Chapter 179| Chapter 180| Chapter 181
Chapter 179: Stuffed into the House
Zhou Yu shook her head nonchalantly and pointed at the girls huddled together behind her. “This room is so dark that sometimes I can’t even tell whether it’s day or night! The first time I was thrown in here, I panicked so much I almost beat someone up.”
“Haha! I remember you begging me to hit you back then! Now look who’s getting beaten up!” a girl chimed in from the gloom. She seemed familiar with Zhou Yu and couldn’t help teasing her.
Only then did Lu Yunxi notice the crowd of girls behind them. Seeing them teasing and bantering with one another despite their circumstances, she couldn’t help but smile.
Just then, heavy footsteps echoed outside the heavy door. The chatter instantly died down as every girl turned her head toward the sound. The door creaked open, throwing a sharp beam of light into the dark room.
“Who are the new arrivals today? Step out quickly! It’s your turn to serve!” a woman standing in the doorway barked in a rough, grating voice.
The girls shrunk back like frightened quails. They exchanged tense looks before casting strange, speculative glances at Lu Yunxi.
Suddenly, one of the veteran girls stepped forward, offering a string of sycophantic compliments to fish for information. “Auntie, there are still so many of us here who haven’t had the honor of serving the young master yet. Why are you calling upon the girls who haven’t even been taught the proper rules to serve him?”
The old woman had been acting entirely casual, but upon hearing this reminder, a cold sweat broke out across her forehead.
“Then those of you who already know the rules… you, you, and you over there! Step out and serve instead!” The old woman pointed randomly at a few girls in the crowd. “Hurry up! The young master is waiting!”
The chosen girls didn’t care about anything else. They immediately smoothed down their clothes, patted their hair into place, and eagerly followed her out.
Lu Yunxi watched the display with complete indifference.
The room was packed with captured girls, most of whom huddled shivering in the corners, letting out massive sighs of relief once the old woman left. Yet, a significant portion of them were clearly thrilled, practically itching for a chance to serve the young master. The few who had just been selected were more than eager to throw themselves at that repulsive young lord.
If Lu Yunxi stepped in to stop them now, she wouldn’t be rescuing anyone; she would just be ruining someone else’s perceived good fortune.
Seeing that she had no immediate tasks to perform, Lu Yunxi looked around for a clean patch of floor to sit down, but Zhou Yu suddenly grabbed her arm and dragged her toward the exit.
“It’s time for training,” Zhou Yu explained. “After that, they’ll feed us dinner.”
Pulled along with a thoroughly bewildered expression, Lu Yunxi found herself led out into a courtyard to undergo training managed by several stern matrons.
“As concubines, your sole purpose is to serve the young master flawlessly, which means his preferences must govern your every thought,” one matron barked. She paced back and forth with her hands tucked behind her back, her severe glare cutting across the girls like a knife. “If anyone dares to displease the young master, do not blame us for beating you to death!”
Lu Yunxi listened to the brainwashing speech in silence, subtly observing the people around her. Surprisingly, the girls didn’t seem to be taking the lecture to heart at all. Though a thoughtful glint flickered in their eyes, they all maintained placid, compliant smiles.
The old woman chattered on, spewing a mountain of tedious nonsense. By the time the lecture reached its final segments, however, Lu Yunxi noticed a glaring logical flaw in the rules.
According to the matron, any girl serving the county magistrate’s son had to meticulously monitor the temperature of his tea and carefully feed him his meals, handles every minor detail with absolute devotion. But the newly captured girls hadn’t even been allowed to bathe yet, and some were still literally covered in mountain mud. How could these fastidious maids possibly allow unwashed captives to serve their precious young master?
When in doubt, consult the data.
Once the lengthy sermon finally concluded, Lu Yunxi leaned close and whispered her question to Zhou Yu.
Zhou Yu, however, dismissed her concerns completely. “What’s the big deal? Boiling enough water for all of us to bathe here is a logistical nightmare. It’s obviously far more convenient to just ship the girls directly to the County Magistrate’s Mansion and have them bathe there.”
Lu Yunxi remained unconvinced.
She strongly suspected that these so-called ‘concubines’ weren’t actually being drafted into a harem at all, but were being systematically funneled into some entirely different labor pipeline. Was a lack of hot water truly the only variable preventing them from bathing at the farm?
