Chapter 9

Tao Shushu tossed the fruits for a while.
The little figure on the screen glanced over every few minutes, their movements quick, always pretending it was an accidental look before swiftly averting their gaze.
Tao Shushu wasn’t pleased. Her fingers were sore from tapping, all in an effort to make her cub smile.
Earlier, after moving the wolf corpses, she saw her cub running outside again.
Thinking there might be some danger she hadn’t noticed, Tao Shushu hurriedly followed and even foolishly helped move a large rock to block the cave entrance.
Unexpectedly, her cub immediately sealed the cave shut, leaving not a single gap.
It was as if they were afraid she would run out again.
After laughing it off, Tao Shushu couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness. Her cub had no companions and didn’t know she was a player, so it was only natural for them to worry.
After some thought, she decided to do something to cheer her cub up.
Tao Shushu deliberately tossed a fruit near Nan Yuan’s feet.
Her cub, who had been focused on handling the meat, paused, wiped their hands clean, and picked up the fruit.
Tao Shushu threw another one.
Nan Yuan picked it up again.
Despite being interrupted twice in a row, Nan Yuan showed no sign of anger. Instead, a small sun symbol, representing happiness, appeared above their head.
Tao Shushu thought for a moment and then tossed several more fruits.
Her cub picked them up one by one and stood in front of the table, refusing to leave.
Tao Shushu quickly pressed both hands onto the screen, using six fingers to toss the fruits in a row.
Over a dozen fruits danced in the air simultaneously.
Her cub’s lips curled into a smile, this time, a genuinely happy one.
Intent on cheering her cub up, Tao Shushu held her breath and kept the act going for two full minutes before finally placing all the fruits back neatly, leaving her cub to work undisturbed.
Seeing that her cub was no longer scowling, she began taking stock of her in-game assets.
Nan Yuan finished processing one wolf and, hearing no other movements in the cave, walked over to the table. Picking up a red fruit, he took a small bite.
The fruits that person had played with seemed to taste sweeter than before.
A smile touched his lips. Just moments ago, he had been upset, angry that that person had recklessly taken on the alpha wolf alone, so angry that he had blocked the entrance.
But when he realized that person was teasing him, trying to make him happy, he wasn’t annoyed at all.
He touched his chest, feeling his heart beating rapidly. So this is what it feels like to be coaxed by someone.
Tao Shushu had quite a fruitful day today. She wasn’t sure how to use the influence points yet, so she set them aside for now.
Completing her study tasks earned her 30 gold coins, and helping her cub eliminate the wolf pack earned her 100 gold coins. Now, she had a whopping total of 133 gold coins.
There was still the side quest of repairing the cub’s vehicle left unfinished. Once the vehicle was running again, she would earn an additional 5 gold coins for every 100 kilometers traveled.
Tao Shushu pondered, earning gold coins through gaming seemed more profitable than studying.
System: "..."
Tao Shushu yawned. It was almost midnight.
The thought crossed her mind that if she went to sleep now, by the time she woke up, another day would have passed in the cub’s world. That meant the cub would have to stay in that cave for another day.
Tao Shushu took a sip of water and moved over to the truck to inspect the issue.
The truck the cub had found was equipped with both autonomous driving and manual control systems. However, when the AIs rebelled, all autonomous driving systems self-destructed.
The military vehicle’s body had been modified and reinforced, but even so, it had suffered significant damage.
Tao Shushu searched around and found a red exclamation mark on the dashboard.
She tapped the exclamation mark, spending 1 gold coin for diagnostics.
After a 5-second countdown, a circuit diagram and a prompt appeared on the screen: "Damage detected in the vehicle’s control system. Proceed with repairs now?"
Tao Shushu stared blankly at the circuit diagram in front of her. What’s going on? Do I have to solve problems even in a game?
[System, come out.]
The system cleared its throat. [The player has the ability to repair the vehicle.] As it spoke, it quietly put away the guide.
Late at night, after a long day of work, Mother Tao and Father Tao finally uncovered more clues and were about to head back to their room to rest when they noticed the light still on in their daughter’s room.
Mother Tao knocked on the door and, hearing a "Come in," entered. "Shushu, why aren’t you asleep yet?"
Before she could finish her question, she saw Tao Shushu holding her phone in one hand and scribbling notes with the other. On the phone screen was a densely packed circuit diagram.
"Shushu, studying so late at night?" Mother Tao exchanged a glance with Father Tao. It seemed their daughter had finally felt the pressure, she was even staying up late to study.
