Chapter 51: Transition (Part Two)

With things to do and a clear sense of purpose for settling down, Jiang Hui's days in the interstellar era passed quite smoothly. Gaining a little more understanding of this world every day, and running around busily to fill her empty home, the days simply slipped away.

The opening day of Besca Intermediate Academy was not far off, now only a dozen days away.

Following the usual mindset of a student from planet Earth, she prepared to purchase her daily necessities for the start of school in advance. To her surprise, when she called the academy's advisory office, she learned that stationery, books, and daily necessities were all included in the miscellaneous enrollment fees. They would be uniformly ordered by the school and distributed to each new student upon arrival.

In other words, when the time came, Jiang Hui only needed to bring her optical brain to report at the academy, and she wouldn't have to worry about anything else.

Ah, she didn't even need to buy stationery or snacks. Starting school this way really lacked a lot of fun. Jiang Hui felt a slight sense of regret.

Because the specific model of the holographic capsule Jiang Hui had purchased happened to be out of stock on Planet 732, it needed to be shipped via interstellar freight. The intelligent system was of the same brand as the holographic capsule and was scheduled to be delivered together with it. Therefore, Jiang Hui still hadn't received either the intelligent system or the holographic capsule.

From initial anticipation to a growing sense of indifference, she had begun to live her daily life with a normal mindset.

During these days, Jiang Hui had purchased many electronic books, intending to transfer all of them into her spiritual space. As it turned out, she had still underestimated the habits deeply rooted in the bones of people from Earth...

Although such e-books were very inexpensive and convenient to purchase—requiring only a few taps on the interstellar network to buy and read—they were still e-books after all. Reading them lacked a tactile feel, and the reading experience was discounted by quite a few degrees.

As for novel-like books bought specifically to pass the time, they were hardly worth reading word for word. After reading for a long time and examining them closely, if she engaged her brain even slightly, she increasingly felt like a fool for spending so much time reading such things.

Meanwhile, the recommended must-read books suggested by interstellar residents were mostly quite obscure. The ideas conveyed in some of them ran counter to Jiang Hui's mindset, naturally leaving her thoroughly dizzy and confused. She quickly abandoned reading books of this category.

Next came professional or reference books. These were even worse; while she could read them, the electronic format cut her memory and learning efficiency in half. Jiang Hui still felt that paper versions of such books were much better. Otherwise, she might as well just watch video tutorials, where the instructors explained things much more clearly.

Consequently, out of nearly a hundred interstellar books Jiang had bundled and purchased, only a dozen or so were readable, and almost all of them were historical texts. Titles like *The History of Interstellar Evolution*, *Human Prehistoric Migration: From the Mother Planet to the Nebula*, *Ninety-Nine Famous Battles*, and *Starting from the Ninth Stellar Era*—books related to human development and the history of warfare—were read by Jiang Hui with great relish.

Even so, her spiritual space had gained many times over in valuable books. Armed with this knowledge related to stellar history, Jiang Hui felt that her previously rootless existence in this world was becoming increasingly secure, and her mind settled down significantly.

As for the idea of purchasing physical books to read, Jiang Hui hadn't even considered it. Such items had now become high-priced handcrafted works, with each copy costing many times more than its original value. They were meant only for scholars who needed to conduct research on physical books.

If Jiang Hui did not possess her spiritual space, buying a dozen or twenty books to delve into professional knowledge might have been slightly worthwhile. But with this miraculous spiritual space, buying books had instead become a waste—a waste of both money and time.

After much investigation and searching, Jiang Hui finally found a compromise: she could go to the book museum in the city center to read physical books. The books she read and accumulated there could then be materialized into her spiritual space, allowing her to read them whenever she pleased later on.

Thus, in the days waiting for the holographic capsule to arrive, Jiang Hui spent her time at the book museum in the city center's primary ring, often staying for an entire day.

Today she was going out as well, but her destination was not the book museum; she planned to attend a hands-on mecha crafting experience class.

That seemed rather strange... Jiang Hui hadn't even received her holographic capsule yet, and apart from occasional spaceships flying across the sky, she hadn't touched anything related to mechas in all these days. Why would she suddenly decide to take a mecha crafting course? This story went back to her day at the book museum.

The book museum was not a public library; it was truly a museum. It housed many famous, selected books from human stellar history, and the vast majority of them were available for people to flip through.

The museum was divided into a main hall and sub-halls.

Strictly speaking, the main hall of the book museum was the traditional kind of museum people understood. It housed a collection of original physical books, all out-of-print editions auctioned by the museum from outside sources. Naturally, these original books were not made available for people to handle and flip through; they were strictly for exhibition, accompanied by simulated page-turning devices on-site for visitors to view their contents.

The sub-halls were divided into two parts. One part consisted of commercially oriented areas, such as leisure zones and specialty shops selling merchandise, which were industries directly subordinate to the museum.

The other part was Jiang Hui's usual destination: the book archives. This archives room was not restricted to the books found in the main hall; it acquired copyrights for various kinds of books and turned them into physical volumes placed in the archives for people to consult. This section actually resembled a library more closely, except that one needed to purchase a membership to enter. Jiang Hui had bought a one-month membership just to check out the books inside, intending to renew it for a longer period if the books proved useful.

That day, she finished "scanning" her target early and felt somewhat tired. Remembering that she hadn't yet visited the other side of the sub-hall, she wandered over to take a look.

To her surprise, this kind of merchandise culture had made its way into the interstellar era as well. It showed that no matter how human civilization developed, it still carried its own set of rules; many things remained essentially the same under a different guise, unchanged through tens of thousands of years.

To be honest, the small novelty items produced by interstellar high-tech manufacturing were naturally much more interesting than industrial products from Earth. However, to interstellar residents who were already blasé about such things, they were probably just another tax on intelligence. Jiang Hui merely intended to stroll around and take a look.

There was a well-reviewed dessert shop next door, and Jiang Hui was planning to walk over there to grab a bite when she was attracted by a huge poster pasted on the adjacent wall.

It depicted a large array of cool, uniquely shaped mechas, stacked layer upon layer to fill the entire promotional poster in a most spectacular fashion. Only a blank space left in the middle displayed two large lines of titles: *Hands-on Mecha Crafting Experience Class, Jointly Sponsored Event by Dongbo Group & Book Museum...*