Though Lu Yunxi sensed a massive error in the system, the realization had come too late. Guarded as they were, executing a breakout to scout the perimeter was far too risky. Shrugging off her suspicions, she quietly sat down to consume dinner alongside Zhou Yu.
The matrons had spent the entire day whining and nitpicking, obsessing over the precise ratio of fat to lean meat they should serve, and drilling the girls on how to properly greet the county magistrate. They made everything sound so incredibly complicated.
But the moment dinner was served, the true budget of the operation became painfully clear.
“…Are we seriously expected to eat this tonight?” Lu Yunxi stared at the substance resting in her bowl and slammed her chopsticks down against the table.
The food item registered as an absolute white common-tier item—it didn’t even command a green uncommon-tier quality rating!
Good grief!
She truly couldn’t comprehend the math anymore. How could any rational player actually aspire to become a concubine in a household like this? This was their grand prize? A concubine title that only granted a single bowl of watery kelp soup for dinner?!
Heh.
Lu Yunxi let out a cold, mocking sneer.
Seeing her temper flare, Zhou Yu frantically tugged her sleeve. “Sister Lu, hurry up and drink it. This kelp soup actually contains a few fragments of shredded fish and a couple of octopus tentacles. The flavor profile isn’t completely terrible.”
Lu Yunxi picked up her spoon and dug into the broth. Staring at the solitary fragment of octopus tentacle floating in the liquid—which measured significantly smaller than a soybean—her facial features contorted into a strained grimace.
This garbage was vastly inferior to the baseline cafeteria food at her previous corporate job! They weren’t even providing rice, noodles, or simple flatbreads to fill the girls’ hunger meters—just a thin soup to artificially keep them from starving!
Refusing to waste resources, Lu Yunxi pinched her nose and swallowed the soup, forcing down a broth that carried a pungent fishy odor, absolutely zero salinity, and a distinct texture of residual sand.
Before long, the system clock initialized the sleep cycle. The matrons began aggressively herding the girls back into the quarters exactly like a flock of ducks.
During the designated rest hours, the captives were packed into a few select rooms, their collision boxes tightly compressed together. It was a literal packing protocol, reminiscent of a rush-hour commuter bus; the rooms were so densely crowded that virtually zero empty space remained.
The maids violently slammed the heavy doors shut from the exterior, throwing the bolts.
Pinned in the center of the dense crowd, Lu Yunxi felt her cognitive processor stalling.
“Why… didn’t the matrons state that it was time to rest? How is an entity supposed to recover their stamina parameters when we’re compressed together like this?” She turned a thoroughly bewildered glance onto Zhou Yu, who seemed entirely unbothered by the layout.
“Sister Lu, this is our designated rest layout!” Zhou Yu replied, letting out a helpless sigh. She had thrown a massive tantrum during her first few days in containment, but after enduring the loop for a week, her system had simply adjusted to the code.
“Because purchasing individual beds for a workforce of this size would drain a massive volume of gold coins, the county magistrate’s wife engineered this specific method to optimize their expenses. They pack us all into a single room to force a standing configuration. That way, even if a girl’s consciousness slips into a deep sleep state, the bodies flanking her parameters will block her from collapsing onto the floor, preventing anyone from catching a chill from the damp stones.” Zhou Yu paused, dully repeating the exact propaganda lines the old maids had fed them.
Lu Yunxi rolled her eyes in absolute, deadpan silence.
What a masterful display of gaslighting! As if they actually harbor a single shred of concern about the girls catching a chill on the floor! If you genuinely care about their health bars, allocate the funds to buy beds! What kind of deranged logic considers sleeping standing up an upgrade?!
Looking at the broader administrative picture, if the magistrate’s budget couldn’t support the upkeep of this many women, they should simply clear the contracts and let them leave the server. Why on earth were they continuously hoarding so many girls inside this facility?
The night cycle concluded, and a new morning initialized.
Lu Yunxi began another grueling day of training alongside the rest of the captives, her entire schedule consumed by endless drilling and listening to the commands of the management tier.
With absolutely nothing to occupy her processing units, she decided to run a comprehensive census on the facility’s population. The final data output completely shocked her.
The harem registry for this single magistrate’s son actually exceeded five hundred individual girls! Fortunately, the facility was situated out on a sprawling suburban farm; had they tried to run this high-density script inside the city limits, the estate’s real estate logistics would have completely crashed.
Because a single room couldn’t possibly render that many units at once, she had completely failed to calculate the true scope of the population during the previous evening’s packing cycle.
