Chapter 18 Milk Tea Shop 2 (Knowledge You May Never Use in This Life)

"You smashed my car window, and I'm supposed to thank you? Are you crazy?!" the woman yelled angrily.

"Why is all you see the car?" Zhu Lin said, displeased.

"Otherwise what?" The woman put her hands on her hips. "Let me tell you, this car of mine is brand new, worth over ten thousand! Pay up, you have to pay up, or I'll call the police!"

Zhu Lin ignored her, saying, "Don't bother, I've already called the police."

“It seems she’s not her biological daughter, but a human trafficker.” Yun Xin nodded. “From now on, nobody leaves. Everyone stay here and wait for the police.”

The woman then realized that Yunxin was holding her own daughter.

She looked at her husband in disbelief, "How come our daughter is in the car?"

"I don't know," the husband said innocently.

"In temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius, the car windows were tightly closed, and the car was deliberately parked in a corner where no one passes by. Didn't you know that?" Zhu Lin sneered.

Although the woman found it a bit strange, she still exclaimed, "We didn't do it on purpose!"

“Yes.” The husband nodded in agreement. “It was just a momentary lapse in attention.”

Zhu Lin turned to Yun Xin and discussed, "It probably wasn't intentional, so should we just let it go?"

Yun Xin shook her head. "We still have to wait for the police to arrive."

"The police won't blame us even if they come," the woman retorted stubbornly. "She's my daughter! If we weren't watching her closely enough, would they lock us up?"

"That's hard to say," Zhu Lin thought for a moment and said, "Recently, many new regulations have been introduced that prohibit harming children and hold parents legally responsible for failing to take proper care of them."

"How could that be? You're talking nonsense!" The woman was so anxious she was jumping up and down.

Zhu Lin rolled her eyes. "Who's lying to you? If you don't believe me, go online and check. They say that too many people have died in accidents in recent years, and they will pay more attention to children under the age of 18 in the future to protect their healthy growth."

"This..." The couple exchanged glances, both looking somewhat flustered.

Zhu Lin felt increasingly uneasy and deliberately said, "I heard the police station recently got some lie detectors, and they're 100% accurate. You absolutely mustn't lie when you get there, or you'll be caught."

"She's not my biological daughter, she's my adopted daughter, okay?!" The woman was both anxious and scared, and finally changed her tune.

The husband's eyes darted around. "It really was an accident... Although I had thought about adopting another boy, I never thought of hurting her... She's my daughter! I love her so much. I buy her all the best food and drinks."

Zhu Lin, “…”

What does it mean to confess without being asked?

That's it.

Just then, the police arrived. "Who called the police?"

"Me." Zhu Lin raised her hand and recounted the whole story.

The police noticed the couple's expressions were off. "You only knew the car window was broken, but you didn't know the child was still inside?"

"We're so careless, being first-time parents," the husband said with a forced smile, suppressing his urge to run away.

The woman cried out, "We have a legitimate adoption! We have an adoption certificate! We've always treated her very well, it was just an accident today."

"Take your words to the police station." The police took the two away, then took the baby girl and held her in their arms.

"What will happen to the child?" Zhu Lin looked on with lingering reluctance.

“Send her to an orphanage, and the state will pay for her upbringing until she turns 18,” the police officer explained. “Recently, new regulations have been introduced, and the Ministry of Finance has allocated funds so that children who have lost their guardians will receive excellent care. You don’t need to worry too much.”

"That's good." Zhu Lin breathed a sigh of relief.

The police officer looked at Yun Xin and asked, "Why don't you come with us too?"

"Okay," Yun Xin agreed.

Zhu Lin was worried and wanted to go with them.

“The man is lying, he can’t escape,” Yun Xin advised. “Zhou Rui definitely can’t handle it all by himself, you should go back first.”

Zhu Lin thought it made sense and watched Yun Xin leave with the police.

[The player successfully saved a human in instance number 115644—"Child's Accidental Death by Suffocation in a Car"—and received a "C" rating, with the following attribute points awarded: Strength +0.1, Constitution +0.1.]

An accident? This is clearly murder.

The thought had just crossed Yunxin's mind when she suddenly realized that murder could also be treated as a copy.

It was probably the husband's first time doing something wrong. He ended up at the police station, where he was closely questioned by the police. He broke down after just a little questioning.

“When I first adopted a child, I wanted to adopt a boy, but my wife wouldn’t allow it. She said that daughters are more considerate, and she immediately fell in love with the baby girl.”

"Later, I brought up the idea of ​​having a son again, but my wife said that we already have a daughter, and having too many children would be a hassle, so she didn't want to have a second one."

"That noon, for some reason, a thought kept swirling in my mind—if we didn't have this daughter, we could have adopted a son again. So I..."

He didn't say anything more, but the others understood.

