Part 2
Five minutes later, all the drone mechs returned to their initial state.
Mǐ Qiū observed from the sidelines.
Mǐ Qiū thought, There must be one among these drone mechs that is the most powerful, right?
At this moment, the man walked over.
He carried a natural sense of oppression, but Mǐ Qiū could still see that he was smiling.
“I need to test your understanding of drone mechs. Whoever can answer will be my assistant.”
Mǐ Qiū just stood there, glancing at him, thinking: He should choose me, right?
Sù Zé Chū didn’t ask about the styles or anything else; he only asked which drone mech had the best performance.
There was a ten-second time limit to answer.
One of the two B-class Guides, the one with short hair, raised her hand.
But when it was time to answer, she had nothing to say.
“You don’t know? Didn’t you tell me you went to the museum?”
“I mainly looked at the styles and models; I suddenly forgot about the performance aspect.”
Neither of them could say anything.
When he asked for the second time, Mǐ Qiū raised her hand.
Sù Zé Chū noticed her and looked in Mǐ Qiū’s direction.
An A-class Guide next to her, higher in rank, looked at her with utter helplessness. “You can’t be serious, are you joking? An F-class Guide, what could you possibly know? Put your hand down, don’t embarrass yourself.”
Sù Zé Chū stood in front of her, feeling her appearance was familiar. “Who are you? Do we know each other?”
The man asked in confusion.
We do know each other, why act like strangers now?
Mǐ Qiū later realized that in this dream, they were just familiar strangers.
The man indeed had no reaction to seeing her, which confirmed Mǐ Qiū’s guess. In this scenario, he didn’t know her, so she had to fight for the opportunity to prove herself.
“Alright, ten seconds.”
Mǐ Qiū answered that it was the triangular drone mech.
“Because…”
Mǐ Qiū casually made up a reason, trying to bluff her way through. “Looking at its overall streamlining and curvature, firstly, from an aesthetic point of view, it’s the best. And, well, triangles have stability…”
Mǐ Qiū offered her opinion, blabbering on and on, but in reality, she didn’t even know what she was saying later on. She was just using her imagination, saying whatever came to mind.
As a result, the man’s brow was now furrowed tightly into a knot.
It didn’t matter if this chance was wasted; give her another chance, and she could continue to perform.
Mǐ Qiū stood there firmly, waiting for his response.
The man just stood looking at Mǐ Qiū. Before he could answer her, Mǐ Qiū suddenly saw the people around her turning wavy. The sky became colorful. What was going on?
And these seven colors… these seven colors felt very strange to Mǐ Qiū, like she had seen them somewhere before. Right, wasn’t that the Seven-Dazzle Flower? 5
How did the colors of the Seven-Dazzle Flower appear before her eyes? This was truly bizarre.
Buzz. Mǐ Qiū’s head rang inexplicably. When she woke up, it was already morning, and sunlight was spilling onto her bed.
It had been nearly 48 hours before Mǐ Qiū woke up in a hospital bed on the island.
The white walls around her gave her a certain visual shock. There was no one in Mǐ Qiū’s room at the moment, only a robot nurse on wheels guarding her side. The back of Mǐ Qiū’s hand hurt; it turned out she was on an IV drip.
Mǐ Qiū sighed. What is going on now?
Did the soothing fail?
Only when Sù Zé Chū walked in did the robot nurse slide away on her built-in wheels and close the ward door.
Mǐ Qiū wanted to sit up. Sù Zé Chū said, “Be careful. You just woke up, take a moment to recover.”
“Did my soothing work fail?” Mǐ Qiū asked.
Sù Zé Chū replied truthfully, “Yes. I looked at the brainwave fluctuation values you measured for me. There was no change at all this time.”
“How is that possible?”
But Mǐ Qiū did remember that she hadn’t even performed the deep soothing yet. Her vision had just blurred, and somehow she ended up like this.
“What exactly happened? I really can’t remember. What day is it?”
Sù Zé Chū: “You’ve been lying here for two days.”
Mǐ Qiū was getting more and more confused. “It seems something must have gone wrong at some step.”
“You want to ask if something went wrong in the deep dreamscape?” Sù Zé Chū shook his head. “No. You have a severe allergy. Of course, the doctors here have already examined you. The reason for your allergy is a flower called…”
“I don’t know when you came into contact with it. But that is the source.”
The Seven-Dazzle Flower. It looked like that was it.
Mǐ Qiū had to admit it was because she had mixed it with the hypnosis potion, thinking it would deepen the hypnotic effect.
“You believe stuff on the internet now? I can tell you clearly, this Seven-Dazzle Flower is useless. And you are allergic to the Seven-Dazzle Flower, which is why you’re in the hospital. You experienced symptoms similar to poisoning, such as vomiting, diarrhea, dizziness, and so on.”
Mǐ Qiū suddenly realized: “So I couldn’t truly calm my mind before entering the dream this time because of that.”
She hadn’t expected this result.
It seemed she had thought things were too simple.
“The doctors here?”