Tao Shushu yawned. "Mom, I’m playing a game, not studying."
Father Tao was taken aback. "Games are this complicated?"
Tao Shushu tried to turn off her phone, but the screen was stuck on the circuit diagram page.
She looked at her parents’ worried expressions, caught between laughter and tears. "Mom, Dad, isn’t my academic performance good enough?"
"Shushu, we don’t want you to work so hard. You can always study tomorrow, it’s almost midnight," said Mother Tao.
"I’ll sleep as soon as I finish this problem, no, this level of the game. Mom, Dad, don’t worry, I won’t overwork myself."
After a few minutes of persuasion, Mother and Father Tao finally turned and left the room.
Tao Shushu just wanted to finish quickly and get some rest.
Because of this, she had no idea that after her parents left, they began whispering anxiously and eventually reached a consensus: their daughter was working too hard and needed more care. Mother Tao called their regular spa to make a reservation, deciding to take Tao Shushu there the next day for some relaxation.
Father Tao also took out his bank card. "The day after tomorrow is the Su family’s welcome-back banquet for their daughter. There’ll be plenty of people her age there, we should buy Shushu some nice clothes."
Tao Shushu continued writing and calculating, spending another fifteen minutes before finally completing the modifications to the circuit diagram.
But modifying circuits required precision work. After removing part of the casing, she found herself stuck. Even with the dexterity of a juggler tossing fruit, she couldn’t manage to solder the connections accurately.
Tao Shushu scratched her head, wondering what to do. Would she have to sketch the circuit in the sand?
Just then, a prompt appeared on the game screen: "Limited-time offer! Spend just 50 gold coins to gift your cub a drawing from another world. Would you like to purchase?"
Fifty gold coins.
Tao Shushu quickly did the math: correctly answering four reading comprehension questions with over 90% accuracy only earned her 30 gold coins.
Her cub driving a car for a thousand kilometers would barely yield a 50-gold-coin reward.
Simply fixing the car only gave a 5-gold-coin payout.
Thinking about how she’d fought off sleep for half an hour, laboring over the circuit diagram, Tao Shushu suddenly realized how much she was investing in this game.
And now this lousy game wanted to take away the gold coins she’d worked so hard to earn.
No way. It’s just redrawing the circuit diagram, how hard could it be?
After a moment’s thought, Tao Shushu noticed that the stone table in the cave had a flat surface, perfect for sketching the circuit.
She picked up a shard of glass and began drawing, albeit in a crooked, uneven manner.
Tao Shushu wasn’t familiar with the symbolic notations used in her cub’s circuit diagrams, but judging by the diagram that had appeared in the game system earlier, they should be the same.
So, she started sketching.
But with hundreds of series and parallel connections, Tao Shushu grew increasingly frustrated. As she drew, she recalled a simplified drawing method she had learned during her past life in the post-apocalyptic world and began using it.
Her speed improved significantly, and she finished transcribing the entire circuit diagram in just over ten minutes.
Exhausted, Tao Shushu rubbed her cub’s face and head before collapsing into sleep.
Nan Yuan waited a while, confirming that the mysterious presence had truly left this time.
Looking at the circuit diagram on the table, he grew even more convinced of his speculation. The wiring for military trucks was highly complex, classified as confidential material not circulated in AI databases, with access restricted to only a few individuals.
The fact that it could be drawn so quickly suggested either that the entity held a high security clearance and had accessed it before, or that its computational power and intelligence level were exceptionally advanced.
Noticing the military-specific shorthand symbols in the latter half of the diagram, Nan Yuan concluded it had a military background.
Could it be a robot from his father’s or brother’s regiment that escaped during the rebellion? That would explain why it showed no hostility toward humans and had repeatedly helped him.
Nan Yuan checked through the robots in his memory one by one but couldn’t find a suitable suspect.
This one seemed to have some degree of emotion, it liked red fruits and would deliberately try to make him laugh when it noticed he was unhappy.
After a moment’s thought, Nan Yuan walked to the storage area of the cave, where several bottles of oil suitable for robots to replenish their energy were kept. He had previously considered them cumbersome to carry and hadn’t brought them along. But now, he could give them to it.
Nan Yuan noted down the circuit diagram and began the repairs.
He had to work quickly, this cave wasn’t safe enough. In a few days, when the full moon arrived, the beast tide would grow even more frenzied.
On the table, the circuit diagram had been traced and taken away.
Nan Yuan polished the tabletop again.
Two large bottles of specialized robot oil and a pile of bright red fruits were placed side by side.