Ch 79: After My Mother Returned to the Rich Family

After Ruan Cha went upstairs, she faintly heard rustling sounds from her parents’ room through the wooden door. She figured they could finally sleep peacefully tonight.

【Ding! Since the target personnel’s team has fully reviewed the chip report and begun research, congratulations, Student Ruan Cha, you’ve earned 1000 knowledge energy points!】

Ruan Cha’s eyes lit up, but the joy of gaining energy was quickly dampened by a wave of complicated emotion. “They spent New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day reviewing the report?”

Not only did they miss the holiday reunion, but they’d likely be spending the next while in the lab too? Once she realized that, Ruan Cha suddenly regretted the timing she had chosen.

【Student Ruan Cha, the dedication to scientific research among the people in your current world is comparable to that of those in my original dimension—perhaps even more passionate. Every minute, every second is extremely valuable to them.】

Thinking of how the nation had transformed over the past few decades, Ruan Cha felt a flush of pride on her face. “Of course. They’re amazing. And besides, without the foundation they laid, your world wouldn’t have developed so fast either.”

1128 fell silent for a moment. After searching its database for an appropriate idiom, it asked uncertainly:

【“The previous generation plants the tree, the next enjoys its shade”?】

“Close enough.”

Ruan Cha had originally planned to shower and sleep right after getting home, but after freshening up and exchanging goodnights in the [Firework Squad] WeChat group, her mind was still alert—sleep nowhere in sight.

Maybe she’d been inspired by those pioneers?

She sat in her chair zoning out for a few minutes, then shook her head and pulled out a half-finished high school mock test from the shelf.

【Student Ruan Cha, it’s already 1:50 a.m. Aren’t you afraid of going bald?】

“Afraid,” Ruan Cha replied decisively. She had seen special treatments for hair loss in the system’s store, but she didn’t want to rely on them unnecessarily. “But I need to do a paper. I need to purify my soul.”

She couldn’t let her inner slacker make a comeback.

【……】

1128 watched silently as Ruan Cha sat at her desk scribbling away, regretting once again that it couldn’t bind with her. If it had, it could help her improve her health so she wouldn’t have to worry about losing hair from staying up late.

It took about an hour for Ruan Cha to finish the paper. As her excitement gradually faded, sleep crept in. Without checking her answers, she collapsed into bed and fell into a deep sleep the moment her head hit the pillow.

Until darkness swallowed her vision, and a surreal dreamscape wrapped itself around her.

Ruan Cha remained lucid in her dream, aware she was dreaming—but she didn’t want to wake up. Because she was seeing the true face of Ren Qingqing’s life after becoming an actress.

Unlike the book version, where Ren Qingqing was portrayed as a hardworking role model worthy of admiration, the dream revealed her as unrepentant—after harming Ruan Cha, she set her sights on another rising starlet.

Ren Qingqing exploited system tasks to drain the starlet’s charm value, turning a once cheerful and radiant girl into someone completely ordinary—eventually, the girl sank into severe depression.

Later, after repeated online attacks, the starlet lost all hope of living and took her life with a bottle of sleeping pills at just 24 years old.

Ruan Cha’s heart twisted painfully watching this. By that time in the story, the “Ruan Cha” character was already dead, yet Ren Qingqing could coldly move on to destroy another.

Just when Ruan Cha thought the dream had shown all there was to Ren Qingqing’s life and was ready to wake up—things took a horrifying turn.

During her Best Actress acceptance speech, in front of thousands at the awards ceremony and millions watching the live broadcast—Ren Qingqing’s face disfigured on the spot!

Not symbolically. Truly disfigured.

Her skin blackened, her mouth twisted, one eye drooped, and the right side of her face was a grotesque mess of burns—flesh scorched and torn, like something had been forcibly ripped out from under her skin.

The sight stunned Ruan Cha. A wave of nausea surged from her stomach—she wanted to vomit but couldn’t. Yet she clearly saw it:

There was something under Ren Qingqing’s skin.

A tiny chip shot out from beneath her flesh, then exploded in midair.

A mini firework—biu! Just like that.

Ruan Cha: “…”

Her description was a little deranged.

Before Ruan Cha could dwell on it further, the dream shifted.

The next scene was an empty, suffocating room. Not a single reflective surface. The curtains were drawn tightly shut, blocking out both the sun and any view of the glass outside.

The floor was littered with moldy instant noodle cups, giving off a nauseating stench. Ren Qingqing sat at a computer, hair unkempt and greasy, muttering to herself as she furiously typed on the keyboard. Through the mess of hair, Ruan Cha could clearly see the twisted scar on her face.

After typing the final word, Ren Qingqing suddenly froze. Moments later, she burst into a manic laugh.

“Ha—hahaha! I won the Oscar for Best Actress! No one in the industry can compare to the academic genius-turned-actress!”

A few minutes later, Ruan Cha watched with wide eyes as Ren Qingqing took a fruit knife and slashed her own wrist deeply. Her face still carried that twisted smile, as she murmured,

“I won Best Actress… Xu Shen and I are a match made in heaven…”

Ruan Cha averted her gaze from Ren Qingqing’s corpse and fell upon the glowing screen of the computer.

And then—she froze.

