Chapter 12: He Grew Anxious

Chapter 12: He Got Anxious

Li Qing wasn’t exactly a fan of minotaurs, but he didn’t mind watching the turtle guy lose his composure.

Li Zhi was truly a pure-hearted warrior, no doubt about that, but in Li Qing’s eyes, he was just a complete turtle guy now. And the best way to deal with a turtle guy was to lay the bloody truth right in front of him.

Hopefully, he wasn’t at the level of a boiling sheep, demanding the gentle treatment of a happy sheep. Otherwise, the entire ancestral line of the Li family would be utterly disgraced.

“Minotaur? What on earth is a minotaur? Could it be some kind of monster?”

As a man of ancient times, Li Shimin naturally couldn’t grasp such modern terms. He was still wondering if it was like the legendary Ox-Head and Horse-Face with a bull’s head.

“Haha... Brother Li, you’ll understand in due time,” Li Qing said with a chuckle, thinking, If I tell you now, how am I supposed to maximize the emotional value harvest?

After spending half a day together, Li Shimin had come to deeply understand Li Qing’s strange tastes. Even though his curiosity was clawing at his heart like a cat, he didn’t press further but decisively closed his eyes to rest, planning to take a short nap.

He got anxious.

Li Qing muttered silently, then closed his eyes and opened the system panel to browse the Emotional Value Store.

The store was divided into four major categories: the first was technology, the second was locked sci-fi, the third was partially unlocked cultivation, and the fourth was an undisclosed mysterious category.

The technology section contained all products from before his time of transmigration, priced anywhere from one to tens of millions of emotional points. Li Qing glanced over it; the prices roughly matched modern prices without the premium. For example, a smartphone cost about a thousand emotional points. The cola he had redeemed earlier was priced at just one emotional point.

In other words, getting Li Shimin to blush once could produce thousands of cans of cola.

Li Qing stroked his chin, pondering how to generate more emotional points from old Li. It seemed time to show him something more thrilling—like the six falls of the capital and the emperor’s nine escapes, or the scene where Wu Zetian wiped out the Li Tang clan. Surely, those would spike his blood pressure.

But would that be too cruel? The thought flashed briefly before he firmly snuffed it out. No, this is for Brother Li’s own good—he’s my closest and dearest brother after all...

If I don’t raise his blood pressure, should I raise my own?

Besides, this is also for the good of the Tang people. Sacrificing one Brother Li to bring happiness to millions—that’s not just a good deal, it’s a downright jackpot.

He continued scrolling. The military-industrial products in the store only had blueprints, no finished items, firmly shutting down Li Qing’s hope of exploiting a bug for a legendary Earth-speedrun.

So the tech tree would have to be climbed slowly. Li Qing thought about it and flipped to the next category.

The sci-fi section was currently inaccessible, requiring the global unification of all time-node dimensions to unlock. The cultivation category had only a few products unlocked: the longevity pill, which extended life by one year at 500 emotional points; the youth-retaining pill, priced at a thousand points; and others like marrow-cleansing pills, disease-curing pills, and resurrection pills.

Li Qing cursed the system’s slyness. It wouldn’t even give him a bit of combat power.

But having something was better than nothing.

The fourth category would only unlock after all twenty time nodes in the Tang Dynasty, except for the Wude years, were unified.

Unifying the world was a slow process, especially in the Tang era. Not to mention how to conquer, even spreading edicts and information was a massive challenge.

So the immediate priority was climbing the tech tree.

But how to get Li Shimin to willingly climb the tech tree?

If only he could take him to experience a modern battlefield...

Then, a sudden inspiration struck Li Qing.

Right, while he couldn’t really travel to a modern battlefield, he could take old Li to watch movies.

Besides, the journey back to Chang’an was still long. It was better to pass the time with a few films.

With that in mind, he redeemed two phones from the system and a signal transmitter capable of covering the entire city of Chang’an. Then he closed the system panel and fixed an intensely fiery gaze on Li Shimin, as if looking at the ultimate headache.

“Brother Li, Brother Li, this first trip through time has already yielded over twenty-three thousand emotional points in just one hour. If we travel more often, maybe we can live a happy modern otaku life in this desolate ancient age?”

Hehe... my Brother Li...

Perhaps sensing Li Qing’s stare, Li Shimin slowly opened his eyes and just so happened to meet Li Qing’s gaze—the look of a great grievance.

“Brother, what kind of look is that?” Old Li instantly became alert, instinct telling him that Li Qing might have some mischief brewing.

“Oh, nothing,” Li Qing quickly changed the subject, not daring to let Brother Li discover he was being treated like a headache.

He pulled the prepared phone from his pocket and handed it to Li Shimin. “Here, Brother Li, something good for you.”

“What is this?” Li Shimin took the phone, surprised at its weight being heavier than expected. He turned it over and over, unable to tell what material it was made from.

Li Qing took out his own phone and began to demonstrate. “Follow me. Here, press this to turn it on.”

Li Shimin pressed the switch as instructed. The screen instantly lit up, displaying a large seal script character for “Tang.”

Phones made by the system did not belong to any modern brand, and Li Qing realized the system was being lazy—since they were in the Tang Dynasty, it simply stamped the phone’s logo with the Tang character.

“This is a product of technology, not from this era,” Li Qing patiently explained to Li Shimin. “To put it simply, this thing combines reading and long-distance communication. In over a thousand years, it becomes incredibly important—it’s fair to say it’s a person’s second life.”

“Second life?” Li Shimin looked at the little gadget in his hand, puzzled. It was hard to imagine his brother held it in such high regard.

Could this small thing really be extraordinary? Li Shimin scrutinized the device called a “phone” once more.

“Maybe it’s an exaggeration, but most people’s first wish before death is to delete their browser history or some study materials,” Li Qing winked at Li Shimin.

He wasn’t wrong. Social death could be as devastating as biological death, sometimes even harder to accept.

“I’ll show you the other functions when we get back to Chang’an. For now, let’s find something to pass the time and let Brother Li understand the power of technology.”

With that, Li Qing began searching for movies in the system.

(End of chapter)