No one knew what that bastard Old Zhao was up to right now.

However, the Emergency Radio Communication Command Center for Reversing the Future and Saving the World still regularly sent him WeChat messages and emails, reporting the latest situations and passing on new intelligence, though he never replied.

“Which psychiatric hospital is in Shanghai?” Bai Zhen asked. Let’s call and ask if they recently admitted a patient named Zhao Bowen.”

“There are way too many people named Zhao Bowen in the country,” Wang Ning casually unplugged the audio cable from the motherboard’s port. “Where’s the HDMI cable?”

The Celeron 3150 industrial control motherboard was powerful enough – install an XP system, and it could let Bai Zhen play Red Alert freely.

Using the industrial control board as the core, connected to a monitor, camera, keyboard, and radio station, they could assemble a space-time camera. But while it sounded easy, doing it was an absolute mess.

While Bai Zhen and Wang Ning were dealing with their mess, one could imagine how things were going on Banxia’s end.

The problem still came down to programming.

With his second-rate programming skills, Bai Zhen had volunteered to teach the young girl how to write software. He had confidently claimed it wouldn’t be a problem, that he could completely solve this minor issue. After all, it was just writing a small program—in the entire data transmission process, the only part Banxia needed to independently code was a tiny section at the beginning. This program was meant to receive subsequent code; once it was installed, the larger and more complex software could be transmitted directly.

Bai Zhen’s calculations seemed perfect. He showed off his skills to others on his computer, his fingers flying across the keyboard, switching between pages rapidly, applying Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V with ease, every bit the image of a top-tier hacker.

“Look! Look! Once this is installed, we’ve taken the first step of our thousand-mile journey! The first pile of our mountain of shit has been laid!”

Bai Zhen patted the laptop on the sofa, its screen displaying his masterpiece written with years of C language expertise and liberal use of copy-paste.

“After this, all the video compression software, image processing software, signal modulation software, the complete idiot’s toolkit, CAD suite, Unity, Unreal 3, World of Warcraft, StarCraft—everything can be transmitted over and installed with one click!”

Bai Yang couldn’t help but see his old man in a new light.

He practically had to massage his temples and rub his eye sockets.

His dad wasn’t just an ordinary ride-share driver—he was a ride-share driver who knew how to copy and paste!

Bai Zhen talked big, but things went to hell when it reached BG4MSR.

“BG4MSR, let’s check again, let’s check one more time—” Bai Yang sighed, holding the laptop. “Let’s go through the code one more time and see exactly where the problem is, OVER.”

“Hmm, alright, let’s check again.”

Another late night.

Since starting the programming process, Banxia and Bai Yang have fallen into an endless cycle of self-checking and verification. They couldn’t understand how a tiny program of just a few KB could produce over a dozen different errors—the entire software was 4KB in size, four thousand bytes of data, and had produced twelve different types of errors. That averaged one error every three hundred and thirty bytes. Every time his dad fixed an old bug, two new ones would appear. The bugs included but weren’t limited to, black screens, black screens, and black screens.

The same code would produce different bugs at different times, on different dates, and even when the motherboard was placed facing different directions.

Wang Ning said Young Yang’s dad had written feng shui software.

Perfect for testing grave orientations—no need for a compass, just hold the motherboard. Whichever direction produced bugs was extremely inauspicious.

“I don’t want to look anymore, BG4MXH, I don’t want to look anymore, my eyes hurt,” Banxia rubbed her eyes. She had already spent three days on this thing, looking at her teacher’s drafts during the day and Bai Zhen’s code at night. It was hard to say which was more chaotic and incomprehensible.

It was too much for her.

“Hang in there, young miss. My dad said if we don’t succeed tonight, he’ll find someone more professional to help. The night is darkest before dawn—once we get through this, success will surely follow, OVER.” Bai Yang felt like a snake oil salesman preaching success theory.

“I don’t want to mess with this anymore, it’s too hard, too hard, I just can’t learn it…” Banxia hugged her knees pitifully, crouching on the chair, tears, and snot flowing. “I can’t learn it!”

Bai Yang thought, oh no, she’s developed study aversion.

A child consistently at the bottom of the class, unable to keep up, leading to study aversion.

What should parents do in this situation? Bai Yang’s mind raced. How to handle a child’s study aversion?

Delete the account and start over.

Bah.

Appeal to emotions, explain with reason, build confidence, guide with patience.

“Young miss, listen to me. This is a hurdle we must overcome. You’ve solved so many difficulties already, how can this one stop you? Let’s try one last time, okay? OVER.”

“Really?” The girl sniffled. “You promise it’s the last time?”

“Yes, the last time, OVER.”

Bai Yang was quite the scoundrel by now, having lost count of how many “last times” there had been. Each time was the last time.

This last time failed too—

“Buck up! Failure is the mother of success. Let’s strike while the iron’s hot, while the failure’s fresh, and make it give birth to success, young miss! Let’s try one absolute final time, this time we’ll succeed!”

“Young miss, I’ve found the key to the problem! Let’s try one positive final time!”

“I swear to heaven, this is the FINAL time tonight!”

“I quit! I quit!” Banxia flopped onto the bed, hugging her pillow and burying her head in it. “Big brother, please spare me, let me go, I’ll do anything else, just don’t make me stare at this code anymore… I’m in so much pain.”

“Young miss.”

“I quit!”

“Young miss.”

“I quit!”

“Young miss.”

“I—QUIT!”

“Would you like to see Fuzimiao, young miss?”

Banxia lay motionless on the bed with her head buried in the pillow, holding the handheld microphone. After playing dead for a while, she finally mumbled: “Yes.”

“Would you like to see the Qinhuai River?”

“Yes.”

“Would you like to see the shopping mall and cinema at Xinjiekou?”

“You always know how to tempt me! You’re the devil!” The girl angrily sat up and shouted into the microphone. “Bad guy! Bad guy! Bad guy!”

“If you don’t establish the image transmission link, I won’t be able to send you photos, young miss. I promise, if you can get this working, I’ll take pictures of whatever you want to see. I’ll show you all around Nanjing, okay? OVER.” Bai Yang continued his coercion and inducement.

“Devil! Don’t think you can trade my soul for your promised benefits!”

“Okay?”

“Mmm… you promised.” Banxia hung her head, slowly getting up. “You must remember to take photos for me. I want Fuzimiao, Qinhuai River, and Xinjiekou!”

“Yes, I promise I will, OVER.”

“Then let’s try one last time.”

The girl sat back in her chair, took a deep breath, pulled all her messy hair back, then patted her cheeks and told herself: You can do it! Banxia! You can do it!

Twenty minutes later.

“I can’t do it…”

Looking at the error message, the girl sighed deeply, her heart as dead as ashes.

She couldn’t understand why humans had invented this torture device worse than any cruel punishment. C language, fuck you.