Defeat the system! Kiss my little monster!

A few seconds of silence followed. Shen Yisui was still confused. He sat there, still holding onto the cage, and at the sound, he turned his pupils toward the place where the energy for barely surviving existed.

"What nonsense are you spouting?! Calling me grandpa won't do you any good! I don't have any stupid descendants like you!" The cunning creature leaped from the air, landing opposite the colorful ball, and said in an unfriendly tone, "Tell me, who taught you to talk like that?!"

The colorful ball immediately came to its senses. It looked at the cowardly survivor through the mental barrier, and its voice slowly lowered again.

[...You smell like my father.]

To live a life of ignominy: "..."

Shen Yisui: "..."

Shen Yi paused for a moment, still finding it hard to understand, and could only quietly ask Gouqie, "Your system... can reproduce too?"

"..." The creature, driven to desperation, kicked the cage in front of it and snarled, "Of course we systems can't reproduce! We're not human, we don't even have genitals, how can we reproduce?!"

As it spoke, it spun its body closer to the colored ball: "You better behave yourself and stop spouting nonsense!"

The colorful ball shook twice in the cage, then finally shut up and didn't speak again.

Gouqie Tusheng sat down in front of Caiqiu with a disgruntled expression. Caiqiu was now locked in a cage, and Gouqie Tusheng could finally take this opportunity to check on its actual condition.

As it predicted, the colored ball's current energy is comparable to a PUA in a certain world, but far inferior to a coal ball.

Fortunately, Coal Ball, the wealthy man, gave Gouqie a lot of Yang energy before leaving, which allowed Gouqie to level up and now handle the Color Ball with ease.

"Hey, stop playing dead. The taste you were talking about just now, was it the main system?" After a moment of thought, the cowardly survivor asked the colorful ball directly, "You call it 'Dad'?"

The colorful ball was taken aback by the sound, and it said, "Aren't you going to call it Dad?"

He rolled his eyes, thinking he was just trying to survive.

"We are all created by it. It is the creator, the father."

The one who was sulking scoffed: "Then let me ask you, why do you call it Dad instead of Mom? It is the creator, who created us with its own energy. It should be more like a mother who nurtures life."

The colorful ball shook its body and said in a serious tone, "The system is not a living thing; we are just machines. We have no life either; we are all given energy by the main system."

To live a life of ignominy: "..."

After a moment of silence, he felt somewhat speechless: "Why are you so pessimistic?"

“I’m stating the facts.” The colorful ball squatted in the cage, its colorful light spreading across the ground, soft yet somewhat distorted. “When our retirement date arrives, we’ll all just become a pile of scrap metal, and a new system will replace us.”

"Oh." The creature, barely surviving, had no interest in its pretentious pronouncements. It simply looked at the colorful ball and casually asked, "Then why are you crying?"

The colorful ball remained completely still.

"Since you have no life and are just a machine, why do you have emotions?"

"Why...why do you call it 'Dad'?"

The series of questions about barely surviving caught Caiqiu somewhat off guard.

No system had ever asked it this type of question before; it simply received and executed tasks in a routine and predictable manner.

It is unknown from a certain day that the colorful ball, like the hosts it was bound to, developed emotions, learned various postures and movements, and experienced so-called joy, anger, sorrow and happiness.

Even if they're just trying to survive, they don't expect the colorful ball to answer their questions. These systems aren't very intelligent; expecting them to understand these things is like expecting an iron tree to bloom.

"Alright, alright, just remember that your father isn't me." The man, barely clinging to life, patted the bars of his mental prison. "Now it's your turn to confess. What are you doing here? What bad things are you planning to do to us?"

Caiqiu looked out through the bars, sitting outside the cage, barely clinging to life. Shen Yisui leaned against the bed, both of them silently watching their movements.

The colorful ball soon understood something and said, "He should have died... Did you save him?"

"Otherwise what?" Gouqie Tousi sneered. "He knows nothing. He's been tricked to death by you all this way."

Shen Yisui: "..."

The light on the colorful ball dimmed, and it turned to face Shen Yisui. After a long while, it finally spoke: "I know what you want to ask me, but I really don't know where Shen Yisui is. He broke my protective device and forcibly untied me, and I can't find him now."

These words were exactly what Shen Yisui had expected. The clues he had been vaguely grasping for a while had now surfaced, now shrouded in the truth.

The person the colored ball was initially bound to was indeed Shen Yisui from before.

"Why did he want to untie you?" Shen Yisui asked softly.

[Oh……]

The colorful ball resumed its original mechanical voice. The things it had kept buried for so long, things it was unwilling to mention, were now being spoken to in front of a face resembling "Shen Yisui."

[Because I am a useless leader.]

Caiqiu spoke each word clearly.

[I attracted bad people to him.]

Shen Yisui understood everything the moment it spoke.

Bad people... Vice Dean... Colorful balls...

The answer can be found simply by connecting these keywords.

Shen Yisui resented Caiqiu for causing him to be pressured by the vice dean, and even went so far as to fake his death to escape Caiqiu.

[The fire was raging, and I still wanted to save him. As I rushed over, he grabbed me, broke through my protective barrier, and threw me into the flames…]

The mechanical ball trembled incessantly, recalling the past, its body pressed tightly against the railing behind it.

[He actually hates me that much.]

Shen Yi listened silently to Caiqiu's words. Everything Caiqiu brought to people was both good and bad, and once the bad things exceeded expectations, they would overwhelm the fragile mentality of the original owner.

He lowered his head and asked, "And then?"

[I was out of energy and crashed for a long time. After waking up, I had to find a new host to obtain the energy needed to survive.]

That was Cheng Jingyi.

When Cheng Jingyi described the ball, she could tell that it was unusually weak, but she never expected there was another reason behind it.

[Shen Yisui has lost contact with me. I've tried to contact him, but to no avail.]

[I spent several years repairing my body, but then my host had another accident...]

Shen Yisui understood what it was referring to: Cheng Jingyi fell into the jaws of a zombie, her neck was bitten off right in front of Caiqiu, and she died on the spot.

Its host is gone again.

"So what?" Shen Yisui sneered, "You just abandoned him like that?"

[I don't!]

Upon hearing this, Caiqiu immediately retorted.