The door opened, and a servant woman walked in carrying a food box.
“Just leave it on the table,” Xie Zhaofan instructed casually.
The servant woman set the box down but did not leave immediately.
Xie Zhaofan opened the food box. In the next moment, the smile on her face froze.
Two cold, coarse flour buns, a bowl of porridge so thin you could practically see your reflection in it, and a small dish of pickled vegetables that looked like something unrecognizable.
Xie Zhaofan fell silent. She looked at the meal, then back at the servant woman.
“This is my dinner?”
The servant woman’s expression was cold. “The Second Young Miss is currently under Confinement. The Master has instructed that, starting today, all your meals and expenses are to be simplified.
“Once the Second Young Miss sincerely admits her faults and learns to restrain her words and deeds, only then will your previous treatment be restored.”
Having said that, the servant woman turned and prepared to leave.
Looking at the few items on the table, Xie Zhaofan finally understood.
This was a punishment, a way to force her to bow her head.
The problem was... she was genuinely hungry right now, the kind of hunger where her stomach was practically stuck to her spine.
Xie Zhaofan looked down at the two coarse flour buns—things that stray dogs in the modern world probably wouldn’t even give a second glance—and her eyelids twitched slightly.
Playing this game with her?
She slowly picked up one of the buns, intending to throw it away, but in the next second, a clear growl erupted from her stomach.
Xie Zhaofan: “...”
Whatever. Food was a person's first necessity. Things like the dignity of the Prime Minister’s Second Young Miss or the grievances between the true and fake daughters could all be put on the back burner for now.
She currently only wanted to know one thing: after the system reinforced her Strength, why had her appetite increased along with it?
Xie Zhaofan polished off the so-called dinner in just a few bites.
She set down her chopsticks and stared at the empty dishes for a long while, unable to stop a long sigh from escaping her heart.
She swore that she had never eaten anything so unpleasant in her entire life.
Especially those two coarse flour buns; they were absolutely nothing like the buns she used to buy at the supermarket. They didn’t look much different on the surface, but it was only when she actually bit into them that she realized how rough they were. The gritty texture of the wheat bran was incredibly noticeable, and it even scratched her throat as she swallowed.
She’d had to take one bite of the bun followed by several gulps of the bland, tasteless porridge just to force it down.
Fortunately, her stomach finally didn't feel as empty as before.
Xie Zhaofan rubbed her belly, but there wasn't a hint of satisfaction on her face.
This life of barely filling her stomach was, much like the Family Discipline, completely unacceptable to someone like her who had traveled from modern society and had been pampered since childhood.
She had never been able to understand why so many people liked reading transmigration novels and watching those short dramas.
Why would anyone want to leave a perfectly good modern society? No smartphones, no computers, no internet or air conditioning, no takeout or express delivery. For travel, there were cars, high-speed rails, and planes; for illness, there were hospitals; and whatever you wanted to eat could be delivered to your door with just a few taps of a finger.
Even if you suddenly wanted milk tea at midnight, you could just open your phone and place an order.
And after transmigrating?
The phone was gone, the computer was gone, the Wi-Fi was gone, you couldn't even find a charging cable, let alone takeout. There weren't even the most basic daily necessities like sanitary pads.
All for the sake of coming back to ancient times to fall in love with some handsome guy and then spend every day fighting with a group of women?
The more Xie Zhaofan thought about it, the more unreasonable it felt. How desperate for a change of scenery did one have to be?
She didn't feel even a shred of excitement about experiencing ancient life right now. Instead, she had only one wish, stronger than anything else.
Go back! She had to go back!
She would rather return to Blue Star to face the endless stream of proposals and meetings than stay here every day in fear, worried that her so-called father would drag her out for a flogging over a single disagreement.
“System?”
Xie Zhaofan called out tentatively in her mind, but there was no response.
“System-bro?”
Still no reaction.
“Lord System?”
There was only dead silence.
Xie Zhaofan wasn't willing to give up. She went through every kind of name in her head, even calling out “Respected AI Assistant.”
In the end, that thing that had suddenly popped up to save her life at her most dangerous moment now seemed to have entered a complete state of hibernation. No matter how she called, there wasn't a hint of a response.
Xie Zhaofan stared into the empty air, her expression gradually becoming strange.
She was beginning to see clearly; her system seemed truly different from those of other people.
Other people's systems were constantly issuing tasks and would chat with the host from time to time, even serving as a mentor during critical moments.
Hers, on the other hand, had done nothing except give her ten attribute points at the start and increase her Strength to thirteen. For the rest of the time, it hadn't said a single word.
It didn't even have the most basic AI response function.
What was this? A defective product? A faulty unit? Or was it an unfinished test version that hadn't even been fully developed?
Xie Zhaofan couldn’t help but complain in her heart, “Too pathetic.”
Her assessment of this system was very objective.
But complaining was just complaining; since the system wouldn't respond, there wasn't much she could do. The only thing she could be certain of right now was that the attributes granted by the system were indeed effective, and at least for now, it seemed these attributes could truly change her physical body.
But beyond that, she knew nothing about the system’s other functions.
No quests, no shop, no lucky draws, and not even any kind of starter pack.
As for how to return to Blue Star, there wasn't even the slightest hint.
Xie Zhaofan leaned against the headboard, staring at the ceiling beams for a long time in a daze.
If the system could help her go back, then everything would naturally be fine. But what if the system only gave her the ability to live forever in this world but had no function to return to Blue Star? What would she do then?
Was she really going to live in this world for an entire lifetime?
No! To be more precise, it would be countless lifetimes. After all, the Lifespan the system had given her was infinite.
At that thought, Xie Zhaofan even suppressed a shudder. Others sought immortality because they feared death. But she had only just transmigrated when she was told she could live forever. It didn't feel romantic at all; it was actually a bit terrifying.
She pondered for a good part of the night without coming up with any reliable method.
As for those common “suicidal return methods” in novels, she didn't even dare to consider them.
Getting struck by lightning, jumping off a cliff, hitting a wall, falling into water, committing suicide...
Was this a joke? Although she wanted to go home, she wasn't crazy enough to gamble with her own life.
What if she lost the bet?
What if there was no mechanism to travel back from this world at all? If she died like that, wouldn't she be throwing away the infinite Lifespan given by the system for nothing?
So, that path was definitely a no-go. Xie Zhaofan rolled over, and her stomach started growling again.
“Gurgle...”
The sound was exceptionally clear in the quiet room. She opened her eyes, a look of helplessness on her face.
That meal earlier really hadn't been enough.
Especially since she had just raised her Strength attribute to thirteen, she could clearly feel that her body's demand for energy was much higher than before.
In other words, while her strength was now ridiculously high, her consumption had increased along with it. The small amount from dinner wasn't even enough to get stuck in her teeth.
Rate on N.U.
