Chapter 104 Planting Trees
Princess Yurong's eyes were practically glued to that gold ingot.
This weighs more than twice as much as the one she received last time.
Glancing at the envious and jealous gazes from below the stage, she swept her sleeve and swiftly stuffed the gold ingots into her purse, bowing her head obsequiously as she said:
“Father, you should have said earlier that you don’t know how to plant trees. Your daughter is best at this kind of rough work.”
Seeing this, a palace maid wanted to come up and help, but Princess Yurong raised her hand to stop her and personally took the bundle of saplings with soil still attached to them to the tree pit below.
She worked quite efficiently. First, she took a branch from her own body and tied it to the osmanthus tree for support. Then, she picked up the blood stored in the pot next to her and poured it into the tree.
After confirming that the sapling was planted securely, she shook the soil off her hands and carefully wrapped the cloth strip engraved with the player's mark around the tree three times.
The court painter, who had been standing to the side the whole time, had already captured the scene with a few quick strokes. Princess Yurong approached the easel, looking with satisfaction at the photo of herself and the sapling. Under the gaze of all the players, she spread the painting out on the low table and boasted:
"Father, your daughter has planted your tree. This sapling will surely protect you and ensure your safety at the banquet to come."
Fang Zhuo looked at the photo of the two plants in the painting.
A bloodstained osmanthus tree, and a tree with twisted and tangled stems and leaves.
...It must have been difficult for the artist, as the content of this painting would be considered some kind of bizarre Cthulhu relic elsewhere.
Although he didn't quite appreciate this masterpiece, he still took out a handful of gold leaves from his bracelet: "A reward."
From the moment she saw the gold ingot, Princess Yurong's mouth never closed; she smiled respectfully and with delight.
She took a deep breath of the gold's aroma, feeling that none of the finest wines and dishes on the table could compare to the fragrance of the golden leaves before her.
Money is such a pleasing thing.
Princess Yu Rong carefully put all the gold leaves into her purse, and then led a group of plant maids to perform a dance for His Majesty, completely forgetting about the players waiting to grab the saplings.
Yin Hu's brain had been razed to the ground by the successive attacks of money.
The players next to him who had been gossiping maliciously fell silent. After a long while, they awkwardly continued whispering:
"Does Princess Yu Rong, this boss, have a bit of a split personality? Last night, she tore several of my guild members in half because they didn't compliment her on her looks when they entered the palace... Why is she jumping up and down like this now?"
"Dude, stop being so sour. If number 188 gave me tens of thousands of ghost money, I could bind all 100 osmanthus trees with his player mark and dance with hundreds of players."
"...Can you keep your voice down? Don't give Yu Rong any inspiration."
"Stop talking, guys. I'm counting on grabbing saplings to increase my strategy progress. Don't let me end up not getting any saplings."
"I'm a little afraid to open my eyes. The way more than a dozen strangely shaped plants on the stage twist and turn is so eerie. I feel my sanity is dropping like crazy just looking at them. This is mental pollution."
"You should take a closer look. The sight of bosses dancing together in high-difficulty dungeons is rarer than a meteorite hitting the world."
"Every look is one less chance to see it. You've managed to snag this rare opportunity."
"They've been jumping for almost a minute now, when are they going to stop? When are they going to start planting trees?"
"Shut up. It's only been a minute. If you had tens of thousands of ghost money, you would be jumping from morning till night. Do you think I don't know you? Princess Yu Rong, a top-tier dungeon boss, has seen it all. I can only say that she is too restrained."
With Fang Zhuo gently waving his hand, Princess Yu Rong reluctantly led her entourage to a stop.
She took a sip of the osmanthus wine on the table, and her peripheral vision caught sight of the pile of saplings in the corner. Only then did her mind, clouded by greed, remember the next part of the ceremony. Princess Yurong stood on the high platform and recited from the script to the audience below:
"On the second day of the ninth lunar month, we will celebrate with the people. Please plant your osmanthus saplings in the designated pits. To make it easier for the palace staff to count them, please mark your saplings with your personal mark after planting."
As soon as he finished speaking, the crowd below rushed towards the seedlings like swarms of insects.
As a lowly city gate guard, Yin Hu stood almost at the very edge of the crowd.
He knew his chances of getting a spot to plant trees were slim, and besides, he'd already racked up over forty strategy points with his best friend these past few days. Rather than risking his life fighting other high-level players, he figured he'd better take things as they came and help his friend out as much as possible.
But when he turned to look at his good friend, he found that his friend was not following the crowd to grab the saplings, but instead had turned his attention to the banquet on the high platform.
