Chapter 177: Do You Top Up with Carrots?

Chapter 177 -75: Do You Top Up with Carrots?

The remnants of the feast on the table still gave off a faint warmth.

The blue crab, so imperious just moments before, was now nothing but a mountain of red and yellow shells piled high on the discard plate in front of Shi Zuozhou.

The steamed leopard coral grouper had met an even more tragic fate. Only a complete skeleton remained; Shi Zuozhou had even used his seafood congee to mop up every last drop of soy sauce from the plate.

Shi Zuozhou leaned back in his chair, patting his round belly, and let out a long, satisfied sigh.

“Decadence. Pure decadence.”

He squinted, looking from the dazzling night view of the CBD outside the window to the private room’s elegant, deep blue decor.

“These sugar-coated bullets of capitalism are… they’re just a little too delicious.”

“You’re unbelievable.” Shao Yiyi shot him a look, elegantly dabbed her lips with a napkin, and reached for her phone at the corner of the table.

“Ah! Crap!” she suddenly cried out, frantically mashing the power button on her phone in frustration.

“It died? It must have run out of battery. I was in such a rush when I left that I forgot my power bank.”

She gave Shi Zuozhou a woeful look.

“I’m screwed, I haven’t paid yet. This is just great. My phone won’t turn on, I don’t have any cash… I guess whoever ate the most should go pay the bill…”

The moment Shi Zuozhou heard that, he shot upright, wrapped his arms around himself, and stared at Shao Yiyi in terror.

“You can’t be serious! You’re my meal ticket! If you can’t pay, I’ll have to pull a Guo Furong and work here as a laborer to pay off the debt. I’ll be signing a twenty-year contract of indentured servitude, stuck here peeling crabs and washing dishes every day…”

“Oh, get lost!” Shao Yiyi laughed in exasperation and threw a napkin at him.

“I was just kidding. I’ll transfer the money to Uncle Chen when I get home.”

Shi Zuozhou dodged the napkin with surprising agility, and Yu Xian chuckled as well.

‘As expected, there wasn’t some cliché scene where a waiter blocks their path before Uncle Chen bursts in with an entourage, shouting, “Welcome, Young Mistress!”‘

Uncle Chen just smiled and walked them to the door. When he saw Shao Yiyi still fiddling with the phone that wouldn’t turn on, he had the front desk hand her a small power bank stamped with the “Deep Blue” logo to tide her over.

The four of them left the restaurant, chatting and laughing, and stepped back out into the cold, damp, rainy night.

…

The commercial district outside North Gate was still ablaze with light. The glistening black asphalt reflected the multicolored neon signs, which looked like a flowing river of color.

The languor that comes after a good meal, combined with the relaxed atmosphere, allowed everyone to unwind after several tense days.

Shao Yiyi was still fretting over her dead phone. Wen Xiao teased that it had become her “prosthetic limb” and she was now handicapped. Meanwhile, Shi Zuozhou was savoring the memory of their grand meal, lamenting how “it’s hard to go from extravagance back to simplicity.”

Smiling, Yu Xian walked at the back of the group. He habitually slipped a hand into his pocket, his fingers finding his phone as he went to check the time.

His fingertip slid across the screen, and, out of muscle memory, he tapped on the pixelated rabbit icon.

Ever since the Rabbit Hole went online, checking it had become almost a conditioned reflex. Watching that number flicker was like seeing a companion raise a torch in the darkness.

“Active nodes in current area: 5.”

Yu Xian stared at the number, his mind still on what Wen Xiao had said that afternoon about the Dream Net’s “servers” and “clients.”

‘Five… well, that makes sense. After all, the four core members are all here.’

‘There’s me, Wen Xiao, and Shao Yiyi. Then there’s Shi Zuozhou—that guy’s carrying two devices, a phone and a smart band. So that adds up perfectly to…’

‘Wait.’

The smile on Yu Xian’s face suddenly froze.

He stopped dead in his tracks, his gaze fixed on the number “5” in the corner of his screen.

‘Something’s wrong.’

‘According to my initial count, five should have been correct.’

‘But…’

His gaze slowly shifted ahead, landing on the phone in Shao Yiyi’s hand—a device as dark and inert as a brick.

‘Didn’t Shao Yiyi’s phone die?’

‘That means her node is offline.’

‘In that case, the total number of nodes here should only be four, at most.’

‘So why does it show 5?’

‘Who… is the extra one?’

Yu Xian stood by the side of the road, instinctively scanning his surroundings. Even with the rain, plenty of people were out on a Friday night.

A couple sharing an umbrella walked past him, whispering softly.

A food delivery driver in a yellow uniform zipped past on an electric scooter, splashing through puddles by the roadside.

Two office workers, likely just off their shift, stood smoking outside a 24-hour convenience store, heads bowed over their phones.

Farther away, at a bus stop, a few people who looked like students stood waiting for a bus, backpacks slung over their shoulders.

“Old Yu? You coming? What are you spacing out for?”

Shi Zuozhou turned back and, seeing that Yu Xian had fallen behind, called out to him from under a streetlight. The two girls also stopped and turned to look back at him.

“Your Rabbit Hole—do you have it running on any devices besides your phones and smart bands?”

“Nope,” Shi Zuozhou answered, looking utterly baffled.

“I only have it running on my band. We’re not near the school and no one’s really using it, so I closed the background app on my phone to save battery. The band has a long battery life, so it’s no big deal.”

“When I saw Yiyi’s phone died, I turned mine off too,” Wen Xiao added as she and Shao Yiyi walked over, sharing an umbrella.

Yu Xian’s pupils constricted. Shi Zuozhou only had his band on, Wen Xiao had turned hers off, and Shao Yiyi’s phone was dead.