When Xiang Ye heard Ying Li asking if he wanted to train with him, his face filled with shock.
Seeing his expression, Ying Li instantly regretted it.
He shouldn’t have asked.
Exercise was no relaxing affair. Even among Sentinels, many disliked the academy’s training courses and found every way to slack off.
Xiang Ye, scrawny as a rail, definitely had poor stamina. A person like this would dislike exercise even more.
In his last life, he had clashed constantly with Wu Nian over trying to get Wu Nian to exercise.
Thinking of this, Ying Li was about to change the subject and steer the conversation elsewhere.
But before he could say anything, Xiang Ye’s face lit up with immense joy. “Mr. Ying, I can actually train with you?!”
He was just a housekeeper, yet he could join his master in training?
Ying Li paused, deeply realizing that Xiang Ye and Wu Nian were two completely different people.
Of course they were. Wu Nian had never really suffered hardship growing up. Xiang Ye, on the other hand, was just like him—someone who had clawed his way up from rock bottom.
In fact, Xiang Ye’s life had been even more miserable than his.
Ying Li answered, “Of course. But you won’t be able to handle my training regimen. I’ll find some videos online for you, and you can follow along with those.”
With Xiang Ye’s twig-like arms and legs, in his current state, he absolutely couldn’t handle any added weight. Doing some squats or jumping rope would already be a great start.
Ying Li found a beginner zero-basics exercise video guide for Guides online and told him to follow along and move a bit.
“This is for Guides?” Xiang Ye was somewhat puzzled. He was an ordinary person. If he awakened in the future, shouldn’t it be as a Sentinel? Why was Ying Li giving him exercises meant for Guides?
Ying Li chuckled. “You’re far too thin. Most exercises aren’t suitable for you. Only the ones in this video will work.”
In the Underground City, the most delicate and fragile group was the Guides.
Sentinels went without saying—even if they didn’t exercise, they’d naturally grow muscular bodies. As for ordinary people… the common folk of the Upper City District were reluctant to spend money on transport. On top of that, their daily lives involved heavy physical labor. Even if they didn’t eat well, their physical fitness was still quite decent.
Hearing Ying Li’s words, Xiang Ye glanced at his own thin arms and felt a little embarrassed.
At the same time, he made a firm resolution. He would train hard and build up his body.
Only if he grew strong enough would he have a chance to awaken and become a worthy Follower for Ying Li.
With this in mind, Xiang Ye opened the video and began imitating the movements inside.
When Ying Li had suggested Xiang Ye exercise, he hadn’t thought much of it. But now, watching the small, emaciated Xiang Ye swinging his arms and legs around doing various moves, he started to worry that Xiang Ye might accidentally snap one of his arms or legs.
For most people, there’s a visible difference in thickness between their thighs and calves. But Xiang Ye had so little flesh on his body that his thighs and calves were the same thickness; only the knee joints formed a slightly wider circle.
Seeing him move like this was honestly nerve-wracking.
Taking a deep breath, Ying Li stopped paying attention to Xiang Ye and brought out the dumbbells he had bought before, starting his own workout in the cramped space.
The dumbbells he was using now felt a little too light for his current strength.
But his main goal recently was to build back his health. Under the circumstances, using lighter weights was suitable.
In the middle of his training, Ying Li noticed from the corner of his eye that Xiang Ye’s complexion had turned poor and his body wobbled slightly.
Ying Li reacted instantly, immediately stepping over to support Xiang Ye. At the same time, he grabbed Xiang Ye’s wrist, using his mental power to probe Xiang Ye’s physical condition.
A Sentinel’s powerful mental power could capture all kinds of biological data—Xiang Ye’s heartbeat, blood flow rate, breathing frequency, and the like were all perceptible to him.
In his last life, after joining the Yu Family Hunting Team, he had learned some medical skills from one of the other team members.
His medical knowledge wasn’t deep, but he could use mental power to examine the physical state of a person next to him.
