Chapter Eight: My Friend Desires a Double S Star

There are two flowers in bloom; let us speak of each branch in turn.

When Chen Jiaojiao returned home, she went straight to her elder brother. “Brother, could you look into something for me? Why was Yun Yun assigned this graduation project?”

Watching his sister cling to him, Chen Xuyang felt somewhat helpless. He knew she had a close friend, but he had never expected her to rush home immediately for that friend’s sake.

Now that she had grown up, his sister felt the family kept too close an eye on her. The moment she stepped outside, she would run wild. Nine times out of ten, she would not come back even when called. Yet this time, before anyone had called her, she had come running to him on her own.

It seemed she truly cared about this friend. He would have to meet her when he had the chance.

“Perhaps your school is short of money again, or lacking resources.” As the heir to the Chen family, Chen Xuyang naturally knew a few things.

A graduation project this outrageous had never been intended for ordinary students in the first place. It was simply one of the school’s methods for squeezing benefits out of the major families.

How did he know?

Ha!

The Chen family had once made a colossal investment in its history, pouring in every imaginable resource, along with manpower and material support, all for the sake of a single diploma. Could anyone believe that?

Most importantly, because the final result had failed to reach Double-A status, it had been handed over to the school. Whenever he thought of that, Chen Xuyang remembered the way his ancestors would grit their teeth whenever they mentioned the matter.

Damn it, they had provided absolutely everything, only to be told in the end that it still was not good enough. Apart from a supposedly generous reward, they had received nothing. But did the Chen family lack that paltry reward?

Still, Jiaojiao’s friend was an ordinary person. Even if the school wanted to exploit her, what could they possibly get? His sister was very perceptive. There had to be more to this.

“I’ll investigate it properly.” Chen Xuyang could not help feeling sorry for Jiaojiao’s friend.

Back then, after all the great families had suffered such a loss in silence, how could they possibly let it go? Following the principle that since they had been caught in the rain, they had to tear apart the umbrella of those who came after them, they had raised the requirements for the reward as well.

For example, the final reward could only be obtained by constructing a Double-S planet. Furthermore, the graduation project could not be canceled. Once someone completed it, the major families would provide additional rewards.

But the school was no fool either. If they said the project could not be canceled, then of course they would not cancel it. Canceling it would be tantamount to admitting that they had only wanted to exploit the families. The deed had been done, but they still had to save face.

Thus, the school directly lowered the probability of drawing a barren-planet design to 0.0000000000000000000000000001 percent. In other words, unless someone was blessed with an extraordinary destiny, it was impossible to draw it.

“Didn’t your dean say she could join the graduate research team directly?” Chen Xuyang asked. Those people might be somewhat useless, but getting an undergraduate student through the course should still be within their abilities.

“But… Yun Yun wants to do it herself.” Chen Jiaojiao was close to tears. Having seen the enormous expenditures in her family’s history, she knew that even the tiniest fraction of those expenses would be enough to crush Hua Yun beneath their weight.

“What?” Chen Xuyang could not help crying out. “She wants to do it herself? That’s completely delusional!”

“Yun Yun wants a planet,” Chen Jiaojiao continued cautiously. “Brother, what should I do?”

“You can watch from the sidelines and figure it out yourself. And listen carefully, Chen Jiaojiao: you are not allowed to use anything from the family to help her!”

It was not that the Chen family was incapable of helping. The family possessed many planets now, but most of them were resource planets, and those were entirely different from developing a barren world.

“Oh.” Chen Jiaojiao could not help deflating. She did not dare touch the family’s assets either.

Fortunately, she had a small private fund of her own!

That night, a post appeared on the StarNet.

—Question: My friend wants a Double-S planet. What should I do?