No wonder he's considered a promising newcomer by number 188; even at a time like this, he's still thinking about protecting his boss.
Before Yin Hu could say anything, he saw someone suddenly leap up from the crowd of players, wielding a purple weapon and charging towards the person sitting in the center of the platform.
Was someone really launching a sneak attack?
Sitting in the very center of the banquet, Fang Zhuo had already spotted the few people lurking below.
They're clearly from the same guild. Judging from the list Princess Yu Rong provided, they're most likely high-ranking members of "Xiaoqi Brothers," the second largest guild in the dungeon world.
As the group drew closer, Fang Zhuo remained motionless.
At that moment, he wasn't thinking about how to dodge, but rather how to make the live stream more engaging.
He's not a professional film director after all, and he doesn't really understand the rules of combining natural special effects. His principle for buying special effects is generally that the more expensive, the better.
At this moment, Yin Hu, who was standing below the stage, felt his legs go weak. Just as Yin Hu was about to shout to warn No. 188 to be careful of a sneak attack, he saw the other party throw a special effects ball of light into the air.
The next second, it seemed as if a raging flood had risen on the horizon.
The waves caused by the tsunami were almost twenty meters high, and the sky-covering waves crashed into the garden, forming a dark, oppressive shadow.
The players nearby, who were scrambling for the saplings, thought it was a built-in effect of the dungeon and muttered a curse under their breath:
"Holy crap, are high-difficulty dungeons really that expensive to make? Even a normal dungeon has to include a flood scene?? Are they trying to make a living with all this extravagance?"
Yin Hu fell to the ground, never expecting that he would actually see the most expensive natural effect sold in the mall in his lifetime—Boundless Water.
This product costs over 50,000 ghost coins, and even the largest guilds wouldn't buy it once to celebrate their founding anniversary.
It felt so good that he didn't even want to blink, feeling like he was wasting money if he missed even a second.
The towering waves on the horizon seemed about to crash down with devastating force, the clouds changed color, and the entire sky turned a dark, oppressive gray. The seawater enveloped every inch of land, and the deafening roar instantly swallowed up all conversations, leaving only the sound of the approaching water.
The man sitting in the center of the platform then threw a weapon enveloped in golden light into the sky.
The light was so bright it was almost blinding, instantly suppressing the faint glow emanating from the purple item held by the attacker.
Yin Hu clenched his fists involuntarily.
Well done, just crush them like that.
This god-tier quality hook knife is hundreds of thousands more expensive than the purple weapon from the Howling Brothers' gang; the latter doesn't even cost a fraction of the hook knife's price.
The members of the Xiaoqi Brothers gang clearly realized that something was wrong. They looked at the surging waves in the distance and then at the golden hook above their heads. Suddenly, their eyes became clear.
The leader was the first to betray them. He turned ninety degrees on the spot, scratched his head, and planned to retreat to the side as if nothing had happened.
The next moment, Yan Changyun nimbly leaped into the air and firmly grasped the hook knife.
Like an executioner reaping lives, with each swift stroke of the blade, a head is cleanly severed.
A burst of golden light erupted, and the towering waves in the distance seemed to be summoned, churning and surging wildly in sync with the movement of the hook blade.
Yin Hu was so shocked that he couldn't speak.
After a brief silence of a few seconds, the chat in the public livestream room for the instance began to frantically refresh with exclamation marks—
[Ahhhhhh, is this something I can see in a live stream?! Director Fang, you deserve to be honored at the Imperial Ancestral Temple. It's hard to imagine how extravagant it must look on site!]
[I'm starting to regret it. I should have known better than to use that delayed entry card. Maybe it would have randomly put me into the Great Yong Dynasty instance.]
[Is this tsunami also a special effect? I thought it was part of the dungeon mechanics. I was just wondering how it could happen so coincidentally...]
[What are you thinking? It's the special effects, of course! They cost over 50,000 each. If you sort by price in this category on a third-party marketplace, it'll be the first one.]
[Haha, I was originally planning to arrange a similar item for the guild's 10th anniversary celebration this year, but I'm backing out now.]
[The special effects cost over 50,000, sob sob... This life is worth it!]
[Switch to LK1892's livestream to see a first-person perspective. This kid's move was so clean and efficient. Fang Ge has struck gold again, that's all I can say.]
[We still don't know how many god-level weapons Brother Fang has, and now he's just casually pulling out a hook knife. I'm at a loss.]
Blood meandered down the steps. Yan Changyun picked up the two osmanthus saplings that Xiaoqi Brothers had dropped on the ground, handed one to Yin Hu, and then marked the other sapling with his own mark and planted it in the last tree pit.
