Chapter 67 I signed the contract!!! "Sir, then we..."
"Sir, then it's settled like this."
The young man in the windbreaker smiled, greeted the old man, and went back to his residence.
This is a small mountain village located in the northwest of the country. It used to be a well-known impoverished village in the province. The entire village had only about a hundred households, and the annual income was only two or three thousand yuan. Anyone with a little strength went out to work. Even so, the villagers still lived a very hard life.
But ever since the government provided the village with improved seeds and home robots at a cost of selling them at half price, the villagers' lives have finally improved a lot.
"Old Liu, how's your back?" Grandpa Wang took a puff of his pipe and greeted Old Liu, who had just been talking to the young man.
"What's wrong? I'm much stronger now than I was in my thirties," Old Liu replied with a smile.
Grandpa Wang's once white hair has turned black under the influence of new grains, and his once bronze-brown, wrinkled face has lost many wrinkles and gained fat, making him look younger. However, he still hasn't given up his long-standing habit of smoking a pipe.
"That's good. Thanks to Xiao Guai, remember to thank him properly." The villagers named their family robot Xiao Guai.
"Of course!" Old Liu raised his chin slightly and said with a hint of pride, "I even had my second son go to the store to buy him the latest energy battery."
"Wow! That's quite a budget." Old Wang couldn't help but exclaim in surprise, then nodded and said, "It's not a loss. If it weren't for Xiao Guai, several of us would have died in this day and age."
What Grandpa Wang said was not an exaggeration. Even in modern society, winter is still the season that the elderly in rural areas are most likely to not be able to get through.
"By the way, what was that young man doing just now?" Grandpa Wang tapped his pipe.
Old Liu squinted, enjoying the warm sunshine, before pretending to have just heard it and dazedly replying, "Buying something."
"Buy something?" Grandpa Wang's eyes sharpened instantly. He glanced at Old Liu, his voice turning cold. "Buy what? What can we sell in a small village like ours?"
“There are many, isn’t Little Darling one?” Old Liu said, looking at the monitoring device on the utility pole not far away. “Look, aren’t those all of them, and…”
He paused, a cold smile creeping onto his lips: "And we still have seeds."
"They want to buy seeds?" Old Wang took a deep drag on his pipe before speaking. "You should have called the police directly."
"There's no evidence, is there?" Old Liu glanced at Grandpa Wang, then suddenly laughed and said, "Don't worry, my Wenni'er is here."
"Alright, I was worrying too much." Grandpa Wang's expression immediately relaxed, and when he thought of the little girl from Old Liu's family, his eyes even showed a hint of joy.
Meanwhile, Winnie was quietly peering out of the group's window, carefully stepping on the bricks and standing on tiptoe, listening to the voices inside.
As the footsteps drew closer, Winnie quickly shrank back, pressing herself tightly into a blind spot.
The young man in the windbreaker who called himself Brother Wen carefully looked out the window for a long time before closing it.
Winnie breathed a sigh of relief, patted her chest carefully, and was about to continue listening by the window when her eyes swept over the children's smartwatch issued by the government on her wrist, and she instantly had an idea.
She took off her smartwatch, found the camera function, quietly peeked out, and carefully pushed it to a blind spot on the windowsill.
She pulled a small wooden stick, about the size of her palm, from her pocket, poked at her smartwatch to find a suitable angle, and then returned to her original spot.
Just as Grandpa Wang and Old Liu suspected, this group of people were bribed spies. They were ordered to come to some remote mountainous areas to obtain the seeds or technology they had long coveted through deception, buying, or stealing.
Wen Ge and his group split into four groups, each heading to a different village, hoping to obtain more seeds from Dongguo in a way that maximizes their profits.
After all, since the establishment of the Skynet system, the living space of spies has been further compressed, and they can almost be said to have been wiped out in one fell swoop. They also know that given the current grim situation, this operation can be said to be the last one.
As Winnie listened to their discussion about how to swindle the maximum amount of seeds from the village's elderly and children the next day, she couldn't help but bite her lip in resentment. Only after the people inside started talking about other things did she quietly put her smartwatch away.
Carefully fastening the watch to her wrist, Winnie slowly descended the bricks, supporting herself against the wall.
These dozens of bricks under the window have been left unused by this family for many years and are now used as platforms for flower pots. As a result, they are covered with a lot of moisture and moss.
Even though Winnie was careful, she was still just a child. She slipped and almost fell, but luckily she wasn't very tall and liked to climb, so she managed to keep her balance and only bumped into the cat bowl under the brick.
The cat bed made a crisp sound, startling Vinnie, and the sounds of conversation in the room instantly disappeared.
