Chapter 32
Zhan Mu drove to the town at the entrance of the village, played with his mobile phone for two hours, and finally waited for his parents to arrive after they had finished their meal and social events.
"How did you offend Liu Gang?" Zhan's mother opened the door and glanced at Zhan Mu, but even if he didn't say it, she would have guessed it, so she just got into the passenger seat.
"No, I just don't want him to know about Zhan Miao."
Zhan Mu got out of the car and asked his father to drive. His father hadn't drunk alcohol, so the front of the car that had hit the hill was particularly clear, and the paint on the front of the car was scratched.
Immediately, Zhan Mu was slapped on the head by his father, who said, "I knew it would kill you to ask you to learn how to drive!"
"I haven't learned it yet..." Zhan Mu was speechless and his mood immediately turned bad. He went back to the back seat and looked at his phone in silence.
The family returned to Wanzhou County. As it grew darker, Zhan's mother told Zhan's father to drive slowly and occasionally chatted about family matters. Zhan Mu watched the flickering lights of houses outside the window. He felt depressed and began to feel inexplicably sad and irritable again.
Zhan's mother: "Your mother mentioned the house renovation again, didn't she?"
"Yeah." Zhan's father replied, "She said she gave all her money to Zhan Jun for his business, and now she has no money left."
Zhan Mu sighed, thinking of his grandparents' dilapidated old house, feeling complicated and strange, and said, "Then we can give them a few tens of thousands of dollars to repair it."
"You are so arrogant. Show me the money." Zhan's mother snorted coldly.
Zhan's father spoke angrily, complaining: "Your grandmother has money, and she invested it in her eldest son's business. What does it have to do with us?"
"Zhan Mu, that's why sometimes I think you don't believe me." Zhan's mother shook her head, a hint of coldness in her eyes. She laughed dryly and said, "Your grandmother has five children, and your father is the fourth. Moreover, since your father dropped out of school and started working, he has never received any financial help from your grandparents."
"Just like you think we are partial to Miaomiao sometimes, we have too many children and it is impossible to treat them all equally. Your mother and I are very ordinary people. We have worked hard for so many years, but we can only make enough to support our family." Zhan's father said firmly.
Tears welled up in his eyes as he said, "Your grandma is kind to your third father because he runs a barber shop in Laojun Village. A distant relative is not as good as a close neighbor. Your mother and I have been doing business in Wanzhou for many years. So, if your grandma needs anything, we can't help her."
"Oh..." Zhan Mu kept silent, remembering that his third uncle Zhan Jun had also bought two houses in Wanzhou.
Zhan's mother suddenly rubbed her brows and said, "Do you think that money is so easy to earn? Your father and I have worked hard for decades. Your father also trained as a chef, and I even washed people's hair. Don't we work hard? We are really doing well. We have been running a supermarket for almost ten years, and we have only bought one house. This is all we can afford at the moment."
"I paid for you and Zhan Miao to go to college. That's pretty good." Zhan's father glared at him with resentment, "I started working when I was sixteen, and your mother gave birth to you when she was in her twenties."
Zhan's mother continued to ramble on, "Are you still not satisfied? You know I have a younger sister, whom you call Auntie. She's lazy and gluttonous, and she can't even handle our household. You gave birth to two children, and they live with your grandparents. Now there are six of us living together in this family. Can you imagine the pressure she'll be under when she grows up?"
"Yes, right, right." Zhan Mu rubbed his face speechlessly.
He felt depressed, depressed and sad, or he felt an indescribable irritability and grievance. He thought of his sister who spent money like water on her sickbed, and then thought of his own bleak future... It was too suffocating.
Zhan Mu picked up his phone and saw that Lu Chao had been sending him TT messages for several days, including many cute emoticons, as if to comfort him.
Zhan Mu nodded, smiled bitterly, and suppressed the bitterness in his heart.
After returning to Wanzhou, Zhan's father drove the car directly to Master Huang to repair it, and asked Zhan's mother and Zhan Mu to go home first. Along the way, his mother saw that her son was depressed and dull, so she reached out and hugged him again.
She asked, "Are you hungry? What do you want to eat? You didn't have dinner."
"I don't want to eat." Zhan Mu said with a stubborn expression.
As soon as Zhan's mother saw it, she knew that his bad habit had come back again.
"I don't know you yet. It's hard for young people to find jobs now. Now your sister is in trouble. You should take the time to take good care of her and look for a job slowly. I'm not rushing you." Zhan's mother took Zhan Mu to a roadside stall and motioned him to look at the snack stand that was always her son's favorite.
"You clearly urged me, Mom." Zhan Mu laughed dryly, then pointed at the octopus balls and said, "I want to eat this."
Zhan's mother: "I've given you face, what can you say?"
Zhan Mu smiled.
As she said that, his mother went to buy him octopus balls. She frowned at the boss's actions, and when she turned around, she saw a strange boy next to Zhan Mu whom he had never seen before.
He looked lonely and tearful.
"You..." Zhan's mother's hands were shaking, but she still held the small box steadily.
-
It was almost eleven o'clock in the evening, and the lights were still on in the Zhan family's house. At the dining table in the living room, Lu Chao recounted his past life, and Zhan's mother frowned and felt heavy-hearted.