As the last seedling was planted, a dark flock of crows rushed through the floodwaters.
Each crow was as big as a giant adult dog, with a beak longer than a human hand, and like a cloud of black smoke that could devour people, it instantly swept across the entire back garden.
The crow circled the osmanthus trees for a moment, then flew straight towards the players who hadn't managed to grab any saplings.
Painful screams echoed through the back garden as copious amounts of blood seeped into the soil. Meanwhile, the newly planted osmanthus trees seemed to receive some kind of nourishment, rapidly sprouting new branches and buds, with clusters of tender yellow flowers blooming among the branches.
Princess Yurong was standing next to the painter, holding a full stack of sketches in her hand, and she stepped forward to stroke the flower buds with satisfaction.
After the flock of crows gradually dispersed, the palace maid unfurled the long scroll in her hand, stood in front of the platform, and began to announce and calculate the strategy points for each player.
There were 1,300 people when they came in, but the final count was less than half of that.
Apart from Fang Zhuo and Yan Changyun who maxed out their strategy points, the highest strategy points for the rest were only around seventy.
Princess Yurong returned to the banquet with the sketches in her arms, pointing to one of the paintings and saying:
"Look, this is the young master of the Grand Secretary's family. Isn't he handsome?"
Fang Zhuo looked at another strangely shaped plant in the painting and, for the first time, didn't know where to begin praising it.
Fortunately, the train on the horizon broke the brief silence, which, in all normal circumstances, meant that this week-long high-difficulty dungeon was finally over.
Princess Yurong also noticed the train. She first put all the sketches she had made that day into her personal space, and then slowly looked down at the audience.
Her gaze moved slowly and intently, as if she wanted to memorize every detail of today's banquet.
In the vast back garden, besides the osmanthus trees in full bloom right in front of you, there are even more hibiscus, crape myrtle and rose of Sharon in the distance, forming a huge sea of flowers.
Thirty tables were set up in the middle of the flowering trees. The small bosses who had been transferred over were completely unaffected by the players' antics and were drinking and playing drinking games while dressed in ancient costumes.
Everything felt so real, just like a banquet hosted by a noble lady from the capital.
After a long silence, Princess Yurong smiled and said, "Thank you, Father. If it weren't for you, the palace wouldn't have had the extra budget to hire a painter."
"I don't know when I'll see a scene like this again, or maybe it will never happen again..."
At the same moment the train whistled, she took a string of bell bracelets from her own stem and leaves and handed them to Fang Zhuo: "Thank you, I really mean it."
"Keep it. It's not expensive. I found it somewhere else."
The moment Fang Zhuo received the bell bracelet, a message floated in mid-air.
[Congratulations to the player for obtaining the item: Princess Yu Rong's Bell]
[Item Description: This seems to be a string of magical bells; the owner can gain a certain degree of danger perception.]
As the main boss in this brand-new, high-difficulty dungeon, the items Princess Yurong always carries must be of pretty high quality.
He thanked the princess sincerely, put the string of bells into the bracelet's space, and placed it alongside the thousands of keys.
The moment Yan Changyun and I boarded the train, a series of announcements popped up on the system—
[Congratulations, host! You have achieved the achievement 'Company employee's first clear of an S-rank high-difficulty dungeon']
[Congratulations again, host! You have achieved the normal achievement 'Counterattack'!]
[You orchestrated a simple business war. This achievement is earned when the host or an employee of your company kills ten or more competitors.]
[Two unnamed blind boxes have been given away and added to your system inventory]
[Current number of blind boxes remaining: 10]
Having saved up another ten pulls, Fang Zhuo used an item to teleport to the safe house as soon as he got off the train, intending to open the boxes first.
As soon as they entered the safe house, the mermaid produced a long list of bills and began reporting on recent revenue as they followed her in:
"Boss, the skill books and pills you asked me to put on the shelves have been selling like hotcakes these past few days. Many people are making a special trip to the safe house just to buy the skill books, and some are even buying them on behalf of others."
"This week's sales have already exceeded 20 million. Let me check the exact figure: 27.04 million..."
“Okay, you don’t need to read out the odd amount, it’s not important.” Fang Zhuo waved his hand.
According to the system rules, after he bound himself to the safe house, the items sold in the safe house still followed the rule of tenfold rebate. That is to say, these pills and skill books alone generated more than 200 million in rebates.
It's so easy to take advantage of the system's features.
With the addition of the more than 7 million in live-stream rebates Yan Changyun earned in the Dayong Dynasty instance, his account now has nearly 300 million more.
