Chapter 6

Back at the flat, Li Lan sat down at the desk and opened the system shop. Where there had once been a single lonely gardenia, the line for collected plants now read fifty-eight, and the list below had sorted itself into groups.

[Algae: 0] [Mosses: 0] [Ferns: 0] [Seed plants: 58]

She opened the seed plants. Most of them were ordinary things — every flower, grass and tree she could find nearby had gone into the shop. She'd also discovered that for anything she'd collected, she didn't merely have the entry: she knew its form and characteristics exactly. Which meant she could tell at a glance whether she'd already collected a plant, without having to touch each one.

That only went as far as the information she already had, though. Anything the shop wanted points for stayed shut to her. She assumed some of it would come to her without the shop eventually, but certainly not yet.

Past the shop, she opened her personal information. She still hadn't traded for any attributes, so the only thing that had changed was the points — from ten to five hundred and eighty.

[Host: Li Lan] [Points (L1): 580 — convert to a higher grade?] [Stamina: 25] [Spirit: 20] [Focus: 10] [Memory: 20] [Comprehension: 15]

With that established she went back to the shop and started buying according to her plan. Every attribute point cost fifty, and five hundred and eighty bought fifty-eight of them, so each one had to count.

After Focus, her lowest was Comprehension — but she had no idea what Focus even did, so the plan was twenty into Comprehension, ten into Memory, fifteen into Focus and ten into Spirit.

Spirit was equally opaque, but the lowest number sets the ceiling for everything else, so she put something into both.

Stamina, at least, explained itself, and as a student she had no heavy lifting to do, so she skipped it, meaning to top it up once points were easier to come by. She would regret that decision the very next day.

She bought, then shut her eyes and took stock. Nothing felt any different. Her personal information, on the other hand, had changed considerably.

[Host: Li Lan] [Points (L1): 30 — convert to a higher grade?] [Stamina: 25] [Spirit: 30] [Focus: 25] [Memory: 30] [Comprehension: 35]

Physically she felt nothing at all, but working through questions that evening she noticed that where yesterday everything had been heavy going, tonight it ran a good deal more smoothly — like oil poured into a rusted machine. And she could still recall most of what had been taught in the day's lessons.

Points were hard to come by, she thought before sleeping, but they were certainly worth having. She felt rather better about the exam three months off.

Whether it was the Spirit or not, she slept the whole night through without dreaming and woke in excellent form.

---

Full of energy, Li Lan parted from her sister and Zhao Xinxin and went to Year 9 Class 3, full of energy began morning reading, full of energy sat through her lessons, full of energy went out to PE — and then wilted.

Out on the sports ground, the PE teacher stood in front of the lined-up students explaining the marking standards for each event in the PE component. Hearing that the test was around April, Li Lan could have split apart on the spot. She had been so busy revising Chinese, maths, English and the rest that a PE exam had never crossed her mind.

The words were barely out before she sank into gloom.

No wonder PE lessons hadn't been requisitioned. Was the PE component this term? Hadn't it been earlier than this? All of it arriving somewhat late.

Looking at Stamina: 25 and Points: 30 in her personal information, she could have wept. She wanted to buy Stamina, but what use was thirty points? After some thought she decided to leave the thirty untouched and save them until she could make a round number of it.

Sulking got her nowhere either. All she could do was see whether she could find another florist's or more plants after school. She noted down the full-mark requirements for each of the three events the teacher named: eight hundred metres, sit-ups, standing long jump.

Having gone through the requirements, the teacher set them training — standing jump or sit-ups first, then the eight hundred, which took the most out of them.

There was a time to beat, so everyone ran flat out. Li Lan had lost a little weight but was still on the plump side and not fast, and when she finished, gasping, only a dozen or so girls were behind her.

She stood to one side and heard the teacher read out her time. "Li Lan. Four minutes. Pass."

She waited for her heart to settle. Full marks was three minutes ten. She had only just cleared a pass. She clearly needed to get that Stamina up.

