Chapter 52: Chapter 52: Education is a Problem
“You like to read novels, don’t you? But be more discreet about it, man.”
Ren Suo let out a short “ah” before quickly turning off his mobile phone. He smiled and said apologetically to Chen Kun, “Sorry, brother Chen Kun, I will take note.”
“Even though we have more freedom when we are out on the field, if something happens and you do not take action in time, it will be recorded down and may affect your resume,” Chen Kun reminded. He was not displeased, however, he said, “My stomach hurts slightly…”
Ren Suo took the hint and thumped his chest as he said, “Go ahead! Don’t worry about me, I’ll be fine watching alone.”
“Great, I’ll leave it to you then!”
Ren Suo watched as Chen Kun walked into the academic block and he took out his mobile phone again. Ren Suo leaned on one of the walls of the stadium and took a quick glance at the junior high students lining up to draw their blood before continuing to read the “Three Kingdoms” novel.
It was the seventh consecutive day of work for Ren Suo—indeed, there had not been any off days for him in between.
He even had to apply for a leave day to attend his oral thesis defense session to complete his last year in university…
It was not that there were no days off for those who worked in the Countermeasure Division. In fact, the stated working hours were perfectly normal—9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays and off on the weekends. However, as one of the nation’s public service units, their schedule would naturally be affected by the requirements of their work.
Of course, the Countermeasure Division was not a shady business. Since it was specially established to be the nation’s special unit comprising of only Practitioners, the laws had to be followed, even if the employee benefits were not the best one could find in the industry. They were naturally paid for their overtime hours, and if their weekends were burned, they could rearrange their off days directly. According to Team Leader You Xulong, they would be able to relax after this busy period.
Well, but after this busy period…
For the past seven days, Ren Suo had not been in the office at the Countermeasure Division for more than three hours in total. Most of his time had been spent out on the field with Chen Kun.
The members of Team 3 were dispatched to work on the field in groups of two or three, based on the danger and difficulty of the mission. Ren Suo was paired up with Chen Kun, who was a former police cadet.
Chen Kun was one year older than Ren Suo and was a student in a police college, where he was about to graduate to become an official policeman when he was found to have Reiki abilities. Military personnel and students at the police colleges were the first group of public servants to undergo the health examination. He had thus undergone training to become a member of the Countermeasure Division just two months before Ren Suo had been.
Ren Suo had wanted to be grouped together with Qiao Muyi to forge a closer bond with her, but in order to protect the new members like the two of them, the Countermeasure Division would abide by the practice of the “old leading the young”, where the more experienced and more able members would be paired with the new and inexperienced members.
Nonetheless, when Ren Suo saw the messages in the WeChat group “We Are the Future of Xuan Nation”, he felt relieved that he had not been paired with Qiao Muyi. The messages she sent with the WeChat username “Xiao Qiao” had been straightforward and demeaning, often showing off how great the unit she was in had been and sending images of sizzling barbeque dinners. Occasionally, she even sent suggestive images which would then turn out to be a gif of a female ghost…
Ren Suo felt that if he had been paired up with her, he would soon be pulled down by her and beaten to death.
Although he had been out on the field every day, his work had not been extremely tiring. To be precise, what Ren Suo and the rest had to do was to don their uniforms and proceed to their destination and watch as people underwent their health examinations.
For instance, he was now in the stadium of Lianjiang City No. 36 High School, an averagely-performing junior high school. His main task was to supervise the students who were queuing up to have their blood drawn.
Typically, such health examinations would be arranged by the individual schools where the students would proceed to the health centers nearby to have their examinations done. However, it was said that the higher-ups had ordered that all the schools within the city, from the primary all the way up to the university level, were to complete the examinations as soon as possible. At the least, everyone’s blood had to be drawn, even if there was no time to complete the other checks.
It was not hard for Ren Suo to figure out that the blood test was the key for the nation to test for one’s Reiki Practice ability. Previously when Ren Suo went through the blood drawing process with the other civil servants, the members of the Countermeasure Division had been the ones supervising them. Now that Ren Suo had become one of the members of the Countermeasure Division, it was his turn to watch as other people had their blood drawn.
