Meanwhile, back in Hongkou District, the atmosphere inside the Shen family had descended into complete chaos.
“She took everything!” Shen Yucheng stood in Mu Wanqing’s bedroom, staring at the empty folder in his hands as his face gradually turned pale, “The property certificate is gone!
The declaration letter is gone!
Everything is gone!”
His voice rose sharply, “That little bitch took everything!”
Mu Qinglan came rushing into the room at that moment, her face equally pale, “She found her household registration booklet!”
The moment she spoke those words, her legs seemed to lose all their strength and collapsed onto the floor with a loud thud.
“Aiya!
Heaven is truly blind!” She began beating her chest dramatically, “That damned little wretch found it!
She took the household registration booklet too!”
Her shrill cries echoed through the small apartment, “What are we supposed to do now, Old Shen?
Tell me!
What are we supposed to do?
Manager Wei was already furious when he left tonight!
He looked as though he wanted to swallow us alive, and now that little bitch has taken every important document!”
Mu Qinglan’s face twisted with fury, “There goes the money!
There goes the compensation!
That shameless little white-eyed wolf has ruined everything!”
She pointed angrily toward Mu Wanqing’s empty room, “May she choke on every grain of rice she eats!
May she trip over every step she takes!
May the ancestors refuse to recognize her when she dies!”
Her voice became increasingly vicious, “That heartless little wretch!
I raised her under my roof for so many years, and this is how she repays me?
A wolf cub truly cannot be raised into a loyal dog!” Mu Qinglan spat onto the floor, “Without us, would she have survived all these years?
And now she dares to steal from us and run away?”
At the side of the room, Shen Ruoxi sat motionless.
Her face was completely pale.
The situation had developed so quickly that she still had not fully processed what had happened.
Meanwhile, Shen Yucheng’s expression became increasingly ugly.
Finally, he exploded, “Enough!” His roar made Mu Qinglan jump, “Why are you crying now?
What were you doing when all of this happened?”
Mu Qinglan stared at him, “What do you mean, what was I doing?”
Shen Yucheng said angrily.
“You were the one responsible for preparing dinner!” His voice rose, “Yesterday was one of the most important nights for this family, and you allowed everything to be ruined!”
Mu Qinglan immediately stood up from the floor, “Are you blaming me now?”
“Who else should I blame?”
“You useless man!” Mu Qinglan’s eyes widened, “You cannot handle your own affairs, and now you are turning around and blaming me?” She pointed a trembling finger at him, “Shen Yucheng, don’t forget yourself!
I have been living with you for all these years, eating coarse rice and suffering hardship, and now that trouble has come, you want to push everything onto my head?”
Shen Yucheng’s face darkened, “You still have the nerve to talk?” He stepped closer “If you had prepared dinner yourself, would Mu Wanqing have had the opportunity to tamper with anything?”
Mu Qinglan immediately shouted back, “How was I supposed to know that little bitch would suddenly grow a brain?
That girl has always been timid!
She has always been obedient!
She wouldn’t even dare to raise her voice at me before!
Who would have thought that she would suddenly become so cunning?
That little vixen must have been pretending all these years!
She was pretending to be weak while secretly watching us!
Like a rat hiding in the corner, waiting for the right moment to bite!”
Shen Yucheng’s expression darkened even further, “You should have watched her more carefully!”
“Watch her?” Mu Qinglan laughed bitterly, “Do you think I only have her to look after?” She pointed toward Shen Ruoxi and Shen Zeyu, “I have my own children too!
Do you think food fall from the sky?
Do you think cloths wash themselves?
The work is exhausting, how many things must I take care of?
So what if she did the choars and I took care of our children?
And….” She pointed at Shen Yucheng and continued, “where were you, huh?
Sitting there like some great master, waiting for dinner to be served!”
The veins on Shen Yucheng’s forehead bulged and his fists tightened, “Do you understand what this means?” Shen Yucheng spoke through gritted teeth, “We may not be able to take over this house anymore.
It’ll forever belong to Mu Wanqing.
