Chapter 71: Lu Zhuniang
The Flower Festival was officially about to begin.
This time, it was Lu Yunxi’s turn to tease Shen San.
“Of all the flowers you could pick, why on earth did you pick rapeseed flowers for the Flower King?” She pointed at the bright yellow blossoms in his hand and laughed. “He definitely won’t like those. If you want to impress him, you need something grander and more beautiful.”
After a good laugh, she looked down fondly at the exquisite blossom cradled in her own arms. She was pinning her hopes on this flower to help her win first place. She desperately wanted to ask the Flower King if it knew anything about her situation. The creature had told her to go back, but the problem was that she was currently trapped inside this holographic world and had absolutely no way out!
As she wrestled with her anxiety, it was soon their turn to present their offerings.
Lu Yunxi watched the line ahead of them, a trace of skepticism creeping into her mind. Honestly, everyone was just lining up like this, placing their flowers before the Flower King in a continuous stream. If this kept up, how would anyone actually know which specific flower the Flower King preferred?
She stepped up just ahead of her apprentice and set her flowers on the ground. When the Flower King didn’t react at all, a wave of disappointment washed over her. Yet barely two seconds after she walked past, a chorus of startled gasps erupted behind her.
She whirled around and saw the giant petals of the Flower King trembling slightly as it leaned down, closing in on Shen San.
A brilliant flash of light enveloped the clearing, and Shen San vanished on the spot.
“Shen San—!” Lu Yunxi cried out in fright. She lunged forward to run toward the altar, but a hand firmly caught her shoulder from behind.
“Don’t panic, little girl. The Flower King has chosen its favorite bloom for the year; that young man is just going to receive his reward.” The player behind her looked toward the altar with a mixture of envy and resentment. “He’ll be sent right back once it’s over anyway. You might as well grab a seat over there in the shade and wait for him.”
Yunxi scanned the crowd and saw the same envious look painted on every face. Relaxing slightly, she found a shaded spot nearby and sat down to wait for her apprentice to return.
Meanwhile, Shen San had been transported into a specialized pocket dimension, and he was currently completely bewildered.
“Whatever I want?” He stared at the glowing prompt. Could the Flower King truly fulfill any wish? Even if this was just a game, once word of this reward leaked to the public networks, it would drive the player base absolutely insane. Whether he wanted a Gold-tier weapon or a legendary martial arts manual, he could choose it right now. He could even ask to be promoted to a Grandmaster Chef instantly, matching his master’s tier!
But faced with an infinite menu of choices, he froze, unable to decide. What should I ask for to maximize my benefits?
“I…” After agonizing over it for a long time, his thoughts suddenly drifted back to his master. The cryptic warning the Flower King had given her earlier was incredibly bizarre, and he strongly suspected there was some heavy hidden lore behind her background.
However, the exact microsecond he prepared to voice the question, his internal instincts flared with a violent alarm, as if screaming at him to stop. His gut warned him that if he pursued this line of inquiry, he would live to regret it.
He couldn’t comprehend why his system parameters were reacting this way over a simple game reward, but his intuition had never steered him wrong.
He pursed his lips, ultimately abandoning the question. “Flower King, I’d like to bank this reward for now. Can I return to claim it once I’ve given it more thought?”
The massive bud of the Flower King nodded up and down. “Granted.”
In the next instant, the light flared again, and Shen San was ejected back into the valley.
Lu Yunxi and Shen San made their way up the mountain path, but neither of them was focused on the terrain. Yunxi was dying of curiosity, trying to deduce what kind of legendary reward her apprentice had selected.
She rolled her eyes playfully, plotting a clever way to fish for information, when a faint, intermittent sound echoed through the trees.
“…Sob… My husband… where are you?…”
Lu Yunxi paused. She pivoted immediately and marched toward the source of the crying.
Tucked away in a dense patch of mountain blossoms, a woman clad in coarse, simple clothes was sobbing heavily, her face twisted with grief.
“Excuse me, miss, what’s wrong?” Yunxi crouched down beside her. Instead of staring at the woman’s tear-streaked face, she gently patted her shoulder to comfort her. “Why are you out here all alone?”
“My husband is missing,” the woman sniffed, her voice thick with sorrow.
“Don’t worry, we’ll help you look for him,” Lu Yunxi said softly, helping the woman slowly rise to her feet. “Stop crying, alright? Where do you live? Let’s get you back home first.”
The woman’s cabin wasn’t far—barely a ten-minute walk from the ridge. Once they were inside and she had a bowl of hot water to sip, she calmed down significantly.
