Ch 102 (Extra 2): After My Mother Returned to the Rich Family

The moment Ruan Cha saw the chips Fu Chen took out, her pupils shrank sharply. Even though the chips were damaged, she still recognized them at a glance.

One was the original Virus Y carrier chip that had been bound to Jiang Yuxing, and the other was the carrier chip of the control panel that should have been in Yu Zheng’s possession.

Fu Chen nudged the two chips on the ground with his fingers, a self-mocking look in his eyes. Who would’ve thought that a person’s consciousness could be altered by a piece of high-tech equipment from another world?

On the other side, when Ruan Zhengfei heard Fu Chen’s words, grief swept across his face. His eyes turned red in an instant. He blinked hard and tilted his head back, unwilling to cry in front of his wife and daughter—he didn’t want to seem unmanly.

He slumped before the tombstone in defeat, remembering all the chaos the family had endured since moving to Nanshi. His heart was heavy with guilt. “Cha Cha… if anything, we should be thanking Fu Chen. He and I were the only ones who believed there was a reason why you said the name ‘Ren Qingqing’ back then.”

“Everyone said I’d lost it, but I hadn’t. That girl, Ren Qingqing, really did look like you… but no one believed us.”

It wasn’t just Ruan Zhengfei—Wei Jiao had also thought so. She had impulsively gone to confront Ren Qingqing, asking what she’d done to Cha Cha. Her behavior, though sincere, was quickly targeted and mocked by Ren Qingqing’s rabid fanbase.

Then came Wei Jiao’s accident. Ruan Zhengfei broke down and nearly stabbed Ren Qingqing in a frenzy, but Fu Chen and the Liang family held him back.

The Liang family, already shaken by Liang Qianling’s scandal and almost swallowed up by the Song family, barely made it through with help from the Fu family—but it cost them dearly.

“Actually, Cung Huai and Cung Jin wanted to come too, but it’s too cold. Cung Jin still hasn’t fully recovered from his car accident. I didn’t tell them—thought I’d sneak out alone. But Fu Chen caught me at the door, so here we are.”

As he spoke, Ruan Zhengfei lowered his head and gently arranged the flowers he brought, setting them one by one before Wei Jiao’s grave. “Ah, I’m rambling again. Let us keep telling you what happened with Ren Qingqing and Yu Zheng—”

Watching them speak as if she weren’t there, Ruan Cha’s heart ached. She let out a soft breath, sat cross-legged on the ground, and quietly listened, piecing together what had happened.

It turned out that after the “Ruan Cha” of the first timeline had her accident, the Liang and Fu families began investigating Ren Qingqing. But no matter how hard they searched, they couldn’t find a single flaw—until a few months later, when Fu Chen, while going through surveillance data, accidentally came across the detached 1128.

Because Ren Qingqing had already debuted as an actress before “Ruan Cha” was hurt, 1128 had been suppressed by Virus X and rendered incompatible with her.

After the incident, 1128’s emergency escape protocol was triggered, allowing it to break free from Ren Qingqing and shed the parasite that was Virus X.

Without a host and on the brink of shutdown, 1128 followed the stream of data tied to Ren Qingqing’s surveillance… and ended up in a program Fu Chen was optimizing.

One person. One system. No preparation.

And just like that, they met.

1128 told Fu Chen everything Ren Qingqing had done.

Over the next few months, using knowledge from 1128’s internal library, Fu Chen developed a program specifically designed to attack Virus X. It all culminated at an awards show, where Ren Qingqing was publicly disfigured when Virus X exploded inside her.

At that moment, the mind control imposed by Virus X was broken, and people’s memories returned to normal.

They were horrified by how distorted their impressions of Ren Qingqing had been. And the students of Second High suddenly realized—

The “Ruan Cha” they had shunned…

had actually been very beautiful.

They’d all acted like they were under a spell, convinced that “Ruan Cha” was ugly, convinced she was jealous of Ren Qingqing.

In the first timeline, even without Grandpa Ruan’s intervention, Yu Zheng’s first attempt at his life-for-life forbidden technique had failed. The harsher requirements of his second attempt led him to choose “Ruan Cha” again.

He hinted to Ren Qingqing to use Virus X against her, and instructed Jiang Yuxing to unleash Virus Y on the Liang family. On the night “Ruan Cha” died, Yu Zheng’s second forbidden ritual succeeded.

When Mu Yirou woke and learned what Yu Zheng had done, her love turned to fear. For a long time after, she was kept locked away in Yu Zheng’s apartment, unable to seek help.

Eventually, Fu Chen followed the trail left by Virus X and tracked it back to Yu Zheng.

In the span of four years, Fu Chen maxed out his knowledge energy points through relentless study and testing. He spent twenty to thirty thousand points to repair the badly damaged core of the system and finally acquired full intel on Yu Zheng.

Once the energy pool was full again, Fu Chen directed the system to launch a mental attack on Yu Zheng.

While Yu Zheng was under attack, Mu Yirou—saved by him once before—awoke, overwhelmed by guilt for the lives she’d cost. She dragged Yu Zheng with her into a fire, and they died together.

Listening to Fu Chen recount Yu Zheng’s fate, Ruan Cha felt her tightly wound nerves ease a little.

To her, the first and second timelines were like a past life and a new life.

The difference between them came down to Grandpa’s appearance… the cabbage her mom cooked…

And—

That night she returned to the Liang family for the first time, and discovered a book that revealed the ending of her past life. It gave her a head start. Later at school, she overheard the system assigning tasks to Ren Qingqing, which allowed her to strike first.

