Chapter 153
Hearing the sound coming from the ball of light, Tang Yu'an and Zhou Qi couldn't help but look at each other, and they saw the surprise in each other's eyes.
A "Old Xie" almost came out of his mouth, but fortunately Tang Yu'an held it back.
"You finally woke up." He said in a low voice.
"Who are you?" the man's voice sounded again.
"I'm a mysterious businessman." Tang Yu'an said, "You were unconscious before, and I used a healing potion to save you."
"Is this true?" The man's voice was filled with obvious doubt.
Zhou Qi suddenly spoke up: "Your name is Xie Chaori, right?"
Xie Chaori couldn't help but pause.
"Who... are you?" Although they were all disguised electronic sounds, he could hear the difference between Zhou Qi and Tang Yu'an.
"I am the assistant of the mysterious businessman." Zhou Qi responded.
"I see..."
Xie Chaori muttered, "So I told you... my name?"
"What else?" Zhou Qi asked back.
Xie Chaori was silent for a moment before he said, "I'm sorry, I can't remember clearly. My memory is a little... confused..."
He may still have doubts about the mysterious businessman saving him, but his condition is still very poor and he seems to be having difficulty speaking.
While he was still conscious, Tang Yu'an quickly asked, "I'm curious, how did you survive in the center of the deserted city?"
"Aren't you near me?"
"We speak to you in your dreams."
Xie Chaori was silent again, and then he spoke: "...This is really a magical ability."
"If you can answer this question for me, I can give you another drop of healing potion. This potion has proven to be very helpful in treating your injuries." Tang Yu'an said.
"So you can send physical objects to me through dreams?"
"Indeed."
Xie Chaori couldn't help but sigh again: "This is really a magical ability..."
However, what Tang Yu'an did not expect was that Xie Chaori actually rejected him.
"Although your potion may be useful, I probably need to remain in my current state. By the time you heal me, it may be the end of my life."
Listening to his description, Tang Yu'an and Zhou Qi became more and more curious.
So he is in an extremely special state now, which is why he can survive in the center of a deserted city surrounded by dangers and turned into a vast ocean?
Considering that he was carrying only earth-type crystals...
Zhou Qi couldn't help but ask, "Could you have turned into stone or mud or something like that?"
Xie Chaori was silent for a moment before he smiled bitterly and said, "Mysterious businessman, your assistant is really smart."
Tang Yuan: 0.0
Old Xie actually turned into stone or mud? The people with special abilities in this world are so powerful, they can even transform?
The center of the deserted city is now full of water. If it turns into mud, it might be washed away, so...
Old Xie is now a stone, and it should be quite large?
After all, judging from the map, it has been staying in the same place without moving. If it were a small stone, it would have been washed away by the flood long ago.
"Did you change this on your own?" Tang Yu'an couldn't help but ask.
They knew very little about superpowers, and since they had finally met someone like Xie Chaori, they had to find a way to get more information.
Xie Chaori did not answer.
While he was considering it, Zhou Qi had already spoken: "I guess you turned into stone after being seriously injured. It was an involuntary change."
What Xie Chaori said just now used uncertain words such as "maybe" and "perhaps", and if he could control himself, even if the injury was healed, it would not affect his ability to continue to be a stone.
Listening to his analysis, Xie Chaori smiled bitterly again.
"You're right. I regained consciousness today and was quite surprised to find myself turned into a stone."
It was a very strange feeling, but before he had time to feel it carefully, he fell asleep again.
It was not until then that he was awakened from his dream.
Tang Yu'an listened to their conversation, thought of something, and quickly sent a message to Zhou Qi on the message board.
【Message Board (Admin Channel)】
[Dongtu Datang]: Brother Xiaoqi, do you think Lao Xie’s condition is related to parasites?
When he was seriously injured and on the verge of death, was it the parasite that took over his body and turned him into stone?
This speculation is not impossible.
but……
[Handsome Zhou]: It could also be that his ability is of a high level, and his body automatically takes protective measures when he is in danger.
