Jiang Wangyue was suddenly struck by inspiration, as she typed, the corners of her mouth kept tugging upward.
【The Federation Anti-Fraud Center reminds you: your comm number is suspected of being involved in fraud. To avoid disrupting your normal service, please report it to the Security Administration Bureau promptly for handling. Thank you for your cooperation!】
Watching the message send successfully, Jiang Wangyue let out a soft huff.
Lousy scammer, and you wanted to swindle her?
Back in her day she’d been the academy’s anti-fraud vanguard, with the proud track record of running scammers in circles before finally delivering an entire fraud ring straight into the police station.
“Beep beep—”
The chime of a new message rang out.
Jiang Wangyue looked down. The other party had first replied with an ellipsis, looking utterly speechless.
【I’m not a scammer.】
Jiang Wangyue clicked her tongue and wiggled her fingers to reply.
【A scammer never admits to being a scammer.】
【You could do anything with this fine life of yours, why insist on being a scammer?】
【Bank up some good karma, would you? Don’t you know scamming is the worst thing for your karma?】
【And another thing, your fraud techniques are stuck in the last star-epoch, aren’t they? Kindly upgrade your skill set before you come back to work.】
Jiang Wangyue had figured the scammer, once she’d called him out, might melt down and start cursing, or might just block and delete her outright, but what she didn’t expect was for him to send only a single line.
【Federation Starnet accounts are bound to one’s personal citizen ID, so online fraud can’t be carried out.】
Huh?
Jiang Wangyue’s first reaction was to take a screenshot and send it to Lan Xue to ask.
Lan Xue’s reply came promptly.
【That’s right. Are you… running into some kind of trouble?】
Jiang Wangyue blanked for a moment, then hurriedly explained.
【No, no, I suspect someone’s trying to scam me, I’m not the one trying to scam other people!】
Lan Xue sent a soothing emoji. 【I was just a little worried about you.】
【It’s fine, it’s fine. If there’s a problem I’ll tell you about it first thing.】
On the ground floor, in Lan Xue’s room.
He sat in the bay window, hugging the snow-leopard plushie in his arms, and couldn’t help the slight curve of his lips as he looked at the terminal screen.
She’d tell him first thing, would she…
This should count as a promise, right?
After confirming with Lan Xue that the other party really wasn’t a scammer, Jiang Wangyue couldn’t help curling her toes against the floor in embarrassment.
Fortunately the other party showed no inclination to hold it against her, and sent another message.
【I’m an instructor at the Central Military Academy. What I sent earlier are the course materials for the Near-Orbit Medicine major, I’d recommend completing the prep work before the term starts.】
Reading it, Jiang Wangyue instantly recovered her righteous footing.
【You should’ve said so sooner! If you’d said so sooner I’d never have suspected you were a scammer. I’ll look over the coursework, thank you so much, have a wonderful day, bye-bye!】
Jiang Wangyue quickly downloaded the files and then bolted offline.
Rubbing her slightly warm cheeks, Jiang Wangyue took a deep breath and opened the files, finding that they really were the course materials for the Near-Orbit Medicine major.
The medical basics at the front she grasped at a glance, but starting from the second chapter Jiang Wangyue ran into trouble.
Using mental power to treat and soothe patients and so on, that she could understand, but the catch was, she had no idea how to use mental power.
Jiang Wangyue scratched at her hair and, resigning herself to her fate, opened the Starnet search interface and typed in the words 【How to practice mental power from scratch】. In an instant, countless posts popped up.
The sight of Ji Li in agony was still seared deep into her mind. Whether for his sake or for her studies, she had to give it a try.
Jiang Wangyue found the post with the most views and likes and read a couple of lines, then backed out of it again, thoroughly baffled.
She carefully reread the post’s title, it really was The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide to Practicing Mental Power, all right, but why couldn’t she understand a single sentence?
Could it be that her idea of “beginner” wasn’t the same as everyone else’s?
Carrying that question, Jiang Wangyue went downstairs to find Lan Xue and ask him in person.
The moment he saw that particular post, Lan Xue couldn’t help looking as though there were something he wanted to say but couldn’t, then, under Jiang Wangyue’s puzzled gaze, he gave a helpless little laugh.
“You really did come to the right person with this. That post was written by me. But it’s aimed at the foundational mental-power training of male cubs.”
Jiang Wangyue fell silent.
Good news: the author was right in front of her.
Bad news: not only was the gender wrong, the age was wrong too.
Lan Xue tapped a couple of times on his own terminal and sent a file over to Jiang Wangyue.
“If you need it, you could try this one.”
Jiang Wangyue opened it and skimmed a couple of lines ten at a glance, this time she actually seemed able to understand it.
She thanked Lan Xue with a beaming smile and went pitter-patter back up to her bedroom.
Jiang Wangyue brought out the same drive she’d had cramming reading-comprehension for the college entrance exam back in the day, studying it word by word and sentence by sentence, even taking notes.
Caught up in the moment, Jiang Wangyue didn’t notice at all that this guide was also for the cub stage.
She slowly closed her eyes and let her mind go blank.
The original host already possessed mental power to begin with, so what she needed to do wasn’t to coax it into being from nothing, but to feel for it and seek it out.
Amid her even breathing, Jiang Wangyue seemed to catch a faint glimmer of light, there and not there.
Before she could react to it, that faint glimmer abruptly swelled.
A flash of white light, and Jiang Wangyue’s eyes flew open.
Had she failed?
No, wait!
Jiang Wangyue looked around her, the unfamiliar surroundings had her on her feet in a flash.
Why did this place look so much like that laboratory she’d seen in the original host’s memories?
Two male beastmen in lab coats came walking toward her. Jiang Wangyue moved to dodge, only for them to pass straight by, as though they couldn’t see her at all.
Without thinking twice, Jiang Wangyue fell right in behind them.
She followed the two male beastmen down a long corridor and saw a long-haired little girl standing in an experiment pod, eyes lowered.
As if sensing something, the little girl slowly raised her head.
It was a face that resembled her own.
Was this the original host as a child, snatched away to be used in mental-power experiments?
Jiang Wangyue watched the little girl move her lips, as if she were saying something.
She strained to make out the shapes the other’s mouth was forming.
Long. Time. No. See.
Jiang Wangyue was stunned.
Why “long time no see”?
She instinctively wanted to step forward, but suddenly felt an irresistible force pushing her back.
“Go…”
A faintly ethereal voice sounded by Jiang Wangyue’s ear.
Go?
Go where?
Before Jiang Wangyue could react, specks of starlight wrapped around her once more.
This time, when she opened her eyes again, she was already back in her bedroom.
A light breeze stirred the window gauze, and the last of the setting sun’s glow fell across Jiang Wangyue through the glass. It was a long while before she came back to herself.
Jiang Wangyue looked down at her own hand. On that empty, bare hand, she could actually see a single thread of transparent mental power, coiling playfully between her fingers.
Maybe it had tired itself out playing, that thread of mental power slid down along Jiang Wangyue’s wrist and burrowed straight into the smart terminal.
The terminal, which had been on standby with its screen off, suddenly lit up.
“Please enter the startup password.”
Jiang Wangyue blanked. What password? What password?
She tried operating the terminal, but it gave no response at all.
You’ve got to be kidding.
Had it caught a virus?
“Please enter the startup password.”
Jiang Wangyue’s brows knit slightly. What startup password?
It couldn’t be—