Chapter 42: You Must Train, You Must Grow Strong

The majority of the content on the tablet turned out to be nothing but adult comics. There were also some animated images, a few novels, and cartoons, all of them the sort that would never pass censorship.

It was only natural. If it was something that could be openly displayed, why hide it in a folder labeled “Biology” with such painstaking effort?

In the end, the combined contents of two USB drives, totaling a hefty thirty gigabytes, left only eight gigabytes of encrypted files to look forward to.

According to Alpha Ji, those encrypted files were all mirrors of a supercomputer. No matter how reckless the tablet's owner was, they would never stash anything indecent in there—the contents must be genuine, valuable material.

But!

A mirror, by definition, requires a reflection and an entity; only then can one see a real image within it. The encryption method employed by the supercomputer project team was similar: to view the contents, the internal network of the project group had to be accessed, connecting to the supercomputer itself.

“So, decrypting it is absolutely impossible—never in your lifetime. You might as well give up now,” Alpha Ji stopped her futile shadowboxing, her feelings complicated.

On the one hand, she rather wanted to see Ye Chao struggle.

On the other, she didn’t wish to witness Ye Chao banging his head against a wall; after all, every dream deserves respect, every effort deserves recognition.

Still, her inner drama meant nothing to Ye Chao—he neither noticed nor cared.

“If it’s impossible, then how did you come into existence?” Ye Chao’s single sentence left Alpha Ji speechless.

Yes, if the network couldn’t be accessed, how was Alpha Ji created in the first place? So intelligent, so extraordinary—she could almost be considered a program with a true soul. There was no way a military-grade tablet could have housed her. She herself had claimed to be an auxiliary program on the supercomputer.

That was the classic case of being blinded within, while the observer sees everything clearly.

And even if connecting to the mirror system required cracking the encryption keys of the supercomputer, this was no longer before the calamity—it was after, when people possessed superpowers.

Ye Chao didn’t need to crack any keys; he only had to use his ability to restore the military tablet to the state it had when connected to the supercomputer. In theory, that would allow him to access the encrypted files.

“Fine, you win!” Alpha Ji gave Ye Chao a thumbs-up, then tossed out two English letters—not S and B, but E and D.

“But what’s the point?”

She was right.

Because whether cracking the password by force or attempting to restore the connection to the host, one essential prerequisite remained—the military tablet.

Restoration required something to restore, and to connect to the supercomputer, not only software repairs were needed, but also the matching hardware on the tablet. In fact, as part of the supercomputer project group, the tablet’s encryption program operated on both hardware and software levels simultaneously.

Without the military tablet, all discussion was meaningless.

Even now, with heightened abilities, reconnecting Alpha Ji to some quantum network to download thirty years of Earth’s holographic evolution map was equally impossible. That, too, depended on the tablet’s hardware.

If only he hadn’t handed in the tablet...

Even if he couldn’t score a perfect hundred and twenty, an eighty or ninety would have been decent. Now he found himself in this awkward predicament. He resolved to ask the teacher when the chance arose, to see if the military tablet could be retrieved. Even if not, perhaps he could get close enough to borrow it.

Having made up his mind, Ye Chao continued sorting the electronic library.

During the dull moments of copying and pasting, he opened a book to study in earnest—“CPU Design and Manufacturing Techniques.”

He had already mastered the structure and principles of USB drives and hard disks, which made his data restoration success rate high, and his ability to engrave Fire Seed weapons fairly good. But when it came to tablets, phones, and laptops, he encountered frequent issues—devices inexplicably turned into bricks. Clearly, his understanding wasn’t deep enough.

When ability falls short, knowledge must fill the gap.

When knowledge is lacking, hard work must make up the difference.

Alpha Ji glanced at the document on the screen, shrank her neck, and kept silent—a scholar’s performance in front of a struggling student.

She often worked with these things, but as for explaining them...

It was like everyone eats and drinks every day, but if asked which muscle groups are involved, how many calories are burned, and how food and water circulate within the body... 99.9999% of people would be utterly bewildered.

Alpha Ji was the same; she could handle software, but hardware was beyond her grasp.

Feeling bored, she resumed her rubber fist exercises.

However, she could only appear within Ye Chao’s field of vision. Since Ye Chao’s attention was fixed on the tablet, her practice was confined to the small space of the desktop, facing the pen and paper on the table—like the protagonist in “Ghost” at the beginning.

After only a few rounds, Ye Chao forcibly sent her back to the imaginary space... because she blocked his view.

It was much like a cat finally deigning to act cute, only to be dismissed.

Her Ladyship is magnanimous and won’t quibble with this brat! Alpha Ji breathed deeply, silently recited “The Song of All Right” thirty times, and finally suppressed her rising negative feelings.

Yet... the imaginary space was even more boring!

Despite its vastness, every blade of grass, every tree, every brick and tile was built byte by byte by Alpha Ji herself, all drawn from her memory. No one knew it better than she did.

At first it was nostalgic, but after lingering awhile, tedium took hold.

She still had another task: helping Ye Chao filter out noise. But since entering River City, the noise had diminished to negligible levels—foam nanometal seemed naturally adept at absorbing signal interference.

No network!

No shows to binge!

F91—nothing but tedious documents...

Gun Gun was still out wandering...

No one to chat with...

Though the imaginary space allowed the creation of NPCs, making the building seem lively as in the pre-catastrophe days, these NPCs were just programs, following set routines without any personality. It felt like playing alone—simply unsatisfying.

Heavens, is this how humans—or programs—are supposed to live?

In a room decorated entirely to her taste, on a vast, luxurious five-hundred-square-meter princess bed, Alpha Ji rolled left, rolled right, back and forth, unable to shake the gloom and frustration in her heart.

“This won’t do!” Three seconds later, Alpha Ji lay sprawled on the desk, belly up, righteously addressing Ye Chao—because only in that position could she face him properly.

What mischief are you planning now? Ye Chao wondered, his mind utterly calm. “Oh? Why not?”

“This world is so dangerous—you need to train, you need to grow stronger, you need to learn how to fight! This is a chaotic apocalypse; only those with strength are respected and can do what they want. The world outside is vast—don’t you want to see it...” And perhaps let me tag along for the experience?

“My ideal is to be a scholar, to build a library, so more people can understand science and the truth of the world.”

Back to this topic again.

“Bravo!” Alpha Ji clapped mockingly, nodding in agreement, “That’s a noble dream, but this world is dangerous. If you only study and don’t train, you’ll die before you accomplish anything.”

“Human energy is limited. I’m reasonably smart, but not a genius with total recall or innate knowledge. Simply studying consumes all my energy—there’s no time left for training.” Ye Chao was level-headed—so much so it was almost frightening.

“Besides, my physical condition and innate abilities clearly don’t suit a combat path. Trying to excel in a field I’m not suited for—there’s a term for that: twice the effort for half the result.”

It seems Her Ladyship has lost...

Alpha Ji versus Ye Chao, 1:0.

No, wait—there’s still hope for redemption.

A flash of inspiration struck her, and lying on the desk, Alpha Ji slowly spoke.