Otherwise, is this parasite still good? Will it protect its host when necessary?
Zhou Qi thought back to the times when he was almost controlled and shook his head secretly. At least he didn't feel that the parasite in his body had such kindness.
It is savage and violent, possessing only the desire to devour...
However, this parasite seems to be different from others. After all, he can master abilities of multiple attributes, while others can only use one.
"Do you have any way to get me out of this damn place?" At this time, Xie Chaori said again, "I don't want to die, and I don't want to stay here forever."
Obviously, this requirement is beyond the capabilities of Tang Yu'an and Zhou Qi.
"It seems that you can't help me..."
Xie Chaori's voice gradually weakened, but he still tried to stay awake. He said, "Can you do me one more favor?"
"What help?" Tang Yu'an asked.
"Do you know a place called Jufeng Mountain? It's right next to Lanhu Town."
"I've heard of it." Tang Yu'an said vaguely.
"If you can reach Jufeng Town one day, could you please convey a message to the administrator there?"
"What?"
"The administrator of Jufeng Town is a woman named Hongli. Please tell her for me..."
Tang Yu'an couldn't help but prick up his ears and listen attentively, with a hint of gossip in his eyes, but then he heard Xie Chaori say:
"Password: 584833."
Huh? What's the password?
Could it be the bank card password? He thought Lao Xie had some last words to tell Hong Li, after all, they seemed to have a good relationship.
Tang Yu'an didn't know whether there was an institution called a "bank" in the fortress, and in order to avoid being exposed, he didn't ask in detail.
He had no choice but to take a pen and paper and write it down, then said, "Password 584833, right?"
"Yes." Xie Chaori said, "Thank you."
"What is this password?" Tang Yu'an couldn't help but be curious.
"You just have to tell her and she'll know."
"Okay then." Tang Yu'an didn't want to ask further, "Is there anything else you want to tell her?"
Xie Chaori thought for a moment and said, "Don't let her know that I'm still alive. If she knew, she would definitely come to save me, and that would be a waste of her life..."
"Tell her I'm sorry, I couldn't protect Xiaohao, and... take care of yourself."
Hearing the deep regret and self-blame in his voice, Tang Yu'an hesitated for a moment, then asked, "The Xiaohao you're talking about, isn't he a guy named Chihao?"
Xie Chaori was obviously stunned, and the entire ball of light in his dream became unstable.
"You...you also entered his dream?"
"I can only tell you that he is still alive and is currently on his way back to Qingmu Castle."
"Great... This is really..."
The vibration of the ball of light became noticeably more intense, and soon the countdown for the dream to be shattered popped up.
"Thank you so much..."
Xie Chaori only had time to say his last words before his ball of light shattered.
Tang Yu'an glanced at the light spot belonging to him on the map, couldn't help but sigh, and said with some frustration: "We can't save him..."
Zhou Qi touched his hair and said, "We can't save everyone."
He was trapped in a place like the center of the deserted city, and it was almost impossible for him to get out. Even Lao Xie himself had accepted his fate, otherwise he would have asked Hongli to rescue him.
"Once we have more points, enough to build a life passage to the deserted city, maybe we can save him." Zhou Qi said.
"Can he hold on till then?"
"Maybe. Hasn't he turned into a big rock now?"
Tang Yu'an thought about his words carefully, and finally nodded, his mood finally improved. "Yes, he has held on for so long, he will definitely be able to continue to hold on."
And when he can't hold on any longer, there is healing potion to keep him alive.
So Tang Yu'an opened Menghai's window again and took out the third drifting bottle from a pile of bright bottles.
"Mysterious Merchant...Mysterious Merchant...Please come into my dream! Please show up soon..."
Xiao Risheng's anxious voice was heard from the ball of light.
"I'm here." Tang Yu'an said.
"Mysterious merchant, you're finally here!" Xiao Risheng said happily, "I have so many leaves this time, I want to exchange them all for rice!"