In this life, once Yu Zheng was executed, there would be no resurrection. And in the last life, Yu Zheng died in a fire—there was no coming back from that either.

Ruan Cha rested her chin in her hand and studied Fu Chen. So in her previous life, had 1128 actually worked with him? Was her antivirus program somehow tied to him as well?

Their cooperation on the mobile game had already shown her Fu Chen’s technical strength.

When the library system first launched in the game, Fu Chen had been the very first player to unlock a key. And within a few months, he’d managed to take down Virus X—proof of how deeply he’d come to understand the system.

Still staring at the tombstone, Fu Chen continued softly, “Cha Cha… after Virus X exploded, I redesigned 1128 into a defense program. It told me it had the potential to reverse time—but I was too slow to complete the tasks. It took a full three years for it to gather enough energy.”

Ruan Cha was stunned.

It had already been seven or eight years… since high school… since the day her first life ended?

She thought of what her dad had said earlier. Her lips pressed into a thin line.

So during those seven or eight years, her family had never forgotten her or her mother… and Fu Chen… had been coming to the cemetery all that time?

Still unaware that Ruan Cha stood beside him, Fu Chen said quietly, “Cha Cha… last week, I embedded your DNA into 1128. It sacrificed its core, turned into data, and vanished. I hope—”

“I hope it finds the you that once existed.”

And that, with help from 1128 in another timeline, it can defeat Virus X, stop Yu Zheng, and protect you—instead of me and Uncle Ruan.

For 1128, giving up its core to become a stream of data was an enormous gamble. If it traveled back and couldn’t find a version of Ruan Cha with the same DNA, it would be lost forever.

But even though 1128 had always been cowardly and afraid of dying, when it watched Ren Qingqing use Virus X to kill Ruan Cha, all it could think was how much it wished it could have died in her place.

To reverse time—

1128 was gambling.

So was Fu Chen.

Because it didn’t matter anymore that Ren Qingqing and Yu Zheng were dead.

Ruan Cha… couldn’t come back.

They just wanted to bet on one small hope—that there was still a chance.

That Ruan Cha could seize control earlier.

That the future… could still be changed.

When Ruan Cha heard Fu Chen’s explanation, her heart became a tangle of emotions too complex to name. She had suspected the antivirus program might be related to Fu Chen—but she hadn’t expected its original form to be 1128 from her previous life.

No wonder she’d been able to hear the system assigning tasks to Ren Qingqing. No wonder the antivirus program could act as a carrier for 1128. No wonder 1128 often said the antivirus felt like it had been designed to fit it perfectly.

Ruan Cha suddenly understood why the antivirus program had been able to upgrade just half a month after the control panel was recovered from Yu Zheng.

It turned out… that control panel was part of the antivirus itself. 1128 and the antivirus program weren’t just connected—they were, in essence, one and the same.

Thinking about that soft little glutinous rice ball that always looked so aggrieved, the system that stayed by her side no matter what, Ruan Cha felt her throat tighten and her nose sting. There was so much she wanted to say. But most of all, she just wanted to say: thank you.

She looked up at Fu Chen, rubbed her reddened eyes, and said in a low, hoarse voice, “Thank you, Fu Chen.”

Thank you for taking care of my dad. Thank you for helping me get justice. And thank you… for redesigning the antivirus and giving the second-life version of me a chance to fight back.

The moment she spoke, Fu Chen subconsciously turned his head to the right.

A second passed. He frowned slightly, then gave a small, bitter smile and shook his head.

He must’ve been imagining things.

He could’ve sworn… he’d just heard Cha Cha’s voice.

His gaze returned to the photo on the tombstone. The feelings crowding his chest were thick and tangled—so much so he couldn’t even begin to sort them out.

Back when he first saw Ruan Cha at school, it had been guilt and a desire to make amends that made him notice her. His impression of her was simple: so there really was a kind of smile that could light someone up with just a glance.

But from that day on, through all the days that followed, he never saw that warm, sunny smile again. Not on Ruan Cha’s face, and not on anyone else’s either.

At first, he thought it was just guilt. Just the weight of what had happened. That he was only pushing forward because he needed to do something to make up for it—for his mother, for himself.

But over time, something else had grown quietly out of that guilt. Something softer. Something harder to define.

Maybe it was simply: heartbreak.

“Cha Cha,” Fu Chen said, his voice quiet and steady, “if there’s really a next life…”

He paused. Took a breath.

“…If there’s really a next life, I’ll be strict about your studies. I’ll make sure no one can ever hurt you again. And I hope… you’ll always be happy.”

Listening to Fu Chen murmuring like that, Ruan Cha wanted to laugh—but the sound lodged in her chest, half-laugh, half-cry. All she could do was keep nodding.

—Fu Chen, in the second life, you already did all of that. I became the top scorer in the Nanshi college entrance exam. This September, I’m going to Jing University.

After she finished nodding, Ruan Cha looked to the other side—at her father, Ruan Zhengfei, who seemed able to sense 1128’s presence—and couldn’t help wondering:

In her previous life, Fu Chen and her dad had both been able to perceive the system.

So why, in this second life, had she not been able to tell anyone—even a single word—about anything related to 1128?

Fu Chen took one last look at the photo on Ruan Cha’s tombstone, then turned toward Ruan Zhengfei.

“Uncle,” he said, “last night… the spiritual remnants of Cha Cha and Aunt Wei Jiao that 1128 left behind showed signs of activity.”

“The plan we discussed… it might actually work.”