Chapter 23: Spiritual Plant Garden
Su Wudeng took the data slate from Zhong Huihui. Sure enough, the message logs were overflowing with the exact same frantic queries:
“Did they make it?! Are they alive?!”
“Please, God, let them be okay!”
“Shopkeeper, please say something! Where did you go?”
“Don’t panic, everyone. The shopkeeper must be doing everything she can to save them right now!”
The live feed had cut out so abruptly that the netizens were losing their minds trying to figure out the aftermath. Su Wudeng was just about to draft a public announcement when an encrypted call request flashed across her console.
It was Chu Yansen.
“Brother Chu? What’s going on?”
Chu Yansen’s cultured voice filtered through the line. “I’m calling to run a quick follow-up on the technical efficacy of the proprietary pet kibble my R&D division formulated.”
Su Wudeng understood immediately. This mapped perfectly to what Zhong Huihui had just broken down for her. It was precisely that high-density nutrient fuel that had accelerated the husky litter’s growth. Zhong Huihui held the detailed analytics on that front.
“Perfect. I’ll let Huihui walk you through the diagnostic data.”
She handed the communicator over to her assistant.
Zhong Huihui took the terminal, her tone professional. “Mr. Chu, your timing is perfect. I was actually just summarizing the growth metrics for the shopkeeper.”
“To put it plainly, the technical efficacy is staggering!”
“The cubs’ development over the past few days has been incredibly explosive, and every single biometric indicator is locking into prime thresholds. Their physiological growth is perfectly stable, and they are currently on the absolute cusp of clearing their evolutionary transition phase. We anticipate the cycle to conclude in a matter of days.”
Chu Yansen asked a few highly specific follow-up questions regarding the cellular absorption rates, and Zhong Huihui answered each one with precise clarity.
At the conclusion of the data review, Chu Yansen let out a satisfied breath. “Excellent. That sets my mind at ease. When you have a spare moment, compress those diagnostic logs and forward them to my terminal.”
Seeing Su Wudeng offer a brief nod of approval, Zhong Huihui replied, “Will do, Mr. Chu.”
Su Wudeng felt a profound wave of satisfaction. She hadn’t expected Chu Yansen’s research division to deliver a specialized compound this flawlessly on short notice.
Right then, Chu Yansen requested to speak with her again. “Is the shopkeeper free to chat? I have a major structural proposition I’d love to pitch to you.”
Su Wudeng reclaimed the communicator, a trace of confusion in her voice. “What kind of proposition? I’m listening.”
Chu Yansen paused for emphasis before continuing, “It’s regarding the launch of a dedicated supply corporation.”
“If my forecasting models are accurate, your storefront is going to interface with an increasingly massive volume of authentic companion beasts going forward. The influx of newborn litters will expand exponentially, and their caloric and nutritional demands will scale right along with them.”
“It is logistically and financially impractical to expect future beastmasters to manually formulate specialized organic rations for living beasts on their own.”
“Furthermore, our own reserved companion beasts enforce this exact same strict premium dietary requirement. Therefore, I intend to establish a specialized corporate entity dedicated to pet infrastructure, and I want to offer you a foundational partnership.”
Su Wudeng didn’t quite parse his logic. “A partnership? Why would you need to bind your venture to me? Your research teams developed the formula, and your facilities handle the manufacturing. You possess full clearance to launch the corporation independently. I can’t contribute a single ounce of corporate utility to that pipeline.”
From her perspective, adding her name to the papers made zero structural sense. Chu Yansen held the intellectual property; he could simply bring the product line to market on his own merit.
But Chu Yansen’s tone turned remarkably solemn. “No, I’ve thoroughly evaluated the parameters. I am offering you an absolute fifty percent equity stake in the corporation.”
“To be clear, you will not be required to manage any operational, manufacturing, or logistical workloads. Your sole obligation is to allow us to bind your name and your shop’s brand to the venture.”
“If you decline the alliance, I will permanently mothball the project and refuse to launch the corporation.”
Chu Yansen had recently extracted the full truth from Shu Can: the Snow Crystal Cat he had adopted wasn’t a standard luxury lapcat—it was a contract-capable companion beast destined for greatness. And he had secured a treasure of that magnitude for a pathetic single million credits.
He couldn’t begin to fathom just how massive of an emotional and material debt he owed the shopkeeper. She had treated him with unprecedented generosity, and he resolved to match that integrity at all costs. Slicing his future pet supply empire exactly down the middle and handing half to Su Wudeng was his way of balancing the scales. If she refused the gesture, his personal code of ethics would never allow him to profit from the data her animals had provided.
Su Wudeng found his intense solemnity slightly amusing. She easily traced the psychological gears turning in the young tycoon’s head.
