 25: The Gold-Digging Scheme

As usual, the triple plea! Begging for votes, recommendations, and bookmarks!!

After obtaining the phone number, He Jiani dialed Yang Tang's mobile as soon as he had walked six or seven steps away.

Yang Tang glanced at the caller ID—it was indeed He Jiani’s number. Irritated, he turned around and snapped at her, “What are you doing? Are you out of your mind?”

He Jiani pouted. “I just wanted to check if the number worked!”

Yang Tang couldn’t help but roll his eyes. “You said you’re He Yuanhong’s daughter; I believed you, so of course I’d trust you to find my home. Why would I give you the wrong number?” He shot her a “Are you an idiot?” look before turning away again.

But he hadn’t gone far when He Jiani caught up in her NPR. “Hey, you haven’t told me your name yet!”

Yang Tang smirked, “Can’t you look it up yourself?” He paused, then added, “By the way, I have a mock exam in mid-March. Don’t bother me until then, okay?”

“In your dreams!” He Jiani shot him a glare, floored the accelerator, and sped away in a cloud of dust.

Yang Tang watched the NPR disappear into the distance, murmuring, “Hopefully, after you’ve looked into me, you’ll be sorely disappointed. That way, I won’t have to be bothered anymore!”

After all, in the Pine Grove Village residential compound, Yang Tang’s poor academic performance was well-known. He reckoned that someone like He Jiani, the daughter of the headmaster from a scholarly family, wouldn’t be interested in a failing student like him and would naturally stop seeking him out.

Back home, both his parents had already returned from their midday shifts and were working together in the kitchen, preparing lunch.

As soon as he opened and closed the door, his father washed his hands and came out of the kitchen. “Xiaohong, come with me to the study for a moment.”

“What’s up?” Yang Tang asked, putting the borrowed books back in his room.

“It’s something important.”

“What important thing?” Yang Tang entered his father’s study.

“A while back, I went to the capital and managed to get you a commission-based spot. You know about that, right?”

Yang Tang nodded.

“But your second uncle didn’t take a penny for it. Do you realize what a huge favor that is?”

“Second uncle?” Yang Tang’s remarkable memory kicked in, and he finally recalled a faint impression of Qin Xuwu from this life.

“Your second uncle’s grandfather is Elder Qin, so he found him a well-matched wife, Cao Wei. It was your Aunt Cao who helped arrange that commission spot for you.”

“So what?” Yang Tang was puzzled.

“Actually, Cao Wei has always looked down on our Yang family. This time, it was only because your second uncle pulled some strings that she agreed to help.” Yang Jixue’s literary sensibilities flared up. “So, I was thinking, wouldn’t it be better if you joined the army and didn’t use that commission spot?”

“Me, join the army?” Yang Tang was truly startled; he had never considered pursuing a military career.

“Yes. Your second uncle is about to be promoted to senior colonel. He has plenty of connections in the military district. If you’re willing to enlist, he can get your military registration transferred to Yujing. With his support, you might even be able to stay in Yujing after you retire from the army!”

Hearing this, Yang Tang realized his father didn’t see his second uncle as an outsider, but had definitely excluded his second aunt.

Whatever the case, his father was thinking about his future. Yang Tang couldn’t directly object, so he said, “Dad, I don’t mind joining the army, but I have two conditions.”

“Go on.”

“I’ve been working hard on my studies lately. Can we wait until the results of the two mock exams in March and April before making a decision?”

Yang Jixue squinted, “What’s this? You think you can get good results?”

“I have a little confidence.”

“That’s good, but cheating doesn’t count. That’s just fooling yourself.”

“I understand!” Yang Tang nodded vigorously. “Second, my eyesight isn’t great—I’m more than three hundred degrees nearsighted. I might not pass the military physical, right?”

“That’s not a problem. Since you’ll be at home studying, you can take the time to get laser surgery and fix your vision.”

“Huh? But what if the surgery fails?” Yang Tang was surprised by his father’s suggestion and secretly thought it might be better to use his dream ability to strengthen his eyesight.

As soon as the thought flashed by, a sudden enlightenment arose: enhance vision!

Damn it!

Yang Tang wanted to curse but held back in front of his father. Yet as he grumbled inwardly, he suddenly realized: if surgery could fail, what about failing to copy skills from his dreams?

Depending on the severity, there might be corresponding penalties!

