Chapter 62: Murdered Right After Inheriting Hundreds of Millions of Hectares of Farmland (1)

"Vital signs have vanished. Heartbeat stopped. Home medical robot emergency rescue failed. Medical emergency call signal is blocked. Crematorium cremation call is blocked."

"Emergency communications and police emergency calls are blocked..."

"Highest command initiated. All communication records, browsing records, and interaction records are being formatted."

"Beep. Vital signs restored. Program error!"

"Formatting cannot be stopped!"

"Please check the network. Suspected offline!!"

Having just opened her eyes, Ding Shui saw a flurry of pop-up information on the smart wristwatch worn on her wrist:

"Strange, the body is completely unscathed, but the soul has vanished entirely, leaving only resentment and hatred. There are no residual death memories in the brain either, making the death seem quite sudden. She only knows someone might have harmed her, but she doesn't know who specifically, nor does she even know how she died. Could this be a method targeting the soul?"

Just as Ding Shui had roughly reviewed the recent memories and was muttering in bewilderment, she suddenly sensed a strange energy rushing toward her, causing her soul to tremble.

Fortunately, Ding Shui's own soul strength was quite decent, and she stabilized herself instantly. Following that, she scanned her surroundings using her spiritual power.

Then, she spotted a bee not far away.

A mechanical bee emitting energy waves.

The next second, Ding Shui wanted to try controlling that mechanical bee with her spiritual power. The result was both a success and a failure; she did successfully restrain the bee, but the very next instant, that mechanical bee started smoking and went dead.

Clearly, a self-destruction program had likely been set inside it.

"It really was an attack that killed the soul.

It seems that in this world, or at least the technological level of the civilization where the original owner was located, is not low. A tiny mechanical lifeform possesses the means to directly attack the soul. I cannot be as reckless as I was in the previous world; I must be careful.

My soul strength isn't that overpowered either."

At this moment, Ding Shui's expression was very ugly. She hadn't expected that just as she began her second mission, she would encounter such a tricky situation. She could easily handle one mechanical bee, but what if a whole hive came?

Let alone helping the original owner exact revenge.

If she wasn't careful, she herself could perish.

Considering this, Ding Shui quickly began to look around and used her spiritual power to carefully check whether there were any other mechanical bees or anything unusual.

At the very least, she had to ensure her own safety first.

"Network restored."

"You have one unread message!!!"

At this moment, the smart watch on Ding Shui's wrist rang again, and two messages forcibly popped up.

Before Ding Shui even had time to click on the unread message.

Another advertisement popped up.

A forced pop-up, forced to play for thirty seconds, and it was a cybersecurity service advertisement, looking like a smart recommendation.

After watching the advertisement, she clicked on the unread message.

Damn it... another advertisement.

Ding Shui was amused to the point of anger. People really do laugh when they are rendered utterly speechless. Following that, she naturally ignored the ads for the time being and continued to carefully inspect the surrounding environment—using both her eyes and her own spiritual power to the fullest.

After a dozen minutes or so, Ding Shui finished inspecting the room she was currently staying in. No new mechanical bees were found, so she should be safe for the time being.

To gather more information, Ding Shui naturally hurried to carefully sort through the original owner's memories.

The original owner lived in the interstellar era. Humanity had long since been able to leave the mother planet to survive in outer space, and national territories were no longer confined to land or oceans.

Instead, they spanned countless planets and even star domains.

However, none of this had much to do with the original owner. A month ago, she had been living in Huxing Town on the D-7 habitable planet of the Star River Empire, living the routine life of an ordinary citizen—going to work, getting off work, and eating three meals a day.

The Star River Empire had roughly three hundred habitable planets.

With a total population of nearly ten trillion.

Among them, there was only a single S-class planet. Judging by its size, orientation, resource environment, it actually fell far short of the S-class standard, but that was the cradle mother planet of the Star River Empire.

Over the past few centuries, it had continuously siphoned resources and population from other planets. Coupled with the fact that the political center and many top aristocratic families resided on that planet, the status of the Imperial Capital had always been the highest, and the designated rank was naturally the highest as well.

Next were the A-class planets, totaling four in total.

Either they possessed resources extremely rare even in the universe, or they possessed a rare and special natural environment, or they were exceptionally large in volume with a particularly crucial geographical location.

