Chapter 18: Studying Is Too Hard
Chapter 18: Chapter 18: Studying Is Too Hard
Zhang Yan sat at his computer desk, hesitating over whether to click on the sub-quest titled [Cognitive Enhancement] from his quest chain right now.
He had been debating this since yesterday but still couldn’t make up his mind. After all, anyone with half a brain could guess that this quest would almost certainly require reading. Thus, he had ultimately chosen to leave the decision to his future self’s wisdom.
Zhang Yan was not a particularly hardworking person, or rather, his "personal drive" just wasn’t that high. During his middle school years, his academic philosophy was simply to stay slightly above average. That meant neither grinding himself into dust with hyper-competition, nor falling far enough behind to trigger teacher interventions or worry his parents.
However, because of a girl, he had been forced to abandon his original plan.
The girl’s grades were excellent. He thought that if he could match her academic prowess, they might have more to talk about, bringing him closer to her. So, he pulled himself together—previewing lessons diligently, paying close attention in class, reviewing meticulously, and taking exams seriously.
Step by step, he improved himself, and the distance between him and that girl truly shrank a little more each day.
She was first in the entire school, while he was first in the whole... well, second in their class. At the time, he hoped to over-perform in the high school entrance exams so they could attend the best magnet school together. But when the exams ended, he managed to get in, while her family emigrated, taking her with them.
On that day, he only had one thought in mind: "I don’t want to study another day in my life!"
In high school, he coasted for two years and even secretly got a girlfriend. But when senior year arrived, he watched his parents spend their days researching which university their son could attend, proudly boasting to the neighbors that his good grades guaranteed him a spot at a top college. Added to that was the constant refrain from his teachers: "Once you get to university, you’ll be liberated!"
Gritting his teeth, Zhang Yan actually believed their nonsense.
During his senior year, he drowned himself in a sea of practice papers. His feelings for his little girlfriend faded, and once they went to universities on opposite ends of the country, they naturally drifted apart.
Senior year had truly made him sick of studying. When the college entrance exams finally ended, Zhang Yan made another vow: "I never want to study again in this lifetime!"
So, as soon as he entered university, he completely let loose. With his dorm buddies covering for him to skip classes, he spent his days either addicted to video games or going out to play basketball and chase girls. For final exams, he subscribed to the belief that "sixty points is a victory in college."
But the very first time he tried to cheat in his academic career, his rusty skills got him caught red-handed by the proctor. Failing the course served as a rude awakening, sending him right back to the classroom.
As a result, he ended up studying for another three and a half years.
On graduation day, Zhang Yan made up his mind yet again: "I never want to study again in this lifetime!"
But looking at his current situation, was he trapped in another cycle?
With a scrunched-up face, Zhang Yan clicked open the quest.
[Quest: Cognitive Enhancement]
[A person cannot earn money beyond their cognitive understanding, nor can they control emotions beyond their cognitive depth.]
[Even if acquired by luck, it will be lost by merit.]
[Select books from the following reading list to elevate your cognition. (Reaching the levels of Familiarity / Comprehension / Mastery will respectively grant 10% / 20% / 40% progress increases.)]
*Meditations*, *Being and Time*, *Guns, Germs, and Steel*, *The Wealth of Nations*, *Ragtag Army*, *A Brief History of Humankind*, *A Brief History of Time*, *Intimate Relationship*, *Art of Ambiguity*, *Jin Ping Mei*
[Quest Progress: 10%]
Upon seeing the reading list in the quest, Zhang Yan’s first reaction was, "What on earth is all this?!"
He recognized only about half of the titles, and of those, he had only read the unexpurgated colloquial version of one. Just looking at the names of the others gave him a splitting headache.
Fortunately, Brother Tongzi’s quest target was the thirty-eight-year-old Zhang Yan. The system would definitely take his age and physical condition into account and wouldn’t issue an impossibly difficult task. Although there was the saying, "You’re never too old to learn," realistically, a person’s learning capacity, memory, and ability to focus gradually declined with age. Moreover, the thirty-eight-year-old Zhang Yan had been worn down by the heavy burdens of life, leaving his physical and mental state in even worse shape.
Because of this, Brother Tongzi naturally provided some assistance.
[Support Item: Concentration Potion (Effective only on the host)]
[Upon consumption, the host will rapidly enter an Absolute Focus State lasting for 1 hour, gaining exceptional memory and superior logical reasoning. (Refreshes daily at 0:00; uses do not stack.)]
According to the system’s description, these three states would boost his corresponding attributes by 100 percent!
"Now that’s more reasonable!" he thought.
With this support item, even in the worst-case scenario, he could rely on the Concentration Potion every day to read through each book until he reached the Familiarity level, which would be enough to barely complete the quest.
"But Brother Tongzi makes a good point too. Improving my cognition is ultimately a good thing. I should still try my best to aim for the Comprehension level," he told himself. "This will definitely be the last time in my life! I’ll study just this once more!"
After all, this was the internet age. The vast majority of book resources could be found online, even the unexpurgated version of a certain novel. Zhang Yan downloaded PDF copies of the books onto his phone, lay down on his bed, and settled into the most comfortable position with his legs crossed. Then, he opened the one book he had read before.
"Let’s push for 20 percent!"
He took out the Concentration Potion provided by the system and drank it. The volume wasn’t large—only about 100 milliliters—and it tasted a bit like herbal cold medicine. The potion took effect quickly. After about five minutes, he felt a significant shift in his mental state. The noise of the world seemed to fade away, leaving only the small screen in his hands in his line of sight, or rather, a world called *Jin Ping Mei*. He transformed into Ximen Qing, encountering one colorful and multifaceted woman after another...
An hour later.
Zhang Yan felt weak, dizzy, nauseous, and saw stars dancing before his eyes.
Although the potion had drastically enhanced his various abilities—allowing him to speed-read ten lines at a glance while memorizing and understanding the plot and underlying themes—his brain was still just an ordinary brain. That short hour had nearly fried his CPU.
Fortunately, the results were astonishing. In just that brief window, he had read nearly a fifth of the entire book! It was worth noting that his unexpurgated colloquial version was a massive tome of roughly 900,000 words.
"I was still too careless. I started reading this book without thinking it through. I should have checked the word counts for all of them first," he muttered to himself.
He rested for quite a while before he finally caught his breath, then took out his phone to check. The longest of the other books was no more than three to five hundred thousand words, while titles like *Meditations*, *Ragtag Army*, and *A Brief History of Time* only hovered around a hundred thousand words. If he had chosen those, he could have finished reading them today!
However, the difficulty of comprehending those books varied, and understanding them probably wouldn’t be as easy as this one. Going forward, he would need to look up their general summaries before selectively starting his second book, striving to complete the quest while suffering as little as possible.
Studying was just too damn hard!