Yang Tang: “…”

“Xiaohong, what are you daydreaming about? I was talking about the surgery.”

“I think we should wait, Dad. I heard after laser surgery you can’t use your eyes normally for several days, can’t look at things for more than an hour at a time. With my tight schedule, how would I find time for that?”

Yang Jixue rubbed his face and said, “That’s not unreasonable. How about this: let’s schedule the surgery for the afternoon after your third mock exam in mid-April. If your second mock exam shows significant improvement and you feel good about the third, we can skip the army altogether. After all, military life isn’t easy. Look at me—my hearing is almost gone in one ear from my time in the service.”

Of course, he said that, but Yang Tang knew his father didn’t have much hope for his academic performance.

“Alright, I’ll do as you say, Dad!”

Back in his room, Yang Tang reflected on the new “pursuit” prompted by his enlightenment. It was a real headache, but he had no choice but to check when the dream would open again.

Second dream activation: the second day of the second lunar month, the Azure Dragon Festival!

“The second day of the second month—not far off.” He muttered as he flipped through the calendar. “Wow, that’s March 7 in the Gregorian calendar—only nine days away!”

But that wasn’t the point. The real point was, after these days of studying with his super memory, Yang Tang found his ability to rack up points was improving rapidly. He began to consider the idea of balancing work and rest.

“Work” meant continuing to review all subjects, but with better planning—no more spending a dozen hours a day buried in books and exercises. As for “rest,” it didn’t mean leisure, but rather making time to earn some money.

But exactly how to do that required some thought.

Back when Ye Zhan first gained his super memory, he considered singing—his voice wasn’t good. Poetry brought in money too slowly, and there was little chance for quiet, big profits. As for writing books, most bestsellers from his previous life were now out of fashion. Writing martial arts novels was possible, but if his parents found out, the consequences would be dire—especially since his mother worked at a publishing house. If he tried to hide his identity just to get published, and the profits ended up in someone else’s pocket, wouldn’t that be a double crime?

So after much deliberation, Yang Tang realized his only option was mobile app development.

Why?

Because he actually had the knowledge! Though he was a liberal arts student, he’d worked as a programmer for over two years.

Some might wonder—aren’t programmers all from science and engineering backgrounds? How did a liberal arts guy muddle through?

In reality, in software and most other industries, true creative talent is rare. The rest are just patching things up, appearing to innovate but mostly muddling along.

Take this for example: so many people have seen an apple fall, why only Newton thought to investigate? So many have seen a kettle lid lifted by steam, why only Watt invented the steam engine?

Because most people lack creative insight, most programmers’ jobs are actually simple: understand the purpose and form of old code blocks, copy and paste into new projects, tweak them a bit, and that’s it. That’s why so many domestic online games feel so similar—the core code blocks are nearly identical, only the text and styles change.

After two years of this work, Yang Tang’s mind was imprinted with countless computer and mobile software codes. All he had to do was pick a software function that was ahead of its time by two or three years, replicate it, and sell it to an ambitious big company—he could easily pocket tens or even hundreds of thousands.

The real question now was: what kind of software should he make?

Fiddling with his relatively cheap domestic smartphone, Yang Tang quickly found a problem: the battery drained too fast.

If he recalled correctly, he had fully charged his phone just three days ago. In the last two days, he’d only made three or four calls, played no games, watched no movies, yet his battery was already below sixty percent.

He checked online and found that battery drain was a serious issue for smartphones, especially for heavy users who were always on their phones—playing games, listening to music, watching movies, or chatting. No wonder so many people had to charge daily.

“Why not write a small app—just for saving power, maybe with some cleaning and speed-boosting functions? That could really work!”

In fact, there were plenty of such apps online already, but most were much the same, with negligible results. They didn’t really extend battery life—people still had to charge daily.

“Well then, I’ll go with this. Find one that’s noticeably more effective, ahead of current software by two or three years, and copy it!”

Yang Tang put his plan into action, searching his memory.

There were six or seven truly effective power-saving programs in his mind. He spent some time extracting the module codes for their core functions, entered them into a notepad document on his computer, and began standardizing the variables.

It’s worth noting: precisely because these were small programs, Yang Tang had the chance in his previous life to read most, even all, of the module codes. If it had been a big software project with hundreds of people, a dozen on each module, he’d never have seen so much code. No matter how powerful his memory, he couldn’t conjure code out of thin air.