"You are from Yuzhou." Zhan's mother took a deep breath. She knew that Yuzhou was the capital of Xia State and its political and cultural center.
Lu Chao's existence was obviously beyond the comprehension of a grassroots citizen like her. What digital life, what national sinner, what political struggle... she couldn't understand it at all.
"Mom, don't disbelieve me, I'll show you." Zhan Mu was anxious, as if he was afraid that she couldn't understand, so he clicked on the relevant information about cyber data people and showed it to her.
"Really? Technology is developing very fast these days. If you can't think of it, there's nothing others can't do. It's a new era now. E-commerce, express delivery, even shared bikes—no one understood these new things when they came out. But they made a fortune by riding the wave of the times."
Zhan Mu: "Cyber data people are also a new technology, but foreign movies have already made about it. I don't talk about it in the countryside because I'm afraid of being treated like monkeys. Even you people find it difficult to accept, let alone my grandparents."
"Zhan Mu, you really have a very rich imagination," Zhan's mother said. Then she looked at the living Lu Chao again, still a little bit unbelievable, thinking that this world was really crazy.
After a tiring day, Zhan's mother decided not to think anymore and went to bed after washing up. Coincidentally, she ran into Zhan's father who was returning home after fingerprinting, and was also startled by Lu Chao's sudden appearance.
"Don't worry about it. It's just an electronic doll your son is playing with." Zhan's mother explained lightly, yawned, and prepared to go to sleep.
"Ouch, ouch... I had a heart attack." Zhan's father leaned against the shoe cabinet and touched his chest belatedly.
Lu Chao was surprised and whispered, "I never thought that I would be accepted by your family in this way."
"I didn't expect that either." Zhan Mu laughed awkwardly.
-
After Zhan Mu finished washing up, he went back to his room and was about to lie down when he saw Lu Chao sitting on his sofa with his legs crossed in a casual manner, saying, "An Jing Bian Lu wants to play games with you again."
It feels as natural as returning home.
What's there to be afraid of? Lu Chao doesn't eat or drink and doesn't take up any space. He just costs some electricity.
"What the hell do they do for a living? Why are they so idle?" Zhan Mu threw the towel in his hand on the bed in extreme annoyance. Thinking of the Rolex on Teacher An's hand, the fire of jealousy burned.
"An Jing is the son of an official, and Bian Lu is his boyfriend. You didn't realize it just now, did you?" Lu Chaozheng was recharged and in high spirits. Zhan Mu was surprised to find that there seemed to be an interface in his eyeballs, or perhaps in his retina.
Awesome, high-tech intelligent immortal data person.
Zhan Mu admires those leaders of technological innovation more and more.
"I suddenly envy you. After you die, you will become a digital life. You don't need to eat or drink and never age. You will have no worldly worries." Zhan Mu smiled.
"But what's the point of living like that?" Lu Chao said, but he didn't intend to debate with Zhan Mu. Obviously, he also had his own worries, but he just didn't want to talk about them again and again.
"The recent update to the game Desperate, I feel like it's targeting me. Actually, I already have an ID card, but I'm just nervous. The last time I played with you in the dungeon, it was the same. How could a bug occur and I was eliminated by a fire?"
Lu Chao chatted casually.
But she found Zhan Mu not so considerate. He was more immersed in his own world, saying, "I'm worried too. My small supermarket business isn't doing well, and my mom... I can't just stay at home and play all the time. I want to work in the real economy, to get involved in industry. I need a job, not just to be a virtual economy anchor."
"You're still picking? Internet celebrities are richer than you now." Lu Chao said.
"..." This guy is really thick-skinned, actually mocking me?!
Fortunately, Zhan Mu didn't mind. He said, "The self-media market is saturated now, and I don't like to do abstract and fancy things. What's more, can you tell me which business tycoon made his fortune as an internet celebrity?"
"There are so many, you just don't know it." Lu Chao put his head down with one hand, glanced at him, and smiled with a curled lip: "You are too thin-skinned, and a little too ambitious. You hate what you do and refuse to accept the success of others."
Zhan Mu jumped up from the bed, his eyes full of resentment, and whispered, "How come your family is so powerful, so they were hit by a car and died?"
"..." Lu Chao hadn't felt angry for a long time. He laughed twice, stood up, walked around, and approached Zhan Mu, wanting to strangle him to death.
"What are you doing? What are you doing! Are you repaying kindness with enmity?" Zhan Mu exclaimed in shock, "Don't forget that your current identity is registered with my family. If I die, you, you, the AI, will be the first to suffer."
"Okay, I love you, right? I'm willing to be hit by a car and die. I'm happy to become like this, neither human nor ghost!" Lu Chaohang took a breath, as if he was really angry, then took a few deep breaths, turned his face and exhaled heavily.
"Maybe, I really disturbed your family's life. I'm sorry, I'd better leave. Sorry, I won't do it again in the future."
As soon as he finished speaking, Lu Chao immediately turned back into liquid, leaving only the small cube on the bed sheet, which made Zhan Mu angry and annoyed, and he was speechless.
"You..." Zhan Mu was also annoyed. He picked up the small cube and smashed it against the wall, shouting in a low voice: "Just leave! Idiot! I've taken you in for so long and you're still not satisfied. You're wasting my electricity bill!"
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
