◎What kind of NPC stays up this late at night?◎
The air was thick with a medley of unfamiliar scents. Nangong Yu stepped through a doorway, and the view before her suddenly opened up.
A vast enclosure stretched ahead, surrounded by fencing. Inside was a naturally growing ecosystem: soft, damp soil; rocks standing among the grass and shrubs; and towering trees.
There were small animals she didn’t recognize, spirit deer with a pair of horns on their heads, birds hopping from branch to branch, and spirit cranes resting by the water.
“Steward Liu, what brings you here?” A plainly dressed young man walked over and cast a cool glance at Liu Shun.
Liu Shun stood outside the spirit-beast park with his hands behind his back. “Have any spirit beasts escaped these past two days?”
“What are you talking about?” The young man smiled faintly. “How would I know?”
He was only a mortal. Even if these spirit beasts were merely beasts, they still possessed cultivation. How could a mortal possibly manage them?
“I’m bringing you someone.” Liu Shun stopped asking questions and nudged Nangong Yu forward. “She’s quick and capable. She can help you out.”
Whether the young man agreed or not was irrelevant. Nangong Yu was Liu Shun’s person. If anything unusual happened in the spirit-beast park, he would naturally find out.
“Hello, Master,” Nangong Yu greeted him, little dimples appearing in her cheeks.
The young man looked her over twice but said nothing. “Since you’re here, come with me.”
Then he looked at Liu Shun. “Does Steward Liu have any other instructions?”
“No.” Liu Shun waved his hand.
The young man led Nangong Yu away without so much as a polite word.
What rank is he? Nangong Yu wondered, studying the young man’s back. Before long, he brought her to a row of bamboo huts.
The open space in front of the huts was filled with bamboo baskets containing materials Nangong Yu didn’t recognize.
Even so, she could tell that they were strips of dried meat, plant roots, nuts, and the like.
“Master, what should I do?” she asked, lifting an earnest face toward him.
She had opened up a new area without spending any effort at all. It was practically a gift from heaven, so Nangong Yu had no complaints.
Besides, this world was far too complicated. Learning more about it could only benefit her.
“Grind all of these up.” The young man gestured toward the baskets. “My name is Ruo Zhu.”
“Nice to meet you, Master Ruo Zhu. I’m Little Yu.” Following his instructions, Nangong Yu carried a basket of dried nuts to a stone mortar. She poured in a small handful and began pounding them.
Seeing how efficiently she worked, Ruo Zhu’s expression softened slightly. “You don’t have to call me Master. Just use my name.”
Then he asked, “What did you do wrong? Why did Liu Shun send you here?”
Nangong Yu looked up in surprise. “I didn’t do anything wrong. Steward Liu saw that I worked hard and said he wanted to let me earn more spirit stones, so he sent me here.”
Well, well.
Could this mean that the spirit-beast park wasn’t a good place to work? Were people only sent here after committing some offense?
Then what had this NPC named Ruo Zhu done?
Ruo Zhu clearly didn’t believe her. He frowned. “Where were you working before?”
“In the kitchen.” Nangong Yu lowered her head and didn’t try to hide it.
Ruo Zhu asked again, “What happened in the kitchen recently?”
This time, Nangong Yu didn’t answer. She merely raised her head and looked at him.
“What? Can’t you say?” Ruo Zhu asked.
How was she supposed to explain it? Tell him that something had gone wrong in the kitchen under Liu Shun’s supervision, and that Liu Shun had paid a heavy price for it?
“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head. “I was only a woodcutter.”
Ruo Zhu frowned.
“Forget it if you don’t want to talk.” He entered the bamboo hut and went back to work.
In any case, having one more person at the spirit-beast park would make his workload lighter.
He had to prepare the spirit beasts’ food.
Spirit beasts were different from humans; they didn’t need three meals a day.
In fact, many cultivators who had reached the Grain Avoidance stage no longer needed to eat three meals a day either. However, spiritual food contained spiritual energy, and some varieties even had special cultivation effects, so many people still maintained the habit of eating regularly.
