Chapter 29 Part 1

Teacher Mo… what’s wrong now?

Li Zhuo pondered for a long time but still couldn’t figure it out.

Teacher Mo had been especially nervous about him lately. At first, he wasn’t allowed to go out alone, and in the past few days, his diet had come under extremely strict control—every item he touched had to be sterilized.

Once, he saw Mo Liang wiping the door handle he touched daily and thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.

On the fifth day back in Changyang, Li Zhuo had just finished his winter vacation homework for one subject when he came out and found Mo Liang wiping the dining chair he would sit on for lunch with a solemn expression. He couldn’t hold back any longer.

“Teacher Mo, be honest with me: am I seriously ill? Do I not have long to live?”

Mo Liang stopped what he was doing. Instead of refuting him immediately, he reacted with surprising intensity, asking, “Are you feeling unwell? Where does it hurt? When did it start?”

Li Zhuo: “……”

After this happened a few times, Li Zhuo got used to it. Human acceptance really is a gradual process.

Of course, it wasn’t entirely just because of habit. Part of the reason was that Li Zhuo had found something else that captured his interest even more.

During one casual conversation, he heard Mo Liang talk a little about the matters of that other world, and he found it extremely fascinating.

Seeing his curiosity and interest in other planets, cultures, and technologies, Mo Liang eagerly offered him a wealth of materials—like presenting a treasure.

These were far more valuable than the incomplete, fragmented scraps Mo Liang had selectively given to the Mo family.

And so, Mo Liang once again discovered a talent in his child that hadn’t been recorded in his character profile.

Li Zhuo was genuinely interested in those abstruse materials. Over the entire winter break, he only went out with classmates twice. The rest of the time he stayed indoors, either doing his winter homework or devouring those materials obsessively, forgetting to eat or sleep.

Sometimes when he came across obscure vocabulary, he would ask Mo Liang, who would patiently explain in detail.

By coincidence, even though Li Zhuo had been calling Mo Liang “Teacher” for so long, it was only now that Mo Liang truly lived up to that title.

However, this “teacher” soon found himself in a predicament. First of all, the unique disasters of the Pollution Civilization had caused its developmental path to be completely different from other civilizations. And Mo Liang himself wasn’t exactly the studious type.

So much so that while he could still handle Li Zhuo’s unfamiliar vocabulary at first, as Li Zhuo’s reading gradually deepened, the questions he asked became more and more profound.

Among them were specialized terms Mo Liang had never encountered, but faced with those clear black-and-white eyes, he absolutely could not bring himself to say “I don’t know.”

How could a qualified caregiver let his child down?! So he turned to the System, and the System searched its database…

For a while,

the household was steeped in an intense academic atmosphere.

At this stage, Li Zhuo was no longer studying just to get good grades, a high rank, surpass someone, or bring honor to anyone. He was simply, purely interested in those cryptic alien texts.

He was so focused that he neglected exercise. In the last week of winter break, a sudden drop in temperature gave Li Zhuo a bout of seasonal flu.

He had a fever for about two days.

During those two days, Mo Liang was a mix of both distress and bliss. The distress came from the fact that he had already cleaned the house into an almost sterile environment, yet his child still fell ill. The bliss came from the fact that the drowsy Li Zhuo lying in bed displayed an even greater dependence on him than usual.

The sick youth’s voice was muffled and nasal, and even his meals were fed to him by Mo Liang, spoonful by spoonful.

“Here, take a bite of this.”

The non-human creature coaxed in an exceedingly gentle voice, carefully bringing a spoonful of plain congee to the sick child’s lips.

Dizzy and groggy, Li Zhuo parted his lips and accepted the food. This scene filled Mo Liang’s heart with immense satisfaction and joy.

He carefully changed the towel on the sick child’s forehead, meticulously wiped his hands and feet, and savored the instinctive dependence and trust directed at him.

The feverish Li Zhuo was very clingy. When Mo Liang placed a hand near him, he would naturally nuzzle his cheek against it. When he fell asleep, he would nestle into Mo Liang’s embrace and mumble indistinctly, calling him “Mom”…

At this moment, Li Zhuo no longer looked as gaunt and sallow as when they first met. His complexion was rosy, his brows and eyes distinct in their dark and light—an eighteen-year-old youth who was pleasing to the eye no matter how you looked at him.

So adorable!

He wanted to personally nurture him!

In fact, that was exactly what he did. It seemed perfectly fine to feed him nutritious substances this way.