Before entering the interstellar era, they could be called super tier-one cities; in the interstellar era, they were super tier-one planets—densely populated, resource-rich, and with convenient transportation.

Possessing over a dozen wormhole hubs.

Class B, Class C, and Class D were relatively more ordinary habitable planets, closely related to size, environment, geography, and population, but they undoubtedly guaranteed suitability for human habitation. Even if they might not have been so suitable originally, they had been made suitable through terraforming.

Further down were Class E and Class F.

Class E planets were basically suitable for human habitation, but might contain hazardous environments, dangerous areas, or be life planets that had not yet been terraformed; these were generally classified as Class E planets.

Class F, however, were no longer considered habitable planets.

They were not among the three hundred habitable planets.

Because Class F planets were basically unsuitable for habitation.

This referred to the surface environment of the planet being basically unsuitable for human habitation. Because if building survival bases on certain planets also counted as habitable, with modern human technology, there were not many planets that were truly uninhabitable.

However, if one spent massive effort on extensive terraforming.

Such a planet could undoubtedly still be transformed into a habitable planet. But with the advancement of technology, there were simply too many planets available for development, or planets that could become habitable with simple modifications. At the same time, the empire's population had not grown to the extent where developing new habitable planets was a necessity for survival.

Therefore, the government had zero intention of developing them.

Generally, they were either left alone or perhaps sold to some major financial consortiums and aristocratic families. The requirement was quite simple: the various aspects of the planet could not be made worse than when they were sold. That means after buying them back, they could only terraform the planets in a positive direction, and were forbidden from engaging in destructive mining operations like draining the pond to catch fish. This also meant that after buying them back, those major consortiums and aristocratic families could only transform them into special planets like agricultural planets or tourism planets.

As a result, actual buyers were not very numerous.

After all, three trillion credits per planet was not a small amount.

Most were just left as they were.

The original owner, living on a Class-D planet, was basically equivalent to an ordinary small-town resident from several thousand years ago. She couldn't earn big money, but she didn't have too much pressure either. After completing sixteen years of compulsory education, because she lacked the money for further advanced studies, she found a job playing an NPC in a holographic game.

Competition in holographic games was fierce nowadays. To attract gimmicks and better serve high-end users, some gaming companies specially set up live-action NPC services, which users were only eligible to enjoy if they spent over a certain tier in the game.

As for those who didn't spend enough or freeloaded.

Of course, they were still served by the game system's artificial intelligence.

Although in reality, live-action NPCs were actually inferior to game system AIs in various aspects, occasional flaws made them feel more real, and most importantly, they generated buzz.

The original owner had just graduated only to find herself unemployed, wandering all over the internet, when she saw a certain gaming company hiring live-action NPCs. The recruitment pitch went: since the vast majority of ordinary people in real life are no different from NPCs anyway, why not enter the game and become an NPC?

Enjoy free games, and make money too!!!

Then the original owner was tempted and took action, successfully getting hired on the very day and beginning to wear holographic glasses every day to enter the designated holographic game to act as a live-action NPC.

This was a month ago.

That was on the third day after the original owner started working, when her parents went out on a trip following their usual routine. The original owner didn't think much of it at the time, but four days later, she received devastating news: the spaceship her parents were riding in had encountered the irresistible cosmic natural disaster of a supernova explosion ray while traversing a wormhole, causing it to crash and perish.

Their remains and bodies had not yet been found.

However, the appraisal agencies deemed survival basically impossible.

Because the accident occurred on A-1 Star, many procedures also needed to be handled there. Therefore, the original owner had to overcome her inner sorrow and pain, sell everything of value she possessed, and take out a personal loan to barely scrape together enough money to buy a spaceship ticket to A-1 Star.

Her family home was under her parents' names. Until the death certificate was issued and the inheritance procedures were completed, she could not use the family house as collateral for a loan.

She had to rely on personal credit loans to scrape together money.

The situation was very chaotic afterward, and the original owner was not very informed about many things, so she could only join other victims' families in demanding the deployment of more personnel to search for bodies and demand compensation.

Over ten days later, the spaceship wreckage and the victims' bodies were all found, but the bodies were mostly unrecognizable and required genetic identification to figure out who was who.

