[Ding! Charming Uncle - Growth Mission has begun.]
[Mission]: Kings and nobles aren't born to it. Stop being a wage slave.
[Mission Reward 1]: High-Efficient Learning Ability.
[Mission Reward 2]: 10 experience points.
[Note: 24-hour countdown. Once you confirm, no company will ever hire you again.]
Gao Yuan looked at the mission issued by the system. He never thought quitting his job would actually trigger it.
Moreover, once he accepted the mission, he would never be allowed to work for someone else again.
This aligned perfectly with Gao Yuan's own plans. He wasn't going to work for someone else anymore anyway. He planned to take a nice long break and perhaps start his own business.
When he saw the system's reward, he was surprised to find it was a High-Efficient Learning Ability.
He was quite pleased with this reward. As the saying goes, one is never too old to learn, and no matter what you do, you should never stop.
Especially during his nearly ten years in e-commerce, he had never once stopped learning.
But as he aged, he definitely wasn't learning as quickly as he used to. Obtaining the High-Efficient Learning Ability now was a timely blessing.
While he was looking over the system mission, Sister Sun, the HR supervisor, arrived at the office door. She saw Gao Yuan holding his personal belongings and offered to take them. Gao Yuan didn't refuse and handed the box over to her.
The store managers outside had just learned that Gao Yuan was resigning. They started to get up to see him off, but he waved them back down.
He was leaving, so there was no need to put on the airs of a leader. They had to continue working here, and it wouldn't look good if the new boss saw them. It was better not to cause them trouble.
As for Sister Sun, she was planning to resign anyway. Just now, while handing over his work to President Guo in the office, Gao Yuan had heaped praise on Sister Sun for a job well done.
Coupled with the fact that Sister Sun was now actively helping him carry his things, President Guo, who was still in the office, was taking it all in.
The HR supervisor for the e-commerce department was essentially equivalent to the head office's administrative director.
The person in this role was usually a leader's confidant, helping them handle miscellaneous tasks like processing expense reports.
As long as President Guo wasn't a fool, she would surely take advantage of the mass layoffs to get rid of Sister Sun.
The two of them reached the elevators. After pressing the button, Gao Yuan took the box of his belongings back from Sister Sun.
He leaned in and whispered a few words to her. Just then, the elevator doors opened, and he bid her farewell before leaving.
...
After seeing Gao Yuan off, Sister Sun returned to her office. She had just sat down when a junior employee from HR approached her desk.
"Sister Sun, the new boss, President Guo, wants to see you."
Upon hearing this, and recalling Gao Yuan's parting words, Sister Sun immediately understood what was about to happen.
She told the junior employee to go back to her work, then opened TikTok and scrolled through videos for a full ten minutes before finally getting up to head to President Guo's office.
She knocked before entering and saw President Guo looking down at some files. Sister Sun smiled and said, "My apologies, President Guo. Something came up at the last minute, so I'm a bit late."
President Guo also smiled and gestured for Sister Sun to sit down.
She was inwardly surprised. 'A mere HR supervisor at a branch office dares to keep me waiting?' While she had been waiting, she had already contacted the corporate Director of Human Resources and recommended that Sister Sun be terminated.
With the company performing poorly and in the midst of mass layoffs, the corporate HR director hadn't hesitated for a moment, immediately approving her recommendation to fire a branch employee.
President Guo began by affirming Sister Sun's work, then went on to describe the company's current difficulties, and finally, she expressed her hope that Sister Sun would voluntarily resign.
The company, in turn, would offer her one month's salary as a severance package.
As a veteran HR professional, Sister Sun knew exactly what was behind President Guo's speech.
It was just as Gao Yuan had said.
If she resigned voluntarily, the company wouldn't have to pay her a dime in severance. But if the company terminated her—even if they "persuaded" her to quit—they would have to offer some compensation.
Even though her family wasn't short on money, a month's salary was still enough to buy a nice outfit she liked.
