Ch. 250 - Your Son Really Is Cheating...

"Finally, it's over."

The commendation ceremony concluded. Chen Shu yawned and headed back to his long-missed dorm room alone.

With only twenty-some days until the college entrance exam, the third-year students hadn't attended the ceremony.

He was about to turn on the light when he spotted two pairs of gleaming eyes in the darkness, staring straight at him.

"Holy shit, what the hell?!"

Chen Shu moved fast — his hands danced, and two urea bags came swooping down over the figures.

"It's us, you lunatic!"

Xie Sunan and Xu Xingxing shouted at once.

If nothing went wrong, the next step in the sequence was a thorough beating.

"What are you two doing? Trying to ambush me?"

Chen Shu grinned, flipped on the dorm light, and saw the two of them trapped under urea bags.

"Ambush my ass!"

The two struggled to pull the urea bags off. Getting trapped by those things — it genuinely left you unable to move.

Xie Sunan protested: "You did that on purpose, didn't you?"

"How could I? This is called emergency self-defense!"

Chen Shu declared righteously, though the grin at the corner of his mouth was distinctly sinister.

"Cut the crap. Who walks around casually holding two urea bags?"

Xie Sunan curled his lip, completely unconvinced.

Chen Shu hadn't pulled those bags from his backpack — he clearly hadn't had good intentions from the start.

"Alright, enough!"

Xu Xingxing brushed the dust off his clothes, feeling like he'd picked up a hint of urea smell.

He spread his arms and smiled: "Welcome back!"

The three embraced tightly. Chen Shu had been gone for over two months.

Without him, the dorm really had been missing something.

"Congratulations to our champion!"

Xie Sunan grinned just as wide, then immediately followed up: "Now, let's discuss the matter of splitting the prize money."

"???"

Chen Shu's eyes went wide. "What split?"

Xie Sunan said righteously: "We've been praying for you every single day. We were your most steadfast pillars of moral support. Taking a little cash — is that unreasonable?"

"It is. Highly unreasonable!"

Chen Shu's mouth twitched. "I think you two were praying I wouldn't come back at all..."

"How could that be?"

Xu Xingxing waved his hands dismissively, let out a dry laugh, and said: "Why're you speaking such big truths out loud?!"

"......"

Chen Shu shook his head. "Tonight, we celebrate!"

He pulled a massive haul of barbecue skewers and beer from his backpack and laid it all out on the table in the middle of the dorm.

The three sat around it, laughing loudly, like one last wild revelry.

The college entrance exam was looming — a new journey, but also the end of their high school years.

"Here's to all of us achieving something while we're still young..."

The three roared with laughter, shattering the usual gloomy atmosphere of the dorm.

"Cheers!"

......

The next morning, Chen Shu was groggily woken up.

His biological clock had long been calibrated to a noon wake-up. Returning to school threw it completely out of whack.

"Chen Pi, time for class."

Xie Sunan called out while brushing his teeth, rousing him.

"You guys go. I need to head home."

Chen Shu yawned and sank back into deep sleep.

The two didn't bother prodding him further. They finished getting ready and hurried off to the classroom, looking rushed.

By nine o'clock, Chen Shu finally managed to drag himself awake. He packed up and left the school directly.

As for asking for leave? Why ask for leave?

As the Nancang Province competition champion, having a few privileges — was there a problem with that?

Chen Shu carried his bag and arrived at home.

"Son, you're back?"

It was Saturday. Both his parents were home.

His mother wore a beaming smile, face full of pride — she'd clearly heard about Chen Shu winning the championship.

Chen Shu nodded and set down his bag.

His mother continued: "Go check on your father. I think he's lost his mind..."

"Lost his mind?"

Chen Shu froze, then spotted his father out on the balcony.

"Why the hell won't you transform into a dragon?! After all these years, I'm begging you — stop hiding it already!"

His father, Chen Ping, had his hands pressed together in prayer, chanting obsessively at the household fish tank. The fish in it was his contract spirit...

Chen Shu's mouth twitched. "Dad, what the hell are you doing?"

"Awakening my contract spirit's bloodline! Walking the path to life's peak!"

His father kept muttering away, like he was conducting a ritual.

"After seeing how incredible your Slime is, your father's become firmly convinced that your talent came from him. He thinks his fish has to be a divine beast too."

His mother walked over and shook her head. "Tell me that's not losing his mind. What else could it be? Go talk some sense into him."

Chen Shu understood immediately.

Wasn't this just pure nonsense?

