9: Chapter 9: Dad's Public Boasting? He Quickly Converts a Wuling into a Jet-Powered Vehicle!

Su Che frowned as he stared at the short, cold line of black text on his phone screen.

"Playing with fire?"

He looked down into the classroom, where the children were still clinging to the projection screen, pointing at the whales swimming inside, their faces full of wonder.

Then he looked beside him, where Lin Waner was wiping away tears with the back of her hand, a smile on her face.

"This is considered playing with fire? Well, this fire feels quite warm."

Su Che scoffed, casually deleted the text message, and shoved his phone back into his pocket.

Whoever it was, he didn't care.

Nothing in the world was more important than the village children watching cartoons.

"Su Che..."

Lin Waner's voice sounded a bit embarrassed; she had lost control of her emotions just a moment ago, and her cheeks were still flushed.

"Hmm?"

"I... I was just too excited."

"What's there to be excited about?" Su Che leaned against the door frame, looking indifferent. "It's just an internet connection, not like I've laid a dragon vein for you."

Lin Waner was amused by his words and burst into a giggle. Tears still hung on her eyelashes, and with that smile, she looked as beautiful as the clear sky after rain.

"You... can't you ever speak nicely?"

"I can," Su Che replied with a straight face.

"For example: stop crying. If you keep crying, your eyes will swell up like walnuts, and that won't look good."

Lin Waner's smile froze on her face.

Was this guy really incapable of holding a conversation, or was he doing it on purpose?

She looked at Su Che's face, which was plastered with "sincerity," and finally could only shake her head helplessly.

"The internet speed is faster, but I'm still worried." Lin Waner sighed, her gaze returning to the children as she changed the subject.

"They have too many questions, especially in math. I explain one problem over and over, yet some still get it wrong. I'm only one person; my energy is truly limited."

"Getting the same problem wrong over and over?" Su Che caught the main point.

"Yes!"

Lin Waner rubbed her temples in distress.

"Children in the city have error notebooks and various tutoring classes. Here, even if I want to give them a few more similar problems, I have to handwrite them one by one. It's too slow."

Su Che rubbed his chin, deep in thought.

When they left the school, the sky was already turning dark.

Su Che was still pushing his creaking wheelbarrow, with Su Hao following behind, still savoring the ultimate 1ms experience from earlier.

Lin Waner insisted on seeing them off and walked alongside them.

The country path was cast with long shadows by the dim streetlights, and the atmosphere felt a bit subtle.

Just as they turned a corner, they saw a dilapidated wuling hongguang blocking the middle of the road.

The car door was wide open, and a familiar figure was bent over, head buried under the hood, fiddling with something while cursing.

"Damn it! This piece of junk! I have to haul oranges tomorrow, and it decides to quit on me today!"

Su Pingan straightened up and kicked the tire, but the car didn't budge, and he ended up grimacing in pain.

"Everything rattles except the horn!"

He looked up and happened to see Su Che and the other two pushing the cart over.

When he saw Lin Waner beside his son, the anger on his face instantly subsided by half, and he squeezed out a smile that was uglier than a cry.

"Teacher Lin... Teacher Lin is here too?"

"Hello, Uncle Su." Lin Waner greeted him politely.

Su Che pushed the cart past the stalled Wuling with an expressionless face, a sentence drifting lightly from his mouth.

"Dad, this car should be scrapped."

The anger Su Pingan had just suppressed flared up again, instantly overriding his politeness toward Teacher Lin.

"Scrapped? You spendthrift brat, that's easy for you to say! Do you think money grows on trees?"

He pointed at the cart of junk Su Che was pushing, furious.

"I told you to stay home, but you're pushing this pile of trash out to embarrass yourself again! Now you dare to lecture your own father?"

"I'm not lecturing you." Su Che stopped and looked back at him. "I'm just stating the truth. If you keep driving with this engine, you'll be lucky if it just leaves you stranded in the mountains."

"You!" Su Pingan was so angry that his finger pointed at him was trembling.

"If you're so capable, fix it for me! Aren't you so talented? Don't you know how to make all those weird gadgets?"

He was so angry that he had lost his head and was speaking without thinking.

"If you can make it haul oranges without breaking down, then even if you build a rocket by hand in the yard later, I won't care about you anymore!"

Su Che raised an eyebrow.

"Really?"

"Really! When I, Su Pingan, say something, it's as good as iron!"

"Fine." Su Che nodded. "You said it yourself."

After speaking, he ignored his furious father and pushed the cart away without looking back.

Su Pingan watched his back, stunned for a long time, and finally could only kick the tire hard again.

"This is rebellion! Absolute rebellion!"

Lin Waner watched this pair of funny father and son, wanting to laugh but not daring to, and could only stand there awkwardly.

Back at the studio, Su Che dismantled the crude quantum router and set it back on the table.

The fragment he had chipped off Grandpa Wang's crystal ball had developed a tiny crack due to energy overload.

It seemed this gadget was a one-time use; he would have to find another way next time.

He sat in his chair, thinking of that text message again.

He took out his phone and tried to call that number back.

"The number you have dialed is not in service."

As expected.

Su Che narrowed his eyes, his fingers moving rapidly on the phone, bringing up a crude background program.

This was a little gadget he had written when he was bored, capable of simply tracing the source of a signal.

He entered the number.

On the screen, data streams flashed by rapidly, and finally, the location pointed to... a virtual coordinate in the center of the Pacific Ocean.

"Not bad."

Su Che closed the program and leaned back in his chair.

The other party was clearly a professional, using virtual base stations and jump servers.

His current "Taishang Laojun" Wi-Fi, while awesome, was still very limited in function, with the tracing capability being practically zero.

If he wanted to play with these people, he would need to upgrade his equipment.

As he was pondering, a long-lost mechanical voice suddenly rang in his mind.

[Ding! Detected the host's urgent need to [Improve Family Life], side quest triggered!]

[Quest Name: Wuling Overhaul! The Return of the Akina Mountain Legend!]

[Quest Content: Your dad's roar is the humility of a cargo hauler! Please thoroughly modify this wuling hongguang, which rattles everywhere except for its horn. Solve its lack of power and frequent breakdowns, making it the coolest ride in the village, faster than anyone else at hauling cargo to the market!]

[Quest Reward: 150 skill points, unlock [Small Turbojet Engine] entry-level blueprint.]

"A turbojet engine?"

"Holy crap, this thing again!"

He remembered that back at the National Defense University, he was expelled specifically because he modified a drone with this exact thing.

Now, the system had delivered the blueprint right to his door?

And it wanted him to install it on... a wuling hongguang?

Su Che felt like grabbing the reader and beating them up.

Installing a turbojet engine on a wuling hongguang to haul oranges?

"This f***ing..."

"...is way too exciting!"