A Good-for-Nothing

121. A Fox Boy (1)

Translator: Dragon Rider

The Special Talents Training Program (STTP) was different from the normal recruitment of new staff members of the Supernaturalism Management Bureau (SMB). The selection process of the former usually started a lot earlier than the official training did. Merely a couple of days after the enrollment finished, the day for the selection process of STTP arrived.

It was now mid-April already, which happened to be the time when the Coastal City went into summer. It was getting hotter by the day. Rumor had it that the year before, there was an earthquake in the north-west, and for some reason, Yōkai outside Shanhaiguan Pass staged an uprising; the training course for applicants of STTP was to go there with staff members of action groups of SMB to handle related matters; since the climate outside Shanhaiguan Pass was terrible, a lot of people intending to enter their names simply gave up on that account. As a result, the year before, the number of applicants was very small, and not a single one of them was recruited to STTP.

For the same reason, the year before, recruitment of new staff members of SMB was also postponed for a year.

And because of the particularity of STTP, no limit had been set on the number of admissions, so there was an exceptionally high number of applicants for this program this year. It was a sea of people in the hall.

The selection process was very simple. First, there was an interview. Those who passed it had to give their official consent to participate in a training course. Applicants who got a pass in the test at the end of the training course would then have to take a written examination.

This selection process might strike people as ridiculous at first glance. After all, an written examination came before an interview in most civil service examinations. But as a matter of fact, executives of SMB had their own reasons for doing this.

Applicants would show their skills and power in the interview, and their knowledge reserves in the written examination. If an applicant was powerful enough but go a mark slightly below par in the written examination, executives would be able to figure out a way to make an exception for them, recruiting a talent to SMB.

In fact, in the year when SMB had launched STTP, which was a couple of years ago, they’d recruited a lot of powerful cultivators from deep mountain forests or small sects to the program. One of them had been very adept at exorcism, who, before receiving any formal training, had been capable of overpowering a ghost-cart which had a danger coefficient of four stars. It would’ve been an unbelievable shame had SMB not recruited a talent of this kind to STTP.

Everybody had believed that he would definitely stay in the program, but unexpectedly, he’d been eliminated in the very first round of written examination.

After an inquiry into his background, SMB had found out that he had only finished elementary school and had very limited knowledge reserve. The pass mark had been sixty, and his had been thirty marks short of that.

The next year, he’d entered his name once again but been eliminated for a second time in the written examination.

Zhen Daoyuan had personally found this person in a remote mountain in the Shen City, so of course he’d wanted to keep this talented applicant, who, after failing the written examination twice, had been on the verge of giving up. Zhen Daoyuan had intended to pull some strings for him and let him get in through the back door, but Zong Xian, the new director general of SMB, who had always set great store by the rules, had objected, so Zhen Daoyuan’s attempt to let that person get in by the back door had failed.

Because of this matter, that applicant had not made a third try. Afterwards, at the demand of Mr Zhen and two other officials of SMB, some changes had been made to the rules, which had resulted in the current examination system.

The location for the interview was near the office hall. He Zheng, whose husband was a high-ranking official of SMB, had been told about it in advance and been waiting outside the field for quite some time.

But He Zheng was not among the earliest to arrive. The field was about three to four times the size of a soccer pitch, and at this moment, a lot of applicants were waiting on the side. There were both males and females, their clothes of all descriptions.

He Zheng saw that one of them was in a T-shirt bearing the pattern of a teletubby; another one was wearing flip-flops, whose hair resembled instant noodles; a female clothed in an outfit specific to members of the Miao nationality. The most obtrusive one of them was a dirty-faced man dressed like a top-ranking elder of the Beggar Gang (a gang in a famous Chinese martial arts fiction). Those in uniforms of the Tigers and Dragons Mountain or the Qingwei Sect were rather sparse.

But most of these people were young. He Zheng noticed that standing beneath a sweet olive tree farthest on the side was a timid-looking fox boy with a pair of fox ears.

The boy seemed to have observed He Zheng gazing at him. As mentioned previously, He Zheng’s appearance was exceptionally deceptive, which easily lulled people into believing that he was a nice person. The fox boy, on seeing He Zheng, was sent into a brief trance of surprise. He was more like a rabbit than a fox, for he appeared to be afraid of everything.

“H–Hello.” The fox boy summoned up the courage to walk up to He Zheng and greet him. Recalling his mother’s exhortation to him, he tried to make himself sound friendly. “I’m Hu Jiu. What’s your name?”

“He Zheng.” He Zheng flicked a glance at Hu Jiu. This was one of the advantages of having the Yin Yang Eyes: though unable to see the true form of Hu Jiu, he could see the nine big swishing tails behind him, which seemed to be of fluffy touch and struck He Zheng as pleasant to the eye.

Hu Jiu, who had thought that He Zheng might not bother making a reply, instantly got excited. “Wow, are you… are you new here as well? I’m a little nervous. I came to this place once but wasn’t even allowed to walk through the door.”

Hu Jiu, as if having just recollected something, bowed his head in depression. The funniest part was that his pointed ears also drooped, which was quite miraculous. He Zheng felt an urge to poke them but kept from doing so in the knowledge that it would be impolite.

Hu Jiu said, “I hope I’ll be able to last longer this year. It’s said that those who pass the interview get to see Supt. Li.”

Hu Jiu’s eyes were brimming over with expectation as he talked about Li Zong.

On hearing this tone of his, He Zheng, who had found this fox boy to be adorable, was instantly on the alert. Wait… A nine-tailed fox? He Zheng recalled the gossip Zu Zhichong had once told him about: a fox Yōkai from a very wealthy family had donated a large sum of money to SMB in an effort to get into the department by the back door but had eventually failed.

Was this fox boy in front of him that very fox Yōkai, by any chance?

He Zheng, feeling that this fox boy wasn’t adorable at all, said with a bland countenance, “You want to see Li Zong?”