Qing Lake High School, Class 3-1 Parent Group Chat.
[Homeroom Teacher Ling]: "@All Members, we've started recording Pet Beast scores this semester. The latest class rankings have been released. Please feel free to check them."
The homeroom teacher posted an image of the class rankings. The moment the message was sent, it was like a depth charge, bringing a whole group of silent parents to the surface.
[Zhou Ruoyun's Dad]: "My daughter is number one? Shocked.jpg"
[Wang Teng's Mom]: "Haha, my son is ranked fifteenth! A huge improvement!"
[Wang Jianyu's Dad]: "Huh? My son is second?"
Some were happy, others were worried.
The parents whose children ranked high were pleasantly surprised to see their kids move up a spot.
Meanwhile, other parents grew anxious as they saw their high-ranking children get pushed down the list.
But the most shocking thing was that the top spot in the class had changed hands.
For three years, Gu Ming's name had been firmly locked in first place, never once dropping.
Before, they were only graded on written exams. Now, with the addition of Pet Beast scores, the grade's number one student, Gu Ming, had fallen to tenth place.
This ranking list didn't just show the total score, but also each student's Pet Beast, its species, and data on its three primary stats.
The parents quickly noticed that the Pet Beast Gu Ming had contracted was a Little Cyan Snake.
After seeing the Pet Beast's species, everyone's expression turned strange.
[Wu Zhen's Mom]: "@Homeroom Teacher Ling, was there a mistake in the data entry? The grade's number one student, Gu Ming, contracted a Little Cyan Snake?"
[Zhou Ruoyun's Dad]: "Hey now, he's not number one anymore. My daughter is."
Once someone brought up Gu Ming, the other parents couldn't sit still, starting to gossip and manually tagging Gu Ming's parents.
Mr. Gu heard his phone beeping, so he went online to check the messages, only to find a group of people asking if his son had really contracted a Little Cyan Snake.
He knew today was the first day of school, but he hadn't expected it to trigger so many questions.
For a moment, his face flushed hot. He felt deeply embarrassed.
As a Five-star Beastmaster, he had actually let his son return to school after contracting such an ordinary Pet Beast.
'I wonder how much his classmates are laughing at him,' he thought.
As he was thinking about how to answer everyone's questions, he got a call from Mrs. Gu.
"Hello?"
"Have you seen our son's scores yet?"
"Not yet. The moment I got online, a bunch of people started asking me questions. What's wrong?" Mr. Gu asked, confused.
'What's there to see in the first scores of the semester? No matter how high his son's written exam score is, it's useless. The Little Cyan Snake's three primary stats combined probably don't even add up to ten points.'
'There's no suspense in these rankings. He'll definitely drop below thirtieth place.'
He had been visiting several large Pet Beast Stores recently, looking for an affordable Pet Beast with Four-star Potential for his son, so he hadn't had time to pay attention to his son's recent situation.
"Our son is ranked tenth! You have to go look at his Mana Points. They're insane!"
"What? Tenth place?!"
Mr. Gu was dumbfounded. 'What's going on? My son contracted a Little Cyan Snake, how could he possibly still rank tenth?'
'What are the students below him even doing? They can't even beat a Little Cyan Snake?'
'This can't be right. Class 3-1 is the top class, with many students who scored 250 on the final exams.'
'If they contracted any Three-star Potential Pet Beast, or even trained for two or three months in advance, they could rack up dozens of Pet Beast points and easily crush Gu Ming's score.'
Mr. Gu quickly scrolled up to the pinned message, opened the image, and saw Gu Ming's score in tenth place.
340 points!
He gasped. 'How is the total score so high? His son's final exam score was 290, which means his Pet Beast score is 50 points?'
When he took a closer look at the Pet Beast's three primary stats, his pupils contracted violently.
Power: 5 points. Speed: 6 points. These two stats were slightly above expectations, but still within a reasonable range.
