Chapter 367: Chapter 367

In 2013, the second year after the year the Mayans predicted the world would end, a young programmer at the city center hospital in the Republic’s Huaiyi City gently held a baby girl. She was his daughter. The programmer felt it was good to have such a child after "the end of the world." The next "Reincarnation" would surely be better.

His somewhat cultured father-in-law named the girl "Xinyu." The old man thought the character for "rain" was good, as it implied "nourishment."

At that time, the man, born in the 80s, truly believed he could live a nourished and content life forever.

But, he gradually felt "history."

No, actually, "history" had already started, at least two years ago. It was just that he was late to realize it.

On June 9, 2008, local time in the Federation, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, released the epoch-making product, the iPhone 3G. And within a mere two years, this trend had swept into the lands of the Republic. It wasn’t just the iPhone series; domestically made 3G smartphones priced around one thousand were also taking root.

Already by February 27, 2008, a mobile payment platform had started to germinate on the soil of the Republic.

Even earlier, online shopping and likewise early-born social networking began to expand through these "cheap personal smart devices."

Even bubbles didn’t expand at their speed.

The behavior of the Republic’s people towards socializing, shopping, and even living was being completely rewritten during these years.

The programmer saw the Gold.

In his circle, a big brother who later made a great name for himself had once said that pigs could fly if they stand at the gust of the wind.

For the Republic’s mainland, which was still a blank slate, it was an era filled with Gold. This kind of "historical wave" had occurred once during his birth. It would likely happen again, but when was uncertain.

The programmer was eager to try his fortune. In fact, he had thought of taking the plunge in 2012. But by the time he had made up his mind, his wife got pregnant. It was his first time becoming a father, so naturally, all his grand ambitions faded.

After the birth of his daughter, the thought surfaced once again. Yet every time he brought it up, his wife would cry and say, "Look at the child." Watching his daughter babbling, the programmer always ended up with a soft heart.

However, by 2014, he couldn’t sit still anymore. He knew that the golden era was ending.

So, the argument finally erupted between the husband and wife.

While focusing on the news that a certain takeout platform had secured several hundred million US Dollar s in financing, the programmer got the divorce papers and, getting his wish, split all family’s cash savings and other properties, leaving only the house.

The girl named "Xinyu" lived with her mother and grandmother, while visiting her father on weekends.

In her memory, her father was supposed to be in a cluttered and cramped place. He was not very good with children, but he would play some children’s shows for her. By then, TV shows were not much fun anymore, but father could still find something interesting online for her to watch, which the mother couldn’t do.

The little girl’s favorite thing was to spend weekends with her father. In the small computer screen, the Giant of Light descended from the sky and defeated the monstrous villains, what an incredible scene!

But the little girl didn’t talk much about these things with her mother. If her mother knew her father had "let her play on the computer all day," her mother would get angry. When her mother got angry, she would hit her, and then cry afterward.

The little girl didn’t like that at all. She thought it might be like those shows depicted, that her mother had a terrible evil monster inside her heart, one that would one day mature and manifest in this world.

But it wasn’t her mother’s fault.

The little girl hoped that, when the time came, a gentle Giant of Light would defeat the monster and help her mother.

But that day never came.

It was probably in 2018 when the little girl and her mother moved. All she remembered was the day her father actually came to "home" and cried to her mother. Despite being an adult, he was unashamed of his tears. Then the mother took the little girl to pack up some furniture and they rented a small house close to her maternal grandparents.

Then, for a long time, the little girl didn’t see her father anymore.

The grandmother seemed very angry, often scolding her mother. Her mother cried often too, which deeply frightened the little girl. Was the big monster inside her mother about to come out? Why did her grandmother’s demeanor also look like her mother’s? Why didn’t her grandfather like her and her mother anymore?

It was much, much later before Xinyu learned that her father had come to borrow money from her mother back then. In a moment of soft-heartedness, her mother had sold the house.

During this period, Xinyu’s only connection to her father was through some books he had left behind. Although her mother couldn’t understand them, she couldn’t bring herself to throw them away.

Her mother never noticed how smart the child was. Her father had no chance to see it. The little girl herself didn’t realize it either. Everyone thought she was just a smart kid who learned to read early.

