She Was the Treasure All Along novel Chapter 227

At that moment, the plainly dressed girl hesitated before raising her hand. “Hallie,” she said timidly, “I… I didn’t understand a lot of that. Could you explain it to me again?”

Hallie frowned. “That means you didn’t prepare properly or you weren’t listening. I taught it using the simplest method possible. How could you not understand?”

She then turned to Cyrilla. “What about you? Did you understand what I was saying?”

In truth, Cyrilla hadn’t fully grasped it either, but she knew how to play the game. “Of course,” she said with a flattering smile. “I thought it was quite simple. I understood everything.”

The other two girls quickly agreed, assuming their own lack of preparation was to blame. The plainly dressed girl lowered her head, too ashamed to say another word.

...

Meanwhile, Loyce returned to the lab Lucian had set up for her. She had spent the entire day dismantling the emergency medical system and discovered it was protected by advanced encryption. Forcibly extracting the core data would cause the entire system to self-destruct. Deciphering the core technology had taken her a considerable amount of time.

Now, with the newly decrypted technical data before her, Loyce scanned through it from top to bottom and began the work of documenting and patching all the vulnerabilities on her computer.

After a while, she felt a pang of hunger and opened the jar of herbal pudding. As the dark, jelly-like substance entered her mouth, she tasted it, swallowed, and then froze. Her eyes widened as she stared at the jar in her hand.

To confirm her senses weren’t deceiving her, Loyce took another spoonful, this time savoring it slowly. Beneath the bitterness of the herbs was a barely perceptible spiciness that transformed into a cooling sensation as it went down her throat. The coolness seemed to travel directly to her brain, providing an instant jolt of mental clarity.

Loyce was certain it contained an extract from ‘Frost Peppermint.’

But Frost Peppermint was exceedingly rare, growing only in jungles filled with poisonous plants. Extracting its properties from the leaves and stems was an even more difficult process.

To think something so valuable was casually added to a simple herbal pudding and given out as a snack… Loyce thought of the girl’s simple attire and became deeply intrigued by her family.

Logically, a family capable of creating such an extract shouldn’t be living so modestly, let alone having their daughter sit in on another student’s tutoring sessions.

Loyce filed the thought away for later and continued her work on the medical system.

By 10 p.m., she was hungry again. The empty pudding jar sat on her desk. Stretching, she opened the lab door to find something to eat.

The butler was waiting outside, a polite smile on his face. “Mr. Shapiro said we were not to disturb you under any circumstances. You’ve been in the lab all day. Is there anything you’d like to eat?”

Loyce held up the jars of pudding and looked at the girl’s red eyes. “Did you learn everything in class today?”

The girl, confused as to why Loyce was speaking to her, lowered her gaze. Her eyelashes trembled as she mimicked Cyrilla’s fawning tone. “Yes, I learned it all. Hallie is a very good teacher.”

A soft chuckle was Loyce’s only response. The girl felt even more mortified and tried to slip past her. But Loyce stopped her again. “You know, I’m actually pretty good at school. Want me to show you?”

The girl froze and turned back, her expression puzzled. “Why?”

Loyce turned her head, her clear, amber-like eyes curving into a smile. “Your mother’s herbal pudding is quite good. I don’t like taking things for free. I always repay a favor.”

The girl noticed the other jars in her hand—the food the wealthy girls had secretly thrown away, now retrieved by Loyce.

“Aren’t you disgusted?” the girl asked suddenly. “It’s cheap stuff.”

“Cheap stuff?” Loyce raised an eyebrow, weighing a jar in her hand. “You mean this? This is anything but cheap. Besides, they haven’t even been opened. What’s there to be disgusted about?”