Electronic Nezha

Chapter 128 Mystery
Around 1 p.m., I asked the koi fish, "What do you usually eat?"

"Government funding," he answered firmly.

"Then let me ask again, what are we having for lunch?" My stomach and tastes have been spoiled by Yuan Yuan. Usually, I would have finished eating by this time and be lying in bed picking my teeth. Today, apart from eating that weirdo's tongue, I haven't eaten or drunk anything for most of the day.

Koi said, "Uh, I usually do the cooking, I forgot about it today."

Sixth Master said, "Let Shark bring the takeout back."

The chubby boy said, "Tell him not to buy fish. I can't stand anything fishy for ten days or half a month."

The dolphin asked, "Why?"

Koi suddenly laughed and said, "I remember now, the hacker and the fish kissed." Back then, he had kissed the strange fish mouth-to-mouth in order to whistle to summon Hao Hao.

The chubby boy said, "Don't bring this up again."

The koi fish asked, "What does it taste like? Is it really like fish?"

The chubby boy angrily retorted, "Still talking?"

Koi said in a serious tone, "I'm doing this for research. We need to figure out its composition first, right? Did you wipe your mouth after you kissed him? Maybe we can extract some useful DNA."

The chubby boy spat loudly, "Pah, pah, pah! Let you take it!"

The dolphin said, "Stop fooling around, have you finished cleaning up the mess?"

The chubby boy said, "It's done. All the nearby surveillance footage has been processed, and the witnesses who saw Hao Hao go upstairs and the strange man jump off the building have also been dealt with."

I asked anxiously, "How was it handled?"

"We told them it was a low-budget short film. Fortunately, the witnesses were all elderly people who neither understood nor were interested. To increase credibility, the shark jumped off the building twice more while still tied to a rope."

"What about the gunshot? How do you explain that?"

The chubby guy said, "The Chinese people didn't even recognize that it was gunfire." Then he said to Sixth Master, "Director Liu, I will write a thorough self-criticism about the lost gun."

Sixth Master said, "Don't label it an investigation yet, but write down the details clearly. This isn't your fault. What can you do if you encounter aliens? Have you investigated the fish's escape route?"

"They went down into the sewers."

Soon after, Shark brought in a bunch of takeout food, and the group sat down together and started wolfing it down. Among them, Dolphin was clearly older, in his early thirties, while the others were young people in their mid-twenties.

The takeout was mediocre and a bit cold. The scallions, ginger, and garlic inside were pungent, and the dish was very oily. The other people were eating with great enthusiasm, but I was full after eating more than half of the meal.

Sixth Master glanced at me and said, "Not having much of an appetite?"

To be honest, "The taste isn't very good. I'll let you try my fried noodles sometime."

Yuan Yuan suddenly said, "I'm sorry to trouble you, Master, for making you eat this junk food." Her words startled the koi.

Koi said, "I almost forgot your robot vacuum can talk." He pointed to a pile of broken bamboo poles and fragments in the corner and asked, "Are those its body parts?"

I hummed in agreement.

The koi carp asked, "What can its head and body do together?"

I said, "I can clean."

Koi paused for a moment and said, "Use a mop and broom? You disassemble the robot vacuum cleaner, reassemble it into a human shape, and then let it clean. What's the point? Just to make it more ceremonial?"

The chubby boy said, "We still can't understand the mindset of a savior."

I said, "Our Yuanyuan can also cook."

The koi fish said, "When you're making dumplings, can it take the flour out of the cupboard?"

I couldn't be bothered with him anymore. The things Yuan Yuan could do in his pure bamboo pole form were beyond their imagination. Although these people were all elites, the technological gap of more than 70 years was still too huge. It has only been more than 70 years since the first atomic bomb was successfully detonated.

I said, "I can't go back to my family home for a while, right?" Sixth Master said, "What do you need to go back for? A family photo? A gold bracelet? A property deed?"

“Those are all material possessions. I want to get Yuan Yuan’s charger back.”

Sixth Master nudged the koi with his elbow and said, "Your brother Feng is testing you."

The koi said, "This isn't testing me, it's embarrassing me. You got the voltage right with the two wires."

I said, "Then you make one, let me see how good you are at electrical work."

"Brother Feng, what were you thinking? Why did you have to make it stand up and show it to us?"

"I'm getting too old to order takeout anymore."

Koi said speechlessly, "You only spent a little over two months building it, right?"

"How can that be the same? I was only in my thirties two months ago."

Since I had nothing to do in the afternoon, my goal was to reassemble Yuan Yuan. Her original body was mostly destroyed, but fortunately the circuitry was still barely functional. As for other replacements, this place used to be a factory, but now it's a small military camp, so usable materials are readily available.

At first, Jinli was quite enthusiastic, but after making a simple charger, he suddenly became perfunctory. The reason was that he discovered that Yuanyuan's "skeleton" was a bunch of bamboo poles, and the futuristic robot created by the savior was supported by bamboo poles. I guess he might be a little disillusioned, just like when you find out that the top student in your class uses dice to answer multiple-choice questions.

The shark didn't seem to care much about the other three, but the dolphin and the hacker were quite helpful—or rather, I helped them quite a bit. I didn't lift a finger the whole time; I just directed them on how to assemble it and gave them hints about the raw materials for certain parts.

Liu Zhenhua didn't need to go to school anymore. He wandered around the area first, and then sat on the sofa, idly staring blankly.

Sixth Master pointed at Liu Zhenhua and asked me, "Fengzi, should I just find him a set of textbooks and let him study here, or should I give him a cell phone so he can play games?"

Liu Zhenhua looked at me nervously—not pretending, but genuinely nervous. He was probably worried that I would make him study in order to fit the persona he was portraying.

I said, "Let him play."

Liu Zhenhua looked at me with a worshipful expression, as if I were a savior. He said, "My son can study if he wants, and if he doesn't, so be it. I won't use any special privileges to make him starve." That's just his persona, isn't it?

Liu Zhenhua said, "Grandpa—"

Sixth Master said, "You can just call me Sixth Master too."

"Okay, Sixth Master, you'd better find me a computer. I'm a content creator, and it's time to update."

Sixth Master pointed to a cleared-out area in the center of the hall and said, "Go there, play as you like."

I went inside and took a look. There were five computers lined up side by side, making it look like a computer room or a small internet cafe.

"Can the computers here access the internet?"

Sixth Master waved his hand and said, "No way, this is just a training class to teach kids how to use Wubi input method!"

Liu Zhenhua laughed and said, "Not only can it run, but its computer configuration is better than ours."

Sixth Master glanced at me and said, "Don't think of us as so mysterious. Even if we're mysterious, we still have to live our lives and do our jobs normally, right?"

"Okay, okay." I nodded vigorously. "Then we don't have any doors on our walls that require a password to appear, right?"

Sixth Master hesitated for a long time, seemingly somewhat doubtful.

"It's okay, you don't have to say."

“No, there aren’t any doors that only appear after entering a password, there are doors that open automatically after entering a password—” He pointed to several prominent electronic doors on the wall, “That’s the ammunition room, that’s the firing range, that’s the kitchen…”

I felt like something strange had gotten mixed up in there, so I couldn't help but ask, "Why did you install a password door for the kitchen too?"

"When we were designing it, we thought we were a special institution, so we installed electronic doors everywhere. But we found we installed too many, even the kitchen had one," Sixth Master said with a smile. "Actually, it's not that mysterious."

(End of this chapter)