In the end, Sister Sun put on a pained expression, saying she had been with the company for so long and couldn't bear to leave.
President Guo clearly had no intention of keeping her. After some patient consoling, Sister Sun reluctantly nodded and agreed to the termination.
The first thing Sister Sun did upon leaving President Guo's office was to message Gao Yuan and share the good news: she had successfully been laid off and had managed to fleece the company.
Gao Yuan replied, congratulating her on becoming a housewife.
After exchanging a few more pleasantries, Gao Yuan got ready to head out.
Now that he had resigned and had nothing urgent on his plate, it was time to put the fitness mission on his agenda.
Back home, he searched online for gyms and found that while there were some near Navi City, they were all a bit too far away to be convenient.
With winter approaching and no car, the thought of walking home in the freezing cold after a workout was extremely unappealing.
After careful consideration, he made a decision: he would move!
'It's not like I'm broke now,' he thought. 'I'll just rent a bigger place in a nicer complex.'
The nicer residential complexes in Hang City all had their own gyms and swimming pools for residents, but apartments in those places were also incredibly expensive.
When he first became director of the e-commerce department, Gao Yuan had considered moving to a nicer place, but he'd given up the idea after a quick search.
A place only slightly better than the resettlement housing he was currently renting would cost seven to eight thousand a month. The only real difference was that it was a commercial housing complex; the quality wasn't much better, but it would add four or five thousand to his monthly expenses.
He wasn't crazy enough to waste money like that.
But now, things were different. After all, he was pulling in a whole three thousand a month now. It was definitely time to upgrade his living situation.
Buying a place was out of the question; he wasn't about to indulge in such an unrealistic dream just yet.
But renting was another story. With the cash he had on hand, he could pretty much rent anywhere he wanted in Hang City.
He had just been browsing short videos posted by real estate agents on TikTok and had already contacted one of them—a particularly pretty agent.
She had already sent him a curated list of video tours for places that fit his budget.
Gao Yuan had watched them and was quite satisfied with a few, so he scheduled an appointment to see them that afternoon.
As he closed his door and walked through the complex, Gao Yuan felt a bit glum.
'I'm probably the lamest system-blessed protagonist ever,' he thought. 'Other guys start out with endless money, but I have to begin with a measly three thousand a month.'
'Other systems just hand out houses and cars, but I still have to rent.'
'The system finally gives me a double cash-back mission, but I have no money to spend, and the person I'm supposed to spend it on doesn't even want me to!'
'It's a good thing Lin Wanyu is a little rich girl herself and doesn't care about that stuff. Otherwise, she would've kicked me to the curb the moment she found out I was a renter.'
'I mean, seriously, what kind of life is this?!'
He reached the main gate of the complex and waited for a moment.
A white Tesla Model 3 pulled up to the gate, and then Gao Yuan's phone rang.
He answered the call, and as he did, the window of the white Tesla Model 3 rolled down, revealing a young woman who stuck her head out and waved at him.
Gao Yuan walked to the car, opened the passenger-side door, and slid in.
He saw that the driver was just as beautiful in person as she was in her videos and sighed internally. 'Hang City really isn't short on beautiful women.'
The Tesla's famously minimalist interior had been decorated with cute accessories. This was clearly her personal car.
Gao Yuan was wearing the suit Lin Wanyu had bought him, and his hair was carefully styled. Even though he didn't have a car of his own, the agent couldn't help but sneak several glances at him as she drove.
On the way, the real estate agent, Yu Feifei, gave Gao Yuan a detailed introduction to the three apartments they were about to see.
All three apartments were located in No.1 Courtyard, and all featured a two-bedroom, two-bathroom layout. The only difference was the size: the first unit was 137 square meters, while the other two were 182.
"No.1 Courtyard?"
As someone who had been working in Hang City for twelve years, even Gao Yuan knew of this top-tier luxury complex.