As the footsteps grew closer, Winnie quickly placed a brick she had just taken down to step on the moss, covering the scratches on the moss.
Then he quickly ran to the tree in the corner of the wall and nimbly climbed up the tree.
At this moment, Wen Ge and his companion also came out of the room and saw a little girl tentatively stretching out her little feet to carefully climb down the tree. The two breathed a slight sigh of relief.
"You...you are Wenni'er from Uncle Liu's family?" Brother Wen hesitated for a moment before tentatively speaking.
With the help of the other person, Winnie pretended to be clumsy as she climbed down, and then said to the man and woman, "Yes, are you here to survey our area?"
“It’s us. How did you get into this yard?” Brother Wen squatted down, tightly holding Wen Ni’s arms with both hands, his eyes sharp.
A barely perceptible red light flickered from the center of one of the buttons on his shirt, and his eyes exuded an icy chill.
Winnie looked at him with feigned ignorance and replied with a smile, "Then, brother, have you seen my Dami? I just saw Dami run into Grandpa Zhang's yard, trying to catch it."
Wen Ge's expression froze for a moment before he shook his head, feigning belief, but the way he held Wen Ni'er tightly revealed his inner doubt.
The woman behind him had already walked around the tree once. Now, standing behind Wennie, she gently shook her head at Wen Ge.
Seeing this, Brother Wen put on a gentle look and looked at Wen Nier, loosening his grip slightly.
But when he glanced at the smartwatch on Vinnie's wrist, suspicion returned to his eyes.
The woman who had accompanied him into the village, who called herself Hongying, walked to his side and gently patted him twice from behind. Only when she saw him return to his initial gentle demeanor did she squat down and look at Wennie, smiling as she said, "Good child, did you hear anything just now?"
Winnie thought that this person probably really thought of her as an ignorant child, and she couldn't help but feel a little smug, but on the surface she still maintained her obedient appearance: "Sister, what happened?"
Hongying stared intently into her eyes: "It's nothing. Your name is Wenni, right?"
“Yes.” Vinnie nodded.
"Wenni, could you... lend me your smartwatch so I can take a look?" Hongying continued, maintaining her gentle demeanor.
Looking at Hongying's face, Winnie wanted to tell her that such a gentle, lotus-like expression was not suitable for Hongying's heroic appearance.
Seeing that Wennie did not respond to her, Hongying's suspicion grew even stronger.
Just then, a fat yellow cat quietly slipped away from the corner of the wall.
Winnie saw the big yellow cat and quickly ran over to it, shouting, "Dami, don't run around!"
Without asking Wen Ge and Hong Ying any more questions, she ran out of the courtyard with the big yellow cat in an instant.
After watching Wennie leave, Hongying looked at Brother Wen and said, "Don't worry, she's just a child. No one will believe you even if you tell them."
Brother Wen shook his head and thought for a moment before saying, "Let's be cautious. If it doesn't work out, we should leave tomorrow. Anyway, we're not the only ones going this way. Even if we don't succeed here, it's not a problem if others do."
Hongying was reluctant. She looked at Wen Ge with some reluctance and said, "Give up? We've already done so much, and we're about to succeed. Are we just going to give up like this? If we give up this time, won't we never have another chance? Besides, doesn't your brother still owe a lot of high-interest loans? If we don't succeed this time, the money they gave us won't be enough for you to pay off your brother's debts. If they really chop off one of your brother's hands, won't your parents hate you to death? Anyway, I don't care. I'm just doing this for some money so I can live a more carefree life. As for you... think about it some more."
Upon hearing his words, Brother Wen's expression instantly turned somewhat grim. His earlier intention to leave wavered, and after a long while, he sighed and said, "Alright, let's see how things go tomorrow."
Wenni dragged Da Mi to her grandfather and looked at Old Liu, saying directly, "Grandpa, I'm sure of it. They are the bad guys who came to steal our seeds."
Old Liu patted his granddaughter's head: "Don't worry, Grandpa's here. We'll take care of everything. Go have fun."
After saying that, he gave Grandpa Wang a look, and Grandpa Wang immediately nodded in understanding and got up to go to the village chief's house.
Three days later, the topic of "little guardians of the granary" became a trending topic.
In the video, Wennier is holding an award certificate, while behind her are Wenge and Hongying, who are dejected as they are driven away by a police car.
At this moment, Sang Zhitao was at her brother's house playing on her phone when the news of the catching of spies swept across the front pages of major websites.
Just then, Sang Leping passed by her, and Sang Zhitao held up her phone and said to her brother, "Brother, look! This little girl from the mountains actually caught a spy, how amazing!"
