Chapter 12

Li Pu spends about three hours every day in the "extreme enhancement mode" for training. The rest of the time, he copies scattered alien data from the module's database for Chen Xian to read.

Although he is a copyist, he can only complete the task with the help of the auxiliary AI that comes with the Divine Warrior Armor. Apart from alien history and Star Hunter travelogues, he can't understand the scattered technological data at all. He just listens to the system AI's translation and copies it out—like someone who doesn't understand calculus but can still copy the problem by tracing the text and diagrams.

However, even the system AI can't fully translate everything, as some of the terms and concepts inside don't have equivalent synonyms in known Earth languages.

Once, Li Pu's hand ached from copying, and he complained to the engrossed Xiao Xian, "Forget the other stuff, can you even understand these weird symbols?"

The talented girl shook her head honestly, "No, it's still too profound for me."

"But..." Chen Xian took a deep breath, hugged her thick notebook, and lifted her head. Her bright eyes sparkled with a light that Li Pu found hard to describe, "When I can understand it, I'll be so happy!"

Time passed, and the year 2000 arrived. The boy and the girl both moved up to the second year of junior high. Everything about the Divine Warrior Armor was known only to the two childhood friends. Perhaps because it was their little secret, they didn't even tell their mothers. Fortunately, Aunt Chen Xin, seeing the two children sometimes acting mysteriously, just smiled and didn't delve into it.

Another Spring Festival came, and on New Year's Eve, only Li Pu, Chen Xian, and Aunt Chen Xin were at the dinner table.

Li Pu's grandfather was a veteran of the Korean War and had passed away a few years ago. His grandmother lived with his uncle in a rural area of inland Sichuan Province, and they didn't visit often due to the distance. As for his mother's side of the family, Li Pu was a mystery to them. He didn't know much about his mother's background, only that she had died in an accident.

Li Pu was essentially alone. However, Aunt Chen Xin's family was the same. Li Pu had never seen any relatives visit Aunt Chen Xin. Most of the visitors were colleagues or men who were interested in her. Li Pu observed that there were quite a few high-quality men among them, including a company president who was a golden bachelor.

Since there were only three of them, they had to prepare the New Year's Eve dinner themselves. Li Pu washed the vegetables, Xiao Xian helped peel the beans, and Aunt Chen Xin did the cooking. After a while, they had a home-cooked New Year's Eve dinner with six dishes and two soups on the table.

The ingredients weren't rare, just some home-style dishes. But Aunt Chen Xin's cooking was quite good. The two half-grown kids eagerly reached for the food as soon as they sat down.

The three of them sat around the round table, eating the delicious home-cooked dishes with white rice, watching the Spring Festival Gala, and chatting casually. The show wasn't particularly entertaining, but the three of them watching and laughing together created a warm and festive atmosphere.

Li Pu quite liked this feeling.

Aunt Chen Xin, sitting across from the boy, was a slender and graceful Eastern beauty. Her face and features were somewhat similar to Chen Xian's, delicate and smooth, with not a wrinkle. Her charm was more mature, and her eyes always had a lazy, hazy look that could make one feel as if they were about to be drawn in if they stared too long.

If someone who didn't know Aunt Chen Xin saw her, they wouldn't believe she was the mother of a twelve-year-old girl. Li Pu thought that Aunt Chen Xin hadn't changed much since he first met her a few years ago. If Xiao Xian grew a few more years and stood next to Aunt Chen Xin, they would look more like sisters than mother and daughter.

Such a beautiful and cultured woman, who was also a highly educated surgeon, naturally attracted many successful men, even with a daughter. However, after living with her as an adopted son for a while, Li Pu found that Aunt Chen Xin was gentle to everyone but kept a distance that no one could cross, giving no one a chance.

Aunt Chen Xin must be a person with secrets. Although he had known her since he was young and often played at her house, he had become her adopted son largely because of Xiao Xian.

"Ha, this crosstalk is so stupid..."

On the Spring Festival Gala stage, Feng Gong's jokes successfully hit Aunt Chen Xin's somewhat peculiar funny bone, making her laugh. Unfortunately, her joy was short-lived as congratulatory phone calls for the New Year kept coming in. Li Pu could tell they were all from colleagues and friends, not a single relative.

When the phone calls finally ended, the New Year's bell rang, and fireworks started outside. Chen Xian happily raised her hands, "Mom, Happy New Year! A Pu, Happy New Year!"

Then she giggled and held out her small hands, "Ding ding~ New Year's money!"