The original owner continued to join the other victims' families.

Lining up for genetic testing.

Up to this point, everything was still relatively normal, until the original owner had some blood drawn and taken to a genetic testing machine to complete gene sequencing. The staff told her that her parents were not among them.

Or rather, there were no matches with her among the remains.

And all the bodies had already been found by then.

The original owner was completely dumbfounded, and even felt somewhat happy, thinking there might have been a mistake and perhaps her parents weren't dead. After everyone else was tested, two bodies remained whose families had not been found. The testing personnel guessed that those two bodies were very likely the original owner's true parents, though whether they were biological or not was hard to say, so they could only comfort the original owner while applying to the civil affairs department for assistance.

They wanted to check the original owner's detailed records, including the detailed records of her parents, to see what was going on.

After all, huge compensation issues were involved later on.

Naturally, they had to be cautious.

Before the civil affairs department could respond, the Zhang family, one of the top ten aristocratic families in the Imperial Capital, made a phone call to the local civil affairs department first. Immediately afterward, the original owner was taken away in a daze and sent to the Zhang family's ancestral home in the Imperial Capital.

At the same time, she was informed that she was a member of the Zhang family.

And the sole direct-line heir of the Zhang family.

As for anything more, no one told her, and they wouldn't let her leave even if she wanted to. Afterward, she was forced through a series of procedures, officially returning to the family and being recorded in the Zhang family genealogy.

Seven days ago, Zhang Ai, the head of the Zhang family, passed away.

He was said to be the original owner's direct great-grandfather. Her grandparents and parents had successively died in various accidents, leaving the original owner seemingly as the sole surviving direct-line descendant of the Zhang family.

However, the collateral branches were quite thriving.

After Zhang Ai's death came the division of family property and the appointment of a new head of the household. The specific procedures were too numerous, and the participating Zhang family members and major institutions were also numerous. At that time, the original owner was somewhat dazed and out of it; even when digging through her memories, Ding Shui could not find any overly specific details. The original owner only vaguely heard that their direct lineage had made some wrong decision, leaving only a daughter whose educational background was quite low, so she was stripped of the family head qualification, and her core assets were also stripped away.

The only thing left was a farm, which was left to the original owner by her great-grandfather two days before his death through a spiritual contract, specifically using his remaining connections to contact the Imperial Notary General Bureau.

The notarization done via spiritual contract carried higher authority than an ordinary will, so this inheritance could not be seized by others—at least not openly and directly.

At that time, the original owner only remembered that the Zhang family members present looked somewhat exasperated, as if she had obtained something extraordinary. Immediately afterward, under the witness of the notary personnel, she signed a series of documents and completed the transfer of the farm's property rights.

Afterward, out of fear, the original owner left along with those notary personnel; this time, no one stopped her.

Later, under the guidance of the notary personnel, when she went to the Property Rights Bureau to complete the final registration, she realized what a massive inheritance her great-grandfather had left her on his deathbed. Though called just a farm, that farm measured a full 130 million qing; converted into mu, that amounted to over 30 billion mu of land.

No wonder the Zhang family members looked somewhat exasperated.

What kind of concept was this?

A habitable planet of normal size, without destroying the ecological environment, generally had a cultivable area of about 50 billion mu. Yes, it was that exaggerated.

Having figured out what a colossal inheritance she had obtained, the original owner temporarily put aside the various doubts in her mind. Using the card her great-grandfather had given her before his death, and most importantly using the money inside it, she bought a ticket for the Han-River spaceship—hailed as the safest in the entire empire—and headed to the Huaguang Agricultural Star to take over the farm.

Sitting on the spaceship, the original owner was too excited to sleep, her mind already pondering what she would do after taking over the farm, and from which direction she should investigate what had happened to her parents.

Why was there no blood relation between them?

And why did her biological parents die?

There were too many doubts and things she wanted to figure out in her mind. Anyway, once she officially took over the farm, she would have both money and leisure, with plenty of time to investigate slowly.

Therefore, the original owner was already writing all sorts of plans in the luxury cabin of the spaceship.

