Novel Bin Chapter 17: Redemption of Honour Points?
Little Four asked excitedly, "What is it?"
Ling Lan laughed and said, "After these ten thousand years, even if there are cloud drives and other sorts of storage methods, I don’t think all books would have been preserved till now ... why don’t you go look and see if there are any requests for old books on the internet?"
Little Four was a little hesitant — even if there were such requests, there wouldn’t be many, which would only result in chump change. For his purpose of buying Ling Lan more gene stimulating agent, he would need a lot more money, the more the better, so this little amount would not even be a drop in the ocean.
Exasperated, Ling Lan flicked Little Four’s forehead, saying, "Don’t look down on this little bit of money. We just need to get started and collect some seed money first before looking for other ways to earn money. Otherwise, even if an opportunity appears, we won’t be able to do anything."
With this, Little Four understood, and abruptly felt the weight on his shoulders grow exponentially. He stood up tall and thumped his chest, saying, "You can count on me." Looking at his seriously adorable ’believe-in-me-you-will-not-regret-it’ face, Ling Lan couldn’t help but snicker in her heart. She found herself thankful once again that she had Little Four at her side, who was willing to work hard for her benefit.
After some discussion, the two of them decided that Little Four would be fully responsible for all matters on the virtual network. That said, safety was the top priority — they’d rather take things slow and gradually accumulate their seed money, as long as they could keep things as covert as possible. Honestly, they really didn’t need to rush. Even if they could buy the gene stimulating agents right now, who would be able to use them? Little Four was a virtual being, while Ling Lan was still a baby who could not even crawl properly yet.
After passing on the follow-up tasks to Little Four, Ling Lan happily went to bed without giving any further thought to the matter. Left alone, a fired-up Little Four rushed into the virtual world and started doing as Ling Lan said, slowly accumulating cash.
Ling Lan was someone capable of putting her full trust in others, so she did not pay any further attention to the matter after entrusting Little Four with it, not even asking for a progress report. Little Four was touched by this show of trust — oh how much faith did his lord have in him — so he decided he must do his best to serve her until his death.
A while back, Little Four had consumed several hundred thousand words of the entire Romance of the Three Kingdoms when fulfilling the request of a client. After that, he had become obsessed, and this was reflected in his method of addressing Ling Lan — instead of the original ’host’, he now called her ’lord’. Every time Ling Lan heard that form of address, her head would throb — why did this silly child love cosplay so much?
It had to be said that Little Four was really very innocent. He had no idea that Ling Lan’s ’show of trust’ was actually just blithe unconcern. In Ling Lan’s opinion, while it would be great if they could earn money, it was also fine even if they didn’t manage to earn any. After all, Little Four was the one who was gung-ho about it, and it was a zero-cost business, so it really didn’t matter whether the results were good or bad. She was just glad to see Little Four in high spirits, no longer looking as lonely as he was before.
Alright, to be honest, Ling Lan had assigned this task to Little Four as a way to distract him and cheer him up — and poor Little Four had fallen for it hook, line, and sinker.
********
Time passed by quickly, and Ling Lan finally became a toddler capable of moving about on two feet. During this time, she had received one more round of agent injections, and as discussed, they stopped absorbing at the tenth tube like before. As for the military people, it was the same group as before, and they seemed to have come mentally prepared this time, remaining calm throughout the whole procedure. In fact, they were even gaining the mistaken impression that absorbing ten tubes was a completely natural phenomenon, not deserving of any surprise whatsoever. It had to be said that the military was certainly made up of extraordinarily mentally resilient and adaptable people.
One day, during Ling Lan’s sixteenth month of life, she was practising her bendy poses as usual, diligently going through all nine stances one at a time. She had actually managed to learn all nine stances by the time she was just a little over fifteen months old, and since then, she had made sure to practise all nine stances in order every day. Of course, there were still inconsistencies and mistakes, but Ling Lan would correct them as she progressed, gradually converting the nine stances into basic instinct.
This time, when Ling Lan completed the ninth stance, she suddenly felt a surge of heat run through her body. It was so comfortable that she couldn’t help but moan in pleasure. This was something that had never happened before — although she would also feel slightly warm and her body would be loose and comfortable after finishing the nine stances, she had never felt this sort of euphoric floaty feeling before.
Ling Lan laid comfortably on her bed, still basking in the echoes of contentment, when she abruptly found that her consciousness had been drawn into the learning mind-space.
Before this, she had always chosen to enter actively — this passive access was new.
Before Ling Lan could protest the learning space’s high-handedness, an aloof man had appeared out of thin air right in front of her.
Ling Lan jerked in surprise, but immediately straightened up to say, "Hello, Instructor Number One!" She definitely must not let this formidable man notice her annoyance. Ling Lan intuitively knew that if she angered him, she would lose a layer of skin even if she didn’t die.
"Firstly, congratulations on your perfect completion of the foundation chapter of the advanced physical skills course," said Number One, his face as emotionless and tone as cold as ever.
Despite that, for some reason, Ling Lan just felt that Instructor Number One was actually in a very good mood.
"Now you shall receive your reward," continued Number One.
Ling Lan felt excitement stir within her — what kind of reward would Instructor Number One give?
At this moment, an extremely mechanical voice piped up beside Ling Lan’s ear, "Reward: first item, time remaining from deadline: 49 days, awards 49 honour points; second item, assessment results: perfect, awards 100 honour points. Total of all items: 149 honour points. Please confirm receipt."
Facing Number One this time, Ling Lan finally realised that the mechanical voice she had heard before had not come from Number One, but seemed to be the voice of the learning space’s system.
Ling Lan chuckled dryly. Hindsight is truly 20/20 — she only noticed now that although Number One’s voice was very cold, it was also crisp and clear, with none of the mechanical inflections of the system’s voice. It was a shame that Instructor Number One had appeared behind her that first time, causing her to mistakenly attribute the mechanical voice to him.
Instructor Number One’s voice rang out once more, "Now I shall explain the usage of honour points. Other than the core compulsory courses, the learning space also provides many additional supplementary courses which require honour points to unlock, and of course there are also games and other types of entertainment available. You may freely choose how you would like to use these honour points."
"Use? Does this mean that honour points are not that easy to get?" asked Ling Lan calmly. She knew very well that Number One’s words may have some hidden meaning – it could even be another test – so she couldn’t just take things at face value.
Unfortunately, her questioning was not fruitful this time round. Number One did not answer, merely keeping his silence, though Ling Lan could sense a very light trace of humour in his eyes. Perhaps she had guessed correctly that honour points were indeed very precious. Or perhaps this first seemingly generous award of honour points was another trap, trying to fool people into thinking honour points were easy to get so they would spend them thoughtlessly.
A large screen suddenly appeared in front of Ling Lan. On the screen, there were many general category selections. It looked like these were the things that she could redeem with her honour points.
"Do I really have to choose right now?" Ling Lan asked doggedly. Since she already knew that honour points were important, she didn’t want to use them recklessly.
Number One said, "You must. This is also one of your lessons." Number One smashed her hopeful plans, and continued, "You must choose within ten minutes, or else the system will enforce a random draw."
At these words, Ling Lan’s heart thumped. Something niggled at her mind, so without wasting anymore time, she opened the redemption window.