Starting with Proficiency Panel

After the two returned to the real estate agency, they signed the purchase contract and paid the deposit. Over the next two days, with the help of the real estate agency, Li Qing submitted various asset proofs and salary slips, and then waited for the seven-day inspection period to unfold, and then handed over the loan, still warm, to the real estate company.

What he got in return was a property deed from the bank, a monthly mortgage payment of less than two thousand, and emptied savings.

It's really cheap already! Li Qing honestly felt he had found a bargain; if it weren't for his quick eyes and swift hands, it would have been snapped up by someone else, even if the place had some ghostly presence.

For Li Qing, it was quite fortunate. Although there were indeed strange things in that room, for a mage like him, even if he was just at the apprentice level, he could at least cast spells, right?

Moreover, among level 0 magics, there were spells aimed at the undead.

'Undead Contact,' this level 0 magic, would allow him to physically touch a soul.

According to rumors, it was supposed to be a female ghost, and he couldn't believe he would lose to a woman.

"Brother Qing, I heard you bought a house?"

During lunch, Luo Rui asked curiously while sitting beside him.

Li Qing nodded slightly: "A second-hand house, in a relatively old community."

Hearing this, the colleague next to him also laughed: "Congratulations, congratulations, Brother Qing, you've finally achieved perfection!"

"Yes, Little Qing, finally achieving your long-held wish over the years!"

"That's really awesome!"

The people around didn't have much jealousy about Li Qing buying a house; mostly, they admired and congratulated him. After all, most of them knew a bit about his family background. Being able to save up and buy a house on his own was already an achievement over ninety percent of people in modern Huaxia, and Li Qing smiled and thanked each of them in return.

He really enjoyed this work environment, which is why he stayed with this company for four years.

"I wish I could be like Brother Qing, but unfortunately, I can't save any money. Every time I get my salary, it's either paying back Huabei or online loans!"

A trendy-dressed man nearby lamented.

Li Qing chuckled and said, "Zhang Yang, if you just controlled your retaliatory spending a bit, you wouldn't be in such a tight spot now."

Nowadays, many young people focus only on the present, spending as much as they have, and indulge in advanced consumption with no sense of financial management. At least among the twenty-somethings Li Qing knows, seven out of ten are in debt, another two barely scrape by, leaving just one who could pull out ten thousand in one go.

Zhang Yang sighed, "My girlfriend always wants this and that. One outing for lunch, shopping, a movie, plus buying some clothes, shoes, bags or whatever, and one or two thousand just disappears."

Beside him, Luo Rui curiously asked, "Do you pay for everything?"

Zhang Yang's face flushed: "No way, my girlfriend also spends a lot on me."

Li Qing casually said, "But this Valentine's Day, you transferred her a 1314-yuan red envelope, and she bought you five pairs of socks?"

Everyone couldn't help but laugh, and Luo Rui laughed even more, "Zhang Yang, you should learn from Brother Qing, who hasn't dated since entering society, then saved up to buy a house at thirty! From there, the next step is finding a girlfriend!"

Zhang Yang muttered, "In this life, you've got to find a girlfriend!"

Li Qing smiled and slightly shook his head, not refuting it, because in this age, many people are just in it for fun, unlike his old-fashioned ways where chatting a few times over a few days had him planning out the future.

Actually, in between, several girls hinted at Li Qing, but he was quite cautious about it, and in some ways, he had thought about the future thoroughly just after a few dinner dates with them.

Because he didn't own a house then, he always felt inferior.

Now, he finally could stand tall.

After lunch, Li Qing returned to his workstation, looking pensive. He had a deck of cards in his hands, and he casually drew three cards.

Six, four, seven.

His fingers gently manipulated the cards, and then he saw the cards shift, turning into a flush.

Li Qing opened the cards and after tidying them up, he brightened up, exchanging the flush with the six-four-seven in his hand.

The flush was now in his hand, while the six-four-seven cards went back into the deck.

Li Qing abruptly stood up, a trace of excitement on his face.

Screw work! he thought.

This commoner mindset finally dawned on Li Qing; damn it, he was a mage now. He had many magics that could make life much more convenient, so why stay as a wage slave?

Is being a wage slave bad? Actually, it's good: working nine to five, or nine to six, weekends either off or alternating, and as long as you have a skill, you can stick with it for the long term. The so-called midlife crisis does exist, but by the time you're middle-aged, you'll have built up resources in job skills and networking in life.

Even if you're unemployed, just lowering your expectations a bit lets you fit in easily. For ordinary people, this is the necessary path to survival.

But for Li Qing right now, he saw no need for that.

The system loader he developed could activate his magic instantly; once he succeeded casting magic the first time, he could fully activate it and mount it onto a plugin.

Even meditation now is running 24 hours without interruption.

Why stick it out here?

Li Qing promptly stood up, performed a routine check on the information system, then applied to use all of his seven days of annual leave in one go.

When he submitted it to Chen Ke, the admin lady, she asked for the real reason, so Li Qing had to drag Chen Chencheng into it as a distraction.

Under her ambiguous gaze, Li Qing politely smiled and signed to approve it.

However, given the special nature of his role, Li Qing was required to have a laptop on hand in order to handle system affairs remotely.

Li Qing had no objections to this; those in operations usually work this way—you hope for nothing to happen, but if something does arise, whether at midnight or in the early hours, or during a vacation, you need to solve it immediately to ensure the system runs smoothly.

As for why he hadn't resigned immediately, it was precisely to ensure a fallback if things didn't work out, with such a good job as a safety net.

To Li Qing, gambling was ultimately not the right path.

Frankly, he hadn't participated in any paid gambling from childhood to adulthood. Anything involving money exchanges in gambling, Li Qing absolutely wouldn't get involved.

So to this day, Li Qing still felt a bit uncertain inside.

Entering the community, he trotted up to the seventh floor breathlessly. Feeling his heart pounding, Li Qing took out the key, and as he was about to unlock the door, the slightly ajar door next to him silently opened, and a pair of eyes eerily stared at his back.