Afterward, the spaceship arrived at its destination quite smoothly and safely. The original owner, after two transfers, finally arrived at the Huaguang Agricultural Star. Without encountering any hardships, obstacles, or conflicts, she received ownership of the farm from the God of Contracts—one of the official top artificial intelligence master brains managing the farm on behalf—and officially became the owner of over 30 billion mu of land.

The God of Contracts was naturally not a god, but rather one of the top official artificial intelligence master brains. Compared to humans, many people trusted constrained top artificial intelligence more.

For massive inheritances or assets that required management, the handover process was basically entrusted for a period of time to the official top AI master brain, which coincidentally also cleared accounts and thoroughly investigated to ensure there were no hidden dangers.

Initially voluntary, it later became mandatory.

This made it convenient for the government to check accounts and taxes, avoided various issues like tax evasion, and better ensured that the recipient of the inheritance or assets took over an estate without problems.

Having thoroughly secured ownership of the farm, the original owner quickly realized her own shortcomings and signed up for quite a few study classes.

There was no help for it; she had to study.

Even if she could hire people to manage it, or even buy artificial intelligence to manage the farm, she couldn't remain entirely clueless.

However, before she had studied for even two days—to be precise, today was her third day arriving at her farm—she was murdered. And the culprit was most likely the mechanical bee that had self-destructed earlier. As for the specific murderer,

the original owner herself didn't know.

Before dying, she only guessed it might be the Zhang family.

She had just acquired such a massive inheritance that she couldn't spend it in ten lifetimes, yet aside from buying a ticket, she hadn't managed to enjoy anything. At the same time, a whole slew of doubts remained unanswered, and she was quietly murdered just like that.

Who wouldn't harbor resentment upon encountering such a situation?

Who wouldn't be consumed by monstrous hatred?!

The original owner's past experiences were roughly like this. As for more detailed contents, the attack the original owner suffered seemed to not only harm her soul but also caused a certain amount of damage to her cerebral cortex, causing many memories to become blurred, especially recent memories which were severely blurred.

For instance, that period of memory in the Zhang family.

When Ding Shui flipped through them, she vaguely felt like looking at flowers through fog. It was unclear whether it was due to cerebral cortex damage, or if her brain and even soul had been affected while she was in the Zhang family, leaving her groggy and lethargic.

Which resulted in that memory being naturally blurry!

Fortunately, Ding Shui had gathered the general information completely:

"Strange, the original owner had just graduated from university and hadn't had much contact with the upper echelons of society in the past, so it's one thing that she didn't understand certain dangers. But how could her great-grandfather, no matter how one looks at it, be a seasoned old fox? How could he not realize how dangerous it would be to leave such a massive inheritance to her?

It doesn't make sense. At the very least, he should have warned the original owner.

Or even taken some preventive measures."

"Forget it, no use thinking about that anymore. Right now, I still need to hurry up and scan to see if there are any other dangers, as well as work hard on security protection measures. I have to save my life before I can consider revenge and investigating the situation.

Where is the farm management hub located again?"

Earlier, Ding Shui didn't know the original owner's specific situation and assets, so she only simply checked the residence. But after reading the original owner's memories, she knew that what needed checking was far more than just the residence.

The entire farm needed a thorough inspection.

And the farm management hub was the core of the farm, capable of monitoring and managing the entire farm. Trying to use spiritual power to carefully check over 30 billion mu of land was pure daydreaming; she still had to rely on technological means to get it done!

Muttering to herself, Ding Shui had already successfully found the location of the farm management hub from the original owner's memories. As she walked toward it, she drew another golden finger:

"Right, I can open another golden finger blind box."

[Beep! Super Farm is binding!!]

[Binding successful!]

[Beep! The Super Farm is severely damaged. The spacetime trading function is closed, the cross-time vegetable stealing function is closed, the intermediate mall, advanced mall, and mythical mall are closed. The nine-color breath-soil land has degraded into ordinary black soil, and the million mu of land has shrunk to ten mu. Due to irresistible forces, the farm has been reset to its initial state and cannot be upgraded!!!]

"?? Super Farm? Ten mu of land!?"

As the farm bound and broadcasted the relevant situation, Ding Shui had already used her spiritual power to check the situation inside the farm. It was simply a thatched cottage with ten mu of land, not even a dog in sight. The thatched cottage wasn't a place to live, but rather the primary mall and warehouse, where various fruit and vegetable seeds could be purchased and agricultural products stored.

