Chapter 124: Failed?
Hearing about the second disciple of the Cultivation Academy, Mark was stunned. He had been hit with too many shocks lately, so he didn’t remember there being such a thing.
Maybe he had never heard about it before, or maybe he had simply forgotten it. But that could be put aside for now; recovering his body was more important.
"I knew the great system was far-sighted. Can you let me recover now? At the very least, you should let me talk to her."
Mark had wanted to open his mouth and talk for a long time, but he couldn’t. He had drunk so much tea already, yet Mark still didn’t know what her name was. And even if Mark could talk but didn’t have ears, how was he supposed to hear?
[Alright, alright. As expected, only a useless mortal who can’t do anything would keep nagging like this to beg the system. Go back, your lesson is considered half complete. If you fail to meet the requirements in this second half, next time you’ll have to eat shit.]
The system left behind a threatening sentence before disappearing, making Mark break out in a cold sweat. The tea Emily made might be weird, but at least it was still a proper drink. But shit was waste, not food!
Feeling his body once again, Mark found that he could speak, but other than that, he still couldn’t hear or see.
At this point, instead of lying flat while Emily poured tea into his mouth like before, he had a seat and a teacup to drink properly.
"Hello, um... I’m really sorry that I’ve drunk so much tea and still don’t know your name. You don’t need to say it right away; I can’t hear you yet. I just want to tell you what I think about the tea you made and see if I’ve understood it correctly."
Mark gently put down the teacup and spoke slowly. His voice was a little strange at first from being mute for a while, but it quickly became more stable.
"Are you kidding me? When did you learn to speak?"
Emily stared at Mark with her eyes wide open. She checked his physical condition every day. Just a moment ago, his larynx was clearly still seriously injured, so how could he suddenly speak now?
After being stunned for three seconds, Emily immediately thought of the reason Mark had been mute until now. Although it was a little strange, it wasn’t impossible to explain.
"Oh, you want to explain it too? Let me see what you understand."
She smirked, resting her chin on one hand as she looked at Mark. Clearly, she really hoped Mark would get it right, but she also knew the chances were extremely low.
Mark naturally couldn’t hear what Emily was saying, much less see what she was doing. He stopped for a few dozen seconds just to make sure she was focused on listening to him.
"Let me tell you. The taste of your tea made me want to throw up at first, and I even felt dizzy. I thought it was terrible, but in reality, my brain didn’t want to acknowledge it. I don’t think I’m using the right words because I feel like my brain was overloaded and didn’t want to understand the taste of your tea."
At this point, Mark paused for a moment again. The bright smile on Emily’s face was the most accurate proof that everything he said was right.
Looking at her expression, it was as if Mark could just say everything correctly and the two of them could even get married tomorrow. After all, Emily had been waiting for someone like Mark for more than a decade before finally meeting him.
If she knew that Mark wasn’t voluntarily sensing it, but that the system and Nexus were pushing him from behind, she would probably be very disappointed. But she wouldn’t be completely sad either, because Mark’s feelings were genuine.
"I can taste sweetness, but it isn’t really sweet. That strange flavor suddenly makes me feel happy. I can taste bitterness, but it doesn’t feel like bitterness either. That flavor makes me feel a sense of loss.
I can taste sourness, but it doesn’t feel sour either. This flavor makes me feel jealous, but I don’t even know what I’m jealous of. I can taste spiciness, but it also doesn’t feel spicy. This flavor suddenly makes me angry for no reason..."
Mark listed each sensation he felt after separating the different flavors of the tea. The more he spoke, the more confused he became because he really didn’t understand it himself.
"Hahahaha, that’s right, very right. Keep going."
Emily couldn’t stop laughing, her eyes filled with affection as she looked at Mark’s face. The more accurately Mark described it, the more handsome he became in her eyes. Emily decided to declare Mark the most handsome man, no, the most beautiful human in the world to her.
"The reason my brain is resisting the taste of your tea is that it’s overloaded when too many different emotions appear at the same time. Honestly, I don’t think what you made is tea because it’s completely different from what I imagined tea to be, but if you like calling it that, that’s up to you."
After drinking so much, Mark could be certain that this was absolutely not tea made in the usual way.
There had to be stimulants inside. No, there had to be all kinds of different psychoactive substances directly affecting the brain.
The more he drank, the more he could sense Emily’s insane determination to create a drink that could immediately activate every emotion a human could possibly have at the same moment.
"Hmph, how dare you say the tea I made isn’t tea?"
Emily pouted and gently flicked Mark’s forehead. Even if Mark wasn’t as perfect as she had imagined, he was at least better than anyone she had ever met.
"Hey, why did you flick my forehead? Was I wrong?"
When he asked Emily, sweat poured down Mark’s forehead like rain, making Emily misunderstand and think he was nervous because he was afraid she would get angry with him, so she gave him a slight smile.
The harsh truth was completely different from what she imagined. Mark was panicking like that because if he failed, the lesson would start over and next time he would be forced to eat shit.
In his heart, Mark was already crying buckets. Emily’s tea might have an abstract taste, but at least there were some secrets hidden inside it. But what the hell could possibly be delicious about shit?
[Hahaha, what a useless mortal. I only casually said one thing, and you got scared like this? There’s no way this great system would make its number one disciple of the Cultivation Academy eat shit. Only that fat black chicken deserves to eat shit.]