68 The Gardener's Flowerbed (15)

You're really easy to fool.

Perhaps it was because the two of them had stood in front of the flowerbed long enough, or perhaps because their gazes were strong enough, that Li Yi, who had been sitting in front of the house like a dried-up puppet, suddenly looked up and gazed over.

His expression shifted slightly when he saw Qin Fu'an.

Upon seeing Xie Yunhuai holding hands with Qin Fu'an, he abruptly stood up.

"It seems I scared him," Xie Yunhuai said, unsurprised.

Qin Fu'an hooked the finger of someone who was trying to sneak away, and led him forward, getting closer and closer to Li Yi's flower garden.

It also makes it easier to see the plants in the flowerbed.

"Stop!!" Li Yi shouted hurriedly and ran over quickly.

Thus, his numb and empty expression finally gained a touch of vibrant human life.

Qin Fu'an stopped as instructed, a slight smile playing on his lips: "Hello, I've come to visit my neighbor."

His words were polite and courteous, but Li Yi dared not underestimate him in the slightest.

"...There's nothing to visit." He declined warily, "I already told you last time, I'm very busy, don't bother me, don't you understand?"

They didn't give me a friendly look at all.

Xie Yunhuai glanced at Li Yi's missing arm behind him, while outwardly remaining quiet as he listened to the conversation between Qin Fu'an and Li Yi.

Qin Fu'an didn't expose his clumsy excuse of being "busy" and sitting in front of the house in a daze. Standing outside the flower bed, he glanced at the only three plants in the flower bed and said casually, "I'll only ask you a few questions, and then I'll leave. But if you don't cooperate... perhaps you'd also like to leave me in your flower bed?"

He slightly raised his hand, and Li Yi finally noticed the Senbai Bone Vine that he had been holding in his other hand.

Li Yi's pupils constricted slightly. Recognizing the bone vine, he could no longer maintain his composure and asked in a hoarse voice, "Was this vine cultivated by Teng Yan?"

"You know him?" Now it was Qin Fu'an's turn to be curious.

Li Yi stared intently at the vine in Qin Fu'an's hand, as if he couldn't understand the question, and impatiently pressed on in a hoarse voice: "How did you get this bone vine? Tell me quickly! It's very important to me!!"

The smile in Qin Fu'an's eyes vanished.

The boy, who was polite and smiling just a second ago, removed his mask of pretense in the blink of an eye and, in front of Li Yi, discarded the bone vine as if it were trash behind him.

The moment the bone vine hit the ground, Li Yi shifted slightly, as if he were about to rush out of the flowerbed to pick it up.

Bone Vine, after feigning death all the way, finally gained its freedom and stood upright the moment it landed. Countless white joints jingled and clanged as it darted away like a fish towards the direction of Tengyan's house.

The next second, it suddenly straightened its body and turned around in disbelief.

“…Hiss!” Li Yi couldn’t help but gasp as he watched the vines suddenly stiffen. His gaze slowly and stiffly moved from the “tail tip” of the bone vine that had been stepped on to Qin Fu’an, who was looking down with cold eyes.

"Full of vitality, it seems there's no need to worry about them not surviving when we get back," Qin Fu'an said jokingly, tilting his head.

Xie Yunhuai understood; this was the answer to his earlier question about whether the vine could survive if it went back.

He just hadn't expected it to be done in such a simple and brutal way...

After answering Xie Yunhuai, Qin Fu'an then leisurely looked at the taut bone vine.

“If you want to go back alive, that’s fine too.” He seemed exceptionally kind, stepping on the roots of the bone vine while enthusiastically suggesting, “You can cut off your own arm like a warrior, cut off your own tail like a gecko, cut off the roots of the bone vine… The remaining life force is enough to support you to go back, and I will never stop you.”

After he finished speaking, he kicked the bone vine that dared not move on the ground, and asked with a light laugh, "How about it? Want to give it a try?"

Upon hearing this, whether it was Bone Vine himself, the two bystanders beside him, or the viewers in the live broadcast room, they all couldn't help but think of a very similar sentence.

Try it and you'll die?

Even if you dare to say it, it wouldn't dare to try...

What's the difference between this and a chainsaw-wielding serial killer demanding that his bound victim run away?!

The bone vine was just brainless, not truly reckless, so no matter how much Qin Fu'an encouraged and bewitched it, it obediently lay on the ground, pretending that nothing had happened.

They couldn't fight back, and they couldn't escape, so they had no choice but to play dead.

Seeing that it was really so obedient, Qin Fu'an couldn't help but sigh with regret.

Then he turned to look at Li Yi, whose body was mostly sticking out of the flower bed.

Li Yi: "...!"

With a bang, the wooden fence slammed shut, and Li Yi stumbled back several steps, as if being chased by a ghost.

"What...what do you want to ask?" he asked in a trembling voice, his fingers unconsciously gripping the Buddha amulet hanging on his chest.

Taking in his subconscious little action, Qin Fu'an added in his mind: when a player loses their player identity and remains in the dungeon to survive, the items they have obtained can still be used.

He turned his gaze back and reassured Li Yi, whose cooperation had suddenly increased, "Don't worry, I'll just ask you a few questions."

Li Yi nervously stroked the Buddha amulet, then smiled wryly upon hearing this, resignedly lowering his head: "Ask away."

"Why are there only three plants in your flowerbed?" Qin Fu'an asked the most obvious question first.

Li Yi paused for a moment, turned to look at the three plants in his flowerbed, and then, as expected, did not hide anything:

"Because after I was stripped of my identity, the original flowerbeds and plants no longer belonged to me. These... were all replanted after I became a resident of Baihua Town."

