Chapter 3: Could It Be the Lin Family Meddling?

Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Could It Be the Lin Family Meddling?

"Impossible!" Shu Xin grew emotional at having her family’s feelings questioned. Realizing her tone had been a bit harsh, she immediately softened it. "Yaoyao, don’t overthink things. Your uncles all adore you and Xiao Juzi!"

Shu Yao said dejectedly, "But we’re from Zone 9."

’Once you had that label, you were destined to be looked down on.’

"What’s wrong with Zone 9? Even if it’s the most backward district, it’s still territory of the Interstellar Federation!" Shu Xin declared resolutely. "I don’t care how outsiders see it, but Mom can promise you, no one in the Shu Family will look down on you and Xiao Juzi because of where you come from!"

The Shu Family was the highest-ranking nobility in the Fourth Star Zone. Shu Yao’s three uncles were all influential figures throughout the entire Interstellar Federation.

Her eldest uncle, Shu Guohua, was the governor of the Fourth Star Zone. He had originally planned to come to Imperial Hospital to wait for the results of the assessment. Shu Yao, worried that the label she and her son carried would bring him shame, had declined his offer to accompany them.

Her second uncle, Shu Shengzhe, was a professor in the Mystical Department at Imperial University, and his schedule today was packed solid with classes. The university couldn’t find a substitute teacher, so his leave request wasn’t approved.

Her youngest uncle, Shu Chao Yu, was a precinct officer in the Fourth Star Zone. He was currently posted up in his unit’s household registration department, waiting for the naturalization application his sister was sending. He’d been waiting so long he was about to grow mushrooms on his head.

After the third application was rejected, Shu Xin contacted Shu Chao Yu through her Light Brain and asked anxiously:

"Xiao Chao, did your department receive Xiao Juzi’s registration application?"

Shu Chao Yu looked confused. "You sent an application?"

Shu Xin stressed, "We’ve submitted it three times! And it was rejected every time!"

"That’s strange," Shu Chao Yu said. "I haven’t received a single application on my end. Let me check the back-end system."

He checked the household registration department’s back-end system and confirmed they hadn’t received a single registration application for his little grandnephew.

"What’s going on?" Shu Xin was baffled. "Could there be a problem with your department’s system?"

"The system couldn’t be the problem." Shu Chao Yu could see the household registration department’s system was operating normally. "Sis, don’t worry. I’ll find out where the breakdown is."

After ending the video call, he quickly sent Shu Xin a text message.

"Sis, can you explain things to Yaoyao? I don’t want her to get the wrong idea."

Shu Xin was even more concerned about what Shu Yao was thinking than he was.

"Don’t worry, Yaoyao," Shu Xin said with a composed smile, though her tone was cautious. "Your youngest uncle is looking into it. All we have to do is go home and wait for news."

Shu Yao nodded, praying inwardly that the process of getting Xiao Juzi’s registration wouldn’t hit any more snags.

Seeing his mother so fraught with worry over this, Xiao Juzi felt bad too.

He reached out a small paw, rubbing his mother’s cheek with its soft, pink pad, and pressed his fluffy little head against her.

"Mama, it’s okay if I don’t get registered."

Shu Yao rubbed his pair of ears, her voice a mix of love and exasperation as she tried to scare him. "If you don’t have anything to prove your identity and you’re caught running around, the police officers or patrol bots will treat you as a suspicious person, arrest you, and throw you in an interstellar prison, you hear me!"

Unregistered individuals could barely survive in the Interstellar Federation. Most would become the abandoned people, eventually ending up in a place like Zone 9, cut off from the light of day, just to eke out a miserable existence.

Xiao Juzi giggled childishly. "Then I’ll just have them arrest Mama too, so we can be locked up together!"

"You really are Mama’s best boy, aren’t you!" Shu Yao said, furiously ruffling the fur on his cat head.

Xiao Juzi’s orange fur was a complete mess.

Shu Xin couldn’t help but chuckle. In a tone meant to soothe a child, yet with resounding conviction, she promised Xiao Juzi, "With your grandma and three great-uncles around, no one is going to bully you or your mama!"

Despite feeling the overwhelming goodwill, Xiao Juzi remained wary of this grandmother.

Leaving Imperial Hospital, the two adults and one child boarded a Flying Machine to return from the First District to the Fourth District.

Xiao Juzi, who had reverted to his human form during the trip, was so startled by someone jumping out the moment he walked through the door that he shifted back into his beast form.

"Great-uncle’s little darling! Gimme a kiss!" Shu Chao Yu said, grabbing the bristling ball of fur and taking a deep huff.

Unable to escape his clutches no matter how much he struggled, a disheveled and helpless Xiao Juzi could only cry out to Shu Yao for help.

"Mama, help!"

From Zone 8 onward, the little kitten would never be able to escape his fate of being "huffed" whenever he saw Shu Chao Yu.

Shu Chao Yu’s cat-huffing was like a hurricane!

He basically used his own face as a rag, pressing it against Xiao Juzi, rubbing and nuzzling ferociously until the poor little guy was a shapeless wreck, and still he wouldn’t stop.

Shu Yao picked up the little blue denim overalls and small white sweater that had fallen off the kitten. Seeing Xiao Juzi rendered completely powerless by Shu Chao Yu’s suffocating affection, she couldn’t help but gloat.

"Go on and enjoy your great-uncle’s love!"

"Xiao Chao!" Shu Xin was in no mood for games. "Why isn’t your department approving Xiao Juzi’s registration application?" she asked, her tone tinged with complaint.

Shu Chao Yu held Xiao Juzi, a look of pure bliss on his face.

"I took leave and came back just to talk to you about this," he said, his smile fading as his expression turned serious. "Normally, after you submit the application, the Fourth District’s household registration department should get the notification. But our department definitely did not receive Xiao Juzi’s registration application. I suspect it’s being intercepted before it can even be transmitted to us."

Shu Xin’s expression changed. "Could it be the Lin Family...?" she guessed, indignant.

Shu Yao’s biological father’s family couldn’t get over the fact that she and her son were from Zone 9. They were terrified of anyone finding out that two pieces of trash from a junkyard were related to them, so they kept their distance. They still hadn’t shown their faces, using their arrogant attitude to make it clear to everyone they had no intention of acknowledging their kin.

"No," Shu Chao Yu said, shaking his head. He analyzed the situation, "The Lin Family are, at best, a mid-to-upper-tier noble family in the Second Star Zone. No matter how big their business gets, their reach doesn’t extend into the Federation’s public security systems."

The Interstellar Federation’s public security systems all share information, but each Star District’s system is independent and equal. There’s no hierarchical chain of command. They’ve always worked in collaboration, and there has never been a case of one interfering with another.

That’s why Shu Chao Yu was certain Xiao Juzi’s registration application hadn’t been blocked by the system in Zone 2.

"If the Lin Family isn’t meddling, then how could your department not have received the application!" Shu Xin just couldn’t understand.

"I suspect Xiao Juzi’s registration application was..." Shu Chao Yu’s expression was grave. "Intercepted by the Main Brain."

The Main Brain—the control core of the entire Interstellar Federation, possessing supreme intelligence.

Shu Yao was completely stunned.

"Why would the Main Brain intercept my son’s registration application?" She looked at Shu Xin and couldn’t help but ask, "Mom, did we break some kind of rule?"