The spirit beasts, meanwhile, were fed once a day. That alone was a considerable amount of work.
There were tiny creatures like spirit bees and spirit mice, as well as huge ones like spirit rhinoceroses and spirit tigers. Altogether, the spirit-beast park contained more than ten thousand beasts.
“Did you used to do all this by yourself?” Nangong Yu asked in shock as she helped carry the food back and forth.
The corner of Ruo Zhu’s mouth twitched. “Not always by myself.”
“There were other people? Who? Why don’t I see them?” Nangong Yu asked, looking around for her coworkers.
“You’ll find out eventually,” Ruo Zhu replied.
“…” Why did she have to wait until later? What other side quest was there?
Nangong Yu was curious, but since she couldn’t get an answer, she soon set the matter aside.
Night descended as thick as ink. Most of the spirit beasts had finished eating and gone to sleep, and the entire Lin residence had grown much quieter.
Nangong Yu secretly glanced at the invisible light-brain fitted around her wrist.
Good grief. It was already past ten.
If Ruo Zhu had done all this by himself, wouldn’t he have had to work until midnight?
“My master treats you so well,” Nangong Yu said, her eyes shifting as she spoke. “He even sent me here to help you.”
Ruo Zhu had had a much easier day. Although the new girl was inexperienced, she was straightforward and never slacked off. She did whatever she was told and wasn’t careless enough to damage anything. She had been a great help, and he was in a good mood.
“I’ll thank Steward Liu another day,” he said.
The employee dormitories were the row of bamboo huts.
Ruo Zhu slept at the far end, and the room next to his was assigned to Nangong Yu.
“Where’s your luggage?” Ruo Zhu asked with a frown.
The moment Nangong Yu entered the room, she tried to lie down without even making the bed. She was just about to stretch out on the bare wooden plank when—
“What luggage?” Nangong Yu asked, looking utterly bewildered as she blinked at him.
Ruo Zhu’s brow furrowed even more deeply. “You don’t have any luggage?”
Nangong Yu pinched the sleeve of her clothes and shook her head. “I only arrived today. They gave me this set of clothes. Was there supposed to be something else?”
Ruo Zhu stared at her with an indescribable expression.
“…Wait here.” He turned and left after saying that.
Nangong Yu sat on the bamboo bed, swinging her little legs as she opened her light-brain.
She had joined the household that morning, and in a single day, she had already checked in at three locations: the back door, the kitchen, and the spirit-beast park.
The light-brain had recorded the route she traveled and turned it into a three-dimensional map.
Nangong Yu studied it. Everything she had seen so far was located in out-of-the-way corners, far from the central area. She had no idea where they kept the spirit-testing formation disc.
“Tap, tap.”
Footsteps sounded in the courtyard.
Nangong Yu immediately put away her light-brain, covered her mouth with one hand, and let out a long yawn.
“I brought these for you.” Ruo Zhu entered the room and handed her a gray bundle. “Go to sleep early.”
Bedding, a pillow, a wooden basin, bowls and chopsticks, clothes, shoes, and socks—everything was inside.
Nangong Yu weighed the bundle in her hands, surprised. Then she hopped off the bamboo bed.
“Thank you, Brother Ruo Zhu.”
An NPC who gave her items of his own accord was definitely a good one.
At the sound of “Brother,” Ruo Zhu’s grip tightened around the bundle, and his face stiffened.
“Don’t leave your room at night. Don’t wander around. No matter what you hear, don’t interfere.”
Nangong Yu had already opened the bundle and was making the bed. “Brother Ruo Zhu, what kind of sounds will there be at night?”
“Don’t ask so many questions!” Ruo Zhu snapped harshly before striding out.
He had successfully piqued Nangong Yu’s curiosity.
But she didn’t take his warning to heart. She pulled out a life-sized doll, dressed it in clothes, and tucked it under the blankets.
Then she applied an invisibility talisman, a breath-concealing talisman, a lightness talisman, a water-repelling talisman, a fireproof talisman, a defensive talisman…
And slipped out of the spirit-beast park.