"Oh? How many leaves are there?" Tang Yu'an asked.
"1,200 leaves!" Xiao Risheng shouted.
Wow, that's a lot.
Before Tang Yu'an could speak, Xiao Risheng spoke first, "Our lord said he wants 4,000 kilograms of rice!"
So it is calculated based on 300 blue beard leaves and 1,000 kilograms of brown rice?
The cost of 4,000 kilograms of brown rice is 20,000 points. Fortunately, Tang Yu'an has more points balance now, otherwise he would not be able to do this business.
Soon, they completed the transaction.
You completed a profitable transaction with a Dream Wisher, gaining +30,000 points and +6 experience points.
After deducting the 20,000 spent on exchanging for brown rice, Tang Yu'an's points balance increased by 10,000.
"Eh, that's not right..."
The value of a piece of blue beard leaf is 50 points, and 1,200 pieces should be 60,000. After deducting the cost twice, he should make a profit of 20,000, right?
After careful observation, Tang Yu'an discovered that only a small part of this batch of newly harvested blue beard leaves was fresh, and the rest looked a little shriveled.
Although it still has the function of regulating temperature, according to the system, these slightly shriveled leaves are worth only 40 points per piece.
After discovering this difference, Tang Yu'an thought about it for a while and didn't take it too seriously.
He didn't think that the Lord of Lanhu Town was selling inferior goods as good ones. After all, the bluehu leaves still had the function of regulating temperature, but they had lost some moisture.
From the perspective of use, such dry leaves are more durable, and the other party does not know the system's points determination rules.
Although this kind of dried leaves has a slightly lower point value, but...
According to Brother Chi Hao, Lanhu Town has a population of over ten thousand, and his four thousand kilograms of brown rice is not enough to feed all of them for a day.
The lord of Lanhu Town still needs his brown rice. Next time, he will probably take out more bluehu leaves to exchange with him. With small profits but quick turnover, this business can still be done for a long time.
Tang Yu'an used the item list function of his portable warehouse to quickly pick out 200 fresh leaves and put them together with the previous leaves.
As for the remaining 1,000 blue beard leaves, they were placed in another box.
At present, there is no suitable market for these blue beard leaves, but Tang Yu'an believes that he will find one in the future, so he will collect them first.
Throwing the last bottle back into Menghai, Tang Yu'an leaned on the window and looked out.
"It seems that the bottles we can retrieve are all from this plane." He looked at the bottle floating in the sea of dreams and said in a low voice.
Zhou Qi, who was making the bed, paused when he heard this.
Then he went on to make the bed and said, "That seems to be the case at the moment."
"It seems that if we want to contact Mom and Dad, we can only rely on the bottle we threw into the sea of dreams." Tang Yu'an reluctantly withdrew his gaze.
"Don't think about it. Maybe there will be other ways in the future." Zhou Qi tucked him into the bed. "As long as you keep upgrading, you can unlock more system functions."
Tang Yu'an nodded, "If you become a top businessman, you can go home..."
An idea suddenly struck him, and he said, "Didn't we add an empty bottle when we upgraded the main store last time?"
Zhou Qi recalled and nodded: "When I upgraded to level 10, I also added one."
So they currently have three drifting bottles that can travel across dimensions. One is connected to Langze, one is connected to the water-scarce plane, and one is still on the way.
"That is to say, when we reach level 20 or upgrade the main shop, we will most likely be able to get another empty bottle!"
Zhou Qi nodded, but neither of these two methods of obtaining it could be rushed.
For example, the second piece of level 2 magical furniture is still waiting for the elf Yaya to upgrade them. As for the remaining three pieces, there is no sign of them yet.
"But we have another direction for upgrading!" Tang Yu'an said excitedly.
He now has a points balance of more than 60,000, so he can definitely explore the second upgrade direction: bigger is beautiful!
