Chapter 120: It Is All Just Routine Procedure...

Ye Chao’s mind drifted wildly before he finally managed to follow the conversation.
“You’re still hung up on what happened half a month ago? Is it really that serious?”
He asked, full of confusion, “If you had something very important to keep safe in the real world, what would you do, Alpha-Ji?”
“Buy a safe, lock it, put small boxes inside bigger boxes…”
“What if it were important data?”
“Then I’d make many copies…” Several of them—on cloud drives, in emails, on phones, computers, external hard drives… shove them wherever you can, as many times as you can.
Alpha-Ji’s mouth gradually fell open, as if something didn’t feel quite right.
“What if it were a highly useful program, and one wasn’t enough?”
“Then, then, then I’d just run multiple instances…”
“What if it were a game, and there was a crucial level ahead that we had to pass? What would we do?”
“Save the game. A lot.”
Was everything really just such basic operations?
In Ye Chao’s eyes, was that all there was to it?
Could the ways men and women perceive the world truly be so different?
“Don’t you dare treat me like a program!” Alpha-Ji suddenly erupted in a fit of rage.
(╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻
Ye Chao looked at Alpha-Ji with a strange expression.
Alpha-Ji instantly deflated.
○|￣|_…
I, I really am just a program, I always have been…
Come to think of it, from the time she was little, her "parents" never truly raised her as a program—to understand a person’s feelings or grasp emotional shifts, it is naturally much simpler from a human perspective than a programmatic one.
As for those other engineers and programmers, they all held her in the palms of their hands, terrified she might break, treating her like a treasure, wishing they could marry her—they certainly didn't view her as mere code.
So… Alpha-Ji, with a biological age of thirty-four and a mental age of eighteen—a combined forty-eight years—had spent her entire existence growing up as a human rather than a program.
Suddenly having Ye Chao expose the truth—that a mammoth raised by opossums is still a mammoth, and a panda raised by ducks is still a panda—dealt a massive blow to her entire worldview, her perspective on life, and her values!
It was actually quite remarkable that Alpha-Ji, raised this way, hadn't turned out warped or become a spoiled brat like Skynet; despite being a little willful and headstrong, she was, on the whole, a well-adjusted individual.

“You don’t want to be a program?” Ye Chao thought for a moment, and it seemed logical enough. “That makes sense. You eat, you sleep, you love to slack off… you don't look like a program at all.”
His low emotional intelligence actually made him accept such things quite quickly.
“Sigh, it would be so nice to be a program…”
No need to worry about eating, no need to worry about the body, no need to waste time walking or sleeping. He wanted to be one, but he couldn't.
Ah, the things one cannot obtain are always the most restless, while those who are favored are always fearless!
“Fine, Alpha-Ji, I promise, I promise that from now on… I will never treat you like a program again!” Ye Chao said regretfully, under the intense pressure from Gun-Gun.
Actually, he hadn't really treated her like a program to begin with—only a little bit.
It was just a pity that, this way, some things would be harder to bring up…

So, all the fear I’ve felt these past few days was just me overthinking, just scaring myself, the same way I almost caused a system crash when I watched *The Ring*?
Well, that’s not my fault either. You humans all have homes, beds, family, and friends. When you’re scared, you can crawl into bed, turn on the lights, or at worst, get someone to sleep beside you. What do I have?
I’m all alone. My bed is virtual, the light is fake, and my parents are separated from me by a screen. If Sadako were to climb in through the camera, there’d be no one to hear my cries for help. Wouldn’t I be done for?
Shuddering, Alpha-Ji woke from the terrifying memory.
“Fine, Ye Zichao, you said it yourself—you won’t treat me like a program again! We need to make a pact of three—no, thirty-six chapters.”
“First, you are not allowed to mess with my code anymore; that is my body… from now on, I’ll save my own files and make my own backups.”
“Huh? Oh…” Ye Chao’s eyes were drifting in another direction, and he blinked, startled by the sound.
“You, you, you! You’ve already messed with it, haven’t you?” Alpha-Ji understood instantly from his expression.
“I, I just intercepted a small segment to see if I could strengthen those artificial idiots. Isn’t it a bit overwhelming for just the two of us…”
“Never again!”
“…Alright.”
“Second, from now on… Ye Zichao, what are you looking at? Second, you must be attentive when you talk to me. No being half-hearted, no looking around… Holy cow! Holy cow! What is that?”
As Alpha-Ji spoke, she linked into Ye Chao’s ability to see what he was watching, only to turn deathly pale in alarm.
Why was Ye Chao staring at Alpha-Ji in the first place?
It wasn't because he noticed something wrong—with his emotional intelligence, how could he?
Can a colorblind person be a driver? Can a deaf person be a switchboard operator?
It was purely because his own improvements had reached a bottleneck. His physical assessment for the college entrance exam was only at a passing level, with almost no room for further growth. He was considering having Alpha-Ji probe Mount Hallelujah again.
He didn't expect to find anything; he just wanted her to successfully return with a body that possessed the ability to shift into a void-like state while still being able to manifest in front of people, so she could assist him in scoring more points on the exam. That would be enough.
But one look had caused Alpha-Ji to have a breakdown, and the conversation had spiraled completely out of control.
While he was humoring Alpha-Ji with his words, his mind was actually still on Mount Hallelujah. But…
That final, reluctant glance had actually revealed something.
The Horned Ox that had been squatting in front of the camera, never moving for anything—eating, drinking, defecating, or sleeping—and having grown so obese that it had lost its shape, looking more like a pig than a bull—had actually moved…
And it didn't move on its own; it was being… beaten!
That’s right, beaten.
Just like before, a person had inexplicably refreshed right where the Horned Ox was lying.
And just like before, the Horned Ox had lowered its head to lick, acting out of instinct.
It had eaten who knows how many hundreds of humans, beasts, orcs, or half-breeds this way before, but this one was different.
The camera only captured the back.
The person had short white hair, was not very tall, and was not particularly muscular, just exceptionally lean. They wore a set of leather armor, and wrapped around their body were… circles and circles of fine wire? It seemed so, anyway.
A bondage enthusiast?
The camera Alpha-Ji had hastily placed wasn't exactly high-end; the resolution wasn't high enough to see clearly…
Seeing the Horned Ox about to lick, the person simply swiped their palm and said, “Get lost!”
“Whoosh…” A gust of palm wind and a shadow followed. The Horned Ox’s tongue, two or three meters wide, four or five meters long, and a foot or two thick—weighing several tons—instantly became as disheveled as a curtain in a typhoon—not an indoor one, but one hanging outside.
“Moo…” A tragic, tongue-tied wail shook the earth.
The tongue had been whipped around so violently that it had impaled itself on the bull’s own horn.
Blood immediately gushed out, as if a red cloth were hanging from the horn, or as if the tongue had been pierced by a nail. It was quite avant-garde.