They were all common crop seeds found on the market.

Forage grass, wheat, radishes, and the like; the highest grade was merely ordinary ginseng or snow lotus seeds.

There were no special seeds whatsoever.

If she were currently in an era of famine or living in troubled times, this Super Farm golden finger would indeed be pretty good, at least allowing her to grow some things to ensure she didn't starve to death. Even if she were in an ordinary modern metropolis of an ordinary world, she could rely on the peculiar time flow inside the Super Farm—such as radishes that could be harvested in twelve hours—to open a fruit and vegetable grocery store and make a living.

But now she had over 30 billion mu of land.

Having these ten mu of land was truly as insipid as chicken ribs—useless to keep, painful to discard.

Although somewhat speechless, adhering to the principle of resolutely not wasting, Ding Shui still decided to put this farm to use. However, there was definitely no need to plant things like forage grass or white radishes. After a brief pondering, she used the 1,000 gold coins given after the Super Farm was reset to buy some ginseng seeds and planted them. The seed description page said they could grow into century-old ginseng; whether they could fetch a good price was hard to say.

But it was definitely more cost-effective than planting white radishes.

Fortunately, this wasn't QQ Farm; she didn't need to upgrade to buy advanced seeds, nor did she need to spend money on upgrades to increase land, otherwise Ding Shui estimated she wouldn't even bother tossing around with it.

After planting, because ginseng required one hundred hours to mature and be harvested, Ding Shui naturally withdrew her spiritual power from the Super Farm and had the smart watch on her wrist set an alarm to ensure she could timely enter the farm to harvest the ginseng after one hundred hours.

Then she had to watch another thirty-second ad.

At the same time, Ding Shui roughly understood why her smart watch had so many ads. The original owner's smart watch was a contract phone she bought ten years ago with money from her work-study program. She didn't clear on what the specific contract was, but the price was very cheap—only half of a regular watch—and the monthly expenses were also low. The downside was that there were exceptionally many ads, which could neither be skipped nor closed.

However, the original owner never had much money.

So she just had to endure it.

Later on, although she had money, she hadn't had money for long, and she hadn't thought to replace this smart watch in time. Moreover, too many things were bound to this smart watch, and unbinding and rebinding them one by one would take time.

As a result, it kept getting delayed like this.

However, she had already bought the latest deluxe version of the smart watch yesterday, which would be delivered today. Her original plan was to take the time to complete the binding of various software information once the deluxe smart watch arrived, but unfortunately...

The disgusting experience of having to watch a thirty-second ad for every single operation on this contract-phone version of the smart watch immediately led Ding Shui to decide that as soon as the newly bought deluxe smart watch arrived, she would rush to replace it regardless of whether she had time or not, otherwise it would inevitably affect her mood.

After a little while longer, Ding Shui belatedly realized that she was not a soul right now, so her speed really couldn't be fast. Furthermore, she was still over a hundred miles away from the farm management hub; if she relied solely on her feet, she feared she wouldn't walk there until evening:

"It seems this brain of mine has indeed been affected; thinking things through isn't very agile. Xiaozhi, summon the lotus flyer, destination: farm management hub."

As soon as her voice fell, a lotus platform flew over from not far away.

This was a flyer that came naturally with the farm, with several stationed every fixed distance. After all, the farm was too large, and the manor where Ding Shui currently lived was also huge, covering nearly 10,000 mu.

Much larger than an imperial palace.

Without a flyer, walking purely on foot simply wouldn't do.

Once Ding Shui stepped onto the lotus platform, it automatically raised a protective shield and then flew at the speed of sound, reaching her destination in a mere instant. By that time, the thirty-second ad on the smart watch on Ding Shui's wrist hadn't even finished playing yet.

Hadn't she told the smart watch to summon the lotus flyer? Naturally, a thirty-second ad had to pop up.

While the smart watch was playing ads, Ding Shui had already entered the farm management hub. Stepping onto the small hovering flyer placed at the entrance, she arrived at the central management room in no time, and saw a person operating something.

Looking closer, how very familiar.

That fellow looked identical to the original owner.