My wife is a witch princess.

"What are all these...?"

“Files. Like the volumes of your magic books.” Song Che pulled up another chair and sat down next to her, letting Xia Li sit on the sofa. “Each folder can hold a lot of things, the documents you read, books, videos, a lot of things can be put in, it’s a kind of program.”

"program?"

"It's... something that allows computers to do different things."

She nodded. "So, what kind of magic can this 'iron box' perform?"

Song Che's lips curved into a smile at her statement.

"There are many. You can write and draw, play games... and even go online."

"Go online?"

“Connected to… a huge network.” Song Che explained in a way she could understand, “like connecting all the libraries or theaters in the world together, so you can see them through this screen.”

Xia Li fell silent.

She stared at the neatly arranged folder icons.

Song Che knew she was processing this information—for a witch from a magical world, accustomed to parchment and magical communication, the concept of the "Internet" was probably even more difficult to understand than forbidden spells.

“I want to try,” she suddenly said, turning to look at him. “That ‘bricklaying’ thing you mentioned… can this be used to do it?”

Song Che was stunned for a moment before realizing that she was talking about earning gold coins in the game.

He suddenly remembered mentioning before that he could teach her how to make money through games once they had a computer. He hadn't expected her to remember it.

“Yes.” He slid his chair closer and opened his browser. “But before that, I need to teach you the basics first.”

Bruce dozed off on the sofa armrest, his tail tip swishing lazily.

Xia Li learned very quickly—so quickly that even Song Che was somewhat surprised.

She memorized keyboard shortcuts incredibly quickly, and her understanding of window operations was almost instantaneous. The only obstacle was typing; she had no concept of the letter arrangement on the keyboard and could only use one index finger to poke and poke, typing out a bunch of letters.

She used to write on her phone by hand, but she's not very good at typing.

“QWERTY…” she read the letters in the top left corner of the keyboard, her brows furrowing again. “Why isn’t it arranged in order?”

“It’s a legacy issue,” Song Che briefly explained. “Initially, it was to reduce typing speed and prevent the levers of old-fashioned typewriters from getting stuck together.”

This explanation elicited a "you humans are so strange" expression from Xia Li.

However, Xia Li was just not used to it. Once she got used to it, she stopped tapping the keyboard and started typing.

"You used to learn new magic this quickly too?" Song Che couldn't help but ask.

“Hmm.” Xia Li’s gaze didn’t leave the screen. “Magic is about understanding the rules and then applying them, and this is the same.”

She typed the first line in a simple word processing program.

It used pinyin, and although it was riddled with typos, it did manage to type out a few characters:

Song Che taught me how to use an electric alarm clock.

Song Che couldn't help but laugh when he saw the phrase "electric alarm".

Xia Li turned to look at him, her blue eyes filled with confusion, before realizing that she had written something wrong.

She stared at the sentence for two seconds, put her fingers back on the keyboard, pressed the backspace key to delete the character "闹", and retyped it—it was still "闹".

Song Che laughed even harder.

He reached out and took her hand from the mouse, guiding her to the input method's candidate word box. "Look here, select 'brain'."

Xia Li looked at the row of homophones and nodded in sudden realization.

She typed it in again, and this time it was correct:

Song Che taught me how to use an electric alarm.

"..."

Xia Li felt she was being mocked. This time it was just a mistake, a simple mistake. It wasn't that she didn't know the word was "闹脑" (nao niao).

Song Che sighed and gave up trying to correct him.

He leaned back in his chair, laughing, his shoulders shaking.

The heaviness that had been weighing on my heart these past few days has been greatly alleviated by this small mistake.

Xia Li looked at him and smiled, the corners of her mouth unconsciously curving upwards as well.

She liked Song Che's smile.

“I made a mistake,” she stated, but without any hint of remorse. “You’re happy.”

"Hmm." Song Che rubbed his eyes. "Xia Li, do you know that sometimes... you're especially adorable?"

Xia Li blinked, clearly not understanding this assessment.

She turned her head back to stare at the screen; she still really preferred the word "dignified."

“Let’s continue,” she urged. “I want to learn how to use the internet.”

Song Che sat up straight again and guided her to enter a simple URL in the address bar.