'But what's with the Mana Points? It has 39 points!'
It was only a month old! Mr. Gu was a Five-star Beastmaster; he could tell the Little Cyan Snake's age just by looking at its size and appearance.
A one-month-old Little Cyan Snake with 39 Mana points... by his calculations, that was equivalent to the cultivation aptitude of a Pet Beast with Four-star Potential.
No wonder his wife was so surprised. Mr. Gu now completely understood what had shocked her.
On Mrs. Gu's end, her shock gave way to excitement. "Hey, the homeroom teacher just messaged me, asking what type of mutation it is."
"I don't know either. We'll have to ask our son when he gets home from school."
A smile spread across Mr. Gu's face. Seeing his son's score so far exceed his expectations, he could no longer suppress the grin tugging at his lips.
He suddenly felt that the Little Cyan Snake wasn't so useless after all. If it could form an Inner Core early and, as a One-star creature, defeat its Zero-star Pet Beast peers, then his son would be guaranteed a spot in a second-tier university.
However, the Gu Family wasn't satisfied with just a second-tier university. They had to aim for a first-tier one, at the very least.
"As for our son's next Pet Beast... I don't think we need to rush it.
"Let's first see what's going on with this Little Cyan Snake and whether it can achieve Evolution before the college entrance exams."
Hearing this, Mrs. Gu was happy, but she couldn't help but worry about her son's future.
A mutation was a mutation, but the Little Cyan Snake was still a bottom-tier Snake Species Pet Beast. It would hit its ceiling far too easily.
At that moment, neither of them had replied to the questions in the group chat.
They stared at their son's scores, reading them over and over again. Their hearts were a tangled mess of joy and anxiety, an endless cycle of hope and fear.
...
Gu Ming arrived at the base of his apartment building and opened the red envelope.
The money inside the red envelope hadn't changed.
This brought him back to fifteen minutes earlier.
He had a sudden idea. Since the money from Manager Ruan Jing's store could be exchanged for Spirit Stones, that meant money from other stores should work too.
He had specifically tried to cash out at a few shops near his neighborhood, transferring money to the owners via his phone in exchange for cash. He then put the cash into red envelopes and carried them home in his pocket.
He didn't touch the red envelopes during the entire process, and after walking for a few minutes, the system still hadn't reacted.
By the time he reached his front door, he took out the red envelopes. Inside was still the same cash the shop owners had given him.
'The key is that the system's 'plot' hasn't changed,' Gu Ming thought to himself, reconfirming the specific rules of the system's cash-out function.
The people he interacted with couldn't be nobodies; they had to be people with whom his life would intersect thirty-two years in the future.
Manager Ruan Jing had once offered him a great opportunity, which his other timeline self had not accepted.
Then there was Zhou Ruoyun. Gu Ming had competed with her for the number one spot in their grade.
Because of this, after returning to the school, the fifty-year-old Gu Ming had entered into a new round of competition with her daughter.
These were all people whose lives had intersected with his, influencing his own life's path.
Only by interacting with these people could he cash out things from the future into the present reality.
Lost in thought, Gu Ming inserted his key and opened the front door.
He was immediately met with a long, drawn-out cry: "Son—"
"Your Little Cyan Snake has thirty-nine Mana Points? What happened? Did it mutate?"
Mrs. Gu walked over impatiently. She had sensed her son's return through the door long before.
But to keep up her pretense, she had waited behind the door for a long time, her heart pounding with excitement.
She waited until Gu Ming nodded and took out the sleeping Little Cyan Snake.
Mrs. Gu took one look and let out a sound of surprise.
"Huh, this snake of yours..."
Mr. Gu also appeared in the entryway, the astonishment on his face unconcealed. "It's already at its fifty-first Circulation, isn't it?"
He had been busy screening Pet Beasts lately and hadn't paid any attention to the Little Cyan Snake. He never expected the little thing's cultivation to be more than halfway complete. How strange.