Moreover, if you upgrade in this direction, not only will you have a higher chance of getting empty bottles, but the number of employees to be recruited and the number of people on the overnight stay list will also increase.
Zhou Qi thought about it and nodded: "Then let's give it a try."
So, Tang Yu'an opened the store interface.
【Choose the direction of store upgrade: Big is beautiful】
[Do you want to deduct 1000 points to unlock the "Big is Beautiful!" upgrade?]
Tang Yu'an naturally chose yes.
[Ping An Grocery Store (Big is Beautiful!) Level 0]
[Level 1 Upgrade Conditions: Merchant Level 5 (Already met), Own 3 stores (Already met), Total store area of 1,000 square meters (Already met), Total store popularity of 10,000 (Already met)]
[Do you want to deduct 2000 points and upgrade the main store "Hean's Grocery Store" to (Big is Beautiful!) Level 1?]
2000 points?
Although Tang Yu'an could afford it now, he still couldn't help but grumble.
When Jing was in the strong direction before, it only required 1,000 points, but now it has doubled!
Moreover, when he looked at the upgrade conditions, he couldn't help but gasp. "Big is beautiful" actually examined the number of branches and the total store area?
Fortunately, he and Xiaoqi discovered a bug that allowed them to use walls to enclose the land, otherwise, it would be really difficult to do.
In short, Tang Yu'an already felt that this upgrade direction would cost a lot of points.
But he clicked "Upgrade".
【Deduction successful! 】
Congratulations! The main store, Heian General Store, has been upgraded to level 1 (Big is Beautiful!)
[New "Furniture Mall" added, please visit the "Decoration" section for details]
[Overnight stay list increased to 1,000 people]
[The main store can recruit +5 employees, and the branch store can recruit +3 employees]
[Dream Message in a Bottle +1, the capacity of the Message in a Bottle is doubled, the current total number of Messages in a Bottle is: 4]
[Message board upgraded, editable channels +3, details can be viewed in the "Forum"]
"Wow! There really is another message in a bottle!" Tang Yu'an said happily, "And... the capacity has doubled?"
He looked towards the window of the Dream Bottle and saw that an empty bottle had appeared on the nail at the edge of the window.
Tang Yu'an quickly stood up and ran over to take down the empty bottle.
Sure enough, this bottle is one size larger than the previous one, but even though it is one size larger, it can't hold much.
Just like the girl in the water-scarce dimension, the message in the bottle he sent over could only hold 200ml of water. Even if it is one size larger now, it is only 400ml.
There is a time difference in the communication between the two planes in the drift bottle. Only a small amount of water is sent at a time, which is not enough to drink.
If he wanted to continue making a deal with her, he would have to find a way to get a space prop that could be stuffed into the bottle.
But no matter what, having one more message in a bottle means one more hope of contacting his parents, so Tang Yu'an is still very happy.
Because the number of times he could send out the message in a bottle today had been used up, he hung it back up and planned to send it out again tomorrow.
Only then did he have the leisure to check other mission rewards.
The number of overnight accommodations has indeed increased, and the branch seems to have improved along with the main store.
Because Store No. 1 has been upgraded, the number of overnight accommodations has increased directly to 1,000, while Store No. 2 and Store No. 3 are still at level 0, so the number is still 100.
The message board originally had only three channels, but now it has increased to six.
Tang Yu'an thought about it for a while, then transferred Lin Jue from the main store to store No. 1, and then edited the third channel into the "store channel".
When speaking in a store channel, only people in that store can see it - of course, as an administrator, Tang Yu'an does not have this restriction.
However, this also means that all the store employees can see his comments, so he should try not to speak in the store channel.
In this way, at least it will be more convenient for No.1 Store employees to communicate with each other.
As for the remaining three channels, he hasn't figured out how to divide them yet, so he put it aside for now.
Of course, what surprised Tang Yu'an the most about this upgrade was the newly added "furniture mall" in the decoration section.
What is sold in the furniture mall is not magical furniture, but some ordinary household items of level 0.
