The Strongest Brain in the Interstellar

Jiang Hui thought about the interstellar stories she’d read in her previous life, where protagonists dominated with their culinary skills, and suddenly felt the disparity between worlds. Clearly, not all interstellar civilizations were the same.

If she really ended up settling here, trying to make a living by cooking was probably not going to work. Besides… her cooking skills weren’t that great to begin with.

Hmm, this drink—she wasn’t sure what kind of juice it was, but it tasted fresh and was quite good. Everything was delicious.

As it was mealtime, the dining area grew busier while Jiang Hui focused on her food.

A man and woman sat at a small table next to hers. Oddly enough, though the tables weren’t that close, Jiang Hui could hear their conversation perfectly. Even when she tried not to listen, bits of their dialogue kept drifting over, making it impossible to ignore.

She figured she should probably finish her meal quickly to avoid feeling like she was eavesdropping on their private conversation.

But Jiang Hui didn’t pay too much attention to it. After all, in a public place, it’s hard to avoid hearing some conversations. This was already pretty good; from what she had seen so far, the manners of the interstellar people were quite decent. Despite the large number of people dining in the restaurant, everyone kept their voices at a reasonable level, making the overall atmosphere quite comfortable.

The two people next to her were talking, while she was eating. They were doing their thing, and she was doing hers… but the problem was that their conversation was truly bizarre. Jiang Hui thought it was the kind of story that would be too strange even for a novel she might have read in her previous life.

The two seemed to be relatives of a patient. They first talked about the patient’s condition, but Jiang Hui wasn’t really paying attention at that point, so she didn’t catch much of it. The absurd part came later—

Their relative was in the neurology department, which was quite close to where Jiang Hui was staying, just one floor above. When she had come out of the treatment pod, she had been unconscious and almost sent to neurology herself, which was for more severely injured patients.

After discussing their own family member, the two started gossiping about a patient in the next room.

So gossip really is a human instinct, no matter the era or place, Jiang Hui couldn’t help but think to herself, just as she happened to catch this part of the conversation.

The patient they were talking about hadn’t been admitted to the hospital because of an injury. He was brought in by the military, immediately taken for surgery, and after the operation, the soldiers seemed to have retrieved something before leaving.

“…So, could the patient in the next room have done something he shouldn’t have?”

“Probably not. The people who escorted him took what they needed and left without looking back, just abandoning the guy there. No follow-up at all.”

“Then what exactly happened?”

“Hey, I heard a rumor about it—can’t guarantee it’s true—something I overheard from a nurse.”

Jiang Hui couldn’t help but internally comment, “So the ‘not guaranteed’ rumor mill exists even now, huh?”

But soon, she wasn’t in the mood to joke anymore because what they were saying really caught her attention.

…

“It seems like someone higher up noticed something strange and sent people down to investigate. They found that the guy had been manipulated—his neurons had been implanted with a control device and a receiver. To gather evidence, they sent him to the hospital for surgery to remove it.”

“How could he fall for something like that? Didn’t he ever pay attention to safety guidelines in early education? You should never accept any external source of mental energy or attempt to incorporate it into your own. That stuff can talk, think, and even deceive people—how did he not suspect something?”

…

Jiang Hui found it increasingly hard to focus on what was being said because after hearing the earlier part, she was struggling to even finish her meal.

What kind of novel-like plot was this? The story was simple, but its direction was bizarre. It was hard to believe this was happening in real life—novels in her previous world wouldn’t even dare to write something this far-fetched.

Apparently, the person in question was just an ordinary student, living a normal life without any issues. But recently, he came across something called a “system”…

Yes, you heard that right—it was called a “system,” the same kind of tool you’d find in popular web novels on Blue Planet.

This system claimed it had “bound” itself to him, and as long as he completed tasks as its host, he would receive various rewards, including items and large sums of money.

Sound familiar? Exactly, it’s the typical plot of those system novels you could find everywhere on Blue Planet’s online novel platforms, without even the slightest twist.

This young man actually believed it. He started following the system’s instructions, doing various tasks to claim rewards. Initially, he was skeptical, but over time, he got more and more absorbed.

He began to shine at school, gaining recognition, and gradually he came to fully trust the system, convinced it would lead him to the pinnacle of success.

But he was unaware that danger was silently approaching him.

One day, while he was performing tasks as usual, he was caught off guard by the military, which had been investigating him for days.

What followed was a series of investigations and exposes. It turned out that this so-called system was not a product from a higher civilization as it claimed, but rather an illegal control tool developed within the same star system.

This thing was linked to the interstellar black market and various illicit transactions.

It implanted itself into the brains of interstellar citizens in some way, then used the guise of a “system” to lure them into a trap.

After gaining the trust of these hosts, it would begin demanding they carry out “tasks,” while using controllers and cameras to upload the hosts’ task processes to the black web for entertainment. The rewards they received were actually payments made by those who watched the tasks on the black web, from which the black web operators took a substantial cut.

The black web even offered a function for customized tasks, allowing those behind the scenes to “tailor” the hosts’ lives for more enjoyment.

As a result, the host, being the only one completely unaware of anything, would be continuously lured by the promise of rewards to carry out these “tasks” until their entire life was completely controlled by others.

Doesn’t this sound absurd? Yet, such things have happened more than once in the interstellar realm. Although each scam may use different rhetoric, the tactics are the same. Most of them are orchestrated by the black web and black markets, using other people’s lives and fates for entertainment, completely disregarding citizens’ right to privacy.

The Interstellar Patrol Bureau has been working hard to expose such incidents, and every time one occurs, it is directly reported in the news. There is always a headline about these kinds of scams, yet there are still fools who fall for them.

There’s even a ridiculous case of an idiot from a remote star zone who was duped for over one hundred and fifty years. By the time he discovered the damage to his brain, he was already completely ruined, having gained nothing while living in disarray.

As that person mentioned earlier, safety education manuals repeatedly teach that children should not abuse psychic powers and must protect their own mental well-being. In the end, it all boils down to greed; otherwise, they wouldn’t have ended up in such a dire situation.

Hahaha, doesn’t it feel like a novel has come to life?