CHAPTER 2: Call the Police 

Transmigrated?

Yi Yao wouldn’t mind if someone had taken over his body. If he could go off to another world and be the overpowered protagonist, he wouldn’t have to deal with his foolish daughter anymore.

“What’s under the books?” Yi Yao stared at the stack on the desk.

“Papers! Just exam papers,” Yi Xiaoya said quickly. “Since I’m transferring schools, I was worried about falling behind, so I’ve been doing some private cramming.”

Yi Yao glanced at her. Her acting was terrible. She looked clearly nervous, didn’t know where to put her hands, and even her pinky finger kept twitching.

Sensing something was off, Yi Xiaoya quickly sat down and placed her hands neatly on the table. No—she picked up a ballpoint pen instead. “See, Dad? It’s really exam papers. I’ve already started doing them.”

“Go on, then,” Yi Yao said. “Once you’re done, let me take a look.”

“Can you even understand it?” Yi Xiaoya muttered.

“Even if I don’t, your tutor will,” Yi Yao replied. “Your foreign language is weak, and your math and physics aren’t that great either.”

“Maybe it’s because I’m not Newton. My head never got hit by an apple, so—” Yi Xiaoya trailed off as she saw Yi Yao pick up an apple from the fruit plate. She nearly bit her own tongue. Holy crap, is he about to murder his own daughter?

“Dad, calm down! I’m your only child!” she blurted. “The first person to describe a flower as beautiful is a genius. The second one? Clever. But the third, fourth, fifth? That’s just being unoriginal. Wasting time. Hitting someone with an apple is the same deal.”

Yi Yao’s lips twitched. His discount daughter really had a talent for spinning nonsense. Instead of throwing the apple, he calmly performed a demonstration—grabbing the large apple with both hands and snapping it cleanly in two, then handing one half to her.

“Eat. Get some vitamins in you,” he said. “Since you love chemistry so much, you can enter a chemistry competition.”

“…” Yi Xiaoya blinked. She had never taken part in a chemistry competition before. Teachers always picked students with better overall grades.

Back in middle school, she’d get sleepy during chemistry. It was too easy. In high school, she didn’t fall asleep anymore, but the content still wasn’t that challenging—lots of people were able to score nearly full marks.

Even at a mediocre school like Fourth High, dozens of students per grade were acing chemistry. Why would the teacher pick her for a competition? She only studied the textbook stuff. If she joined, it’d be a straight-up slaughter—of her.

“Dad, are you trying to publicly expose how much I suck?” Yi Xiaoya glared at him. “You know what? You should just go raise a side account. But before that, hand over the dowry you were gonna give me. Even an illegitimate kid has inheritance rights, you know.”

The next second, Yi Yao moved lightning-fast—he snatched away the tablet hidden under her books.

“Give it back!” Yi Xiaoya hadn’t expected him to take her tablet. “I need it for studying!”

“Can you eat bananas and milk together? What foods clash? How can an illegitimate daughter maximize her inheritance from her biological dad?” Yi Yao read aloud from her search history after tapping open the browser.

“…” Yi Xiaoya’s face stiffened. “Uh… I wasn’t trying to poison you or anything. You’re my only parent left. If I poisoned you, who’d keep running the company and making money for me?”

She folded her hands in front of her chest. “Dad, you’re not actually planning to donate all your money to charity, right? Spare a little for your poor, pitiful daughter?”

“I already told your teacher you’ll be entering the chemistry competition,” Yi Yao said. “So what if you’re only good at one subject? You’ll compete with the score you do have. If you place in an official competition, you can get a recommendation to a good university.”

“Why not just donate a couple buildings to those universities?” Yi Xiaoya said. “Wouldn’t that be easier?”

“The college entrance exam is supposed to be fair. No matter how much money you have, you can’t just buy your way into college.”

“So I wait until I get in, then you donate buildings and get the professors to give me good grades?” Yi Xiaoya asked. “No, wait, if I’m already in college, I don’t need good grades—passing is enough. If you’ve got that much money, just give it to me.”

“You can get into a master’s program without taking the entrance exam!” Yi Yao said.

“Oh, I get it,” Yi Xiaoya said, eyes lighting up. “So you’ll donate buildings again, and even if I slack off and bomb my finals, I’ll still—”

“Heh.” Yi Yao sneered. “If your scores are trash, don’t even think about a dowry. And don’t expect money to get you good grades.”

“Fine, I won’t. But if you want me to do this chemistry competition, then I need my tablet back. I’ve gotta get ahead on college-level content if I’m gonna wipe the floor with everyone else.”

“Here.” Yi Yao pulled a watch from his pocket. “Genius kids’ smartwatch. You can make calls with it.”

When Yi Xiaoya saw the so-called “genius” smartwatch, she fell silent. Genius? More like useless. It couldn’t run games or search for info. What good was a watch like that? It wouldn’t help her leave her classmates in the dust or become some legendary student.

