Chapter 25: Sense of Emptiness

After lunch, Ye Jinyi wandered the streets wearing pixelated sunglasses and a face mask.

Like an unemployed drifter—oh wait, she was an unemployed drifter.

Commonly known as a street stroller.

But what was wrong with strolling?

Strolling had dreams too, and right now Ye Jinyi was chasing her little dream.

When she reached Minghu Park, Ye Jinyi found a bench and sat down, becoming a benchside philosopher.

“Speaking of which, what kind of job am I actually good at?”

Ye Jinyi sat on the park bench, deep in thought.

Back in university, she majored in computer science. Later on, she got sweet-talked by Heavenly Court Group into doing server maintenance.

Sounds nicer as “network engineer,” sounds worse as “code monkey.”

Ye Jinyi gave it some thought.

“Feels like… there’s no room for me in that field at all!”

Right now, working in IT sounded less feasible than becoming a welfare bunny.

Doesn’t matter if the job market’s saturated—there’s no way someone like her, completely off the grid, was ever getting hired.

“Honestly, setting up a melon stand sounds better… and while selling watermelons, I could just throw in myself as a freebie. That’d be even better.”

“Come to think of it, didn’t I already give myself away?”

Yes, Ye Jinyi had long since handed herself over to her wayward disciple to be treated like a little sister.

Why is my life so damn surreal?

Ye Jinyi felt speechless.

No matter how she tried to interpret her fate, she just couldn’t find a single fitting explanation.

It’s not like she could just throw her life away and become a hacker, right?

Not that she had the guts anyway—she was a law-abiding undocumented citizen!

If we’re being honest, if it’s just as some Z-list script kiddie, Ye Jinyi figured she could probably manage.

But after all that thinking, she still hadn’t figured anything out.

As the sun dipped toward the horizon, Ye Jinyi felt like she’d wasted yet another day.

“Uwaah! Is there some kind of useless club that would just take me in?!”

Ye Jinyi cried out her despair.

She felt completely hollow inside—nothing could interest her, and she couldn’t bring herself to do anything.

“Can someone please tell me what the point of my life even is?! I’d even take shrine duty or picking up trash—anything’s better than this constant nothingness!”

“I just… want to be recognized…”

Ye Jinyi felt utterly defeated—not by life, but by herself.

It wasn’t that she couldn’t do things, it’s that she wouldn’t do them. At this point, she really did feel completely useless.

Even if someone tossed her in the garbage, she’d be in the non-recyclable bin.

“I want to cry… I want to eat…”

A sudden wave of sadness hit Ye Jinyi. She felt completely out of sync with the world.

She wanted to bite something—maybe that would help distract her.

She tried biting her arm.

“Gnnnaah!”

As expected, it just hurt like hell.

“There probably isn’t anyone else in this world dumb enough to bite themselves like this, huh?”

Today’s Ye Jinyi was really in the pits.

Ding-dong~

Just then, her phone suddenly rang.

Ye Jinyi looked at her phone and saw a message on Penguin Chat.

[Magical Girl Yingmeng-chan]: “You still haven’t made good on that promise to play cards with your little sister.”

It was a message from Huimengyi.

Ye Jinyi vaguely remembered saying that, then started typing her reply.

“That was just me talking nonsense with a fried brain back then…”

She didn’t know how to explain it—her brain had definitely overheated at the time.

Maybe it was this new body’s underdeveloped brain that made her blurt things out uncontrollably.

Looking back now, all Ye Jinyi could feel was…

Pure black history!

The kind that made her want to die of embarrassment!

“Then again, is there anything more humiliating than randomly calling someone your big sister…”

Only now did Ye Jinyi realize just how completely she had thrown away all her dignity.

“So embarrassing!”

At this point, Ye Jinyi felt like dignity had absolutely nothing to do with her anymore.

“Screw it.”

She decided to give up on thinking.

Since she’d already lost most of it, might as well let the rest go too.

Ding-dong~

Just then, Huimengyi sent another message.

“But that’s not okay. You promised, and a promise is a promise. Even if it’s way overdue, I can still finish the remaining half, right?”

Ye Jinyi couldn’t be bothered to think that hard anymore.

She casually typed a reply on Penguin Chat and stood up from the park bench.

“Wait till I get home. I can’t play computer games out here.”

After sending the message, Ye Jinyi put her phone away and began walking back toward her rental.

Once she got back to Wenxin Garden and reached her building, Ye Jinyi entered her unit.

Unbeknownst to her, a girl somewhere else was watching the screen intently.

“You really made me wait, didn’t you, you adorable little thing~”

The girl then turned and gave an order to the officers around her: “Find out who she really is. Though I doubt any of you will dig up anything.”

Back in the apartment, Ye Jinyi turned on her computer and sent Huimengyi a message on Penguin Chat: “I’m back. Log in.”

After that, Ye Jinyi launched the game.

Once she logged in, she claimed the daily junk rewards, and soon, an in-game invite from Huimengyi’s account popped up.

The match officially began.

Drawing cards, managing resources, setting traps…

Both sides played carefully, step by step, each using their own strategies—but the randomness of the deck was something neither of them could control.

Ye Jinyi did have the edge in skill over Huimengyi, but when the draw luck was bad, there wasn’t much she could do.

At least this match was fair. Her hand wasn’t too bad—the main issue was that her deck was outdated.

Compared to Huimengyi’s new cards, her old ones really felt powerless.

Tears of the times.

Stat inflation in trash games—it never fails to deliver.

“I win!”

With the victory screen flashing, Ye Jinyi secured the win.

To be fair, it was a close one—both sides were just a sliver of HP away from finishing the other off.

Luckily, Ye Jinyi had planned one move ahead and drew the crucial final card first to clinch the victory.

“Missed it by a step.”

Huimengyi replied helplessly.

No surprise—her shifu was still her shifu. When it came down to it, Huimengyi had only learned the basics from Ye Jinyi.

Inside the Public Security Bureau.

The girl watched the looping footage on the screen, her lollipop now nothing but a bare stick.

She tossed the stick into the nearby trash bin and glanced at the officers still combing through data.

“Got anything yet?”