She waited patiently throughout the day, and soon the server sky deepened into dusk.
The familiar old matron swung the heavy doors open, selecting a fresh batch of girls to deploy for service detail at the magistrate’s son’s quarters. Lu Yunxi was intensely curious about the ultimate destination of these so-called ‘concubines,’ so with a subtle application of her internal energy, she smoothly manipulated the selection metrics, ensuring her own name was called.
Zhou Yu’s anxiety parameters peaked the moment she registered the selection, her hand instantly shooting forward to snag Lu Yunxi’s sleeve.
Lu Yunxi shook her head slightly, offering a subtle, telepathic reassurance. “I am perfectly secure. Do not let your morale drop.”
Despite the reassurance, Zhou Yu remained profoundly worried. She had been trying to stay optimistic over the past week, but her modern analytical skills confirmed that the underlying script of this facility was deeply sinister. Seeing the primary anchor she trusted most prepare to vanish down the pipeline, she clamped her fingers around Lu Yunxi’s wrist, flatly refusing to break the link.
Faced with a systemic glitch in the selection sequence, the old matron shrugged and simply updated the ledger, ordering Zhou Yu to join the deployment detail as well.
The chosen group of girls marched out of the farmhouse gates. Stationed a short distance down the dirt track was a line of heavy transport carriages. The matrons roughly herded the girls into the cabins like a flock of defenseless chickens.
The exact microsecond their boots cleared the threshold, before anyone could even stabilize their equilibrium or secure a seat, the carriages violently jolted forward, setting off at a frantic velocity.
Lu Yunxi’s eye twitched. Reaching out with lightning reflexes, she caught Zhou Yu just as the girl was about to be launched across the cabin by the kinetic force, pulling her securely onto the bench beside her.
“My thanks, Sister Lu,” Zhou Yu panted, patting her chest as her stress levels gradually receded. She instinctively leaned her frame closer to her companion’s silhouette to anchor her safety parameters.
Chapter 180: Familiar Pattern
Lu Yunxi smiled but said nothing. She simply watched the transport carriage gallop along the cobblestone road, a puzzled look gathering in her eyes.
She had been a bit distracted the previous night, so she hadn’t noticed that the old matron was systematically drafting four or five girls out of every single holding cell. Calculating the numbers based on that pattern, the total crowd of girls sent to serve the county magistrate’s son tonight actually reached twenty to thirty! And this was just a single deployment batch.
She felt more and more that the underlying script was entirely wrong.
However, the rest of the hostesses merely sat frozen inside the cabin, their anxiety parameters maxed out. No one dared to initiate a conversation. Lu Yunxi blended seamlessly into the silent group, patiently waiting to see what event would trigger next.
Surprisingly, the carriage fleet drove straight past the perimeter gates of the main county magistrate’s mansion.
Lu Yunxi pursed her lips, mildly incredulous. Was her initial diagnostic wrong? Was this greasy magistrate’s son actually unhinged enough to organize a massive, thirty-person group encounter?
Just as her suspicions peaked, the carriage ground to a halt, and the twenty-odd girls were roughly pushed into a large hall.
“You little wretches, stand by and wait here!” the mean-looking old matron commanded in a freezing voice. She slammed the heavy doors shut and bolted them from the outside, leaving the group of girls stranded in the center of the room.
The server sky had transitioned completely into night, yet the interior lights of the pavilion remained fully active. It was an exceptionally mysterious setup.
Among the captives, some girls were weeping from pure terror, others were vibrating with twisted excitement, and a few were simply trapped in total confusion.
Lu Yunxi swept her gaze across the empty hall, falling into a deep analytical loop.
“Ah!” Zhou Yu shrieked as her low-level visual senses failed to scan the floor layout, causing her to catch her foot on an anomaly and crash toward the ground.
“Are your vitals secure?” Lu Yunxi tightened her grip on the girl’s wrist, smoothly hoisting her back onto her feet. But the exact microsecond she lowered her chin to inspect the point of impact, her gaze locked onto the flooring in the center of the hall.
The stone was deeply engraved with a series of intricate, remarkably familiar geometric patterns.
Have my database files logged this array blueprint somewhere before?
“I’m perfectly fine,” Zhou Yu murmured, noting her companion’s sudden tactical pause. Thoroughly perplexed, she instinctively clutched Lu Yunxi’s arm. “Sister Lu, what exact coordinates are we running right now? The ambient lighting is so low I can’t map a single asset!”
