Chapter 496: Spring Festival


    Trantor: EndlessFantasy Trantion Editor: EndlessFantasy Trantion


    The spring festival was approaching and factory workers had gone home for the holidays.


    It was the second time people had celebrated the spring festival since the apocalypse andpared to the first year, the celebrations this year was definitely more lively. There were even giant rednterns that symbolized the festivities that hung outside the megastructures. The streets were decorated with lights and littered with colors.


    There were crowds at the department stores, supermarkets and farmers markets. People had been holding in the urge to shop for a long period of time and it had just been unleashed. There was an abundance of supplies during the spring festival this year. The shopping malls sold many of thetest household appliances and the farmers’ market even had meat in stock for the first time, attracting many people.


    The meat was not naturally grown but at the same time, it was not synthesized with different elements. Instead, it was a kind of meat that was cultivated in aboratory. There was no limit to its growth and it could grow infinitely as long as it was in the nutrient solution, simr to cancer cells. IT was a seasonal product which was identally discovered when they were studying the flesh of the interster creature. While the study was being conducted, a young intern who had just graduated identally found out that the flesh would snap out of its suspended state and begin multiplying at an extreme rate when it was ced in a growth medium and ced in an extreme environment. It would absorb all the nutrients avable nearby and undergo cell division before growing rapidly to be resistant to the dangers in its immediate surroundings, maintaining itself.


    However, even though it would multiply and grow rapidly, the flesh of this creature wasparable to metal and waspletely inedible. The only way to continue the experiment was to acquire more supplies. However, even though they had acquired an astonishing reserve that managed to fill up an entire warehouse and could supply them with enough supplies to conduct experiments for the next 100 years, it was meaningless.


    After finding out about this phenomenon, theboratory did not give up but continued carrying out various experiments on the interster creature’s flesh thatsted for more than six months. From time to time, the researchers would try using different sampling methods and eventually, they had surprising news.


    In the growth process of the flesh, the researchers found that it was gradually degrading. It was possible that the environment the experiments were conducted in could not support high-level flesh such as that from an interster creature. In order to adapt to its new environment, the flesh would degrade slightly with every experiment and eventually, it became soft and there were even changes in its gic structure. After continuous growth and experiments, the flesh put on the market could no longer bebeled as the flesh of an interster creature but instead, a level three flesh which had adapted to its new environment.


    ...


    "Give me some dough, there is hardly any left over here!" Zhao Yali quickly used up the dough in front of her and said.


    "How did you wrap it up so quickly?" Wang Xiaguang was shocked. They were wrapping dumplings from the same pile of dough and she had not even used one-fifths of the dough but Zhao Yali had already finished.


    "Here!" Huang Jiahui said.


    "When I was younger, my family used to run a snack bar. Every night, I’d help in making dumplings and steamed buns. I got my skills there." Zhao Yali took the dough Huang Jiahui brought and said. Her tone remained the same. Time was the best medicine... It had been so long, the grief of the past had faded.


    People began gathering at the round table in the living room at Luo Yuan’s house and started making dumplings - it was very lively. The mutated woman looked at them for a short while and after she found it to be quite interesting, she took a piece of dough to attempt making dumplings. However, it was a fact that she did not have the talent. Her sharp ws would always pierce through the dough and the dumplings she made would alwayse out with strange shapes, exposing the meat inside. However, she was having fun, enjoying herself.


    Wang Shishi red at the unknown object in front of her and said spitefully, "You’re so stupid! You’re going to eat the dumplings you wrappedter!"


    Hearing Wang Shishi’s criticism, the mutated woman pouted, seemingly angry. She made a few more, put down the dough she was holding and ced the dumplings she made earlier in a basket angrily. She then carried the basket in one hand, dragged a chair in another and walked away from Wang Shishi. She walked to where Luo Yan and Luo Yu was at and gestured them to make space for her.


    The both of them did not mind and moved the chair enthusiastically. The mutated woman then ced the chair between the both of them. Nowadays, Wang Shishi was not the only one she could y with. Compared to Wang Shishi who always spoke ill of her, Luo Yu and Luo Yuan were her true best friends. She hopped on the chair and looked at Wang Shishi with a smirk which made her scoff in return.


    However, the mutated woman was inherently active and lost interest in things quickly. She lost patience after she had been making dumplings for awhile. However, in order prevent Wang Shishi fromughing at her, she continued persistently. Fortunately, the footsteps that approached from from outside saved her. Her slightly pointed ears were moving like that of a rabbit as she immediately hopped off the chair and fled like a sh of lightning.


    "It’s probably Luo Yuan," Huang Jiahui said whileughing after she looked at the disappearing act the mutated woman pulled.


    "Dad is back!" Luo Fan confirmed. The ears of the clones were sharper than the others. Among all the people there, only the mutated woman couldpare with their abilities.


