After leaving Feiyu Internet Cafe, they grabbed a bowl of malatang on a back street and headed back to their dorm.

Chen Hao was silent the whole way.

The moment he stepped into the dorm, he suddenly clutched his head with both hands and curled into a ball.

"SOB... SOB, SOB..."

"I almost... I almost killed him... SOB, SOB..."

"If I had pushed down... I would’ve been a murderer..."

In the dorm, Li Zijian and Wang Bo were totally freaked out.

"Holy shit! Brother Hao? What the hell is going on?"

The two of them scrambled down from their beds.

Jiang He walked over to Chen Hao and squatted down.

"Chen Hao, you didn’t kill anyone. You rushed up because you wanted to save someone."

"But... but if I had pushed..."

"You didn’t push. I stopped you, right?"

Jiang He paused for a moment, then said:

"What happened today was an important lesson. If you ever run into a situation like this again, use your head. Think it through before you act, understand?"

Chen Hao stared blankly at Jiang He.

After a long moment, he finally said, "...I understand."

"So... what exactly happened?" Wang Bo asked cautiously.

After calming down for another moment, Chen Hao haltingly recounted everything that had happened at the internet cafe.

"Holy shit..." After hearing the story, Li Zijian was dumbfounded. "For real? We’re only juniors! Old Jiang, you actually dared to perform a chest puncture?!"

Wang Bo just kept shaking his head. "That’s insane. Absolutely insane..."

Suddenly, Li Zijian seemed to remember something and whirled around.

"Wait! I think I saw something when I was on the BBS earlier!"

His fingers clattered across the keyboard as he pulled up the Nanshan Medical University campus forum—the Southern Medical Tea House.

A stickied post, highlighted in red, had an incredibly eye-catching title:

Worshipping a Master! Textbook-Perfect Emergency First Aid at Feiyu Internet Cafe Tonight! This is the True Pride of Medical Students!

"This is it!"

Li Zijian waved excitedly, beckoning everyone over to look.

Jiang He also walked over and glanced at it.

A photo was attached to the post.

But given the low resolution of a 2008 phone camera, combined with the dim cafe lighting and the photographer’s shaky hands, the picture was a blurry mess.

You could just make out the back of a figure in a white T-shirt, kneeling on the ground, one hand on the patient’s chest and the other holding up some kind of IV-drip-like contraption.

The original poster wrote:

[I was right there when it happened. That guy was so damn cool! For real! The patient looked like he was on his last breath, his face was already purple, and this guy goes up and saves him with a mineral water bottle! Even the paramedics said he was a badass when they arrived! Since when does our university have such a beast of a student?]

There were already dozens of replies.

[1st Floor: Front-row seat to watch a master at work!]

[2nd Floor: For real? A mineral water bottle? What was he even doing?]

[3rd Floor: To the poster above, it’s called a makeshift water-seal chest drainage. Speaking as a first-year grad student, that kind of on-the-spot reaction time is definitely on the level of an Intern at Affiliated Hospital No. 1!]

Li Zijian’s face was flushed with excitement as he read the post.

"Old Jiang! I’m gonna reply and claim it for you. You’re gonna be famous!"

With a calm expression, Jiang He stopped him. "Don’t."

"Huh? Why not?" Li Zijian asked, confused. "This is a great chance for some recognition! Room 402 will be able to swagger through the clinical department after this!"

"Do I have a medical license?" Jiang He asked.

Everyone shook their heads.

"Is an internet cafe a medical facility?"

Everyone shook their heads again.

"Exactly," Jiang He explained. "Even though the person was saved and the doctors praised the work, it’s better to avoid unnecessary trouble. We should just leave it at that."

The dorm room fell into a brief silence.

They were all medical students, so it only took a moment of thought for them to grasp the potential repercussions.

Still...

"It’s such a shame," Li Zijian sighed, taking his hands off the keyboard. "You do a good deed and you still have to keep it under wraps."

"That’s what being a doctor is like," Jiang He said, patting his shoulder. "The reward is in the act itself, not the recognition. Let’s get some sleep."

With that, Jiang He turned back to his desk and started gathering his things to go wash up.

Chen Hao, still sitting on the floor, watched Jiang He’s retreating back with an incredibly complex expression in his eyes.

He took a breath and used the edge of the bed to pull himself up.

"I’m going to make a call."

Out on the balcony, Chen Hao lit a cigarette and dialed his father’s number.

"Hello? Dad..."

"...I need to tell you something. I almost caused a huge disaster today..."

Chen Hao spoke into the phone, explaining as he smoked.

He went into great detail.

He explained how reckless he had been, how Jiang He had stopped him, and how Jiang He had saved the day.

There was a long silence on the other end of the line, followed at last by a long sigh.

「Ten minutes later.」

Chen Hao stubbed out his cigarette, rubbed his face hard, then pushed open the balcony door and went back into the dorm.

At that moment, Jiang He was holding a washbasin, about to head out.

"Old Jiang."

Chen Hao called out to him.

Jiang He stopped and looked back. "Yeah?"

Chen Hao walked over and said, "I just called my dad and told him everything that happened today."

"Okay." Jiang He nodded.

"My dad said our family will never forget this debt. Words aren’t enough for a favor this big. I know you want to focus on your research, so go for it. From now on, I’m covering all your expenses at school. Anything that costs money—whether it’s food or academic pursuits—I’ll pay for it all."

"Don’t you dare refuse," Chen Hao said, raising a hand to cut off Jiang He before he could speak. "If you refuse, you’re looking down on me. You saved my life. What’s a little money compared to that? It’s nothing!"

Nearby, Li Zijian and Wang Bo heard everything, but neither of them interrupted.

Normally, they would have definitely joked about wanting to be a sugar baby too...

But today was different.

This was too serious to joke about.

"Old Jiang, Brother Hao is right," Wang Bo chimed in. "You have to take the money. Otherwise, Brother Hao won’t be able to live with himself."

"Exactly," Li Zijian added. "Don’t be polite with Brother Hao. His family’s loaded. To him, this amount of money is just the cost of a few new pieces of in-game gear."

Jiang He hadn’t planned on refusing in the first place.

As someone who had been reborn, making money would have been simple for him.

He could have easily bought some Moutai stock, waited for Bitcoin to take off, or even just flipped some information about the imminent boom in school-district housing prices over the next few months to achieve financial freedom.

But the things he needed to do right now all required immediate start-up capital, and a slow solution wouldn’t solve an urgent problem.

Rather than waste energy figuring out how to make a quick buck for his first pot of gold, he preferred to invest all his time into his research on curing pancreatic cancer.

So, Jiang He said, "Alright. Perfect timing, actually. I need to go print out some research papers tomorrow, so I’ll borrow some from you for that."

Chen Hao let out a long sigh of relief, a smile finally breaking across his face.

"Borrow, my ass! Just take the card!"

He pulled a bank card from his wallet and stuffed it into Jiang He’s washbasin.

"The PIN is 758941. Use it for whatever! Let me know when it runs out!"

Jiang He nodded. ’So this is what it’s like to be my roommate’s sugar baby,’ he thought. ’Not bad.’

Then again...

’I borrowed a huge sum from Chen Hao in my past life, and now in this life, he’s the one providing my first pot of gold again.’

’My path to riches is really putting a strain on Chen Hao, isn’t it?’