Godmother!

Ming Jiu immediately pulled back her hand and made no further move.

What camera?

Mom had rhinitis, so they had never kept pets at home. The baby monitor Xiao Rong had used as a child had also been completely dismantled long ago.

[Spend 50 silver coins to detect the camera's location?]

Ming Jiu selected [Yes]. Fifty silver coins were deducted, and through the translucent silver-gray screen, she saw a glowing red dot on the light strip on the ceiling outside the kitchen.

System: [Spend 1 gold coin to trace the camera's source? Spend 1 gold coin to destroy the camera and its connected monitoring equipment?]

Ming Jiu finally realized what was wrong.

How many times had the system taken the initiative to speak to her now?

Had her golden finger gained a new function again?

In her previous life, the system had been extremely "mechanical." Other than necessary notifications for upgrades and feature unlocks, it had never taken the initiative.

The current system was clearly more "intelligent" than it had been in her previous life.

System? Are you still the same System who accompanied me in my last life?

Considering the camera of unknown origin, Ming Jiu retreated to her parents' room and continued communicating with the system in her mind.

[Yes. There is only one System.]

Ming Jiu: [...Then you seem a lot more cheerful.]

The system paused for a moment before its electronic voice sounded again.

[The previous host's mental strength was insufficient to form more mental links. The current host possesses double the mental strength and can communicate normally.]

Ming Jiu: [Is the camera surveillance function you mentioned just now a new feature?]

System: [The feature has always existed.]

Ming Jiu understood. The system's functions had always been extensive; it was just that her mental strength had been too weak in her previous life, so she had been unable to use them.

Ming Jiu thought for a moment. [Besides detection, tracing, and destruction, are there any other camera-related functions?]

System: [Surveillance footage can be altered to a limited extent.]

Ming Jiu's heart skipped a beat. She tried hard to smooth down the corners of her lips.

Does every use require gold coins?

System: [Yes.]

Ming Jiu lowered her head in thought. In barely a dozen seconds, countless wicked ideas sprang into her mind.

Perhaps seeing that Ming Jiu had been silent for too long, the system proactively explained: [My various operations all consume energy.]

The energy consumption from farm planting and management was included in Ming Jiu's planting costs. Its creator had granted it the authority to take a regulated commission from sales and transactions, and that commission was converted into the energy it needed to operate.

Thinking of her upcoming plans, Ming Jiu was so excited she practically rubbed her hands together like a fly.

Um, babe, can I get a monthly subscription? Including every function related to cameras and surveillance—how much would that cost?

The system fell silent for a while.

[Yes. A monthly subscription costs 200 gold coins.]

Ming Jiu looked at the 204 gold coins that had barely settled in her account and fell silent.

Can you make it cheaper?

The system refused decisively. [No bargaining.]

Ming Jiu: [Godmother!]

This time, Ming Jiu clearly heard something like an electric current coming from the system.

Ming Jiu pressed on. [System Mom! Sis System! My life-saving System! Please!]

[I swear that until the day I die, I'll diligently farm and work seriously every day of the year without rest!]

System: [...150 gold coins.]

[Deal.]

Ming Jiu decisively paid 150 gold coins, leaving only 54 gold coins in the system account.

Thinking about what she planned to do over the next month, those 150 gold coins would definitely be worth every penny!

[Sis System, can you deal with the camera in the kitchen?]

Very soon, a soft crackle came from outside the kitchen door.

System: [Camera destroyed.]

Ming Jiu walked out of the room and raised her hand, storing the storage box in the living room into her backpack slots.

Who installed the camera? How long has it been there?

More than ten seconds later, the system gave its answer. [Your housekeeper's son. It was installed one month ago.]

Ming Jiu frowned. She had already reached the door, and she could not be bothered to change out of her pajamas. She simply threw on a coat, slipped into a pair of sneakers, grabbed her elevator card and phone, and went out.

The housekeeper? Aunt Liu?

Unpleasant memories surged up, but Ming Jiu ignored them for now and merely quickened her pace.

The place where Xiao Rong took classes was not far away. After leaving the residential complex and crossing two intersections, she would arrive. There were actually plenty of online sign language courses, but Ming Jiu had still enrolled herself and her sister in classes. In-person lessons offered more opportunities for interaction.

The sign language teacher was gentle and patient, but unfortunately, their course was about to end.

The moment she saw Xiao Rong, Ming Jiu ran over without a word and gave her sister a huge hug.

Xiao Rong froze for a few seconds. Though she did not understand why her sister was so emotional, she still raised her arms and hugged her back, her little hands patting Ming Jiu's back comfortingly.

Ming Jiu's eyes burned, and she nearly lost control.

Xiao Rong had died during the transition between the extreme heat and snow seasons in the second year of the apocalypse.