Zhou Yu’s dialogue acted like a universal trigger. The remaining hostesses, who had been far too terrified to speak, instantly broke out into a chaotic chorus.
“Did the matrons not command us to maximize the Master’s comfort meters? Why have our characters been deployed to this empty hall?”
“Young Master? Master?! Are you running a hide-and-seek minigame with our accounts? Where is your avatar?”
“The shadow rendering is too high! I am terrified! Why hasn’t a guard flipped the lighting switches?!”
“…”
Hysterical weeping, desperate pounding against the locked doors, and panicked shouting fused into a chaotic feedback loop, instantly throwing the twenty-odd girls into total disarray.
Lu Yunxi felt a wave of mild helplessness as her cognitive processing was interrupted by the noise. She opened her mouth to deliver a calming prompt, but the heavy doors suddenly swung wide open.
A brilliant flood of light poured into the hall from the courtyard outside.
The magistrate’s son, whom they had briefly encountered at the market intersection, stepped slowly into the room. He walked with his hands tucked behind his spine, his bloated, greasy flesh shaking with every step like a moving mountain.
The sobbing girls instantly choked back their tears, their eyes locking onto his figure in absolute silence.
“Are these the designated assets for tonight’s cycle?” the magistrate’s son asked. The sleazy, lecherous expression he had worn throughout the day had completely evaporated; his eyes carried nothing but deep, chilling indifference as he scanned their ranks.
Lu Yunxi arched a delicate eyebrow.
Confirmed. These girls were absolutely not brought here to expand his harem.
“Correct, Master. This is the exact inventory allocated for today’s run. Do your parameters dictate that we initialize the sequence now?” the attendant holding the lantern nodded submissively.
“Yes. Initialize the sequence,” the magistrate’s son commanded, waving a casual hand.
A squad of muscular thugs stationed behind him immediately advanced, forming a tight containment ring around the pale, trembling girls.
At this juncture, even the most low-level NPC could calculate that a major system error was occurring.
“No! Stay back! Do not compromise my coordinates! Young Master, please! I will execute any service script you command!”
“Master, what exact labor do you require from our profiles? Please, don’t do this… I am terrified! Waaah…”
“…”
The overlapping shrieks of dozens of girls gave the magistrate’s son a severe headache.
“Cease this racket! What are you screaming about?!” he roared. Once the crowd fell into a stunned silence, his eyes flickered, and he adjusted his vocal settings to project a softer, reassuring tone. “My scouts have uncovered a high-tier hidden treasure cache. I simply require your profiles to serve as a vanguard vanguard to explore the pathing. I harbor zero intention of deleting your lifecycles, so why are you weeping?!”
However, not a single hostess swallowed his blatant disinformation script; their frames merely began to shake with an even more violent terror.
“Do your visual sensors scan that circular pattern engraved in the center of the floorboards? Simply move your vessels inside the perimeter, and whatever premium loot drops your accounts secure, you are legally permitted to retain!”
The magistrate’s son continued to present lucrative incentives, desperately trying to force their movement paths toward the geometric circle in the middle of the room.
Before he had offered the explanation, the girls had merely been backing away out of caution. But the exact moment the phrase explore the pathing cleared his throat, their survival instincts flagged a lethal hazard code. Not a single maiden dared to take a step back; they could only watch the closing thugs with tears welling in their eyes.
“Sister Lu!” Zhou Yu whispered, her voice dropping to an absolute minimum register, though her fingers were aggressively clawing at Lu Yunxi’s sleeve.
Lu Yunxi kept her brow knit in deep, analytical thought.
Almost there! The data is almost synchronized… Where exactly have I processed that circular pattern before?
The retreating hostesses had already been forced to the absolute edge of the geometric engraving. The overwhelming dread triggered fresh weeping.
“Stay back! I beg of you, clear my contract and let me leave! I renounce my aspiration to become a concubine!”
Amidst the desperate pleas for mercy, Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu stood perfectly stoic, completely breaking the demographic pattern.
The magistrate’s son narrowed his eyes, his pathing shifting as he prepared to personally advance toward their coordinates, when a sharp, freezing snort cut through the hall.
One of the captured girls whirled around, furiously barking at the weeping maiden beside her, “Cease this pathetic crying! Are your logic modules still that profoundly naive?! It is blindingly obvious that our units were never purchased to serve as his wives—we are being used as disposable meat shields to trigger the traps inside that treasure vault!”