“Does it have magic?” Yi Xiaoya deadpanned. “Like, does your system give me bonus IQ for completing missions?”

Yi Yao took a deep breath. He reminded himself that this was his biological daughter—even if he hadn’t raised her, he couldn’t just watch her be this dumb forever.

“Getting something for nothing is shameful,” Yi Yao said.

“Define ‘nothing.’ If I inherit your fortune, that’s not nothing. I’m your daughter—I earned that,” Yi Xiaoya said with a sly gleam in her eye. Fine, take the tablet. She still had her bank card, and there was money on it. She could just buy a new one later.

Of course Yi Yao knew exactly what Yi Xiaoya was thinking—she was thinking about buying a tablet! No way! She could forget about it!

Yi Xiaoya had transferred to a private school—a prestigious one that covered elementary through high school—with extremely high tuition. Most of the students came from wealthy or influential families. A few were admitted through special recruitment programs that helped boost the school’s university acceptance rate into top-tier colleges.

When Yi Xiaoya arrived, other students were puzzled. Why was a transfer student coming in at this time of the term? Could she be a specially recruited student? Then she must be amazing academically.

During the break, the chubby boy sitting next to Yi Xiaoya stared at her for a while.

“Were you top of your class at your old school?”

“Are you aiming for Tsinghua or Peking University?”

“Wanna do a little business?”

…

Yi Xiaoya was busy organizing her textbooks—fortunately, the school used the same textbooks as her old one. Makes sense. Same city, same province, of course the textbooks would be the same. They’d all be sitting the same college entrance exam.

“What kind of business?” Yi Xiaoya’s eyes lit up. She never turned down money.

“Really simple,” the chubby boy said.

“He just wants to copy off you during exams so he can get good grades and look good in front of his parents,” another girl chimed in.

“You can’t cheat on the college entrance exam,” Yi Xiaoya blurted out instinctively.

“Just say you had an off day during the exam,” the girl rolled her eyes. “You don’t seriously think we’re all going to study in domestic universities, do you? If we don’t do well, we just go abroad. Who cares about the gaokao?”

Yi Xiaoya was stunned. “Then there’s no need to cheat during normal tests either!”

“Bamboo shoots stir-fried with pork tastes terrible,” the chubby boy said solemnly.

Yi Xiaoya hadn’t expected that if these kids did badly, they’d still get beaten. Tsk tsk, no one could escape the punishment of bamboo shoots with pork.

“You’d better ask someone else. I have principles!” Yi Xiaoya declared. Better not let them find out her grades weren’t that great. Back at No. 4 High, she was never at the top of the class—making it into the top hundred in her grade was already pretty good.

If she let someone copy her paper, they might even end up with a higher score than hers!

Once the monthly exams came around, they’d know she was just a total noob! She wasn’t a helicopter, and definitely not a rocket. Whether she could evolve from a slow green train to a high-speed rail? That was still uncertain.

Her tablet had been confiscated. Her smartphone, too—taken by her petty and controlling father. All she had left was a kiddie smartwatch. Fortunately, she still had her bank card, and she planned to go shopping after school.

After school, Yi Xiaoya ran straight out of the school to the mall. As soon as she got to the electronics store, she started looking at tablets and checking prices. Five to six thousand yuan? No way. Better to get one that cost just over a thousand. That way, even if her dad confiscated it again, it wouldn’t hurt too much.

One tablet wasn’t enough—she’d better get three. Yes, three.

If one got confiscated, her dad might think she had a backup. No one would expect her to have a third one.

Wait no—counting the one that had already been taken, this would actually be her fourth. Things come in threes, right?

“These three,” Yi Xiaoya said, pulling out her bank card.

“Your card has been restricted for large payments,” the clerk said.

“Huh?” Yi Xiaoya’s eyes widened.

“There’s a spending limit on your card,” the clerk explained.

“Then just one,” Yi Xiaoya said.

“Still over the limit,” the clerk replied.

Yi Xiaoya pouted. It must be her legal guardian—her dad—playing tricks again. He was so rich, yet so stingy? She’d seen people on TV and in interviews getting tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of yuan in pocket money per month. Meanwhile, she was trying to spend just a few thousand—and this was her own card, with her own money deposited into it. And her dad pulled this stunt?

Then Yi Xiaoya pulled a stack of cash out of her bag. Good thing she was smart and came prepared.

“No can do,” the clerk refused to sell her the tablets. Her parent had already limited her bank card spending. If they sold her the devices and the parent came demanding a refund later, they’d be the ones taking the fall.

Better to just refuse now than deal with drama later.

Not only did they refuse to sell her the tablets, they even called the police—suspecting that Yi Xiaoya had stolen the money. After all, what student walked around with that much cash?

“You really are something, huh?” Yi Yao hadn’t expected that one day, he’d have to pick his daughter up from the police station.