Back then, relying on her talent for drawing, Ming Jiu had found work at the base's management center drawing portraits of survivors looking for relatives. She worked more than ten hours a day, nonstop from morning to night, and the pay was only barely enough to keep herself and Xiao Rong alive.

Supplies in the base were scarce. Food, clean water, and daily necessities were all expensive. She and Xiao Rong did not even have enough points to rent space in the communal dormitories, so they could only live in the shantytown. To keep her safe, Ming Jiu took Xiao Rong to work with her almost every day.

Ming Jiu would never forget that day.

She came down with a high fever after a sudden temperature drop and painfully asked for half a day off. Xiao Rong had used up a great deal of strength just to bring her home.

The moment they got home, she could not hold on any longer and fainted. When she woke up on the freezing floor, she saw three equally gaunt men standing in their cramped shack.

They had lifted the bed boards she shared with Xiao Rong and knocked over the room's only battered cabinet, trying to find food and thick clothes. Xiao Rong desperately tried to stop them, but one of them shoved her hard. The back of Xiao Rong's head struck the upturned bedframe.

She could only watch helplessly as blood seeped from Xiao Rong's head, gathering into a thin pool on the intact, smooth tile the two sisters had worked so hard to find.

With the last of her strength, Xiao Rong used her own blood to write a single word on the floor: "Live."

And she herself, weakened by fever and hunger, did not even have the strength to crawl to her sister's side, much less cry out for help.

The light vanished forever from Xiao Rong's eyes, which had seemed unnaturally large because of how thin she was.

Seeing that they had caused a death, the three men fled at once, afraid the patrol would come after them.

In the end, she still survived. Once her fever broke, she dug out the canning jar hidden beneath the bed and silently ate the entire compressed biscuit concealed inside.

After she regained some strength, she hid the only knife in the house inside the sleeve of her oversized cotton coat—a small slicing knife from a full kitchen knife set from before the apocalypse—and separately went to the shacks where the three men lived.

She remembered clearly that two of them had families. One had a wife and child, while another lived with his elderly parents. She went straight to their doors and said only one thing.

"If you don't want to be driven out of the base for murder, come out and talk."

Once they came out, she stabbed them without another word.

After the natural disasters began, she had always lived cowardly. Most of the time, she would rather suffer losses than clash with anyone. Whenever conflict arose, her first reaction had been to hurry away with her sister. She had never dared get involved in any trouble.

That caution had allowed them to survive in that difficult world.

It was the first time she had stabbed someone face-to-face.

Murder was a serious crime in the base. None of the three had expected her to suddenly attack them in broad daylight, and she succeeded every time.

After killing them, Ming Jiu calmly returned home to prepare Xiao Rong's body. Xiao Rong had always been a clean child, so Ming Jiu found the cleanest clothes: a short-sleeved shirt and cropped pants. Even now, she clearly remembered the warm yellow daisy pattern on the shirt.

Those were the only clothes she could put on Ming Rong. In the extreme cold, there was less chance that crematory workers at the base would strip that outfit from her body before burning it.

Just after she had changed her sister's clothes, the patrol arrived.

The officials managing the base were actually quite kind. The patrol did not make things difficult for her. After confirming that the other side had attacked first, Ming Jiu was not driven out of the base. She was only forcibly assigned to a worse communal shanty, lost her original job, and was punished with three months of hard labor at a construction site.

She decided to listen to Xiao Rong and try to live, for as long as she could.

And half a month after Xiao Rong left her, she bound herself to the system that could keep her alive...

Noticing that something was wrong with her sister's mood, Ming Rong stepped back slightly and withdrew from her sister's embrace. She looked carefully at Ming Jiu's face, then asked in somewhat clumsy sign language: Are you okay?

Ming Jiu suppressed her complicated emotions and smiled. "I'm fine. I just woke up and saw you weren't home, so I got a little panicked."

Ming Rong blinked, took out her phone, opened the notes app, and quickly typed.

[Sis, don't worry. I'm not going anywhere. I'll stay with you.]

Mom and Dad were already gone. They were each other's only family.

Ming Jiu tightly held her sister's hand, doing her best to calm herself. She asked the teacher for half a month's leave, saying that she wanted to take her sister to City B to try a new psychologist.

Xiao Rong was not deaf or mute. She had lost the ability to speak after a car accident.

Just three months ago, their parents had taken Xiao Rong to the countryside near City G to gather inspiration. On the way back, they were involved in a serious car accident.

Their father died on the spot. Their mother, who had been in the back seat, desperately shielded Xiao Rong at the moment of impact and later died despite being rushed to the hospital.

Fortunately, Xiao Rong had only suffered a minor fracture in her left hand. But after that accident, she had never been able to speak again.