Fang Zhuo tapped his bracelet and sent a message to the real estate agent he had contacted last time:
[I remember last time I bought all the rooms in the beginner and early-stage dungeons. Could you help me calculate the approximate total price of the rooms in the intermediate difficulty dungeons and send me a list?]
Several exclamation marks appeared on the other end: [! ! Boss, do you mean we have to pick a room in every C-rank dungeon? That'll add up to almost three thousand rooms!]
Fang Zhuo replied with a "1" to indicate his approval.
His business expansion plan only extends to C-level dungeons. Although higher-level dungeons require more safe houses, they are also much larger, and the huge area means that a single safe house cannot cover every corner of the dungeon.
Adding rooms to the same instance would incur unnecessary costs; he can't possibly buy thousands of rooms in a Thousand Faces instance.
On the other hand, any business should have its limits – low- to mid-level dungeons are not very difficult, so adding a safe house won't affect the game balance.
However, venturing into high-level dungeons would obviously bring endless trouble, and Fang Zhuo, being a businessman, didn't want to be targeted by the dungeon's official staff.
He had barely returned to his room when the real estate agent sent him a list.
There are nearly three thousand Class C laptops in total, with a total original price of over four hundred million.
After triggering the real estate tycoon mechanism, Fang Zhuo only spent 360 million yuan, which had almost no impact on his total assets.
After all the rooms were linked, the system description for the safe house was also changed accordingly.
[Name: Infinite Dungeon Safe House]
[Currently linked properties: 5439]
[Note: The size and additional features of this safe house will increase with the number of linked properties.]
[Current number of safe house rooms: 230]
[Number of floors in the safe house: 21]
[Single-floor area: 920 square meters]
Before opening the blind box, Fang Zhuo sent a message to the mermaid:
[I'll be making some modifications to the safe house using some props in a bit, please tell the guests not to panic; also, the real estate agency will be sending someone to deliver the keys later, please receive them for me.]
Mermaid: [Yes, boss! I guarantee I'll complete the task!]
Having completed the expansion of the safe house, Fang Zhuo, based on his experience, selected several boxes with the most square contents.
Based on my previous experience opening blind boxes, those with square-shaped items inside usually contain building materials.
Sure enough, this time they unearthed quite a few functional modules related to the addition of safe houses—
[Congratulations! The number of guest rooms in the safe house has increased by 10, and the total number of floors has increased by 1]
[Obtained safe house building items: Add elevator*3, Indoor heated swimming pool*1, Rooftop lounge*1, Specialty buffet restaurant*1]
[Congratulations on obtaining the SSR-level employee card: Hotel Senior Management Manager]
[Congratulations on obtaining the SSR-level dungeon world-exclusive mimicry: Black Emperor]
Besides these heavier items, he also unearthed several healing pills and a massive starship.
As he manipulated the building modules to lay them out, the safe house beneath his feet began to tremble slightly.
The mermaid, who was dozing off at the front desk, watched as one function after another popped up on the management system in front of her—there was a swimming pool, a specialty restaurant…
As expected of high-end props that the boss acquired, these newly added functions can even be synchronized to the electronic system in real time.
He wiped away the drool that had escaped from his nap and pushed a registration form to the new guest.
"Fill out a form when you come in, and just tick the room type you like."
Opposite him was a young man in his twenties with well-defined muscles on his arms and a calm expression, looking like a high-level player who had experienced many challenging dungeons over the years.
The mermaid searched through all the players or bosses on the leaderboards in her mind, but she couldn't recall such a person at all.
Was his intuition wrong? Was he just an ordinary promising newcomer?
The man, holding a large wooden box, bowed slightly towards the front desk and smiled politely:
"Excuse me, I'm not here to make a purchase. I'm here to deliver the property keys and would like to meet your boss while I'm at it."
"Oh, okay, just leave your things at the front desk. Our boss is busy."
The merman snapped his fingers and said, "Young man, I see you have extraordinary talent. Would you like to join the Giants Guild?"
"I'm a guild veteran, I can put in a good word for you with our boss. You've probably heard of our guild, right? The pay is amazing, and tons of people are desperate to get in..."
The young man shook his head.
His face still held a refined smile, tinged with a hint of helplessness:
"I really need to see your boss urgently, just five minutes will do."
“I think your boss would be willing to take some time out of his busy schedule to meet with me. You can tell him that the dungeon master wants to talk to him.”
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Author's Note: Dungeon Master: I'm so poor, I'm thinking of selling myself on Zhuanzhuan (a second-hand marketplace app).
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