This time I chose Paladin.

Chapter 167 Chicken Farming, Astronomy, and Surgery
"Brother Nie? Brother Nie!" Yi Jian's voice came from outside the cave. "Hello? Are you there?"

The red cloth wrapped around the broken sword fluttered at the cave entrance, contrasting beautifully with the flowers covering the mountains and fields.

The young man, dressed in a t-shirt and shorts, carefully carried a rooster and a hen, walking under the red cloth. He used his leg to push open the fence gate and entered Nie Weiyang's yard.

The cave was spotless, paved with neat bluestone slabs, and a small hut had been built inside. The bricks, wooden pillars, and thatch made it warm in winter and cool in summer. Although it hadn't yet been tested by winter, it had certainly already experienced summer temperatures—even though it was only spring, the temperature was definitely up to summer standards.

The house was built for Nie Weiyang by the people of Gushi. Nie Weiyang said he didn't need it, but they insisted on doing so.

“Even if they come back to stay temporarily, they should at least be able to stay comfortably, right?” Liang Zhenduan said. “We can’t let people know that the people who shed blood for them are sleeping in tents set up in caves. It’s not extremely hot yet, and there’s no war yet… In short, this is all out of goodwill.”

From that day on, he also started calling Nie Weiyang "Old Nie".

Nie Weiyang eventually accepted the house. It didn't take long; three level 18 construction workers finished the job in two hours. If Nie Weiyang hadn't stopped them, they even considered adding carvings to the baseboards.

Even so, they still managed to make some decorative items like vases and wind chimes from the leftover materials before leaving with smiles on their faces. Before leaving, they exchanged pleasantries with Nie Weiyang for a while: "Thank you, thank you so much! If it weren't for you, we'd probably all be dead!"

Nie Weiyang then realized that many people wanted to come, but they knew he preferred quiet, so they only sent these three of his best construction workers. He had been living a very quiet life every time he returned to his hometown recently, partly because of this—after all, there weren't any internet celebrities or live streamers around, and nobody wanted to invite trouble.

What will they become when this false and strained peace disappears?
The thought only flashed through his mind. Nie Weiyang didn't say much at the time, but simply told them that it was not his achievement alone, but the collective effort of everyone that saved Gushi.

Now, Nie Weiyang slept well on his monthly day off, although for vampires, working during the day and sleeping at night is probably the real form of staying up all night—

He placed a bouquet of flowers in a vase and set aside the washed dishes and chopsticks.

Although he doesn't need to eat, he still eats; after all, a person can't just drink without eating. What he eats depends on which unsuspecting mutated animal comes near. For example, his breakfast just now consisted of fried giant centipede meat steaks. Surprisingly, aside from easily poisoning two normal people, the taste was quite good. However, his constitution is strong enough to neutralize toxins, and his passive skill, enhanced after leveling up, further strengthens his resistance to all negative effects. Therefore, this amount of toxin is nothing to him.

He lifted the curtain and stepped out of the room.

"I'm here, you've come." He said, casually straightening his casual clothes, his gaze falling on the two chickens in Yi Jian's hand, asking knowingly, "These are...?"

"They came from a chicken farm in the city. Their population has finally expanded, and they'll have more and more eggs to eat in the future," Yi Jian said with a smile. "They want you to help raise these two chickens. Just build them a nest outside the cave, and let them eat some New World insects every day."

"It's said that chickens raised this way lay eggs with very high nutritional value. They also want to study whether there are differences in the nutritional value and taste of eggs and meat from chickens raised on different hills nearby..."

Nie Weiyang narrowed his eyes and stared at Yi Jian: "Do you want my help, or do you want to give it to me?"

"..." Yi Jian paused for a moment in front of those eyes, then immediately made the right choice: "I'll give it to you."

"Take it back," Nie Weiyang said.