Before the lesson ended, while she was still turning over where to find more plants, the teacher's voice reached her from the front. "...and the results are about what I expected. Those of you who did badly needn't panic. There's over a month yet, you're young, and if you train properly — ten minutes' running every morning — full marks in PE is perfectly possible."

That stopped her. Of course. Her PE marks last time round must have been much the same as now, and last time she'd had no system shop and no attribute points, and her PE result hadn't been especially bad.

So if training was enough for full marks, why was she so fixed on buying Stamina? She had got herself into a corner, and the truth was she'd started leaning on this shop that had turned up out of nowhere.

Either way, low Stamina or not, one PE exam ought to be manageable. And her guess was that Stamina would rise by itself with regular exercise — that perhaps all the attributes could grow on their own, given the right approach.

That settled, she relaxed, and the exam a month away stopped looking so objectionable. She would keep saving points regardless. Stamina might come from training, but she had no idea how the others grew and couldn't be sure they did, so those still had to be bought.

---

After school, while her sister and Zhao Xinxin went out to eat, Li Lan went hunting for new plants again. Her luck wasn't as good as the day before — no florist's this time — but the trip wasn't wasted either.

There was no flower shop, but plenty of shops kept a plant or two, and working that way she found three species and thirty points.

Li Cheng and Zhao Xinxin were back from dinner by the time she got in. Li Lan took a sheet of paper out of her bag and stuck it on the wall — a revision timetable she'd drawn up in her free period — and turned to them. "Xinxin, Chengcheng. This is a revision plan. Let's work to these times from now on."

The two of them came closer to look. What was on the wall was several pages torn from a notebook and taped into one large sheet, headed in thick black capitals: March Revision Plan.

Below that was a day-by-day schedule, running from the morning run through every hour to the end of the evening, with sit-ups and standing jump practice worked in between.

Li Cheng and Zhao Xinxin looked at each other. "Li Lan, did you make this?"

"I did." With no adults around, the three of them had never been especially disciplined. It looked to them like working hard, but to a Li Lan who had been through the university exam and four years of end-of-term papers, it was barely a start. Dawdling until half past seven and in bed by ten? So she had drawn up a timetable, and doing it together would make it easier to stick to.

"Until half eleven at night? And up at half five to run? I'll fall asleep in lessons," said Zhao Xinxin, hesitating.

"You won't. They say the top of our class studies till twelve or one. And six hours is enough sleep." Most people said seven was the healthy figure, but all three of them were in their teens with energy to spare, and a little less wouldn't do any harm.

Seeing them still wavering, she added, "Anyway, it's not long till the exam. Once it's over you can sleep however you like."

Both of them had plainly been thinking along the same lines, and after a moment they gritted their teeth and agreed. Who didn't want a good result? A few months of it, then.

With that decided, Li Cheng looked at her sister. "We're agreed, then. You have to actually follow it. No skipping when you feel like it." Li Lan, after all, was the one who used to stay up reading and was famously the last out of bed.

"Obviously." Li Lan raised an eyebrow and promised. Her Spirit was thirty now. She didn't know what anyone else's was, but this schedule was clearly not going to be a problem.

And she meant it. The morning after the timetable went up, the three of them were out running with barely a wash first. To their surprise, they weren't alone — a good few classmates from the surrounding buildings were out running too.

It was about twenty past six when they got back, having eaten breakfast on the way, and by the time they'd washed in turn it was time for school.

After lessons, while the other two went out to eat, Li Lan roamed about looking for more plants. When she got back the three of them revised to her timetable, and when studying got tiring they went down to do a few jumps, or some sit-ups.

Neither Li Cheng nor Zhao Xinxin actually disliked studying. Their poor results last time had as much to do with not revising hard enough, and having no plan, as anything else. And at bottom the three of them were middle-schoolers with no parent in the house to keep them at it, so of course they had gone slack. As Li Lan saw it, none of them had gone off the rails — and reading a few novels made her, if anything, exceptionally well behaved.

Now, with a plan and with Li Lan setting the example and sticking to it, neither of the others wanted to be the one who gave up. It was as though they'd found a spine to lean on: revising and training every day, and, in time, actually keeping it up.