And the compensation?
That will also go to her.
One million yuan.
And another three hundred thousand yuan in relocation compensation”
Shen Zeyu, who had been standing quietly near the door, suddenly raised his head, “One million?” His eyes widened, “more than One million yuan for the property.
So much money?” His eyes immediately filled with greed, “And now all of it belongs to that little bitch?”
The number continued spinning inside his mind.
To him, that was an unimaginable fortune.
And more importantly, everything in this family would eventually belong to him, Afterall he was the only son.
But thinking about how his money would belong to Mu Wanqing he suddenly became anxious, “Then why are we still standing here?
We should go after her!
She couldn’t have gone far!
Let’s find her immediately!
We can call the police!
She stole things from our house!
She took the documents and ran away in the middle of the night!
Isn’t that theft?
Once the police find her, we can bring her back!” He grabbed Shen Yucheng’s arm, “Dad!
What are you waiting for?”
Shen Yucheng’s face immediately darkened.
Slap!
The sound of a hand striking flesh echoed through the room.
Shen Zeyu was thrown sideways.
His cheek immediately began burning.
For several seconds, his ears rang.
He slowly raised his hand and touched his face in disbelief, “Dad?”
Shen Yucheng’s face was terrifying, “Are you stupid?
What house are you talking about?
This was never our house!
From the beginning, this property belonged to Mu Wanqing!
And now she has taken her property certificate, her household registration booklet, and the documents legally connected to her!
Tell me, what exactly are we supposed to report to the police?”
Shen Yucheng suddenly turned toward the others.
His eyes were completely bloodshot, “Tell me something.
Did any of you tell Mu Wanqing about our plan?”
Mu Qinglan immediately shouted, “Why would we tell her anything?
That greedy little bastard must have overheard neighbours talking about compensation money and became greedy!”
Her face twisted with hatred, “We took her in, fed her, gave her a roof, and what happened?
That little white-eyed wolf has turned around and bitten us!
She is a disaster, a jinx!”
Shen Yucheng slammed his fist against the table, “Enough!”
Mu Qinglan jumped in fright.
Shen Yucheng breathed heavily, “Cursing her will not bring the documents back!” His expression became increasingly grim, “Why don’t you use that energy to figure out where she went?”
Mu Qinglan clenched her jaw.
Shen Yucheng continued, “If we cannot find her, we are finished.
We don’t own this house.
The demolition compensation will not belong to us.
Than we can forget about buying another apartment in Shanghai ever, Afterall we don’t have Shanghai property purchase licence, and with my wages obtaining it is also nearly impossible for me.
We might not even be able to afford rent.”
Mu Qinglan’s expression changed dramatically, “than do you wish to take us back to village?”
Shen Yucheng laughed coldly, “With my wages as a middleman for textile dealer, do you think I can support this entire family in Shanghai?
If we don’t get that compensation money, we will have no choice but to go back.”
“No!” Shen Ruoxi suddenly screamed, “No!
Everyone turned toward her.
“I will not go back!” Her face immediately became pale, “I will never go back to that place!” She grabbed Mu Qinglan’s arm, “Mother!” Her eyes filled with tears, “You have to do something!
I don’t want to return to that muddy village!”
For the past three years, Shanghai had changed Shen Ruoxi completely.
She had grown accustomed to the city’s bright lights and more importantly she had grown accustomed to being admired.
Every Qingming Festival, when she returned to the ancestral village wearing fashionable clothes the girls from the village would gather around her.
Their curious eyes, their envy, jealousy, all those had given Shen Ruoxi an indescribable sense of satisfaction.
She loved knowing that, in their eyes, she was no longer an ordinary village girl.
She was someone who lived in Shanghai.
Going back permanently would mean losing everything.
Her carefully constructed image would collapse overnight.
“I won’t go back!” Shen Ruoxi shook her head repeatedly, “I would rather die than go back there!”
Mu Qinglan hurriedly hugged her daughter, “Don’t say such unlucky words!”