However, this kind of furniture is exactly what Tang Yu'an needs now.
For example, tables and chairs, storage cabinets, shelves, pots and pans of various specifications and materials, but what caught his eye the most was the stove!
Yes, it is the most common household stove, which is perfect when paired with the gas cylinder from the wholesale mall!
"We can set up a kitchen in No. 1 Store." Tang Yu'an said happily.
This way, when you want to cook, you don’t have to go back to the main store to cook, and these two things can be combined and sold to residents.
Anyway, a stove only costs 100 points, and the gas cylinder is not expensive. At least Grandma Guo can definitely afford it.
Moreover, she had previously asked Grandpa Li to build an earthen stove for her, and now she can use the new one directly.
"Great, I'll get up and go shopping tomorrow!"
Maybe it was because he had more points balance now, Tang Yu'an looked at these things that only cost one or two hundred points and didn't think they were expensive at all.
Back then, they risked their lives just to get three cold medicine pills for 100 points...
"Life is getting better and better!"
Tang Yu'an finally lay down in bed, nestled beside Zhou Qi with peace of mind, and said, "We will definitely be able to go home soon!"
Zhou Qi hummed lightly and reached out to pat the top of his head comfortingly.
Although the way back home is uncertain, they must always hold on to hope.
As the night deepened, lightning and thunder began to flash outside and heavy rain began to fall.
The temperature is getting lower and lower.
The next morning, when Tang Yuan went downstairs, he felt cold and quickly put a few more blue beard leaves in his arms.
Normally, it would have been dawn by this time, but now it was still dark, and the chill of the night still lingered in the air.
"Has the message in the bottle been thrown into the sea of dreams?" Zhou Qi was packing breakfast.
Tang Yu'an nodded, "It's already been thrown in."
After much consideration, he did not use the name of the mysterious businessman this time, but used his real name.
Since their bottle is used for interdimensional communication, there should be no need to worry about the person who gets the bottle being harmed by the other dimension, right?
In this case, there seems to be no need to use a vest.
Because there is a time difference in cross-dimensional communication, if his parents or sister picked up his message in a bottle, they would have to wait for the bottle to travel back and forth before they could know his identity, which would be a waste of time.
So Tang Yu'an decided not to pretend to be a mysterious businessman when placing the bottles.
If you send a message in a bottle with the intention of making friends, you might get something different. He doesn't rely on the message in a bottle to gain points or experience points anyway.
Zhou Qi had no objection to Tang Yu'an's approach. After all, they didn't have any extra messages in bottles, so it would be fine to use just one to see the effect.
Afterwards, they brought breakfast to Store No. 1. When they arrived at Room 501, Lin Zhen, Xiao Cao and the others were there.
"Wuhu, breakfast is here!" Lin Zhen cheered.
Xiaocao and Shitou seemed a little shy, but they were also looking forward to the breakfast Zhou Qi would bring.
Old Li looked at them quietly. Although he was serious, the color in his eyes was soft and warm.
After dinner, Lin Zhen and the other two went to find the residents to start today's work, while Tang Yu'an took Old Li into the kitchen to show him the newly bought furniture.
"Is this... a gas stove?" Old Li was able to remain calm on the surface as he watched the young man take out a brand new stove and two gas tanks out of thin air.
"Yes."
Zhou Qi connected the gas tank to the stove, turned on the switch, and immediately a blue-purple flame came out.
Turn off the switch again and the flame will go out instantly.
Looking at this thing that only existed in his memory, Old Li's expression was still dazed.
And this is not the end.
Then, Tang Yu'an took out a complete set of pots, pans, and even a spatula for him.
"Grandpa, do you need a juicer?"
“…No, there’s no electricity.”
"Well, is there anything else you need?" Tang Yu'an asked.
Old Li was silent for a moment, then said, "Do you have any cigarettes?"
The author has something to say:
Old Li: I want to smoke a cigarette to calm down!
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