“Thank you both so much. My name is Lu Zhuniang. My husband grows flowers up in these mountains, but he never came home last night. I’m terribly worried about him.”
Lu Yunxi and Shen San’s eyes locked instantly.
Lu Zhuniang? Wasn’t that the exact name they were hunting for? Talk about a stroke of absolute luck!
After listening to her describe her husband’s appearance and his usual foraging routes, the duo bid her farewell and left the cabin.
“Master, do you think she’s your aunt?” Shen San asked in a low voice.
But how was Lu Yunxi supposed to know? All she had to go on was her aunt’s name and general age. Lu Zhuniang had glanced at the ancestral jade pendant hanging from Yunxi’s waist during their chat, but she hadn’t shown a single trace of recognition. According to what her mother had told her, her aunt should have recognized the artifact instantly.
The reaction didn’t match the lore. Then again, her mother had been very young when she was sold off, and her aunt was roughly the same age; it was entirely possible the woman had simply forgotten her childhood markers.
After weighing the variables, Yunxi said, “Let’s focus on tracking down her husband first. Once he’s safe, we can ask her more about her family’s history.”
The two went into action immediately, tracking the coordinates provided by Lu Zhuniang. They combed the mountain trails and before long, they located the missing husband.
However, the situation was critical. The man was collapsed on the grass, bleeding profusely from multiple deep wounds.
Shen San stepped forward without a second thought, cracking open a high-tier health potion and pouring it down the man’s throat, while Lu Yunxi deftly pulled out a clean bandage to staunch the bleeding.
“Who… who are you?” the man rasped, forcing his eyes open as he spoke in a weak, trembling whisper.
“Your wife was frantic when you didn’t return last night,” Yunxi explained gently. “She asked us to bring you home.”
A wave of profound tenderness softened the man’s exhausted features. “I’ve caused her so much worry… I…”
A bloodcurdling wolf howl shattered the silence of the woods.
The man’s expression twisted in terror. “Oh no! The pack has returned! Run—!”
But his warning came too late. The moment the echo died down, a massive pack of feral wolves surged from the brush, completely encircling the three of them.
Shen San drew his heavy broadsword, his gaze locked onto the alpha wolf as his posture turned grim.
In the next heartbeat, a familiar system notification chimed in their minds:
[Triggering Map Event: Entering the Wolf Pack Instance Dungeon.]
Hearing the clinical voice of the system engine, Lu Yunxi’s pulse quickened. Her expression faltered for a fraction of a second before she rapidly forced her master persona back into place.
Beside her, Shen San was thoroughly rattled when he realized she had been pulled across the spatial gateway with him. “Master?! How did you manage to enter the instance—”
Lu Yunxi simply leveled a calm, unflappable gaze at him, as if silently asking, Is there a problem?
Staring at her entirely unbothered expression, and then glancing back at the injured civilian on the dirt, Shen San sank into a brief crisis of logic. Could it be that native NPCs possess the mechanical capability to cross instance lines? Is it just a high-tier world setting I’ve never personally triggered before?
Still thoroughly dazed by the mechanical implications, his instincts took over the moment the wolves lunged. “Master, get behind me!” he roared, hoisting his massive broadsword and unleashing a sweeping strike.
Oddly, not a single wolf dared to approach Lu Yunxi’s position.
Whether it was because predators possessed a heightened sense of danger, the wolf models completely ignored her, sensing an underlying, lethal threat from her frame. Instead, the entire pack directed their aggression squarely at Shen San.
With her invisible structural protection anchoring the sector, there was no need to worry about Lu Zhuniang’s husband sustaining further damage. Seeing that the monsters refused to touch them, Shen San felt even more secure in his mechanical theory: NPC entities simply don’t draw aggro inside player instances. Comforted by this conclusion, he boldly hurled himself into the pack to clear the waves.
Lu Yunxi watched him fight for a few minutes. Confirming that his damage output was more than enough to handle the wolves, she relaxed completely and casually struck up a conversation with the wounded man beside her.
“I ended up running straight into a territorial alpha on my way up,” the man explained, leaning against a tree trunk. “Otherwise, I would have been back at the cabin by dark.”
“My wife? She was actually raised in the local township down the mountain, but she never looked down on my status. She happily left the city to move up into these quiet ridges with me.”
“My father-in-law and mother-in-law? Oh, they love nothing more than strolling through the valley gardens. Their marriage is legendary! I only hope that when my wife and I reach our winter years, we can share the same beautiful bond they have.”
Yunxi processed his answers, exchanging a few more casual remarks. Within minutes, she confirmed the structural data: this Lu Zhuniang was definitively not her long-lost aunt.
It appeared her true relative was residing on the Water Continent.
