Chapter 55: Malice

""System, system, are you there? If it's all about pushing kids to study harder, can't I just push myself? I'm a kid too! I'm my mom's kid—if you've got a mom, aren't you someone's precious baby?""

""System, system—""

Fu Mingxue kept calling out in her mind.

She wasn't sure if there really was an intelligent system, but when the light screen flickered, she knew for sure there was.

Sure enough, after a long silence, the system was finally forced to respond.

""Host, you can! The task panel has been updated.""

With that, it vanished again.

Fu Mingxue: ...?

Well, that's settled—this is a cold, taciturn version of a system.

But that suited her just fine; she didn't like chatterboxes anyway.

Happily, she checked the system's screen. The tasks weren't any different, except now the target was herself.

Why bother pushing others to improve?

Just like in her previous life, when she poured her heart and soul into raising three elite, ungrateful brats?

Heh, improving herself was what really mattered.

Besides, there were rewards—how could she resist?

She was craving some meat—after all, she only got a tiny bit of meat ration each month.

Fu Mingxue's gaze fell on the daily tasks.

The first one was to read for an hour, with a reward of one jin (500g) of food coupons and a random drop of one jin of food—rice, flour, oil, or meat.

Steeling herself, she dug out her high school textbooks.

She started reading in earnest—even though a lifetime had passed, in her previous life she'd spent years preparing for the college entrance exam.

And even in the decades after, though she wasn't studying for exams anymore, she still liked to read late at night when everything was quiet.

Not to mention, she'd tutored those three ungrateful brats for years—if not for her careful guidance, would they really have gotten into college?

Heh—

An hour passed quickly.

As she finished, the system notification chimed.

""Today's Task 1 complete. Reward has been sent to your space.""

Fu Mingxue was overjoyed when she heard this.

She hurried to check her space and found everything was already there.

This time, the random food was—meat?

A whole jin of pork belly.

Fu Mingxue was ecstatic.

Heavens, this was real.

It really worked.

This system was just too considerate—

Task two was to practice calligraphy for an hour, which wasn't hard.

She found some paper and a pen—

An hour later, the system notification sounded again: reward, one jin of meat coupons and one jin of rice.

...

That night, Fu Mingxue slept incredibly soundly.

She woke up early the next morning.

Checking her space, she saw everything was still there, and the system hadn't disappeared. It looked like this was all real, not a dream.

She couldn't help but break into a wide grin.

Being reborn was wonderful!

——

Bai Siqi, on the other hand, wasn't doing so well.

She'd had nightmares all night.

In her dreams, she was being chased and hacked at by Fu Mingxue and her mother.

She got up looking pale and exhausted—

""Mom, I'm going to find Song Yan first.""

""Alright!"" her mother reminded her anxiously, ""Be careful on the road, especially of human traffickers.""

Bai Siqi had been feeling down, but when she heard ""human traffickers,"" her eyes flickered.

How could she have forgotten about that?

There were so many traffickers these days! What if Fu Mingxue got snatched and sold off to some remote, poverty-stricken mountain village?

How would she ever go to college then?

At that thought, Bai Siqi's breathing quickened.

That bitch Fu Mingxue was pretty enough—those traffickers loved delicate girls like her, since they could fetch a good price.

Heh, didn't want to be her kid's stepmom, huh?

Fine! Let her go be some old bachelor’s wife in a poor mountain village.

Let’s see her pop out a dozen kids then."