Chapter 52: Thank You, My Little Tree

Lu Meng wanted to die.
All of her carefully cultivated images—calm, restrained, steadfast, ladylike, gentle, and considerate—were completely ruined in a single instant!
However...
So what if that damned sentinel saw it? Who cares anyway?
In her heart, his image was no better than a pile of dog shit!
Thinking about this made her feel a little better.
She opened the cabinet, brewed herself a cup of soy milk, and grabbed a piece of bread.
This was the soy milk she had spent ages searching for online before she finally managed to buy it! In this wretched interstellar era, you could hardly find anyone selling soy milk.
Whenever she opened the shopping app, all she saw were various nutrient solutions and compressed biscuits, which left her, a pure-blooded Earthling, in utter despair.
To be honest, isn't the whole point of living life about eating and drinking?
She couldn't quite understand what the point of living like this was.
At times like this, she felt extremely fortunate to have entered the military district. Since the military district was filled with sentinels who required heavy energy replenishment, the Empire specially approved the consumption of real food within military bases, and the annually supplied rations were quite substantial.
That was why raw ingredients were available here in the military district.
Besides, she had read online that outside the base, even if you could find ingredients for sale, the prices were absurdly high.
It was truly wonderful to be here!
Having a government-issued job was genuinely blissful! Even if she had to live like this for the rest of her life, she would gladly accept it!
It was just that...
At the thought of something, Lu Meng's face filled with worry once again.
Ace was basically a ticking time bomb!
And he was a ticking time bomb she had brought upon herself!
If he were ever discovered, she would be in serious danger.
Yet...
She simply couldn't bear it. When she looked at him back then and saw that desperate look in his eyes—just like those people in her past life who waited in despair for death during the zombie outbreak—she couldn't just stand by and do nothing.
In her past life, the director of the orphanage often said she was far too sensitive. She would cry when a little bird died in the winter, cry when she saw others get hurt, and when she saw a spider spinning a web by the wall, she would be terrified out of her wits while simultaneously worrying whether it could catch any prey to fill its belly.
Later, when she went to see a doctor, the doctor told her that her nervous system was naturally more developed than most, making her empathy exceptionally strong.
She suspected that her ability to awaken superpower might also be related to this physical condition.
Never mind, what's done is done.
Lu Meng sighed inwardly. She wondered how effective her psychological counseling had been on him!
She hadn't thought about it these past few days and had even forgotten to ask.
Yet for some reason, she felt an inexplicable sense of confidence, which was a signal transmitted to her by her companion vine.
That was, she was capable of counseling his mental sea, and for her, it was a very effortless task.
It would just take a little time.
In fact, her decision to help Ace was largely due to this underlying confidence.
She and her companion vine had been symbiotic ever since she awakened her superpower. When she was healing superpower users at the healing base, it had given her this exact confidence countless times.
*We can heal him, don't be afraid!*
And this time, she chose to trust it, which also meant trusting herself.
Seemingly sensing her thoughts, three tiny vines poked their heads out from her bracelet, rubbed against the back of her hand, and gave her an affectionate caress, as if planting a tender kiss.
Originally, it hadn't been a vine, but a tree that lived inside her body.
For some unknown reason, it had gradually withered away, eventually leaving behind only three slender, frail vines.
She turned her wrist, allowing the vines to crawl up the back of her hand and brush against her fingertips.
With a slight movement of her fingers, she gently stroked them, and the warm, soft touch melted her heart.
"Thank you for always staying with me."
Coming to such an unfamiliar place, the thing that made her happiest was that her little tree had not abandoned her.
The vines rubbed against her fingertips once more, as if replying, *You're welcome.*