“No way, Brother Nie…” Yi Jian sighed: “You know, if people want to get closer, they have to accept each other’s kindness. I know you don’t want to build any kind of interpersonal relationships, but I also know you don’t want to be separated from ordinary people, right? If it really doesn’t work, just pretend you’re raising them for them. You can occasionally collect a few eggs as a service fee, and they can handle the rest themselves.”

He held a pair of chickens in one hand and gripped Nie Weiyang's sleeve tightly with the other, his face sincere: "You know everyone likes you." "...Who taught you this?" Nie Weiyang asked slowly, forcefully pulling his sleeve out of Yi Jian's hand.

"Old cold legs... no, Xiao Jiang." Yi Jian withdrew his hand and awkwardly put it in his pocket: "I knew her outfit wasn't very human-like."

Over the past two months, Yi Jian and Han Jiangxue have followed Nie Weiyang around many times, spending the rest of their time resting in Gushi or carrying out other missions. Their levels and combat power have greatly improved, and they are now in the top tier. Both of them are level 28, at the forefront of the current players... except for Nie Weiyang.

But the consequence of all this was that as Han Jiangxue and Yi Jian interacted more in their daily lives, they both became strange.

Yi Jian tried to make his social skills seem more sincere and genuine, but after learning Han Jiangxue's heart-touching communication style, his words and actions always seemed to make his bed seem a bit too inclusive.

Han Jiangxue always wanted to become more humane, so she spent half a month learning humor from Yi Jian, learning how to send someone to the Arctic with a single joke. She then spent another half month learning communication skills, but her communication abilities didn't improve at all. However, Nie Weiyang was certain she had deeply understood how to deliver sarcasm more effectively…

Nie Weiyang silently grabbed the two chickens from Yi Jian's hand.

"Don't keep arguing with Xiao Jiang about life principles. Her approach doesn't apply to normal humans at all, and yours doesn't apply to her either." He pulled out the Golden Gift and carved an extremely hardcore stone chicken coop out of a corner of a rock near the door. "Poor wild plants in front of my door, they're probably going to suffer."

"Huh?" Yi Jian didn't understand.

"Don't you know? Chickens eat wherever they go, insects, grass seeds, plants... If you raise too many, that piece of land will become barren."

Yi Jian was shocked, but not because of this hot topic: "Wait, how come you're so skilled at this?!"

“I raised chickens when I was a child,” Nie Weiyang said, untying the two chickens and putting them into the coop. “I was poor and didn’t have money to buy eggs, so I saved up to buy a chicken and raised it to lay eggs. The lifespan of a free-range chicken is usually three to eight years. I raised it to eleven years old, and then it died of old age. I buried it in the mountains near the county town and then went to university.”

His expression betrayed no sadness; he simply squatted down and patted the heads of the two chickens. These two sacred and magnificent descendants of ancient dinosaurs looked into his eyes, behaving very obediently.

Yi Jian fell silent for a moment.

“University is usually for people who are seventeen or eighteen years old…” Yi Jian murmured, “You… you saved up money to buy a chicken when you were six or seven? Shouldn’t this kind of thing be… done by an adult?”
He stopped himself in time, but Nie Weiyang knew what he was going to say. He simply gave a gentle smile and changed the subject: "Is there anything else?"

"Oh..." Yi Jian seemed to have been successfully diverted from the topic, and he readily replied, "It seems that something happened to the scholars at the observatory, and Mayor Liang asked you to come over. By the way, he said that everything you asked him to do is being done, and also, the first surgical operating room at the city hospital has been completed, and he asked me to give you the good news."

"Understood," Nie Weiyang said.

He put down the stone gate he was carrying at the entrance of the chicken coop. It was a stone he had just carved out of a single block of stone. Whether others could lift it or not was another matter, but the chickens certainly couldn't break it open.

“Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s go to the observatory and see what’s going on.”

Under the scorching sun, the two walked down the hillside one after the other. In Nie Weiyang's passive skill list, the two skills [Mind Cognition] and [Optimal Cognition] were quietly listed side by side.

(End of this chapter)