He quickly figured out Xiang Ye’s condition.
Xiang Ye was anemic and his physical fitness was abysmal. Just now, as he tried to do squats—moving down and up repeatedly—his blood flow had trouble reaching his brain, causing low blood pressure.
It was no major issue. It just meant Xiang Ye’s body needed careful nurturing.
He had been taking Supplements himself during this period. In the future, Xiang Ye could take them together with him.
Of course, what Xiang Ye took would definitely differ from what he took. Xiang Ye’s body right now simply couldn’t absorb too many nutrients at once.
Since arriving at his home, Xiang Ye’s stomach had rumbled plenty of times and he had made quite a few trips to the toilet. This was caused by his long-starved digestive system being unable to handle suddenly eating so much food.
After all, Xiang Ye hadn’t awakened as a Guide yet.
Even if he had awakened, a Guide’s body was essentially the same as an ordinary person’s. It didn’t come with an iron stomach.
These thoughts zipped through Ying Li’s mind in an instant. Xiang Ye, however, was feeling very uneasy.
He hadn’t expected that doing even simple movements would nearly make him faint.
Was he really this useless?
“Mr. Ying, I’m sorry,” Xiang Ye said in a fluster.
Ying Li had brought him home because he believed Xiang Ye had the potential to awaken as a Sentinel. But weak as he was, he didn’t look like someone capable of that at all.
Would Ying Li throw him out?
Just as he was thinking this, he felt Ying Li grab the fabric of his chest, lift him, and reposition him flat on the floor.
“You just have a bit of low blood pressure. Lie down for a while and you’ll be fine,” Ying Li said, then sighed. “You’re so light, it’s nothing.”
Xiang Ye looked underdeveloped, shorter than he would be ten years later. He was only about 1.6 meters tall. As for his weight… it probably wasn’t even fifty jin.
For an ordinary person to be this skinny, they’d probably have died long ago. He had no idea how Xiang Ye had survived, awakened, endured the Shen Family’s experiments, and lived to ten years later with this kind of body.
“I…” Xiang Ye felt even more guilty.
Ying Li didn’t dwell on it much. “I’ll buy you some Supplements. Take them on schedule every day, so your body can recover.”
Pale-faced, Xiang Ye wanted to refuse. “There’s no need, I don’t need Supplements…” Things like supplements definitely weren’t cheap.
He was already eating nine boxes of Nutrient Paste a day—a hundred and eighty Credit Points. Add in water costs and the other food he ate, it was at least three hundred Credit Points a day. That meant he cost Ying Li ten thousand Credit Points a month! That was already far too much. How could he ask for anything else?
“I said you need them, so you need them!” Ying Li didn’t want to get into a back-and-forth of refusals with Xiang Ye, so his tone was very firm. After speaking, seeing Xiang Ye lying on the floor so thin and small, he felt another wave of pity for him and softened his voice. “Your most important job right now is to fatten up, got it?”
People who were too thin looked a bit frightening. It was only because he had seen all kinds of people and wasn’t unfamiliar with corpses that he could remain so calm. If it were Wu Nian, he probably would have screamed at the first sight of Xiang Ye.
He hoped Xiang Ye could plump up quickly.
Hearing Ying Li’s words, Xiang Ye nodded.
He lay on the floor, his body gently rising and falling with his breath, his eyes focused on Ying Li standing beside him, who in his eyes seemed like a god descended from heaven.
Ying Li was far too good to him. He had no idea how he could ever repay him.
Why couldn’t Ying Li have at least some special hobby?
Ying Li had no idea about Xiang Ye’s thoughts. Xiang Ye was simply too thin and small. Subconsciously, Ying Li saw him as nothing more than a child.
As for a partner… His aesthetic taste aligned perfectly with the preference of the vast majority of people in this era: he liked people who were fair-skinned and plump.
In his last life, Wu Nian had fit his tastes very well. At the beginning, he had liked Wu Nian very much indeed.