“That coordinate must carry a catastrophic fatality rating, correct? Which is precisely why your profile lacks the courage to step inside, choosing instead to outsource the body count to us! Otherwise, how could a corrupt magistrate’s lineage suddenly display such immense generosity?!” the girl sneered, turning a freezing, defiant gaze onto the master of the estate.
Taking a deep, ragged breath, she addressed the surrounding captives: “Pleading for mercy is a complete waste of data! Steel your parameters, everyone! Even if our lifecycles are destined for termination tonight, we shall not degrade our profiles by groveling before a monster!”
The moment her dialogue concluded, she let out a final, proud snort. Tracking the magistrate’s face twist into a mask of pure rage, she spun on her heel and leaped directly into the center of the circular pattern without a shred of hesitation.
The exact microsecond her boots cleared the perimeter, the intricate geometric engravings began to pulse with a brilliant, blinding light—rendering a gorgeous yet profoundly eerie energy field.
The surrounding girls unleashed a collective shriek of horror, before their eyes widened to the absolute maximum, staring blankly at the vacant space.
The moment the light parameters hit one hundred percent saturation, the maiden who had stepped into the circle was completely deleted from the room.
“That… that graphic animation…” Zhou Yu’s hand instinctively slapped over her mouth, her eyes shaking. “Is it possible my transmigration script didn’t drop me into a historical pre-industrial era, but rather a high-tier cultivation fantasy world?!”
Lu Yunxi ignored her existential crisis, her own eyes suddenly flashing with supreme brilliance.
The data link had finalized! She officially unlocked the identification file for the array!
“I—” Before she could unpack the explanation for her companion, a sharp scream erupted from the girls adjacent to them.
The magistrate’s son had completely lost his patience, his face crimson with wrath as he ordered his heavy thugs to violently shove the remaining hostices toward the circle, their eyes glinting with lethal intent.
The fragile commoner girls possessed zero physical attributes to resist the kinetic force of the thugs; their balance parameters failed, and they began tumbling backward into the glowing engraving, their features masked in absolute, unadulterated terror.
Lu Yunxi’s focus sharpened. Leaning close, she delivered a rapid, whispered instruction directly into Zhou Yu’s ear, before instantly shifting her posture to mimic intense panic, stumbling backward toward the center.
“You absolute savages! Keep your filthy hands off my hit box! I shall execute the jump animation myself!” she shrieked, her expression turning incredibly cold the exact microsecond the magistrate’s son reached out to grab her cloak.
With a final theatrical turn, she executed a flawless leap straight into the absolute center of the matrix.
The teleportation graphics flashed a second time, and Lu Yunxi’s silhouette completely vanished from the hall.
The remaining hostesses were practically vibrating with sheer terror, their panic metrics peaking. But seeing both the fierce girl and the seemingly defenseless Lu Yunxi proactively take the leap, a minor tint of hesitation flickered across their calculation models.
Mingle within the trembling crowd, Zhou Yu lowered her chin, her modern mind rapidly processing the data Sister Lu had just whispered.
Sister Lu explicitly identified this array as a… one-way long-range teleportation matrix. Meaning the destination parameters could resolve to either an extreme hazard zone or an absolute safe haven. This moronic magistrate’s son simply lacks the map data, assuming it’s a trap-riddled treasure vault, which is why his own profile dares not cross the threshold…
Finalizing her long-term roadmap in a fraction of a second, Zhou Yu tightly grit her teeth.
It is infinitely better to stay synced with Sister Lu’s party than to remain stranded on this corrupt server.
With an aggressive burst of momentum, she launched her vessel into the light.
Following a heavy sensation of spatial distortion and mild vertigo, Zhou Yu’s motor controls re-engaged as her boots slammed onto solid earth.
She scanned her immediate surroundings with intense anxiety, a wave of primitive dread creeping into her processor.
Back at her original spawn coordinates, even within the dense mountain ridges, the foliage was permanently rendered with beautiful blossoms and sweet fruits. The environment here, conversely, resembled a brutal tropical rainforest—the humidity parameters were maxed out, and the terrain was choked with colossal trees, toxic insects, and massive ant colonies.
“Sister Lu… what exact map coordinates are we running right now?” Zhou Yu asked, shrinking her neck into her collar as she uncomfortably lowered her voice.
Lu Yunxi monitored the familiar rendering of the high-density jungle, a subtle wave of realization touching her core.
