Chapter 1: If You Don’t Accept It, Come Hit Me

Chapter 1: If You Don’t Accept It, Come Hit Me

The simply furnished room was pitch-black, with only the screen lit up in the study, flickering with a faint blue glow. Occasionally, the sound of message notifications could be heard.

At that moment, a series of light footsteps came from the kitchen, drawing nearer and nearer, and a figure gradually became visible.

Beep beep beep

The notification sound rang out once again. The person’s steps shifted. Without any visible movement, her figure transformed into a wisp of green smoke and appeared in the study. She moved so quickly that a trail of afterimages was left behind. She took a sip of the instant drink she had just made, casually placed the panda-shaped mug on the desk, and swiped upward on the virtual screen with her finger.

[Pei Ye, are you there?]

[Are you there, Pei Ye?]

[Grandma Pei, this is a life-or-death emergency! Stop playing dead!]

[Grandpa Pei, I’ll call you Grandpa, alright? Reply as soon as you see this, or I’m going to hack your brain-computer!]

[Pei Ye, come out! Pei Ye, come out! I know you’re online. Don’t hide behind the screen without making a sound. I know you’re lurking!]

The time in the lower-right corner ticked by second after second.

Pei Ye read through the increasingly irritable messages left by her friend, her expression as calm as still water.

Her friend had gone from begging desperately to utter despair and compromise, spamming more than two hundred messages in a row.

Pei Ye skipped over all the meaningless rambling in the middle and scrolled directly to the last few messages.

[Grandma Pei, you’re really patient. I surrender. I admit defeat.]

Her friend’s attitude gradually softened.

[I have something I’d like your help with. Haven’t you been pretty free lately? Help me look after a kid. If it works out, we can discuss the reward.]

[This kid’s existence can’t conveniently be known by outsiders. After thinking it over, you’re the only person I can ask to take care of it.]

[I know you don’t know how to take care of children, so I specially designed a foolproof raising app for the little guy. Just follow the app and raise it. It’s completely effortless.]

[I have something else to do. We’ll talk later!]

Friend XXX has sent you an offline file. Please check and receive it.

The speed of it all made it seem as though they were throwing away a burning hot potato.

Pei Ye stared at those words for quite a while before finally choosing to accept it.

Her posture shifted from sitting upright to a lazy, slouched recline. Her long, straight legs crossed and rested against a corner of the desk while she hummed a popular local tune.

Download. Install. Open the app.

Done in one smooth motion.

One second later, the brain-computer screen went black with a loud Smack, then slowly revealed a brilliant pink sea of stars.

The starry sea converged toward the center of the screen, forming a pink vortex.

Not long afterward, the pink vortex condensed into an adorable pink heart, simulating the beating of a real heart three times.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

“Why does a child-raising app need such a flashy design?”

As she spoke, the heart suddenly exploded and transformed into flowing pink light, gathering into four enormous characters.

[Love and Raising a Child]

Pei Ye: “...”

Not only was it flashy, it was also borrowing ideas from other works.

Playing a game like this would lower her standards.

She casually grabbed a pile of snacks stacked in the corner of the study, tore open the biodegradable paper package, and began crunching away at potato chips.

Crunch crunch

After waiting for a while, the lengthy opening animation finally ended and an even flashier logo appeared.

Despite being a privately made app, the creator had designed an entire set of disclaimers that Pei Ye had to agree to before entering the game.

She glanced through them casually and discovered that the terms were astonishingly idiotic.

[This game is a raising simulation that combines romance and child-rearing.]

[1. The child’s growth is entirely under the player’s control. If the child turns out to be an idiot, please do not become enraged. Reflect on yourself three times daily and look for the problem within yourself. Domestic violence is prohibited. The child’s growth requires your participation throughout the entire process, so please take it seriously and don’t fish for three days and dry nets for two.]

[2. The child’s emotions are extremely sensitive. Please pay attention to emotional changes.]

[3. If the child makes mistakes, focus on guidance and correction. Do not resort to verbal abuse.]

[4. Once activated, this game is permanently bound. It cannot be destroyed or discarded.]

[Finally, all rights of interpretation belong to the Heavenly Brain!]

[If you don’t accept it, come hit me!]

Pei Ye: “...”

Right now she wanted to buy a ticket to the Central Planet and wipe out that person’s entire headquarters!

There were plenty of people to show off in front of, yet they had chosen to show off in front of her?

Pei Ye didn’t bother reading the idiotic terms carefully. She dragged straight to the end, clicked agree in one go, signed her name according to the process, and bound the account.

As a melodious and cheerful BGM began playing, the game finally started.

Pei Ye tapped randomly and skipped the boring tutorial.

Compared to the flashy cutscenes and logo screen, the game’s interface was surprisingly simple. On the screen was an extremely plain room. The four walls were grayish white. There was a closed frosted window, a tightly shut door, a wooden table, a wooden stool, and on the stool sat a gaudy egg. Nothing else.

The egg was truly gaudy. At a rough count, it seemed to contain over twenty different colors, as chaotic as a child’s doodles.

She poked the egg, and a naming box popped up.

[Please give your child or lover a name.]

“Since you’re calling it a child, let’s just call it Ah Zai.”

The game’s setting left her with far too much to complain about.

She wasn’t attracted to paper characters. There was no way she would treat a virtual character in an app as a partner, much less a lover.

Raising a child and a lover at the same time, wasn’t that equivalent to raising a child and then marrying them yourself afterward?

Way too disturbing.

(:з」∠)

[Naming successful]

After the system notification ended, two small words appeared above the egg’s head.