The page loaded for a few seconds. Xia Li stared at the spinning icon on the screen, leaning forward.

Then, a colorful webpage appeared in front of her.

It was a news portal website, with headlines accompanied by large pictures, and various information and advertisements scrolling through the sidebar.

Xia Li stared at the screen without moving, remaining silent for a full half minute.

“So much… information,” she finally spoke, her voice tinged with surprise, “appearing all at once.”

"This is just the homepage." Song Che scrolled down the page with his mouse wheel. "You can keep scrolling down, it'll never end."

This was an exaggeration, but Xia Li clearly took it seriously.

She took the mouse, scrolled the wheel, and watched as the content on the screen kept moving upwards, with new content emerging from below.

She scrolled for over ten seconds, and the page was still expanding. To her, this was truly amazing—a single screen could hold so much information.

How many libraries does it connect to?

“Hundreds of millions,” Song Che said, “and it’s increasing every moment.”

Xia Li was silent for a moment, then thought of something.

She closed the news page and reopened a new blank page. This time, she slowly typed in the search box.

The first term she searched was: "How to extend human lifespan".

Song Che watched as she pressed Enter, and the search results page refreshed—a screen full of health product advertisements and pseudoscientific articles.

Xia Li clicked on the top item and quickly browsed through the exaggerated promotional text, her brows furrowing deeper and deeper.

“These are all fake,” Song Che couldn’t help but say.

“I know,” Xia Li said calmly, closing the page. “The Magic Mirror gave me a similar answer before.”

She had initially thought that this computer, connected to so many libraries, would allow her to find content more accurately.

She then typed in a second term: "Potion recipe substitute material".

The results this time were even more chaotic, a mix of game guides and novel settings, lacking even proper pharmaceutical knowledge.

Xia Li opened a few pages, quickly scanned them, then shook her head and closed them.

“There’s too much information,” she concluded. “The real and the fake are mixed together, making it hard to tell the difference.”

“That’s the internet,” Song Che said. “You need to learn to judge.”

Xia Li typed in the search box for the third time. This time she typed very slowly, as if carefully considering: "[How to make someone happy]".

Song Che was stunned.

The search results popped up, mostly motivational articles and short videos. Xia Li didn't click on any of them, but just stared at the titles for a long time. Then she closed all the windows and returned to her blank desktop.

She turned around, her blue eyes looking directly at Song Che.

“Song Che,” she said, “you’ve been unhappy these past two days. Is it because of what I said this morning? About how I’ve been searching for you for a hundred years, and about the longevity potion.”

The question was so direct that Song Che was momentarily speechless.

“Not entirely.” He ultimately chose to tell the truth, but only part of it: “I was just… thinking about some things.”

"About the fact that you will die while I will live a long time," Xia Li finished speaking for him.

Song Che's breath hitched.

"Yes." He admitted, his voice lowering. "Xia Li, have you thought about it? Decades from now, I will grow old, I will get sick, I will..."

He paused, then rephrased, "I will leave. And you... will probably remain the same as you are now."

Xia Li listened quietly.

"I've thought about it."

Song Che looked at her.

“I thought about this back in Hit,” Xia Li continued. “I know that human contractors have short lifespans. That’s why I researched longevity potions. Although I failed, I know where the problem lies—it comes at a price, a huge price, which may violate my principles as a witch.”

She looked up. "But now I'm thinking about something else."

"what?"

“You’re afraid,” Xia Li said. “Not afraid of death, but afraid of the fact that I’ll be sad if you die.”

Song Che felt something blocking his throat; she was right.

Xia Li tilted her head. "You taught me a lot. You taught me that humans can be afraid, sad, happy, and joyful. You taught me that these emotions are precious, even the sad ones are proof of being alive."

She paused for a moment, organizing her thoughts.

This is a rare occurrence; Xia Li usually speaks directly and rarely needs to think about her words.

"If you're going to push me away now because I might make you sad later," she said slowly. "Then what's the point of all that I've learned?"

Song Che was completely speechless.

"And..." Xia Li added, her tone returning to its usual bluntness, "I'm already very upset that you're ignoring me now."

These words were like a knife, stabbing into Song Che's heart.