    As expected, Luo Yuan entered the door a whileter with the mutated woman following suit behind him.


    "Dad!"


    "Dad!"


    The kids stood up and greeted Luo Yuan immediately. They were obedient.


    Luo Yuan nodded and smiled. He ced a paper box in his hand on the ground and took off his coat. Luo Yu picked it up eagerly, put it on the hanger, and then asked expectantly, "Dad, what is this?"


    "Here, your new year presents!" Luo Yuan smiled and said.


    "What present?" Luo Yu hugged Luo Yuan’s arm.


    Luo Yuan released his arm from Luo Yu’s grasp. During the past two years, the kids grew rapidly and they were now young men and youngdies. Especially his two daughters, they had their first periods half a year ago. It was inappropriate for them to be so close to him.


    He took out a gift from the paper box, it was wrapped to the festival’s theme. He passed it to Luo Yu and said, "Open it and you’ll know!"


    "Dad, I want one too!" Luo Yan said.


    "Yes, everyone’s got one!"


    Seeing that she was ignored, the mutated woman made a noise.


    Luo Yuanughed and patted her head, "I wouldn’t forget yours."


    Luo Yuan then gave everyone a present, including Ye Qiuyu.


    After Luo Yu opened her present, she saw what seemed like a pair of contact lenses. There was a bottle with a liquid in it, but she knew that these were not contact lenses as she asked, "Dad, what are these?"


    "This is thetest miniature quantumputer. Put this on your sses and switch it on using your Will." Luo Yuan exined, "It can be used to connect to the inte, make long distance calls and also conduct environmental tests. Itsputing power is nothing less than the previous generations of was nothing less than the previous generation. There are other functions as well, take a look for yourself in the manuals!"


    "There’s nothing fun about the inte." Wang Shishi mumbled to herself.


    As part of the military in a totalitarian society, Luo Yuan and his family were naturally the first people served by the staff. Every other day, there would be new, high-tech products sent to his house which included things like quantumputers. Wang Shishi had the first generation up to the third generation quantumputer in her bedroom so she was quite familiar with the inte. Speaking of the current inte, Wang Shishi was utterly disappointed as the current inte was crude and could notpare to the inte prior to the apocalypse, which was full of colorful images. There were limited websites, only about 100 of them. More than 10 of them were rted to academic journals while the rest were news or educational websites. To ordinary people, most of them would not even use it if gaming or video rted websites were nowhere to be found. Entertainment was close to zero on the inte.


    Even themunication software needed to be improved. Aside from the basicmunication functions, business and entertainment programmes were non-existent. The interface was so simple that people just wanted to p the developers. However, Wang Shishi could not wait to put on the miniature quantumputer that looked like contact lenses. She was a fan of electrical products and even though there was no entertainment, she spent most of her time on the inte and surfed for thetest news or some interesting e-books. As she put theputer on, she blinked a few times and felt like nothing changed.


    "Eh? How do I turn this on?"


    Just when she was thinking, a screen appeared before her eyes.


    "Oh! Its controlled by brainwaves!" Wang Shishi thought about what Luo Yuan said earlier and found out how to use them. The brightness was spot on, the mini calctor appeared in the blink of an eye and soon, the image of a ssic blue sky and clouds on the desktop that we knew so well appeared, seemingly so real. She felt like she was in it, back to the time on earth before all this happened.


    Fortunately, she was not an emotional person. Soon, she started exploring and realized that the images she saw could be adjusted to be more transparent. Once the transparency was adjusted to about 50%, it would not affect her when she was walking at all.


    The operation was simple if you had clear thoughts, its speed was blindingly fast and urate. Irrelevant thoughts would affect its operations but since humans would always haveplicated thoughts throughout the day, the only way it could be operated was if everyone used Will.


    Wang Shishi even found some of the movies she had watched before on theputer. She selected one of them to check out how immersive the experience would be if she watched a movie on the miniatureputer. Since there were realistic special effects on the desktop, the effects on the miniatureputer should be even stronger.


    Almost immediately, she felt an intense impact from the images that appeared before her eyes, like she had entered into the virtual world of the movie. Compared to that, a three-dimensional screen was nothing at all. Wang Shishi thought to herself, "Too bad there are no games, it’s such a waste for such a high-tech product."


    ...


    This portableputer was the first of its kind to test run the ssian portable technology to end users by theputer research department. They utilized groundbreaking technology that were not even present in ssian technology such as brainwave-based controls which was thanks to human research. Perhaps to the ssians, such a technology had long be obsolete. The ssians have been using a technology that would connect to the brain of the end user directly, creating something like a brain-in-a-jar where the virtual web was difficult to distinguish from reality. The technology gap between both civilizations were far apart but it was the first time that humans managed not to rely on ssian technology as a benchmark but instead, created something for themselves. It was something meaningful that was worth celebrating.