The woman looked at her husband in disbelief. "You wanted to raise our son, so why didn't you talk to me about it properly? You just mentioned it casually and then went silent. How was I supposed to know you meant it? How could you harm such a young child? Are you even human?"

The husband insisted, "If you hadn't refused, this wouldn't have happened. In the end, it's all your fault."

The two started arguing right there at the police station.

On the other hand, when Yun Xin gave her statement, she emphasized that she saw the child was about to die, so she broke the window to save him.

Because of her good citizenship record, she was quickly acquitted.

Before leaving, the police gave her a verbal warning: "Next time you encounter something like this, remember to call the police and don't try to handle it yourself."

"I understand." Yun Xin nodded obediently.

But if I encounter a child with only a few minutes left on the countdown and no ability to save themselves again... I would do it again next time.

Back in the shop, Zhou Rui looked at him resentfully, "You still know how to come back?"

"Go to the police station to cooperate with the investigation and give a statement," Yunxin explained.

"How is that couple doing?" Zhu Lin asked anxiously.

“Women get criticism and education, while men usually end up in jail for a few years,” Yun Xin said.

"Serves him right!" Zhu Lin said angrily. "Given what he's done, he deserves to spend the rest of his life living in prison."

"It seems like there are quite a few new regulations lately. I wouldn't have known if you hadn't mentioned it," Yunxin said casually while working.

Speaking of this, Zhu Lin also remarked with emotion, "This year is quite strange; many new policies have been introduced, and safety accident education has been particularly strengthened."

"I watch TV series online, and for every ten minutes of the drama, I get a one-minute animated safety education segment. That safety education segment is so bad, I can't skip it, even with a membership! It feels like I'm trying to sneak in a bit of TV drama while receiving the safety education..."

"Then I recalled the fear I felt during my school days, being dominated by safety education before every holiday. No matter what they said, the naive ones would still do it, while the honest ones wouldn't even touch it, but everyone had to listen to it."

"The most outrageous thing is that this safety training covered everything. From fires to floods, from earthquakes to stampedes, from food poisoning to falling objects from heights, from natural gas explosions to heatstroke... What to do if you encounter these situations? How to reasonably rescue yourself and others? How to wait for rescue more safely? Everything was covered."

"It felt like it was telling me knowledge that I might never use in this lifetime, but it kept telling me over and over again."

"What's even more amazing is that it actually came in handy. When I saw that scene, I immediately thought of the fact that 'leaving a child alone in a car during hot weather can easily cause them to suffocate and die from heatstroke.'"

"It's a miracle that the child was alive, since he met you guys." Zhou Rui wasn't actually angry; he was just a little annoyed that the person he was taking out the trash for had disappeared.

Hearing that they had saved someone, the matter was put behind them. "Hurry up and get ready, the night shift workers have already arrived. Once we finish this work, we can go home."

Zhu Lin teased, "Didn't you say you could stay at the hotel 24/7?"

"I'd like to," Zhou Rui said with a laugh. "Commercial electricity is so expensive! If we're not operating and the air conditioning is only on me, wouldn't the boss be heartbroken?"

The three chatted and laughed, and the day passed just like that.

The next morning, Zhou Rui came to work with dark circles under his eyes.

Zhu Lin was stunned. "What's going on?"

"I didn't sleep well last night." Zhou Rui looked haggard. "The weather was too stuffy, and I tossed and turned in bed, unable to fall asleep. Eventually, I couldn't stand it anymore and turned on the air conditioner."

"I had just had a good nap when the power went out in my rented room, the air conditioner turned off automatically, and I woke up because of the heat."

"The electricity kept going out, and I was exhausted, hot, and stuffy. I don't know if I fell asleep or just fainted from the heat..."

"Oh my god." Zhu Lin felt like she was listening to a disaster documentary; it all felt unreal. The whole thing seemed like something out of a news story on TV or in the newspaper, something far removed from her own life.

"The electricity bill for renting a place is more expensive than for a regular household. And to make matters worse, the power went out." Zhou Rui could hardly believe this was a modern metropolis. "I'll go to the supermarket later and buy a low-wattage fan; maybe that will help."

Electric fans consume little electricity and are less prone to power outages, making them a better option for him to get through the long night.

"You should go buy it now," Yunxin advised. "This morning I saw a lot of people rushing to buy electric fans; there were already long lines outside the supermarket. What if they don't have enough stock..."

Zhou Rui immediately felt a sense of urgency. He took off running towards the supermarket, saying, "I'm going, you guys watch the store."

"Go on, go on." Zhu Lin waved her hand, then turned to Yun Xin and instructed, "If the boss comes to check up on things, just say Zhou Rui went to throw out the trash."

Yun Xin nodded obediently, "I understand."

(End of this chapter)