The little girl first practiced those pieces of knowledge in 2019. That time, her cousin’s computer, which had been straining under eight years of use, broke down. Her four-year-old cousin had no idea what had happened, and all the adults thought it was just a natural breakdown of electronics.

Xinyu cried hard. She knew she had done something wrong. The computer failed to boot, and it wasn’t because of a hardware failure. She had broken the operating system.

In the following years, Xinyu Zhu wore out her mom’s old cell phone, then another one, but soon repaired them. Initially, she used the internet from the small restaurant downstairs, but quickly, she learned to steal internet from the neighbors.

Her mother remained the same, hitting the little girl whenever she saw her playing with these gadgets and even beating her for reading her ex-husband’s books. The mother believed those books had driven her husband mad and were now going to harm her daughter.

The girl was not convinced. She believed she was not doing anything wrong.

This situation continued until 2023, when the girl was in the third grade.

Then suddenly, her mother stopped hitting her, only weeping every day.

"I was too foolish," her mother said to her, "Mommy was too foolish, not born for wealth. You must not turn out like me when you grow up, do you hear?"

The girl, perplexed, nodded her head.

Until one day, her mother told her that from then on she would be living with her father.

It was then the little girl found out her dad had truly made a lot of money.

So, in another winter, the little girl stepped into a luxurious villa. A 400-square-meter mansion, truly enormous compared to the place where there was only one bathroom.

Xinyu Zhu saw her long-unseen father. And there, she also met a woman and a four-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl.

The boy hugged Xinyu Zhu’s leg, calling her sister with his babyish voice. Her father asked her to call that woman aunt.

Xinyu Zhu was not ignorant. She could read newspapers even before attending elementary school. She also read the books her mother cried over. She understood what was going on but didn’t want to understand it at all.

She pushed away the little boy and escaped from this "home." Follow current ɴᴏᴠᴇʟs on novel fire.net

She found her mother, but her mother instead slapped her. The girl couldn’t comprehend and started crying. Her mother also held her and cried.

"Silly child..." she said softly, "Your father can provide better conditions for you."

Her mother attempted another approach. She even spent a significant amount of money buying gifts, going to that woman to apologize humbly, forcing Xinyu Zhu to bow her head as well.

This was the first time Xinyu Zhu felt "completely unable to understand." She had always been quick to learn everything, but this scene, her brain completely and absolutely refused to understand.

Had her mother gone mad? Clearly, it was her father’s fault, so why did she apologize?

And her father too... How could such a shameless person feel the slightest bit of remorse?

What was that woman’s expression?

—Ah, this must be a monster. An unbeatable monster.

—Mom is both mad and foolish, and so is dad.

The only person Xinyu Zhu felt was normal was the little boy. Crying, the boy asked her, "Sister, did I do something wrong?"

—Why would there be normal people? She almost wanted to hit him. Was it like the acting written in the novels her mother read? Was it pretense? To make me feel guilty?

From that day, Xinyu Zhu lived at her father’s house. She had an independent room, which was bigger than the place she had lived with her mother. A very large bed, a lot of clothes. There was even a computer. Xinyu Zhu also had her own cell phone.

Although the "family members" strictly limited her internet time, that woman hardly cared for her. Ever since the day she knocked down the little boy, that woman had never looked kindly at her. She was probably just waiting for her to self-destruct.

The boy was also like a fool. Occasionally when Xinyu Zhu gave in and played games with him, this fool loved creating "draw" situations, babbling nonsense like "I win, little sister wins, big sister wins." She couldn’t be bothered with those two foolish children.

The restrictions set by her father were also a mere formality. The so-called "juvenile monitoring system" was completely ineffective against her, and at most her father could see that his daughter had a habit of reading internet novels for an hour every night. Xinyu Zhu soon learned to exploit loopholes in the carrier billing system request detection to steal the carrier’s data.

No one knew what she was doing.

Her family had no idea how much time she was spending in the electronic, virtual, and internet worlds.

She felt there was nothing left here in this monster-ridden place to cling to. Her spiritual homeland was above the internet.

In the world of technology, right was right, wrong was wrong. What could run would run, what would crash would crash.

She wanted to stay far away from those monsters.