Did the teleportation array just bridge the gap straight to the Forest Continent?
A few paces ahead of them, the fierce girl who had initiated the leap had already finalized a quick foraging run, harvesting a handful of wild mountain fruits. She stepped back, calmly extending her palm to share the resources with the new arrivals.
Lu Yunxi ran a rapid chemical diagnostic on the flora, confirming the item parameters contained zero toxic debuffs. Wiping the dirt from the skin, she took a clean bite.
“Whoa… so sour!”
Chapter 181: Tofu Shop
Seeing Lu Yunxi’s face instantly scrunch up from the intense sourness, Zhou Yu immediately lost the courage to take a bite. However, the fierce girl merely frowned and forced herself to swallow, fighting through the sharp flavor.
“This is the only kind of fruit that grows around here. You won’t find anything else,” she said, turning to Zhou Yu. “If you don’t want to starve, you’d better get used to it.”
Zhou Yu hesitated, then gingerly took a small bite. The sourness hit her like a physical blow, instantly making her teeth ache.
By the time she finished cradling her sensitive cheeks, the first girl had already wolfed down several more fruits.
A few minutes passed, and the ache in Zhou Yu’s teeth finally began to fade. She was just bracing herself to take another bite when the other girl suddenly clutched her stomach. A remarkably loud, clear rumble echoed from her midsection.
The girl let out a dry, embarrassed chuckle. “Well, it seems these sour things aren’t very filling.”
The words had barely left her mouth when her expression twisted. She clamped both hands over her stomach and bolted frantically into the dense bushes.
Watching the poor girl suffer an explosive bout of diarrhea, Lu Yunxi and Zhou Yu silently set their fruits down, not daring to touch them again.
Fortunately, the girl had stopped eating the moment her hunger bar was satisfied, so the stomach issues weren’t too severe. After Lu Yunxi foraging around and found a few medicinal herbs for her, she recovered in no time.
Before long, the rest of the hostesses who had failed to overpower the magistrate’s thugs began spawning into the clearing one by one. Initially, they were in a complete panic, but seeing that the vanguard was safe and unharmed, they gradually calmed down.
Lu Yunxi polled the group to see if they wanted to travel with her party. These girls were only fifteen or sixteen years old—essentially half-grown children! Hearing her offer, they all eagerly agreed.
Picking a direction at random, the newly formed convoy set off into the wilderness.
Along the trail, they occasionally crossed paths with squirrels, wild hares, and pheasants. The trees along their path were routinely loaded with wild fruits, and the local streams were teeming with fish, ensuring no one’s hunger meter dropped to zero.
Observing the familiar environmental aesthetics, Lu Yunxi grew increasingly certain that the teleportation array had successfully dropped her back onto the Forest Continent.
What made the journey even better was the sheer capability of her companions. She had initially calculated that she would have to expend a massive amount of stamina instructing them in basic wilderness survival, fearing they wouldn’t be able to stay alive. Who could have foreseen that this group of girls was a literal gathering of hidden dragons and crouching tigers? Aside from the rare occasions when they stumbled upon a high-level pack of wolves or a rogue tiger—requiring Lu Yunxi to step in and clear the threat—she didn’t have to lift a finger. Because she anchored their security detail, the girls took absolute charge of every other survival chore.
“Sister Lu, how do your parameters rate the boiled fish I prepared today? The ambient humidity has been incredibly high these past few days, and some of the girls are breaking out in eczema. Consuming something heavily spiced is the perfect counter-buff right now.”
“I managed to harvest a large cache of local herbs during our trek. I can infuse them into tonight’s stew to purge the dampness from everyone’s systems.”
The girls coordinated their tasks with fluid efficiency. Lu Yunxi barely had time to sit down before a steaming bowl was pressed into her hands. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the feast.
However, mid-way through the dinner cycle, the nearby mountain peaks suddenly began to violently vibrate.
Zhou Yu’s eyes widened in sheer panic. “An earthquake hazard?! Drop your stance and cover your heads, everyone!”
Lu Yunxi’s own vessel shook from the kinetic tremors. Acting on instinct, she instantly cast dozens of max-tier protective barriers, perfectly encapsulating every single girl in the clearing.
The next microsecond, an apocalyptic wall of mud and mountain debris surged down the slopes, burying their entire party beneath the earth.
“Sister Lu, has your consciousness rebooted?!”