“Are you absolutely certain about this?” Su Wudeng asked, her tone sharpening slightly. “An equity split of this magnitude is a massive corporate decision.”
“I have never been more certain of anything in my life,” Chu Yansen’s voice vibrated with absolute, unwavering conviction. He refused to be the kind of man who casually bled a benefactor dry.
Su Wudeng fell into a brief silence, analyzing the board.
Her initial instinct was to decline the massive windfall, but Chu Yansen’s raw sincerity was an immovable object. She knew that if she rejected the equity, his stubborn pride would genuinely drive him to abandon the venture entirely. Furthermore, turning the problem over in her head, she realized that as the volume of living pets in the sector scaled up, establishing a centralized, premium supply infrastructure would become an absolute necessity sooner or later.
Instead of leaving the market open for an aggressive corporate competitor to exploit, leaving the pipeline in Chu Yansen’s hands was an infinitely superior choice. At the very least, they operated on the exact same wavelength of integrity. Crucially, holding a clean fifty percent voting stake granted her absolute veto and decision-making power over the manufacturing standards.
She wanted to guarantee that these animals received the absolute highest tier of care, extending beyond baseline nutrition into hygiene, toys, and medical supplies. Slicing the equity down the middle was the most bulletproof way to protect her animals’ future.
She hadn’t forgotten how the pet industry in her previous life had been plagued by endless scandals involving toxic, adulterated kibble and lethal toys manufactured by greedy corporations to maximize their profit margins. This time, she would personally act as the ultimate gatekeeper, ensuring her cubs never faced a structural dilemma of that caliber.
“Alright,” Su Wudeng finally spoke, breaking her silence. “I accept the alliance. But I am hard-coding a non-negotiable clause into our corporate charter: our primary, absolute mandate must be to deliver the highest possible standard of care for companion beasts. Maximizing profit margins will permanently remain secondary to the welfare of the animals.”
“Without a doubt!” Chu Yansen’s voice filled with pure delight the moment she accepted. He commanded a dozen other high-yield conglomerate divisions to generate raw capital; he had zero need to exploit the pet industry for money. He vowed solemnly, “I will ensure this corporation sets the absolute gold standard for ethical pet supply manufacturing across the interstellar sectors!”
Let Snowball grow up surrounded by the absolute best the galaxy has to offer.
With the foundational verbal agreement locked in, Chu Yansen promised to forward the legal documentation directly to her console. Su Wudeng simply needed to sign off via a digital signature. While she had the option to finalize the entire contract pipeline within the Star Network, she preferred to print and archive a physical, hard-copy paper backup. Beyond the legal safety, it injected a beautiful sense of ritual into the partnership.
Su Wudeng felt a wave of profound relief wash over her. With a dedicated corporation handling the manufacturing, she and Huihui would no longer have to spend hours manually grinding and blending high-density kibble everyday, saving them massive amounts of labor and time.
With the corporate logistics settled, Chu Yansen finally allowed his curiosity to take over.
“By the way… did the Iron-Eating Beast survive the operation?”
“The broader network has gone completely feral, waiting for your official statement.”
“Though, truth be told, my anxiety was minimal. I knew with absolute certainty you would pull her through.”
Su Wudeng smiled, deeply touched by his unshakable confidence in her abilities. His relaxed demeanor proved he hadn’t doubted her for a single microsecond.
“The surgery was an absolute success,” Su Wudeng reported warmly. “But the alpha mother sustained horrific internal trauma. Her recovery pipeline is going to be incredibly slow and delicate.”
“And you won’t believe the biometric data: the hidden cub inside her womb was successfully extracted alive! She engaged in a life-or-death territorial battle against an apex predator while actively carrying an unborn infant, and she won!”
Chu Yansen gasped, completely stunned by the telemetry. “What?! You’re telling me all three cubs survived the ordeal? That defies all statistical probability.”
A triplet delivery within the Iron-Eating Beast line was an extreme biological rarity, let alone navigating a severe case of obstructed labor in the middle of a war zone. Pulling every single life through was a miracle of pure, unadulterated fortune.
“The sheer, indomitable resilience of that mother panda is deeply awe-inspiring,” he murmured reverently. He let out a long, heavy breath before adding, “But honestly… I feel even more blessed to have crossed paths with you, Shopkeeper.”
“If her body hadn’t materialized inside your surgical suite, her internal hemorrhaging would have claimed her life within the hour, and her newborns would have followed her to the grave shortly after.”
Without a mother sovereign to shield them, newborn infants in that primeval wilderness were nothing but a free meal for wandering predators or destined to quietly freeze to death in the dirt.
Suddenly, Chu Yansen’s tone shifted, turning noticeably serious. “Wudeng, you need to maximize your operational security going forward. This incident has almost certainly triggered high-alert monitoring from major institutional players.”