Those two days were truly blissful. It was just a pity that as Li Zhuo’s temperature gradually returned to normal, he refused to be taken care of like a baby any longer.

Thinking of this, Mo Liang sighed.

Winter break ended and Li Zhuo started school again. The time spent with his child shrank from 24 hours a day to only mealtimes. Although he could watch him through other means, he still felt it was better to have him right before his eyes.

See? Just a few hours without seeing him, and he was already missing his child again.

【Miss him…】

【Miss him so much…】

As he yearned for his child, Mo Liang began writing today’s log entry.

It recorded in detail every strand of hair Li Zhuo shed, every nail clipping, and various substances that Li Zhuo himself could not see but were shed daily.

【His daily study time on Alien Civilization Communication Studies has been too long. His eyesight, cervical spine condition, and water intake have all markedly declined compared to usual…】

【The previous method was effective. Can continue…】

【Recent cell phone usage frequency…】

【Recent social interactions. Hmm… isn’t the number of times he’s spoken to this female classmate a bit too high…】

【Could it be that he wants to fall in love?】

The thought that another human could become closer to his child than he was, occupying a place even more important than his own in Li Zhuo’s heart, and possibly spending every day clinging to him for decades to come…

The suffocating feeling in Mo Liang’s chest intensified.

Outside the window, the sky was clear as if freshly washed, with a few white clouds drifting leisurely. A bird spread its wings, soaring freely through the sky…

Mo Liang, wearing an apron, was busy in the kitchen preparing lunch for his child. Just imagining that scene, countless tentacles with clearly divided tasks suddenly halted.

【If my child were to leave me, wouldn’t I return to the days from before?】

【That endless, never-ending loneliness, that cold, suffocating solitude…】

【I’ve only just managed to draw a tiny bit of warmth from my child, and now I’m going to experience that empty, hollow feeling all over again?!】

【Absolutely not, absolutely not, absolutely not, absolutely not, absolutely not, absolutely not, absolutely not, absolutely not…】

A small gray bird that unwittingly flew by was suddenly yanked downward as if by an enormous invisible hand—plummeting straight down and vanishing swiftly from the sky.

In the classroom, Li Zhuo looked up from his homework. Outside the window, the sky remained tranquil.

Today really is a fine day, he thought.

Since the summer camp, the birthday party in Hai City, and the two small winter break gatherings, Li Zhuo wasn’t so afraid of socializing anymore.

After taking the initiative to make the first move, he discovered that making friends wasn’t as hard as he’d imagined.

Without him realizing it, Li Zhuo was no longer alone. Sometimes when he walked outside, friends from the previous summer camp would greet him with familiar ease.

When the dorm room discussed topics, they would naturally throw comments his way, and through these exchanges, the invisible barrier was gradually dissolving.

Although he hadn’t suddenly become a social butterfly like Deng Yuliang, compared to before, it was an enormous improvement and change.

The teacher on the platform lectured while the students listened with rapt attention, the scratch of pens taking notes rising and falling. The half-open curtain billowed gently in a light breeze, and outside the window, a dense cloud drifted slowly.

Sunlight streamed through the swaying curtain, casting dappled patterns of light and shadow on the desks—peaceful and beautiful.

Everything seemed no different from usual, and yet somehow nothing felt the same.

Li Zhuo wondered, what’s for lunch today?

Maybe he should just ask?

As soon as he finished the last stroke on the paper, the blank draft sheet automatically generated a string of crooked, squiggly text displaying the lunch menu.

—【Are you hungry?】

Along with the text came a sudden, gentle breeze, carrying the crisp freshness of mountain forest morning dew. It caressed his cheek, ruffled his hair, and left a faint, barely-there tickle.

Li Zhuo didn’t even need to guess who was up to mischief. He immediately wrote a reply:

“Not hungry. Just asking.”

He fully believed that if he said the word “hungry,” then probably in the next second, Teacher Mo would definitely find a way to send food over to him.

The epitome of a parent who spoils their child without limits.

He remembered back when he was still in Pingshan Village, there was a family in the neighboring village who also spoiled their child to an extreme degree.

After all, they had conceived a son late in life. The couple had taken medicine, prayed to the gods, but couldn’t conceive. It wasn’t until their forties that they got this precious little darling—of course they treated him like a treasure.

In the village, supplies were scarce. Most children only got a new set of clothes during New Year’s and festivals. Usually, they wore hand-me-downs from relatives or clothes that their older siblings had outgrown.

Every household was like that.