[Ah Zai]

While exploring the functions of various buttons, the system prompted her to choose an ID for her account.

After a moment’s thought, [Your Dad] was born.

If the egg ever equipped a title, the words above its head would become [Your Dad’s Ah Zai].

She poked various icons while studying their meanings.

“A game this crude actually has the nerve to be released? It wouldn’t even create a ripple on the market...”

Ever since retiring from the Federal Military Department, Pei Ye had immersed herself in games all day long. Action games, adventure games, simulation games, role-playing games, and casual games, she had dabbled in nearly all of them.

Among them, the ones she played most were the popular pay-to-win games designed to trick players into spending money. She had also played several raising games, but after a while she had figured out the formula and abandoned them.

Judging by her standards, this raising app was far too crude.

It simply couldn’t inspire any desire to spend money.

“How does this thing level up?”

After exploring for a while, Pei Ye discovered a progress bar above the egg labeled “Merit.”

“Merit” was equivalent to experience points in ordinary games. There was currently no payment channel, so progress could only be achieved through grinding.

“Following the standard raising-game formula, this is where they should introduce a one-yuan purchase package or a six-yuan SR skin to trick players into spending...”

With a one-yuan offer and a six-yuan offer leading the way, the later ninety-eight, one hundred eighty-eight, three hundred forty-eight, and six hundred forty-eight offers would naturally follow.

(:з」∠)

Even Pei Ye herself had once been tricked into spending tens of thousands by game companies.

Raising games either required money or endless grinding. Games that required both money and grinding were simply shameless.

Right now she had nothing except abundant free time and plenty of energy for grinding, so spending money wasn’t worthwhile.

“How much Merit is needed to hatch? One, ten, a hundred, a thousand... One thousand Merit? Doesn’t seem like much...”

Pei Ye poked around randomly and discovered that the tutorial she had skipped earlier contained important clues.

She quickly reopened it and read it carefully.

A scroll of parchment unfurled in the center of the screen. The text at the beginning was still clear, but the latter part had been stained by ink, making it fragmented and incomplete.

[More than a hundred thousand years ago, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth was abundant. Although immortals, humans, demons, and devils occasionally clashed, the world was generally peaceful.]

[In the Human Realm, there was a vast continent where hundreds of nations stood side by side. Among them was a small nation with a population of less than one million called Tanchang.]

After these two sentences, blotches of ink covered several lines of text.

[... years later, the Empress of Tanchang gave birth to... named... Su...]

Another patch of ink followed, and Pei Ye could barely make out a few characters.

Based on the context, this prince named Su must have encountered some sort of misfortune. Her guess was that Tanchang had been destroyed by another nation.

After the nation’s destruction, Su became corrupted and committed some unforgivable atrocity, provoking the wrath of heaven. As a result, the Heavenly Dao cursed him. Unless Su repaid all the karmic burdens on him, he would never achieve release throughout eternity.

In the end, Su’s soul transformed into this egg.

The player needed to hatch the egg, accompany Su in earning Merit and fortune, and help him awaken.

After reading all that, Pei Ye had only one thought.

“What a cheaply made backstory!”

It was such an overused setting that countless free materials with nearly identical plots could be found anywhere.

Having figured out the egg’s background story, Pei Ye began researching how to clear dungeons and earn Merit.

Her friend might be a scammer, but since she had agreed to help raise the child, she might as well do it. She had plenty of free time anyway.

Whether one was addicted to online games or raising games, there wasn’t much difference. Both were good ways to pass the time.

The dungeon entrance was easy enough to find.

In the upper-right corner of the screen was a flashy skull-shaped button with the words “Dungeon” written on it.

After clicking it, another long parchment scroll appeared on the screen. The parchment looked old, with yellowish-brown discoloration around the edges.

Only the first dungeon was unlocked. All the others were locked and marked in gray, making them inaccessible.

She could only open the description for the top dungeon.

One look nearly blinded her.

[Why did a seventy-year-old grandmother die tragically on the street? Why do hundreds of sows scream every night? Why are the condoms at the convenience store repeatedly targeted? Why are women’s dormitory underwear frequently stolen? What hidden secrets lie behind the theft of dormitory bedsheets? Who is responsible for the blooming chrysanthemums of handsome young men? Behind all of this!!! Is it the distortion of human nature, or the collapse of morality? Please stay tuned to this dungeon channel and let Your Dad lead us into the hearts of demons, monsters, ghosts, and spirits, exploring a world unknown to ordinary people...]

Curiosity had made her click in.

Self-preservation instincts made her want to close it immediately.

“What kind of garbage is this?”

(╯‵□′)╯︵┻━┻

Pei Ye felt as though her intelligence was being rubbed across the floor by her friend.

She wanted to uninstall the game, but the damned thing seemed cursed. The interface froze at that exact moment, and her hand accidentally slipped onto [Enter Dungeon].

“It can do that?”

She refused to believe her brain-computer would lag while running an app, unless someone was secretly tampering with it.

For example, the creator of this app.

Pei Ye immediately locked onto a prime suspect.

Several notifications appeared on the screen one after another.

Preparing to enter dungeon. Please make the necessary preparations.

Countdown: 3...

Countdown: 2...

Countdown: 1...

Entering dungeon!

Enjoy your game!

A pleasant game voice sounded out. Before Pei Ye could react, everything before her eyes suddenly went black, and she immediately lost consciousness.

Just before passing out, she vaguely heard her friend’s teasing laughter.

[All rights of interpretation belong to the Heavenly Brain!]

[If you don’t accept it, come hit me!]