She glared at Shen Yucheng, “Did you hear that?” She pointed toward Shen Ruoxi, “My daughter cannot go back to that rotten place, she is a city girl now.”
Shen Yucheng rubbed his forehead, “Then tell me what we are supposed to do!”
Shen Ruoxi’s eyes suddenly widened.
She seemed to remember something, “I know where we can find Mu Wanqing.”
Everyone immediately looked at her.
Shen Ruoxi continued, “Tomorrow is the final day for signing the authorization documents, isn’t it?”
Shen Yucheng’s eyes narrowed, “Yes.”
“If Mu Wanqing wants to receive the money, she will have to go to the City Planning Bureau.
She cannot claim the compensation without completing the necessary procedures.
So we simply wait for her.
She will definitely appear sooner or later.
Once she arrives, Mother can claim that she is still her legal guardian.
Mother’s name is registered in her student records and guardian information.
So long as we bring her back before she completes everything, we still have a chance to control the situation.”
Shen Yucheng slowly nodded and Mu Qinglan also wiped away her tears.
Her expression changed completely and a vicious smile appeared on his lips.
She grabbed Shen Ruoxi’s hand, “That is my daughter!” Her voice was filled with pride.
She patted Shen Ruoxi’s head, than her eyes turned toward Mu Wanqing’s empty bedroom and her face slowly twisted with hatred, “Little bitch, run as far as you want.
But let’s see how long you can keep running.
Once I get my hands on you again, I will make sure you remember this night for the rest of your life.”
She ground her teeth, “You dared to trick us and embarrass us in front of Manager Wei?
That humiliation… I will make you pay for it ten times over.”
She looked toward Shen Yucheng, “Tomorrow morning, we go to the City Planning Bureau and bring that bitch back.”
Meanwhile, Mu Wanqing was still completely immersed in the Virtual Mastery Room, utterly unaware that the Shen family had already devised a plan to intercept her at the City Planning Bureau.
More importantly, she had no idea that the following day was the final deadline for signing the authorization documents.
Snap!
The sharp sound echoed through the old-fashioned classroom and Mu Wanqing immediately covered the back of her hand, her face twisting in pain.
This was the seventh time.
The seventh time she had been struck by her mathematics teacher.
“Didn’t I tell you already?” the middle-aged woman said coldly, her ruler resting against the palm of her hand.
“Before attempting to solve a composite function of this complexity, you must first decompose it, layer by layer.
Identify the inner and outer functions, examine their domains for compatibility, and determine whether the transformation preserves monotonicity before you dare touch the derivative.
You rush forward without thinking.
How many times must I repeat such a simple principle?”
Mu Wanqing pursed her lips, “Yes, Teacher.”
“Then continue.”
Mu Wanqing lowered her head and obediently returned her attention to the problem before her.
Although this was supposed to be a virtual world, the pain certainly did not feel virtual.
This hurts like hell!
She had initially assumed that being struck inside a simulated environment would feel nothing more than a faint sensation.
How naïve.
The first time the ruler landed on her hand, she had nearly jumped out of her seat.
The second time, she had seriously begun questioning whether this so-called Virtual Mastery Room was secretly designed as a torture chamber.
By the seventh time, however, she had learned something important.
Complaining was useless.
Teacher Xu, had absolutely no sympathy for tears.
“Focus.”
Mu Wanqing immediately straightened her back, “Yes, Teacher!”
She lowered her head once more and began working through the problem.
How much time had already passed inside this strange space, Mu Wanqing had no idea.
Yet surprisingly, she did not feel tired, not even slightly.
Her mind remained clear, her body energetic, and her concentration sharper than it had ever been in her entire life.
When she had first entered the classroom, she had struggled through the earliest questions with considerable difficulty.
Mathematics had always been her weakest subject.
Even in her previous life, she had never understood why.
She had listened carefully during class.
She had tried to memorize formulas even practiced problems whenever she could find the time.
And yet, somehow, mathematics had always remained an insurmountable mountain.
Now that she thought about it, however, perhaps the reason had never been as simple as her lack of talent.