On the softly glowing white screen, a document was open, full of densely typed words. But it was the title that made Ruan Cha’s breath catch:

《Top-Tier Academic Genius [System]》

The same book she saw in her mind the night she first returned to the Liang family.

With a jolt, Ruan Cha opened her eyes. Her bedroom gradually came into focus. Dawn had broken—the soft golden light of early morning streamed through the gaps in her curtains and onto the floor.

Her heart pounded from the images in the dream.

Until now, she had always believed she was just a side character from a book—due to some unknown cause, she’d seen her “original” life unfold like a novel the night she returned to the Liang family.

But now—

Scratching her head, Ruan Cha felt it was more accurate to say she was in her second run-through, and that the book she had seen—《Top-Tier Academic Genius [System]》—was clearly written by Ren Qingqing.

In the “first run,” Ren Qingqing must have met the ending Ruan Cha just dreamed of: public disfigurement, utter disgrace, hiding in a mold-ridden rental with nothing but expired instant noodles.

But filled with resentment, Ren Qingqing had written a book. What she didn’t expect was that the Ruan Cha of the second round would see that book in her sleep, as if warned by fate.

Still—something didn’t add up.

Ruan Cha threw off the covers and got out of bed. She walked to the window, pulled open the thick, heavy curtains, and stared at the garden outside, lost in thought.

First: where exactly had Ren Qingqing’s book been published? If it hadn’t been published, where did the comments Ruan Cha read back then come from?

Second: Ruan Cha had seen clearly—the chip that flew out of Ren Qingqing’s cheek was the carrier for virus X. When studying AI construction, she had seen the chip carriers for both the 1128 system and virus X, and she could tell the difference.

That meant, in the end, only the virus X carrier remained.

There were two likely explanations:

1. Virus X had devoured the 1128 system.

2. The 1128 system detached from Ren Qingqing before she entered the entertainment industry.

But during the first run, Ruan Cha hadn’t had a virus-killing program, and couldn’t have supported the 1128 system in any way.

So if the 1128 system could break away from Ren Qingqing, just like how it had escaped from Yu Zheng in this round, then Ren Qingqing must have triggered some condition that caused it to detach.

“1128, if Ren Qingqing switched to the B-task without having a virus-killer program, would you have been devoured by virus X? Would your chip carrier disappear too?”

1128 didn’t quite understand why Ruan Cha was asking this, but mindful of the rule never offend your sponsor, it answered honestly:

【It’s possible I could have been devoured. But if I were absorbed by virus X, the chip carrier would fuse with it, transforming into a different form—it wouldn’t completely vanish.】

【Thank you, Ruan Cha. Without your virus-killing program, I might’ve been long dead and gone.】

Ruan Cha tied her hair back with a leather cord. “You’re welcome—we’re partners in this.” Then she paused. “You’re 830 energy points away from unlocking the database, right?”

【That’s right! Thanks to your relentless dedication and hard work, the data that was sealed off is almost unlocked!】

Ruan Cha: “…”

Why is it acting weird this early in the morning?

She shook her head and stopped talking to the system. Before heading to wash up, she sat in her chair and opened her notebook—filled with symbols, diagrams, and Xs and Os only she could interpret—laying out the key events of both timelines.

The last entry on the page contained her suspicions about what caused trouble for the Liang Corporation in the first run. Jiang Yuxing’s name was included.

Although she chose to cooperate with him in order to learn more about Yu Zheng, she hadn’t let her guard down. After all, no one could say for sure whether Jiang Yuxing had anything to do with what happened to the Liang family in the first round.

Even if she managed to “turn” him in this timeline, Yu Zheng could easily find someone else to take his place.

After reviewing her thoughts, Ruan Cha wrote down another point: Ren Qingqing and Yu Zheng most likely triggered the same condition that caused the system to detach from them.

By the time she finished washing up in the bathroom, the wall clock’s hour hand was already pointing at ten. She had gone to bed at two or three in the morning and only woke around nine-thirty, since her dreams had been so vivid.

Just as she was about to open the door, her fingers brushed the handle—and a shrill, excited shriek erupted from the system.

【Aaaahhhhhh!】

【Ruan Cha! The data stream I left in the southeastern outskirts of Nanshi just came back—the disrupted magnetic field in the outskirts has recovered! I can now try to trace Yu Zheng’s location through virus Y’s data flow!】

Ruan Cha froze. To be honest, she had multiple reasons for turning Jiang Yuxing. Besides gathering more info on Yu Zheng, there were two key benefits:

First, by having Jiang Yuxing willingly open his mental field, a well-resourced system could gently delete virus Y’s B-task prompt, preserving only the A-task it had copied and modified.

Second, once the system fully took over virus Y, it could trace the data flow back to Yu Zheng’s actual location.

The night they formed the alliance, 1128 had already attempted a trace. Unfortunately, even with precise data, the system had lost direction within the area’s scrambled magnetic field.

But now…

A magnetic field likely altered by mysticism—had returned to normal?

Ruan Cha immediately told 1128 to use the virus Y stream to locate Yu Zheng. Before the system could leave, her phone lit up on the desk with a new message.

[Grandpa: Cha Cha, Happy New Year. The gift I bought is on the way. Don’t forget to open it.]