Before Liu Yang could finish speaking, Ye Muqing directly splashed a basin of water over her, drenching her from head to toe.
Water streamed down Liu Yang’s hair, making her look utterly bedraggled.
When Liu Yang finally came to her senses, her face twisted with rage. She shrieked and raised her hand to hit Ye Muqing, but Ye Muqing seized her wrist, leaving her unable to move.
Ye Muqing’s expression was cold. “Even if this really was a misdiagnosis, there’s no way I’m going to donate bone marrow to your son. Give up on that idea!”
Liu Yang glared at her furiously, her voice shrill. “How can someone as cold-blooded as you exist? He’s your younger brother!”
Ye Muqing found her words especially ridiculous. When they had first met, Liu Yang had been desperately begging her, and now she had already started trying to morally blackmail her?
“He wouldn’t be getting anything even if he were the Jade Emperor’s younger brother. Get lost!”
Ye Muqing held Liu Yang by the wrist and flung her to the side, then shut the door without the slightest hesitation, slamming it hard enough to trap the other woman’s shrill curses outside.
She stood by the window with her arms folded, looking down coldly as Liu Yang climbed into her car and drove away in disgrace.
It seemed that moving away had to be put on the agenda. Ye Muqing did not want Liu Yang coming to her door again and again.
However, there was one major problem troubling Ye Muqing.
She had no money…
Ye Muqing irritably grabbed at her hair and could not help letting out a groan.
She had only just finished paying off her student loan last month. She had not a single cent to her name now—how was she supposed to move?
With a deeply troubled expression, Ye Muqing walked into the kitchen. She pondered the problem while cooking noodles, but even after the steaming bowl of noodle soup was ready, she still had not thought of a solution.
She could not keep living here, but she could not afford to move either. This was killing her.
【Exchange request received. Host, please check it promptly.】
The system’s sudden voice startled Ye Muqing so badly that she nearly dropped the bowl of noodles in her hands.
Curious, she looked at the translucent screen in front of her and was surprised to discover that this was an exchange request from ancient times.
The source was… a human who was about to starve to death??
Ye Muqing drew a sharp breath and hurriedly pushed the bowl of noodles forward. “I agree to this request. Hurry—don’t let them starve to death.”
【System scanning in progress—the item meets the requirements. Exchange established.】
During the previous exchange, Ye Muqing had not been entirely clearheaded, but this time she witnessed the entire process with her own eyes and could not help feeling amazed.
The bowl of noodles vanished in an instant, replaced by what appeared to be an ordinary scroll.
【Exchange successful. Congratulations, Host. You have obtained an ancient item: a piece of calligraphy.】
One bowl of noodles for a piece of calligraphy—Ye Muqing could not tell for a moment whether she had made a profit or a loss.
But as long as the person had been saved, that was enough.
She set the scroll aside, cooked herself another bowl of noodles, and asked the system while eating, “Why did I receive an exchange request from ancient times? I thought you could only exchange items with the interstellar era.”
【The past and the future are both within the scope of exchange. However, Host, please note that no anchor points exist in the past. Therefore, the system can only passively accept exchange requests from the past, and only those with sufficiently strong intentions can be detected.】
Ye Muqing suddenly understood. So that was why it had initially been in forced-mission mode, while this time it was an exchange request.
“There’s one more thing I don’t quite understand. Why could a bunch of flowers from me be exchanged for an A-grade repair fluid? The value of those two things is worlds apart, isn’t it?”
【A-grade repair fluid is incomparably precious to the Host. Likewise, flowers are just as precious to the people of the New Stellar Calendar era.】
【After tens of millions of years of flight and migration, human technology has flourished to an unprecedented degree, but humanity has completely lost all natural plants. They have never seen flowers before.】
Ye Muqing’s heart trembled, and the motion of eating noodles with her chopsticks came to a halt.
Wait, what did it mean, tens of millions of years of flight and migration?
Had the humans of the future abandoned Earth?
In an instant, scenes from all kinds of science-fiction films and novels flooded Ye Muqing’s mind. Had the sun rapidly aged and expanded, on the verge of swallowing Earth? Or had the Trisolarans arrived?
She could not help tightening her grip on her chopsticks. “System, what exactly is your purpose? Why don’t you just tell me the truth? I think I can handle it.”
A translucent pale-blue screen appeared before Ye Muqing’s eyes. On it floated fleets of planet-destroying warships that looked like steel behemoths, while facing them was the blue planet she knew better than anything.
Ye Muqing instinctively leaned forward.
Had aliens really come to attack Earth?
【A higher civilization detected signals originating from Earth. They dispatched an army in an attempt to seize the planet.】
【Humanity’s ancestors resisted but failed, and were forced to abandon Earth and sail outward. It was not until the New Stellar Calendar era that humanity found a new home, but by then, it had also lost all of its heritage and culture. The Exchange System came into being as a result.】
Ye Muqing immediately sucked in a sharp breath and covered her chest. No, she had to take back what she had said earlier. She really could not handle this thing.
【Host, please complete all exchange missions and transmit all existing human civilization to the future New Stellar Calendar era in order to preserve humanity’s heritage.】
Ye Muqing’s head filled with question marks. “What? What about Earth, then? You’re just going to abandon this Little Broken Planet? Didn’t you say your technology has flourished to an extraordinary degree? If even the Exchange System can travel through time and transmit itself here, then why can’t you send over some starships…”
The more Ye Muqing spoke, the more agitated she became, and she was practically about to shout. However, her words came to an abrupt halt in the next moment.
Because she suddenly saw the scroll beside her hand and realized something.
The exchange transmission was bidirectional.
Just as flowers could be exchanged for A-grade repair fluid, and hot noodle soup could be exchanged for a scroll, if she could provide the people of the interstellar era with things they wanted—such as green plants, vegetables, and books—could she exchange them for the things she wanted?
Ye Muqing suddenly slammed her hand on the table and stood up. She rose so abruptly that her vision went black for a moment, but that did nothing to diminish the excitement in her heart.
The things the people of the interstellar era wanted were practically worthless to her, yet they could be exchanged for things that were far more useful to her.
For example, technology tens of millions of times more advanced than that of present-day Earth, as well as laser cannons and space warships.
As long as she got all of those things, what aliens would she have to fear? It would be enough if she could beat them until they cried for their mothers!
The more she thought about it, the more excited she became. Ye Muqing wished she could turn herself over to the nation right that instant.
However, she soon discovered an important problem that needed to be solved: how was she supposed to tell the authorities about this and convince them to believe her, rather than have them think she was a mentally ill patient suffering from delusions?
All her excitement receded like a tide, and Ye Muqing calmed down again.
She could not act impulsively. She had to think it through carefully. Otherwise, what if she ended up getting herself involved?
She trusted her motherland unconditionally, but that did not mean she trusted everyone.
Ye Muqing turned and returned to the dining table. Curling her fingers, she tapped them against the tabletop while thinking it over carefully.
Besides, whether she was moving house or conducting exchanges with the people of the interstellar era, she needed money.
And that was precisely what she lacked most at the moment.
Her gaze swept over the scroll lying quietly to one side, and Ye Muqing’s eyes lit up.