"Really?!" Sang Leping exclaimed in surprise as she bent down from behind the sofa to look at her phone screen.
Looking at the news headline above, he couldn't help but smile, his eyes crinkling: "This is all thanks to you."
"Me?" Sang Zitao was full of question marks.
Seeing this, Sang Leping smiled and said, "If it weren't for you, we wouldn't have obtained so many advanced technologies from the robot world, nor would we have the Sky Eye today, and there wouldn't be smartwatches that everyone can use. Without these, even if the children are very clever, they wouldn't be able to detect and alert the police to catch these spies in time!"
“But…” Sang Zhitao hesitated.
Sang Leping interrupted his sister before she could finish speaking, and continued, "Without you, there wouldn't be plants containing the new 01 element, and there wouldn't be family robots. Do you know? This winter, the mortality rate among the elderly hit a new low. And, because of you, rural education has finally caught up with the rest of the country. Children will no longer only receive basic education due to the scarcity of rural educational resources. Now they can also access the best educational resources just like children in big cities. In particular, the robots deployed in rural areas are all equipped with textbooks by renowned teachers, which can almost be said to have saved the situation of scarce rural teacher resources."
Sang Zhitao was at a loss for words. She looked down at the trending topics on her phone, her gaze sweeping over the obviously impoverished mountain village behind the little girl, and the magnificent, continuous mountains in the distance.
The intelligent robot behind him, dressed in a common rural gray-blue jacket and carrying a broom, was chasing a child covered in mud.
Looking at this very lifelike scene, Sang Zhitao was momentarily at a loss for words.
She never imagined that a barren mountain village and a highly technological robot would create such a spark.
With her gaze fixed on the void, Sang Zhitao chuckled and murmured, “This is because we have a very good country. If I lived in a country like Country A, I don’t think I would have the courage to hand over the money myself, and I probably wouldn’t dare to time travel either, because I can’t guarantee that I won’t expose everything. Once exposed, I would definitely become a puppet of capital, and those things that should have brought about change for the people would only become a new scythe for them to harvest from the people.”
As they were talking, the television on the wall started playing the news about "Little Guardians of the Grain Depot".
The camera pans across the children's classroom, where a robot, simulating a professional teacher, brings the children an interesting history lesson.
At this moment, a section of the "Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies" scroll, titled "Feng Yuan Facing the Bear," was projected onto the wall by a robot. This section is one of the nine sections collected by the British Museum. However, due to the lack of relevant knowledge among the British, it was not properly preserved and was cut in half, resulting in some crumbling.
The children listened attentively, especially when they heard stories of national treasures that had been stolen; each of them showed indignation on their faces.
"The Admonitions of the Instructress to the Court Ladies..." Sang Zhitao sighed, "I wonder when our national treasure can return home?"
Seeing her younger sister's once-proud expression darken, Sang Leping couldn't help but pat her head and comfort her, "Don't worry, the country has invited various experts to examine and compile the treasures that the country brought for you. The museum is also under construction and I believe it will be open to the public soon. At that time... we can naturally get everything back."
As the brother and sister were talking, the news about catching spies had finished airing, and the camera turned to an oasis.
A gentle breeze rustled through the rolling wheat ears, and amidst the undulating sand dunes, seemingly endless fields of wheat appeared before everyone.
A voice-over says: "Hello everyone, what you are seeing now is the Taklamakan Desert, the largest desert in my country. The yellow sand that used to cover the land has disappeared. This is a miracle born in the desert!"
As the voice-over begins, the camera soars high, revealing patches of green representing life on the endless desert landscape.
The camera flies downwards, passing through the wheat seedlings, where emerald-colored spots of light faintly shine through the wheat leaves—a characteristic unique to seeds cultivated with spirit stones.
"Wheat can be grown in the desert?!" Sang Zhitao's attention was completely drawn to the news.
A technician in camouflage, unable to suppress a smile, held up a stalk of wheat: "The Taklamakan Desert afforestation project is a complete success! From today onwards, deserts will be completely eradicated from the geographical history of our Eastern country!"
Sang Zhitao and her brother watched the news, and countless emotions welled up in her heart, leaving her speechless for a moment.
The phone she was clutching kept popping up with messages, topics she had followed before. These messages seemed to be telling her how shocked everyone was by today's news.
She lowered her head to hide the tears that were about to fall from her eyes, and looking at the funny and cute replies from netizens on her phone, she felt that it was all worth it.
Sang Leping didn't disturb Sang Zhitao, but silently patted her shoulder.
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