“If nothing else, the high-command centers of the eight primary military war zones have undoubtedly received detailed briefings on your broadcast metrics by now.”
Controlling multiple consecutive slots on the global trending search charts made it statistically impossible for the high-ranking surveillance divisions to overlook her shop.
“Previously, the military analysts likely categorized your clips as clever digital synthesis, choosing to maintain a skeptical, wait-and-see posture. But with this unedited rescue footage out in the open, certain factions are guaranteed to dispatch field agents to probe your background. You must prepare your defenses.”
He paused, delivering his final sentence with heavy, meaningful weight: “If you ever require asset liquidation, specialized hardware, or… off-the-books support, you tell me immediately.”
Though his phrasing was polished, Su Wudeng instantly parsed his underlying meaning. Chu Yansen was openly offering to leverage his immense conglomerate network to supply her with infinite funding, high-tier military hardware, or black-market defensive arrays.
But Su Wudeng remained completely unbothered. With the absolute protection of the system architecture woven into the shop’s foundations, Pet Love Home was a literal fortress.
She offered a calm smile. “Don’t worry, Brother Chu. The shop’s internal security matrix is entirely impenetrable.”
As long as the system was running the defensive protocols, she didn’t have a single care in the world. However, his warning reminded her that her external security framework could use a flexible upgrade. She needed to strengthen the physical barriers to prevent random corporate spies or military scouts from casually waltzing through her front door.
Furthermore, her immediate survival strategy was to remain firmly inside the shop anyway; she had zero logical reason to venture out into the city for the foreseeable future. Su Wudeng tapped her chin thoughtfully, resolving to look through the system mall later to see how much Hope Value it would take to upgrade the shop’s structural classification.
Beyond fortifying the defenses, she also needed to expand the physical square footage of the facility. Between the retail display floor, the nursery suites, the surgical bay, and her personal living quarters, the layout was getting tight. Sourcing more apex beasts in the future meant she had to map out a comprehensive architectural expansion plan ahead of schedule.
Hearing her calm reassurance, Chu Yansen let out a silent breath of relief. He concluded that Su Wudeng must be backed by a massive, shadowy ancient faction or an elite interstellar syndicate. He nodded understandingly. “Excellent. Just remember: my resources are yours whenever you call.”
He genuinely, deeply wished for her safety.
After disconnecting the call, Su Wudeng pulled up the primary system interface. Sourcing the medical modules and trauma equipment required to save Aihua had completely drained her Hope Point reserves, leaving her wallet practically empty.
But she held an absolute monopoly on traffic generation now; accumulating Hope Points was remarkably simple.
Su Wudeng plotted her next move. “All I need to do is initiate a follow-up live stream, showcasing the recovery progress of Aihua and the triplet litter. I know the netizens are completely desperate for an update.”
She scrolled through the active forums on the Star Network. The global community was entirely consumed by worry over the giant panda’s fate, generating an astronomical volume of traffic. The collective consciousness was waiting on a single metric: did the mother make it?
Launching a broadcast under these parameters would cause her Hope Value metrics to absolutely tear through the charts. Factors in the timeline, and the husky puppies were also roughly forty-eight hours away from clearing their transition threshold, which would allow her to run a dedicated contract-readiness showcase. That would provide another massive injection of pure system currency.
“In the short term, my financial pipeline is completely secure,” she concluded.
Su Wudeng finalized her schedule. “Aihua’s biometrics should stabilize further by tomorrow morning. That’s when we hit the ‘Go Live’ button.”
Her immediate priority was to rapidly harvest Hope Points to overhaul the shop’s structural defense systems. Fired up by the strategy, she logged into her network profile and pinned a high-visibility public bulletin:
“Greetings, citizens of the Star Network! This is Pet Love Home, and I am Shopkeeper Su Wudeng.”
“I am absolutely thrilled to officially report that the Iron-Eating Beast, Aihua, is currently in stable condition. We will be hosting an exclusive, real-time follow-up broadcast tomorrow morning. Eager viewers can book their stream placements via the pre-registration link below. I want to extend my deepest, most sincere gratitude to every single soul across the galaxy who offered their thoughts and care for Aihua.”
She paused, her fingers moving across the terminal as she drafted the secondary paragraph:
“Allow me to provide a brief introductory context regarding Aihua: she is an indomitable, heroic mother of the Iron-Eating Beast line. Not only did she successfully deliver two beautiful cubs in the wild, she absorbed catastrophic physical trauma to aggressively lead a pack of predators away from her nursery to protect them.”
“What is even more miraculous is that upon executing her clinical extraction, our diagnostics revealed a third, unborn infant trapped within her womb due to severe labor complications.”
