"Take care—"
"Until we meet again—"
"Have a safe journey—"
"Wuwuwu... I'm finally repaired and rebooted! My corpse feels so warm and fuzzy!"
Amidst the chorus of farewells from the crowd, Chai Xiaomi suddenly heard an extremely abrupt, buzzing mechanical voice with static electricity.
It echoed in her mind.
She tentatively called out in her heart, "Youtiao?"
"Yes, it's me."
???
How did it become a bilingual version?
Chai Xiaomi: "Did you upgrade your system?"
This seemed to hit a sore spot. Youtiao immediately wailed loudly in her mind: "Upgrade?! I worked so hard to save up 10,000 performance points that I couldn't bear to use, just waiting to buy myself an advanced chip in the future. But then you, Host, caught a fever and literally fried my CPU! The repairs cost a whole 8,000 points! A full 8,000!!"
"Wuwuwuwu... Doujiang next door already switched to the latest photonic chip, and I'm the only one still stuck with a crappy first-generation card! Why am I so unlucky to be stuck with such a fragile host, wuwuwu—"
It cried a river, shaking the heavens and the earth.
Chai Xiaomi stayed silent for three seconds before she reached the end of her patience: "Shut up. If you keep crying, I'll die right now and show you."
Youtiao instantly became obedient: "Dear Host, long time no see. I missed you very much at the headquarters. Finger hearts."
Chai Xiaomi: "What did you mean by performance points just now?"
Youtiao: "Inside our digital world, there is a virtual point store. Performance points can be used to redeem everything a system needs, such as upgrading chips, daily maintenance, and even the golden fingers you mentioned before, Host."
Chai Xiaomi's eyes lit up. She had just gotten excited when it poured a bucket of cold water over her head.
Youtiao said in dismay: "But I've followed all kinds of hosts into all sorts of novels before, and not a single one completed their missions. They all ended up dead, so I've never earned a single point. This 10,000 was just the initial system performance points, and after meeting you, I was deducted 8,000. Thank you very much!"
Its voice almost carried a tone of despair: "If a system loses all its performance points, it proves it is completely useless and cannot assist the host in completing missions. The ultimate fate is destruction, destruction ahhh!"
Chai Xiaomi comforted it: "Don't worry. I will definitely complete the mission and earn back all those deducted performance points for you."
Youtiao didn't seem to have much confidence, its tone carrying a sense of resignation: "You'd be doing me a huge favor if you just stopped catching random fevers. Alright, let's review the plot progress now."
"First of all, congratulations, Host. During the time I was down, you weren't easily killed by the villain and have tenaciously survived until now. Round of applause! So let me ask, have you successfully gained even a tiny bit of the villain's trust?"
"Lili," Chai Xiaomi suddenly turned her head, looking at the young man behind her.
"Hmm?" Wu Li looked lazily at the road ahead, his arms wrapped around her in an embrace, and casually responded.
Chai Xiaomi asked directly, "Do you have even a tiny bit of trust in me?"
Youtiao: "!!!"
Youtiao: "Is your brain fried?! Who asks the villain directly like that?! I told you to beat around the bush, not throw yourself into the net!!!"
Hearing this question, Wu Li seemed to find it somewhat amusing and cast a downward glance at her.
"If you're really that bored," he tightened the reins and squeezed the horse's belly, "then get down and run for a bit."
The sound of horse hooves suddenly quickened. Chai Xiaomi's body swayed, and she quickly grabbed his arm tightly: "Just answer me, do you or do you not."
"I only trust myself."
He looked down at the girl's expression, originally thinking that after throwing out this sentence, it would be met with her relentless questioning.
But she went quiet.
She didn't say a single word.
She didn't even look up at him, just remained silent on her own, her eyes cast down as if she had fallen into deep thought.
He inexplicably felt a bit of regret.
In the past, this answer was an unquestionable truth, the rule he relied on to survive. But now, even he knew that these words were no longer entirely true.
At the very least, he believed the vows she had made.
Believed them to his bones, perhaps even a bit more than he believed in himself.
Chai Xiaomi said to Youtiao: "You heard that, right? Trust level is zero. I can neither judge the depth of his feelings for the female lead, nor predict when he will plant the love gu."
Youtiao felt frustrated at her lack of progress: "Then what on earth have you been busy with all this time?!"
"I was busy with quite a lot of things," Chai Xiaomi thought about it, realizing it wasn't completely fruitless. "Oh right, I didn't get his trust, but I did get his first kiss."
Youtiao: "What???"
Chai Xiaomi: "The villain's first kiss."
Chai Xiaomi: "And kissed twice."
Youtiao: "!!!!!!!!!"
After a harsh burst of static noise, the mechanical system voice intermittently spewed out a string of chaotic characters:
"5&1!K^j%8@mZ$9eP……%#@*&……"
Chai Xiaomi didn't understand it; it seemed to be a string of code scrambled by an overload.
The old system chip clearly couldn't process this explosive information and completely bugged out under high-speed operation.
It wasn't until the group stepped onto the territory of Liangya Prefecture.
That Youtiao gradually recovered.
It repeatedly confirmed with Chai Xiaomi: "Are you sure you weren't delirious from the fever, dreamed about it, and then confused reality with your dreams? The villain taking the initiative to kiss you, how is that possible? In the original novel, he didn't even hold the female lead's hand!"
Chai Xiaomi: "He said it was just to shut me up."
Youtiao: "Nonsense, he obviously has a gu worm that can make people mute."
Chai Xiaomi: "That bug was eaten by the big fat snake."
Youtiao fell into a long and chaotic silence.
Does this make sense? The gu snake he carefully raised swallowed the gu worm he raised? Why does it sound more and more absurd the more I hear it...
Forget it, now is not the time to dwell on this.
The sky gradually darkened.
The group rode their horses forward. The hooves stepped on the wide official road, the sound clear and distant.
A mottled stone tablet by the roadside came into view, clearly engraved with three large characters—Qianwu Town.
This was supposed to be an ordinary resting place on their way to Youquan Town.
But Chai Xiaomi's memory gradually became clear.
In the original novel, it was precisely after arriving at this town that the protagonist group encountered a series of bizarre and inexplicable events.
It was also in this Qianwu Town that the villain and the female lead started interacting more frequently.
His first attempt to plant the love gu in the female lead happened right here.
Youtiao took a deep breath:
"Host, are you ready?"
"We are about to step into the real—main storyline."
Chai Xiaomi's gaze swept across the twilight, looking toward the myriad twinkling lights of Qianwu Town in the distance.
At sunset, smoke from kitchen chimneys curled upward in the town.
Her eyes were firm, full of ambition: "I'm ready!"