Your son here has cheat codes![1]

His eyes darted around, and then he retreated to his bedroom.

A few minutes later, Chen Shu emerged in the living room holding a cardboard box.

"Dad, that approach won't work. You've got to make it leap the Dragon Gate!"[2]

With that, he held up the cardboard box, on which two giant characters had been scrawled crookedly: "Dragon Gate."

"......"

His mother's eyes went wide. "You two really are sick in the head!"

Shaking her head, she retreated to the kitchen, clearly having concluded that both of them were beyond saving.

"Quit screwing around. Now tell me what's really going on."

Father Chen Ping grabbed the "Dragon Gate" — he'd try it out later. Who knew, maybe the fish really could transform.

He sat upright and started questioning his son: "What's the actual deal with Little Yellow?"

"Dunno!"[3]

Chen Shu shrugged, looking completely clueless.

His father pressed on: "Did you feed it some kind of miracle elixir or something? Otherwise, how could Little Yellow have fallen to this state?"

"......"

Chen Shu was speechless. What did he mean, "fallen"?

His eyes darted, and he was about to speak — but he was cut off immediately.

"Stop!"

His father said: "The moment I see your eyes move, I know you're about to start bullshitting. Tell me the truth!"

"Alright, I confess."

Chen Shu sighed. "I'm cheating."

"Quit with the nonsense!"

"I really am!"

......

Father and son argued back and forth. Chen Shu sighed.

These days, you tell a lie — no one believes you. You tell the truth — no one believes you either. Who do you even complain to?

Eventually, his mother cut off their argument.

The family gathered together and enjoyed lunch in warm harmony.

His mother asked: "Oh, right. Son, the college entrance exam is almost here. When are you heading back to school?"

Chen Shu blinked — options appeared before his eyes.

[Option 1: Return to school, study hard, get into a good university, and secure a good job in the future! Completion reward: Three bottles of Black Iron-rank Endurance Potion]

[Option 2: Activate vacation mode, effective immediately! Completion reward: Explosion Potion ×2]

[Option 3: Abandon the college entrance exam, apply to be a neighborhood security guard, skip decades of career struggle, and outcompete all your peers![4] Completion reward: One bottle of Silver-rank Intelligence Potion]

Chen Shu's mouth twitched. What kind of bullshit was Option 3? The pioneer of reverse involution?

He locked in on Option 2 immediately. It came with potions he actually wanted, plus he'd get to enjoy a vacation — two birds with one stone!

"My teacher said I'm way too tired and should rest up more!"

After lunch, Chen Shu began savoring his wonderful vacation.

As for school — he'd already forgotten it completely.

[1] 开挂 (kāiguà): Gaming and internet slang literally meaning "to toggle cheats" or "enable hacks." Originated from single-player games where players used cheat codes or third-party programs to gain unfair advantages. In competitive gaming, 开挂 is the ultimate accusation of cheating. In internet culture, it broadened to describe anyone who's inexplicably or absurdly powerful — as if they had cheat codes running. The chapter title's joke is meta: Chen Shu's Beast Taming Choice System IS quite literally a cheat code, and he confesses it plainly to his father, who refuses to believe the truth.

[2] 龙门 (lóngmén): The "Dragon Gate" — a legendary waterfall in the upper Yellow River. According to Chinese myth, if a carp can swim upstream and leap over the Dragon Gate waterfall, it transforms into a dragon. The idiom 鲤鱼跃龙门 ("a carp leaps the Dragon Gate") is a metaphor for achieving dramatic success through extraordinary effort, especially passing civil service exams. Chen Shu's version is a crookedly-labeled cardboard box — the absurdity of using it for Dad's ordinary fish is the entire joke.

[3] 母鸡啊 (mǔjī a): Internet slang originating from a Cantonese-influenced phonetic twist on 不知道 (bù zhīdào, "don't know"). The Canto pronunciation of 不知 sounds similar to 母鸡 (literally "hen"). By the time it spread across Chinese internet communities, 母鸡 became playful shorthand for "dunno" / "beats me." Chen Shu uses it here to play dumb rather than explain himself.

[4] 反向内卷 (fǎnxiàng nèijuǎn): "Reverse involution." 内卷 (nèijuǎn, "involution") describes the phenomenon of everyone working increasingly harder for diminishing returns — a hyper-competitive rat race where more effort yields no proportional gain. Chen Shu's "reverse involution" strategy is to simply opt out entirely by becoming a security guard, "skipping decades of career struggle" to directly reach the end state. The joke is that in a world of endless competition, the ultimate power move is to stop competing at all.