He spoke frankly and honestly, without concealing the fact that he killed other players after being stripped of his player status.

"What are the requirements for clearing this dungeon?" Qin Fu'an asked again.

This question... Li Yi was a little lost in thought, and after a while, he answered with a mixed tone: "It's about planting these plants, starting with common plants, then rare plants, and then progressing step by step. Once you get the title of Senior Gardener, the mayor will congratulate you on becoming a full member of Hundred Flowers Town."

Qin Fu'an frowned silently. What he wanted was to leave Baihua Town, not to become a member of Baihua Town.

Seemingly sensing his thoughts, Li Yi explained with a wry smile, "I also asked how to leave Hundred Flowers Town, and the mayor gave me an answer, but... asking a player to grow a fairy-level plant that has never truly appeared in the entire Hundred Flowers Town is not just asking for my life, it's a one-way trip into a hopeless situation!"

As he spoke, even Li Yi, who had long since resigned himself to his fate, couldn't help but become more agitated. His ferocious anger made him seem more real than the others in Hundred Flowers Town, and made his previous struggles to survive seem particularly pale and powerless.

A rare and exceptional plant.

Qin Fu'an recalled the brief message he received when entering the instance.

"Only the most skilled gardeners can cultivate the most magnificent flowers."

Therefore, the conditions for clearing the dungeon were actually explained to the players from the very beginning.

The dungeon is of the "Evil and Mysterious" level, the main quest is completed in stages, and there's this reminder that clearly states the final main quest from the very beginning.

Is it to prevent players from becoming overwhelmed and desperate due to the difficulty of the mission at the beginning, so that the mission is guided step by step to complete the mission?

Or perhaps it's the perverse sense of the dungeon's creators, deliberately revealing the answers and enticing the donkey, like a carrot dangling in front of it, each step seemingly bringing it closer, yet always just out of reach.

However, Li Yi's answer gave Qin Fu'an a complete understanding of the questline for this instance.

He suppressed his many guesses, narrowed his green eyes, and took advantage of Li Yi's emotional state to ask the third question.

"One last question: Where did the seeds of Hundred Flowers Town come from?"

With so many strange and wonderful plants growing out of them, neither transformed by spirits nor caused by evil spirits, Qin Fu'an was really curious about where the people of Hundred Flowers Town got so many seeds.

Unsurprisingly, after hearing the question clearly, Li Yi's eyes widened suddenly, and he looked at Qin Fu'an with fear, his face pale, as if he was terrified by the question.

He acted very well.

Qin Fu'an highly approves of Li Yi's acting skills.

Unfortunately, despite his brilliant acting skills, he still managed to catch a glimpse of the jealousy and murderous intent flashing in the other person's eyes.

So Qin Fu'an stopped asking for the answer to the third question, and just chuckled casually before turning and leaving with the bewildered Xie Yunhuai in his hand.

"Wait—!" Li Yi exclaimed in surprise, not understanding why he was about to leave without saying a word.

As Qin Fu'an stopped and looked back, he leaned his upper body eagerly over the fence and pleaded, "For the sake of our past friendship... if you can get out, could you... could you take this out and give it to my girlfriend? In exchange, whatever you do in Baihua Town, I will do my best to help you!"

He clutched the Buddha amulet tightly, as if it were his only solace in Baihua Town.

He wasn't lying.

After walking a short distance, Xie Yunhuai said softly, "I remember he once said that the Buddha amulet was actually a gift from his girlfriend."

After Li Yi finished speaking, Qin Fu'an did not respond.

He thought Qin Fu'an believed Li Yi was lying. Xie Yunhuai thought that he was disliked by everyone in Baihua Town and was of no use other than causing trouble for Qin Fu'an.

If there are gardeners in Baihua Town who can help Qin Fu'an as much as possible, it shouldn't be a bad thing.

So he offered an explanation for Li Yi.

Hearing this, Qin Fu'an shook his intertwined hands and said helplessly, "Little Cloud, do you know how easy you are to fool?"

Xie Yunhuai looked back blankly.

Qin Fu'an smiled and tilted his head, affectionately touching his cheek before explaining, "He didn't lie, but what he said was only half true."

"If I have enough strength to grow a divine plant and he can't find any loopholes or weaknesses in me, then he really does have a girlfriend, he really wants me to take the amulet out, and he will truly do everything he can to help me."

"But he would rather I die than have the chance of me getting out of here alive. So he used the truth to keep me hanging and to deceive me, to make me trust him, depend on him, and get used to his help. Then he would have more opportunities to kill me, to turn me, a player who originally had the chance to leave the instance, into a corpse, just like the other players, into a plant in his garden."

At worst, Li Yi would stop at nothing to find Qin Fu'an's weaknesses, like a water ghost in the Yin River waiting day and night for passersby, wanting to turn the living into the dead, and let the dead replace the water ghost as substitutes.

“Every player who enters the instance alive is an enemy that Li Yi hates to death.”

[Author's Note]

Yunzai: (Seriously) He shouldn't be lying, I overheard him.

Anzai: My wife is so easy to fool, so cute, I want to kiss her.

Li Yi: ...I wanted to trick you into dying, not for you to use me as a teaching template!!!

Hmph, so you all said my update time was 23:59:59, (hands on hips) I'm standing up for myself today! I updated two hours early, I'm awesome!!

.

Thank you to the little angels who watered the nutrient solution:

9 bottles of neon;

It is Yao Yao, not Yao Yao, Yu He, Qing Yu Gu Zhou, Le Ran, Jing Xi 1 bottle;

Thank you so much for your support! I will continue to work hard!