If it hadn’t been genuine affection, he wouldn’t have chosen Wu Nian as his Guide.
Ying Li opened his Communication Terminal and purchased some Supplements, along with more fresh ingredients.
Included among them was a hundred grams of pork liver.
This was quite expensive—much pricier than the cheap scraps of pork he had bought before. It cost him over a thousand Credit Points.
But it was an excellent food for building blood. The female Guides in the Central District were particularly fond of eating it.
After finishing his purchases, Ying Li noticed several messages on his Communication Terminal from his father.
When resources are desperately scarce, people’s entire mind is focused on trying to fill their stomachs. There is no energy left to love anyone else.
His parents simply did not love them, their children; they merely found the children annoying.
They had so many kids because the government gave subsidies for having children, and they could also eat the free food the government provided for the kids.
As for whether the children would starve after the parents ate their rations, they didn’t care.
Since his parents had no love for the kids, there was naturally no affection between him and his siblings either.
When he was small, he often went hungry. Only when he grew to five or six and could go claim government rations on his own did he finally get enough to eat.
His parents only wanted to squeeze him for benefits. So, after he awakened as a Sentinel and entered the Sentinel Academy, his parents immediately started demanding all sorts of things from him.
The Sentinel Academy indeed provided a lot of food. But a Sentinel’s appetite was huge!
That food was barely enough for himself, so he wasn’t willing to give any to his parents. Unable to extract anything from him, his parents simply stopped feeding his youngest brother and drove the hungry child to his doorstep.
He couldn’t bear to watch his little brother starve to death. He had no choice but to save some of his own food for the boy.
When he turned sixteen and began hunting outside the city, his parents further intensified their demands, pestering him for money every single day.
He did give them money, but not much. Initially, he gave them a thousand Credit Points a month. After reaching adulthood, he increased it to two thousand Credit Points a month.
At this same point in his last life, when they learned he had become a B-Rank Sentinel and demanded more money, he had raised the amount to four thousand Credit Points a month—effectively two thousand for each parent—automatically deposited into their accounts at the end of every month.
Later, the amount had increased a few more times. Before his death, he had been giving them ten thousand Credit Points a month. To his siblings, he also gave two thousand each a month. Beyond this, there was virtually no other contact.
In this life, Ying Li planned to do exactly the same.
He replied to his parents, informing them about the increase in money, when a sudden thought struck him.
At this point in time, Wu Nian’s mother was still alive.
When they met at eighteen, Wu Nian learned that Ying Li gave money to his own parents, and subsequently brought up the topic of his own mother. As a result, Ying Li had extended the same arrangement to Wu Nian’s mother, giving her money just like he did for his own parents, continuing to do so until her death.
Right now, he was giving his parents a thousand Credit Points each, and Wu Nian’s mother also received a thousand Credit Points.
Ying Li canceled this financial support towards Wu Nian’s mother without the slightest hesitation.
In his last life, Wu Nian’s mother had constantly complained that he gave too little, always looking at him with obvious dislike and contempt. There was truly no need for him to keep throwing money her way.
After handling some other messages, Ying Li returned to his training.
Xiang Ye watched Ying Li intently for a while before slipping into the kitchen to cook.
The apartment was very small, so Ying Li could hear the sounds from the kitchen with perfect clarity.
Listening to those sounds, he suddenly felt a sense of home.
He had always wanted a home—a place with a partner, with children, people who would always be there with him and cook him meals.
Ying Li felt a sudden urge to take Xiang Ye as his godson.
If Xiang Ye were his son, he would definitely fatten him up until he was plump and fair.
Alright, calling him his godson might be a bit overly dramatic. But he could acknowledge him as a younger brother.
His biological younger brother was unreliable. Xiang Ye, on the other hand? Even after the Shen Family tortured him like that, Xiang Ye hadn’t gone on a blind, indiscriminate killing spree. Ying Li felt Xiang Ye’s character was fundamentally very good.