The Lin residence was truly huge.
Where could that spirit-testing formation disc be?
Following the route she had taken during the day, Nangong Yu began expanding her search into the surrounding areas.
It was deep into the night, and there weren’t many people around the estate.
Every now and then, someone dressed like a steward hurried past along one of the paths.
Not a single young master or young miss could be seen.
The servants were nowhere to be found either. Nighttime simply wasn’t when they were active. After all, they had more than enough work to keep them busy during the day.
Every so often, Nangong Yu would take a small handful of pebbles from her system inventory and toss two in each direction—front, back, left, and right.
It was best to avoid the traps. After all, advanced dungeons were full of tricks.
The pebbles were stored in her inventory, so she could take them out whenever she wanted, and they didn’t take up much space. She had filled an entire slot with a shipping container of basic supplies like these.
Back then, in order to stock her up, the vampire lord had even hollowed out an entire mountain.
“Tap.”
The pebble landed ahead of her, rolled for a while, then came to a stop.
Nothing happened, so she continued forward.
At two in the morning, Nangong Yu safely reached the central area of the Lin estate.
This was where the young masters and misses lived. The courtyards belonging to the Head of the Lin Family, his wife, and his concubines were arranged in a cluster around the area.
“Could they have built a secret chamber?” Nangong Yu didn’t go any farther. Instead, she lightly tapped her cheek with one finger.
The treasury ought to have been built out in the open, right?
Usually, they would give it a grand name like Treasure Pavilion, Treasure Tower, or Gathering-Treasures Tower, right?
And buildings like that were generally supposed to be tall, weren’t they? If it was only one or two stories, people would laugh. If you didn’t have anything valuable, you shouldn’t build a treasury in the first place.
Nangong Yu wouldn’t even think much of the Head of the Lin Family if his treasury were less than seven stories tall.
Yet there wasn’t a single building taller than seven stories in the entire central area.
Still thinking it over, Nangong Yu changed paths and doubled back toward the spirit-beast garden.
Just as she was about to arrive, a minor accident occurred.
Once again, the pebble she tossed stirred up a commotion.
“Who’s there?!”
A fierce gust of force swept toward Nangong Yu. A black-clad figure leaped out from the shadows.
Nangong Yu: “…”
What time was it already? What kind of good NPC didn’t sleep and instead hid beside the road in some dark corner?
“Who’s there? Come out!” a young man barked harshly. His slightly uncanny eyes gleamed faintly in the darkness as they scanned in Nangong Yu’s direction.
Nangong Yu dropped into a crouch at once.
Before entering the infinite-flow world, she had been rather average physically. After entering it, she had never grown any further.
She was tiny to begin with, and once she crouched down, she became even harder to notice.
“There’s no one there,” a coquettish voice came from the shadows. At the same time, a pale, delicate hand reached out. “Come back.”
The young man’s gloomy gaze swept over the area several more times before he slowly retreated into the shadows.
Nangong Yu didn’t stand up immediately. There were always sneaky bastards who pretended to leave, only to turn around and launch a surprise attack.
But clearly, that wasn’t the case this time. Before long, a faintly seductive voice drifted out from the shadows.
“…”
With all that noise, you could’ve just called out in the first place!
You scared her for nothing.
“Keep your voice down!” the young man warned in a hushed voice.
The woman lowered her voice. After that, the shadows fell silent.
Why did they stop? Was it not exciting enough?
Nangong Yu’s eyes shifted. She wrapped a handful of aphrodisiac powder in a Breath-Concealment Talisman and scattered it into the wind.
Then she took another route and headed back toward the spirit-beast garden.
Nothing else went wrong after that.
When she returned to the spirit-beast garden, everything was quiet. Not a sound could be heard.
Nangong Yu entered the room, put away the doll lying on the bed, and lay down in its place.
When she opened her eyes the next morning, she still hadn’t heard any of the commotion Ruo Zhu had mentioned.
At once, she understood: the spirit-beast garden’s anomaly occurred between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m.