In addition, not only were all the schools required to perform the health examinations, even private companies were urged by the government to go through the necessary examinations. Their examinations were actually more crucial than students—as one of the TOP4 first-tier cities in Xuan Nation, Lianjiang City had a resident population of over 20 million and a floating population of over 8 million. Each day, a vast amount of people travel to Lianjiang City from different parts of the Xuan Nation to seek better opportunities there.
Even though there were many students in Lianjiang City, it was a “simple” matter when compared to the even larger amount of people who were already in the workforce, including white-collar workers and migrant workers.
It was easy for schools to cooperate and organize the examinations since students were mostly gathered in schools and schools were under the management of the Ministry of Education. With a directive issued, no school could defy the orders from the Ministry.
Furthermore, there were about 900 primary schools, 300 junior high schools, 150 high schools, and 43 universities in Lianjiang City—seemingly a large number in total? However, this number would just be a small fraction when compared to the number of small enterprises and private businesses in the entire city!
It was said that those who were in the other departments were working their tails off having to look through all the information of the working population making up the resident population. Compared to them, Ren Suo was fortunate to be tasked to supervise the students who were drawing blood.
Ren Suo had also asked You Xulong about why they did not disclose the technology to the public which would then encourage ordinary people to get examined at the hospitals by themselves, easing the workload. At that time, You Xulong had just shot him a glance and asked, “Have you ever seen any information online related to Reiki, regardless if it was from within the country?”
Ren Suo quickly understood—the recent events that occurred in his life had clouded his thinking.
Ren Suo had wrongly assumed that the development of Reiki was common knowledge as he had been in contact with Practitioners recently, and even the higher management had not been too concerned whether the information would be leaked out by them. However, in reality, countries all around the world were silently censoring all the “rumors” revolving around Reiki.
When Ren Suo took breaks from playing his game, he would lie down and watch videos or scroll through his Weibo feed. He would occasionally come across peculiar news articles like “Shocking! Revengeful Flame Soul Appears in Luzhou”, “Eating the Hokkiens Explained”, or “The Live Show of the Dead Designer”.
However, a short while after he started watching the videos or reading the articles, prompts like “this video cannot be found” or “this Weibo has been deleted” would appear. If Ren Suo was willing to wait a little longer, he could possibly see that the site had deactivated the uploader’s blog or account, and inform readers that the uploader was spreading false rumors…
As such, in the current situation when the development of Reiki technology was still in its early stages, nations from around the world all chose to conceal such information from the public while utilizing various methods to gather people with Reiki abilities and be in control of them as early on as possible. In this way, groups formed from Extraordinaires could also be prevented from emerging.
Ren Suo suspected that the reason why they were taught [Clothes] and [Lock] was because these two abilities did not have much visible effect and would thus not cause suspicions to arise.
Even if they leaked such information to the public, most people would think that they had just practiced the Thirteen Methods of Taibao or the Induced Paralysis of the Body…
Any actions the nation took related to Reiki was still kept discreet while performing large-scale collections of blood samples to find Practitioners.
“Don’t touch me!”
Ren Suo looked up from his mobile phone screen to see a male junior high school student trying to escape from having his blood drawn. A female teacher who was standing at the side supervising the line of students quickly stopped him and said, “Wen Junjie! Don’t be scared, it’s just drawing of your blood!”
“No, I don’t want!” the student shouted.
Ren Suo closed his eyes slightly as he thought silently and waited for his equipped ability [Skill: Clothes] to be replaced with [Skill: Lock].
The reason why the members of the Countermeasure Division were tasked to supervise the drawing of the students’ blood was a large number of students, and there was a high possibility of “striking jackpot”, hence they required a member from the Countermeasure Division to come to the rescue in times of need.