“The doctors in the island hospital are also robots. They performed a full-body scan on you. Aside from the allergy symptoms, everything else is fine, so don’t worry.”
Mǐ Qiū had lain on a relatively soft medical sofa for a full-body scan, followed by medication and an IV drip. The whole process was quite convenient.
Thankfully, she could still use her medical insurance, otherwise, the cost would have been huge.
Mǐ Qiū had never been to a place like this before; it was very technological and clean.
Of course, she thought, she wouldn’t just casually check into a hospital, right?
“Where are the others?”
Mǐ Qiū referred to Hè Chí, Zhù Shāngchén, and Shěn Qīnghuái.
“I was the first to see you wake up. They probably think you’re still unconscious. Are you hungry? Thirsty? If you need…”
Mǐ Qiū felt like her stomach was completely empty from vomiting. She hadn’t expected the allergy to be so severe.
She felt a bit better now with the IV, but she still didn’t want to eat anything.
“How about some porridge? Sweet porridge. It might be good for your current condition. Or fruit would work too.” Mǐ Qiū nodded at him.
When Sù Zé Chū went to the unmanned supermarket, Mǐ Qiū couldn’t help but feel a bit annoyed. She never thought she would end up like this one day. And with no change in the brainwaves, how was she going to explain this?
Mǐ Qiū touched the light-brain on the table with her right hand and discovered that the Seven-Dazzle Flower she bought online last time had new reviews, but they were buried very far down.
“I dare say, this flower is useless! Those positive reviews were all faked. You only know the truth after using it yourself!”
“My best friend used it once, and it seemed bad for her health. Anyway, think about it, how useful can a flower be that grows in just eight days!” 6
…
Mǐ Qiū finally realized now that she was the fool for believing in such a weird flower and almost putting herself in danger.
She wondered if Sù Zé Chū had an allergic reaction, since she had applied the medicine to his abs.
When he came back with the items, Mǐ Qiū wanted to check his…
So she discussed it with him.
To reassure her completely, Sù Zé Chū lifted his shirt, letting Mǐ Qiū inspect him to her heart’s content.
Mǐ Qiū realized her head was too close and quickly pulled back.
“Oh, it’s good that you’re okay.”
Sù Zé Chū unconsciously grabbed Mǐ Qiū’s wrist, the warmth of his skin slowly seeping in.
“You wanted to say you were afraid the mixed medicine stayed in my body, right? I wiped it off immediately. Not that I really knew there was a problem with the medicine, but it was sticky and felt uncomfortable.”
Thank goodness, thank goodness. Otherwise, she truly couldn’t have borne the consequences!!
Mǐ Qiū: “I think I’m fine now. And haven’t I been lying here for two days? I should be able to be discharged.”
“To be discharged, you have to wait at least one more day.”
Sù Zé Chū meant for her not to rush, and he actively explained that he had already sent Hè Chí and the others back.
Although her relationship with them hadn’t reached a very close level, they had spent some time together, so everyone was still concerned about her.
“You’ll write down the value for this time, right?”
Mǐ Qiū asked guilty. In fact, if she hadn’t been hospitalized for the Seven-Dazzle Flower allergy, she probably would have had a hard time finding the reason for the discrepancy in values.
Sù Zé Chū: “Hm, this time is special, so I won’t report it to Officer Hè for the time being.”
“If he knew, he’d think my previous figures were falsified.”
Learning why Mǐ Qiū had mixed the Seven-Dazzle Flower ingredients into the ointment, he understood the difficult situation of Mǐ Qiū’s hypnosis.
“Sometimes, Guide Mǐ Qiū, you may not need to seek outside help, but rather look inward.”
Sù Zé Chū wanted her to see what the essence behind hypnosis truly was.
Mǐ Qiū indeed felt her efficiency was low and she was always tired. Actually, what Sù Zé Chū said made sense. Sometimes you really have to rely on yourself. Outside things could be true or false, leading to unknown consequences.
It seemed she needed to adjust her method. Relying solely on high frequency to hypnotize them would cause certain damage to her own body.
Knowing this, Mǐ Qiū completely understood where the problem lay.
What if she still couldn’t hypnotize them successfully? Mǐ Qiū asked herself internally.
Surely she wouldn’t just be dispatched; she’d probably be sent to other places, right? This time it was a scenic island; next time it might be a wasteland…
Mǐ Qiū’s head felt like it was splitting, wrapped in countless worries, because she knew that if the next group of guests arrived, it would still be a difficult situation to crack.
Sù Zé Chū let Mǐ Qiū rest and placed some food on the hospital bed table.
Mǐ Qiū couldn’t sleep right now. She picked up a jar of interstellar-produced canned cherries to eat.
The taste of these canned cherries was a bit like cherry-flavored nutrient solution, but purer and richer.
Inside were actual juicy yellow peaches, tasting moist and sweet.
Mǐ Qiū took bite after bite, taking very small nibbles, savoring the taste carefully.
The flavor flowed down her throat and lingered there. The effect was wonderful! After just two bites, Mǐ Qiū felt her body was much more comfortable.
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