Aunt Chen Xin affectionately rubbed her daughter's cheek, took out two red envelopes she had prepared, and placed one in Chen Xian's hand. Then she turned to the boy and handed him the other one, smiling, "D-boy, this one is for you."

"Thank you... Aunt Chen."

Li Pu had grown up in a single-parent family, and his memory of his mother was vague. To him, Aunt Chen Xin, whom he had known since he was eight, had long been like family.

Xiao Xian and Aunt Chen Xin were already the most important people in his life. Looking back, Aunt Chen Xin had never explained why she had brought her daughter to this country with no relatives or friends, so she must have had her reasons.

Although each red envelope contained only fifty yuan, it was the first time Li Pu had received more than ten yuan from an elder. He was deeply moved and even paused his "Divine Warrior Armor" training for a few days to enjoy the New Year with his new family.

On the Lantern Festival at the end of the century, Chen Xian, wearing a light blue padded jacket and a pink cat-patterned woolen hat, held a traditional rabbit lantern made of cheap white paper with thick gloves. She walked happily next to her "brother." The candle inside the rabbit lantern flickered, casting a warm glow on her delicate, smiling face along with the neon lights of the street.

Next to her, a half-grown boy in a jacket and jeans, with his hands in his pockets, looked around a bit disappointedly, "There are so few people out with rabbit lanterns. I remember when I was a kid, the streets were full of all kinds of lanterns. This stuff isn't as popular anymore, I guess."

"It's okay. One, two, three... including me, there are four people with rabbit lanterns on this street," the girl said, seemingly unconcerned, "There will be more in the city center!"

Unfortunately, even in the city center, they didn't see many people with rabbit lanterns. After a few rounds in the bustling area, with most of their pocket money spent, the boy and the girl sat on a stone bench in the city center square, facing a colorful fountain illuminated by neon lights.

Since the day they met, the boy and the girl seemed to have endless topics to talk about. However, their conversations often led to the same thing—their shared secret.

"By the way, I checked my physical fitness score the day before yesterday, and it's almost at 9," Li Pu boasted, "Without using a gun, I might even beat Jean-Claude Van Damme in 'Ultimate Target.'"

In the past six months, with the help of the Divine Warrior Armor, Li Pu's physical fitness had rapidly improved. According to the life blueprint's values, an adult male human has about 4 points of physical fitness. For a growing teenager like Li Pu, having twice that of an adult male was already quite impressive.

In fact, during physical education classes at school, Li Pu had to deliberately suppress his athletic abilities; otherwise, his performance would have sent him straight to an Olympic training camp.

"Only almost at 9? Your improvement is slower than I expected," Xiao Xian's disappointment surprised Li Pu.

"If I hadn't spent so much time copying all that messy data for you, I would have improved faster," Li Pu complained, "It took me almost five months just to copy the first section of the first chapter of the 'Beginner's Galactic Encyclopedia'! I lost a lot of free time because of that."

"Okay, thank you!" The girl affectionately nudged the boy with her shoulder, "I thought this alien technology would be more advanced. Hmm, maybe because this 'standard Divine Warrior Armor' is just a sports tool, not a military model. It doesn't aggressively adjust your genes but rather enhances your natural abilities..."

"Gene-level adjustment? Like in the 'Transforming Warriors'?" Li Pu frowned, thinking out loud, "Well, if I could become as cool as the Beast God Generals, I wouldn't mind."

"Still, no," Xiao Xian tilted her head slightly, "If you turned into a weird guy, I'd be in a tough spot."

"Alright, then I won't," Li Pu smiled. He could hear the concern in his childhood friend's voice.

The boy and the girl were chatting in the city center square when a group of people, ranging from teenagers to young adults, approached. They walked with a swagger, looking rather rough, and there were four of them. One was a boy about Li Pu's age, two were young adults in their twenties, and the last was a high school student around seventeen or eighteen.

The youngest boy glanced at Li Pu from a distance, paused, and then tapped the young adult next to him, who was smoking, and muttered something. Immediately, all of them looked in the direction of the boy and the girl.

Li Pu had already noticed this conspicuous group. Although they were still about twenty to thirty meters away, his "perception" had improved from 6 to 9 in the past few months with the help of the Divine Warrior Armor. He could still faintly hear their conversation.

The youngest boy was urging a long-haired young adult, "Brother Tiger, that guy used to be at my school. I've had it in for him for a long time. How about we teach him a lesson today? Don't worry, his family is poor and has no influence."