Furthermore, students were different from adults in that they were generally less adapted to society and often had the mindset that the “world revolves around me” as they were still growing up. As such, they would be lured by the attractiveness of their Awakened Powers more easily and were hence more dangerous.
However, Ren Suo had not struck any of such “jackpots” for the past seven days. He had heard that there were people Qiao Muyi and her buddy had encountered who just did not want to undergo the examination, although he did not know the details—such information remained classified.
“I can’t be so lucky…” muttered Ren Suo as he walked towards the student alone. Chen Kun had not yet returned from the toilet. He asked, “What happened here?”
Perhaps it was due to Ren Suo looking slightly fierce or that the black vest he wore appeared to give him some evil form of authority, the junior high school student suddenly became anxious and wriggled free from the grasp of the teacher. He backed off a few steps and hollered, “Don’t come any closer!”
“Hmm?” said Ren Suo as he purposefully stepped forward one step. He stared into the student’s eyes and asked, “Why?”
“He is just being playful, I will ask him to have his blood drawn…” said the female teacher quickly as she extended her hand to grab the student. She said, “Wen Junjie! Stop messing around, or else I would have to call your parents—”
The other students who were also queueing up to have their blood drawn looked over.
“They can’t tell me what to do either!” the student shouted. He seemed to have been triggered as he yelled, “Come any closer and I will not hold back anymore—”
At that moment, the long-suppressed desire arose from within Ren Suo as he looked at the sumptuous male junior high school student—
Ren Suo did not hesitate any longer as he rushed forward and stretched out to grab the junior high school student! But his speed was indeed not fast enough as the student reacted and was about to raise both of his hands to stop Ren Suo—
However, he stood no chance against Ren Suo the moment Ren Suo touched him.
As the student appeared to lose his strength the moment Ren Suo grabbed him, the female teacher quickly held onto Ren Suo and said, “He is just a child, don’t…”
“He will be fine,” replied Ren Suo as he waved his hands. He said, “He has just lost his strength, but for his own sake, it would be best to let him remain in this state for the time being.”
At this juncture, Chen Kun finally returned from the toilet. He saw Ren Suo holding onto a student and immediately understood what had happened. He quickly called the Countermeasure Division for assistance.
————
“You hurt your hand?” asked the lady manning the counter at the Jianji stall, noticing the bandage on Ren Suo’s right hand.
“Yes, thanks to a kid,” replied Ren Suo as he navigated to Alipay on his mobile phone. He said, “One bowl of Yee-fu noodles with beef briskets in fried bean sauce.”
“That’s quite an injury,” the lady said. She seemed to have had a similar experience and continued, “Kids these days are so hard to teach, they don’t listen, and even if they did, they don’t do it. Sigh…”
“Yes, indeed, education is a problem,” Ren Suo said with a laugh.
Ren Suo reached home with his takeaway. He looked at his injured right hand, and although it still hurt slightly, it had its benefits—at the least, You Xulong had given three days off to rest.
The junior high student had been subdued by the Countermeasure Division, and although he attempted to harm people, due to his age and him being Awakened at such a young age, he would likely not be punished severely, provided that he had not committed any crimes before that.
Even though there was no detailed report yet, Ren Suo guessed that his Awakened Power would be related to the manipulation of air to create wind blades.
Otherwise, there was no explanation as to why Ren Suo felt like his palm was cut by a steel blade when he grabbed onto the student’s arm.
Ren Suo had to have eight stitches done in the hospital and it hurt so much he cried; otherwise, You Xulong might not have given Ren Suo the days off during such a busy period.
According to You Xulong, Practitioners like Ren Suo would recover more quickly than ordinary people, and he would be able to remove the stitches in three days.
After a busy seven days, Ren Suo finally had the time to relax. He planned to try out the facilities provided to the Countermeasure Division members at the training stadium for free, and as for the rest of his time…
Of course, he would be staying up to play his game!
“Education is a problem.”
As Ren Suo opened the game [Over My Dead Body], he could not help but recall that statement.
“I plead with you, my dear brothers and sisters, please stop causing trouble…”