There had been far too many distractions in her previous life.
Her mathematics teacher, Mrs.
Cao, had also been her homeroom teacher.
And Mrs.
Cao had never particularly liked Mu Wanqing.
The reason was painfully simple.
Mu Wanqing was poor with no wealthy parents bearing expensive gifts to request special attention for her.
Therefore, she had never received the patience that other students seemed to enjoy.
Whenever she failed to understand something, Mrs.
Cao would explain it once, if she was in a particularly good mood.
After that, the responsibility was entirely hers.
But school was only one part of Mu Wanqing’s troubles.
The moment she returned home, another kind of pressure awaited her.
Every minute of her day had to be carefully calculated.
She had to prepare meals, wash clothes, clean the house, complete her assignments and make sure Shen Zeyu was never inconvenienced.
Because Shen Zeyu could not tolerate hunger.
If dinner was delayed by even a few minutes, he would become furious.
He would curse and even hit her.
And every single time, Mu Qinglan would stand nearby and tell her the same thing, “You are the elder sister.
Can’t you endure a little?”
Mu Wanqing had always found those words ridiculous.
Elder sister?
She and Shen Zeyu were barely a month apart in age.
Yet because she had been born first, she was expected to endure everything.
Fortunately, that life was over.
And perhaps that was why, for the first time in her life, she was finally beginning to understand mathematics.
Teacher Xu’s teaching method was completely different from anything Mu Wanqing had experienced before.
She did not simply throw complicated formulas onto the blackboard and demand that she memorize them.
Instead, she explained where the formulas came from, why they worked and how they had been derived.
And most importantly, how to recognize the situations in which they could be applied.
Whenever Mu Wanqing encountered a difficult problem, Teacher Xu would explain the conventional method first.
Then she would teach a second method and sometimes a third.
“There is never only one road to the mountain,” Teacher Xu would say sternly.
“If you insist on walking only one path, what will you do when that path collapses?”
Mu Wanqing had quickly discovered that those words applied perfectly to mathematics.
Every topic was taught systematically.
First came the basic principles, then the common question types, then increasingly complicated applications.
Afterward, Teacher Xu would select twelve critical problems related to that topic.
Teacher Xu rarely helped.
Instead, she would stand directly behind Mu Wanqing’s chair with her ruler resting ominously against her palm.
At first, Mu Wanqing had hated those twelve questions.
The first two were manageable.
But as she progressed, the difficulty increased sharply.
Several questions were far beyond the standard level she had expected for the college entrance examination.
Some were advanced competition problems, requiring unusual methods and deeper mathematical thinking from featured in math Olympiad, Lowell Putnam and Kangaroo.
By the fifth or sixth question, she would often find herself stuck.
By the seventh, she would begin questioning her entire existence.
By the eighth, Teacher Xu would usually start tapping the ruler against the desk.
And by the ninth, somehow, things would begin to change.
Patterns that had previously seemed invisible became clear.
Methods she had struggled to understand suddenly connected together.
By the tenth question, her thinking became smoother.
By the eleventh, she could usually solve the problem without needing to stop.
And by the twelfth, she often found herself staring at the completed answer in disbelief.
The strange thing was that the final four questions were always the most difficult.
Yet by the time she reached them, they somehow no longer seemed impossible.
It was as though Teacher Xu had systematically forced her mind to adapt.
Forced it to think and understand rather than merely memorize.
Several more hours seemed to pass.
At least, that was how it felt to Mu Wanqing.
Eventually, she placed her pen down.
Teacher Xu walked forward and examined the final page, “Acceptable.
You have completed the topic of functions.”
Mu Wanqing released a breath, “Finally.”
Teacher Xu immediately looked at her.
Mu Wanqing corrected herself at once, “I mean…
thank you for your guidance, Teacher.”
“Hmph.” Teacher Xu placed the papers neatly on the desk, “You may rest for now.
We will begin the next topic later.”
Mu Wanqing immediately stood, “Thank you for your efforts, Teacher.” Then, without hesitation, she gave the woman a respectful bow.