The moment her eyelids fluttered open, a dense crowd of girls instantly swarmed her position. One group gently supported her shoulders, another brought a cup of warm tea, and a third frantically held fresh food to her lips.
Lu Yunxi’s eye twitched. Declining their overwhelming assistance, she sat up straight on the cot. The exact moment her motor controls re-engaged, she registered the heavy, damp quality of the air inside the room, her brow furrowing with mild discomfort.
“What are our current map coordinates?”
“Sister Lu, our luck parameters held up! We were successfully extracted from the mud slide by a local rescue faction. The residents claim this sector is Luzhou.”
“Luzhou?” Lu Yunxi arched a delicate eyebrow.
She lacked the data to verify if a city named Luzhou existed back on the Flower Continent, but her database firmly logged a prominent metropolis named Luzhou within the borders of the Forest Continent. The region was historically famed for its endless network of scenic marshlands and small ponds, which attracted massive flocks of egrets, giving the city its name.
Driven by intense anticipation, she bolted out of the bed and threw the heavy wooden doors open.
Sprawling before her silhouette was a beautiful sequence of serene ponds, where several elegant white egrets stood with their heads lowered, gracefully pecking at small fish in the shallows.
A brilliant smile lit up Lu Yunxi’s face.
Confirmed. I have officially returned to the Forest Continent server!
The hostesses pooled their resources to craft a selection of beautiful thank-you gifts for their rescuers, before eagerly marching through the city gates of Luzhou.
Luzhou was a thriving metropolitan hub commanding a massive volume of commerce, excellent job opportunities, transparent governance, and incredibly friendly local NPCs. Possessing a variety of specialized craft skills, the girls rapidly secured stable positions and settled into the city fabric.
With her party safely established, Lu Yunxi’s entrepreneurial instincts re-ignited, and she began scouting the lanes to establish a new business. However, before she could even finalize a viable street location, the girls caught up with her tracking marker.
“Miss Lu, our networks intercepted data indicating your profile is hunting for a commercial property! My account just secured a storefront lease in the central district, but my current operations don’t require the space. I shall transfer the deed to your inventory immediately!”
“Her storefront is a low-tier micro-property! Mine is a premium, two-story commercial pavilion. Sister Lu, you must utilize my property to launch your enterprise!”
“My account doesn’t command any real estate assets, but my supply line connections are maxed out. Regardless of what specific commodities your stall intends to trade, I can source the freight for your inventory at absolute rock-bottom wholesale prices!”
“Sister Lu, your intervention back in the wilderness saved my profile from being torn to digital pieces by that wolf pack! If it weren’t for you, I would never have secured this high-paying job in the city! Please, do not reject this humble offering!”
“…”
The crowd of girls launched into a chaotic, high-volume debate, all trying to out-gift one another. Lu Yunxi stood entirely stunned by the influx of wealth.
Zhou Yu, conversely, looked profoundly embarrassed, feeling as though she had completely disgraced the legendary league of time-traveling protagonists. In standard transmigrator lore, main characters were supposed to carelessly distribute massive fortunes or prime land deeds to their companions. Yet here she was, only capable of purchasing cheap street snacks for Sister Lu’s inventory.
After being relentlessly pestered for several consecutive days, Lu Yunxi realized she lacked the capability to override their gratitude algorithms, reluctantly accepting the massive stack of deeds and keys.
Luzhou City, East Street.
This specific commercial avenue was heavily optimized for luxury trade, with rows of pristine pavilions catering exclusively to the high-net-worth elite—retailing premium rouges, cosmetic powders, lustrous pearls, and high-tier jade artifacts.
Yet, over the past few days, a glaring anomaly had generated along the strip.
A literal roadside tofu shop had spawned right in the center of the luxury sector!
Every adjacent merchant was trading in gold, silver, exquisite jewelry, or rare antiques and classical calligraphy paintings. This solitary tofu shop, sandwiched tightly between the high-end boutiques, looked profoundly bizarre.
Lu Yunxi sat behind the counter of the establishment, lazily waving a silk fan to cool herself. Her current status was absolute boredom.
In truth, this premium storefront had been gifted to her by one of the deeply grateful hostesses. Lu Yunxi’s initial strategy was to list the property on the commercial boards to secure a steady stream of passive rental income, but after letting the listing idle for several days, the market demand returned absolutely zero applications.
Conversely, a secondary storefront another girl had gifted her was situated down in the heavily congested downtown core—a high-traffic grocery lane nestled right against the bustling vegetable market. The environmental aesthetics there were incredibly chaotic and messy. Yet, almost the exact frame she listed the market property, a swarm of local merchants fiercely competed to sign the lease, while this magnificently decorated East Street pavilion remained entirely unpopular.
Left with no logical alternative, she finalized the lease for the market property to farm the gold, opting to occupy this luxury pavilion herself to grind out her business experience metrics.
Unfortunately, on this specific upper-class avenue, the baseline tofu business flatly refused to take off.
Even though she drained a considerable chunk of gold coins to hire a professional lion-dance troupe, commissioned local promoters to spam advertisement lines across the chat channels, and even launched a series of high-yield promotional raffles, the wealthy elite NPCs aggressively ignored her stall.
After burning through so many marketing campaigns, Lu Yunxi hadn’t earned a single copper coin of profit. Instead, her operational expenses had completely hollowed out her liquid funds, leaving her virtually broke.
Had the server logic not dictated that simply keeping the tofu shop active would slowly tick up her experience bar even with a total zero customer count, she would have closed the shop weeks ago.
The calendar pages turned day by day.
Just as she was prepping her system to permanently abandon the enterprise, a wealthy merchant suddenly submitted a lease application for the East Street pavilion, offering an exceptionally generous monthly gold rate. Too exhausted to engage in a prolonged negotiation loop, Lu Yunxi smoothly authorized the contract. Shifting her strategy, she migrated down to the crowded vegetable market, setting up a primitive wooden table to continue retailing her tofu as a street vendor.
However, on her absolute first day of operating the market stall, her sales parameters remained entirely dry. Instead of purchasing her inventory, the massive crowd passing her table was simply using her coordinates to farm visual entertainment.
“Huh? What a bizarre sight. There’s actually a young maiden retailing raw tofu in this filthy lane?”
“Is this the legendary ‘Tofu Beauty’ the local chat channels have been hyping up?”
“She truly commands a remarkably high aesthetic rating.”
“…”
A non-stop stream of passing men loitered around her table to gossip about her character model. Lu Yunxi paid absolutely zero mind to their dialogue, keeping her focus locked on her inventory.
But perhaps because she displayed absolute zero baseline reaction to their catcalling, one particularly dense thug computed that her defensive parameters were non-existent. He boldly stepped across her boundary line, reaching out a hand to touch her face.
Lu Yunxi’s expression instantly turned pitch-black. Her large eyes narrowed into a freezing, ominous glaze, a dense wave of unbridled, terrifying killing intent radiating from her core form.
She ran a rapid visual scan of her immediate perimeter, confirming that the surrounding market vendors had already panicked and fled the lane, leaving the cobblestones entirely vacant.
Letting out a cold, sharp sneer, she initiated a high-intensity physical intervention, brutally thrashing the degenerate who had tried to violate her hit box.
Following that altercation, she had no idea what specific rumors the local NPCs had logged into their information networks, but her tofu business plummeted into absolute, dead silence. Whenever common pedestrians caught sight of her silhouette down the lane, their faces would turn entirely pale with terror, and they would execute a maximum back-dash to clear her radius, acting exactly as though her avatar were a lethal bioweapon.
Realizing her market reputation was thoroughly glitched, Lu Yunxi was forced to alter her corporate formatting.
She finally processed the structural flaw: the act of selling delicate white tofu made her character look entirely too weak and defenseless. Simply sitting placidly on a low wooden stool inherently triggered the aggro of every rogue, thug, and low-level gangster spawning in the sector. Shifting her strategy to project raw dominance, she resolved to pivot her business model entirely to butchering and selling meat.
What her internal alchemical calculations failed to realize was that the endless influx of hooligans she kept triggering had absolutely nothing to do with the botanical properties of tofu. The anomaly stemmed entirely from Luzhou’s geographic parameters; the state capital sat at a remote corner of the map, resulting in compressed job opportunities alongside a massive population density. With such a high volume of idle, low-level entities loitering in the streets, they simply hunted for conflict to burn their stamina.
In addition to the dense network of small marshes spanning the city lines, the terrain ten kilometers outside the massive stone walls was entirely dominated by primeval forests, which spawned an infinite supply of wild game.
Lu Yunxi casually trekked up the mountain ridge, tracked down a massive wild boar, and manually dragged the heavy carcass back to the vegetable market.