Teacher Xu looked at her strangely.
Mu Wanqing blinked.
Perhaps it was because of the old-fashioned classroom and the woman’s elegant qipao.
The atmosphere of the entire place simply reminded her of the teachers in old Chinese dramas.
But bowing somehow felt appropriate.
Teacher Xu stared at her for several seconds.
Finally, she raised one hand, “Out.” She snapped her fingers and the entire classroom disappeared.
Mu Wanqing suddenly opened her eyes.
Soft golden light filled the luxurious Presidential Suite.
For several seconds, she simply stared at the ceiling.
Then she heard a gentle voice.
“Miss Mu?”
Mu Wanqing turned her head.
The hotel’s butler stood a respectful distance away, carefully arranging dishes on the dining table.
“Good morning, Miss Mu.
I apologize for disturbing your rest, but breakfast has been prepared.”
Mu Wanqing blinked.
Then her eyes widened slightly.
Hmm?
She immediately sat up, “System?
Why didn’t I hear the butler earlier?
You told me that whenever I entered the Virtual Mastery Room, I would still be able to sense what was happening around me.”
System 888 answered calmly.
[Your mathematics teacher restricted the connection between the Virtual Mastery Room and the outside world.]
Mu Wanqing frowned, “She can do that?”
[She can.
Teacher Xu accelerated the time to the maximum allowable level.
You studied in the Virtual Mastery Room for approximately eighteen hours.]
Mu Wanqing froze, “Eighteen hours?
And how much time has passed outside?”
[Approximately one hour and thirty minutes.]
She sighed in relief, then she suddenly remembered something, “Wait.
How can teacher Xu, disconnect me to the real world?
Imagine if I had remained unconscious for hours while someone was standing beside me.
What would he have thought?
Do you want the hotel to send me to a hospital?”
System 888 hurriedly replied.
[Child, don’t worry.
I will be more careful in the future.]
Then System 888 added in a slightly deeper and more solemn tone,
[And what did you just call me?
I’m your father now.
You should call me daddy.]
Mu Wanqing’s scalp immediately went numb.
Is he still on that same page?
But she decided that arguing with him would only encourage his increasingly bizarre emotional development.
Therefore, Mu Wanqing ignored him completely.
She threw back the covers, climbed out of bed, and immediately headed toward the dining table.
The butler watched her approach and politely pulled out a chair,b”Miss Mu, your breakfast is ready.
If there is anything you dislike, please let me know and I will have it replaced immediately.”
Mu Wanqing sat down and the moment she looked at the food, her eyes widened.
She had not realized how hungry she was.
And after hearing that she had spent eighteen hours studying mathematics.
Even though her body had not physically moved in the outside world, the knowledge alone was enough to make her feel as though she had fought an entire war, she felt more hungry.
Without another thought, Mu Wanqing picked up her chopsticks.
Then she began eating.
System 888 watched silently how she devovored her food.
Then, in an extremely emotional voice, he spoke.
[Child.]
Mu Wanqing continued eating, “What now?”
[Eat slowly.
Don’t choke, eat few more eggs, you are so thin, and why did you remove the veggies, finish then all, they are good for your growth.
Such a reckless child, do i have to remind you for every small thing?
Eat properly, is this how a proper girl should be eating?]
Mu Wanqing paused.
Her chopsticks remained suspended in the air.
A strange feeling suddenly crept over her.
She did not know whether to laugh or cry.
This system really thinks it’s my father now.
Mu Wanqing silently lowered her head and continued eating.
But somewhere deep inside her heart, a warmth she could not explain quietly began to spread.
For the first time in both her lives, someone, or perhaps something, was genuinely worried that she might not have eaten enough.
Even if that someone happened to be an overly emotional artificial intelligence who had suddenly decided to adopt her.
Mu Wanqing shook her head.
Forget it.
For now, she had more important matters to worry about.
She had ten days left before the college entrance examination.
And judging from Teacher Xu’s methods…
Mathematics was only the beginning.