“Against all statistical odds, the final cub was safely extracted via emergency surgery…”
Su Wudeng provided a detailed, captivating narrative tracking Aihua’s struggle and the current clinical parameters of the triplet pandas. The vast majority of the audience had only witnessed the first two cubs on the stream before the blackout; they had remained entirely oblivious to the dramatic existence of the third infant.
The moment the bulletin cleared the review monitors, it triggered an absolute societal earthquake across the network. The comment feed was instantly an unstoppable deluge of text:
“MY GOD! Aihua is infinitely more badass than I realized!”
“Pulling the first two through was already a miracle, but to find a third infant trapped in her womb during a major trauma surgery and save it too?! This is historic!”
“I am full-on crying at my desk… Aihua, you beautiful angel! You have to pull through completely!”
“Her maternal fortitude is legendary. Sourcing three cubs simultaneously… I pray her cellular reconstruction progresses flawlessly.”
“I am locking in my stream pre-registration right now! I need to witness this miracle with my own eyes tomorrow morning!”
Su Wudeng skimmed the incoming reactions, nodding with deep satisfaction. Public perception was aligning perfectly with her forecasting models, setting a magnificent baseline for tomorrow’s broadcast.
Once the stream concluded, her next operational phase would be to initiate the formal adoption vetting process for the husky puppies.
“Wait a minute… don’t I still have one final Snow Crystal Cat whose designated buyer hasn’t checked in yet?”
Su Wudeng quickly opened her encrypted communications menu and fired off a direct text: Professor Yang, what are your current coordinates?
Meanwhile, out in the high-tier sectors, an elite interstellar starship was cutting through the void at maximum warp.
Professor Yang sat in his private cabin, silently urging the vessel’s engines to push past their physical limits. If he had harbored a shred of academic skepticism initially, the subsequent viral explosion of the Husky stream and the unedited Snow Crystal Cat proof files had violently shattered his doubts. He realized with absolute, crushing clarity just how magnificent of a galactic treasure he had nearly allowed to slip through his fingers.
An authentic, living Snow Crystal Cat. Every single specimen in that shop was a real animal with a living soul. He had been on the verge of turning his back on a miracle.
Thank the heavens it wasn’t too late. And thank the heavens he maintained a stellar relationship with Chu Yansen; it was solely due to the young tycoon’s intervention that his reserved spot for the final kitten had been preserved. The exact second the validation cleared, the elderly academic had emptied his research accounts to book the fastest premium starship ticket to her sector.
Right then, his console chimed with Su Wudeng’s incoming text.
Professor Yang hammered out an immediate, frantic response: “En route! My vessel is currently at maximum velocity! Please, I beg you, hold the kitten for me until I arrive!”
Su Wudeng fired back a casual thumbs-up emoji.
Exiting his direct messages, he returned to his institute’s internal communication channel. The text logs from his senior faculty were flashing relentlessly:
“Director Yang, do not botch this assignment! The entire institutional legacy hinges on your shoulders!”
“The literal survival of our research department is riding on that cat! Bring it back!”
“If you secure that Snow Crystal Cat, our funding crisis vanishes instantly!”
Director Yang let out a long, heavy sigh. They were formally registered as the Endangered Companion Beast Research Institute. But the sickening irony of their existence was that despite being the sector’s premiere animal research department, they didn’t possess a single living animal. Every single paper they published was bottlenecked by theoretical extrapolation and historical archives; they lacked a physical, organic benchmark to anchor their research. After all, authentic pets were priceless crown jewels; the military high-command and the mega-conglomerates would never hand a living specimen over to a research facility.
But the paradigm had just violently shifted. With a living Snow Crystal Cat secured in their laboratory, his institute would finally possess the breakthrough data required to revitalize their department, completely lifting the suffocating administrative pressure off his shoulders.
“Faster, push it faster!” Director Yang muttered, staring out the viewing port at the streaks of starlight. For the first time in his life, he found interstellar travel agonizingly slow.
Suddenly, a high-priority video notification popped up on his display feed: Historic Miracle: Triplet Litter of the Iron-Eating Beast Line Stabilized! Sovereign Mother Aihua Defies Trauma!
Professor Yang’s brow furrowed, his academic sensibilities instantly offended. “What absolute garbage! The Iron-Eating Beast line has been locked in critical endangerment for generations; our sensors hasn’t picked up a wild signature in over a decade! And now some retail account claims one is delivering a litter? What a preposterous scam!”
“Furthermore, a baseline terrestrial sovereign of that class enforces a strict biological limit of one or two cubs per labor. Sourcing triplets is an extreme anatomical anomaly. Which fraudulent marketing account is inventing these lies?”
Disgusted, he tapped the link to review the uploader profile, only to freeze when the creator’s handle loaded: Pet Love Home—the exact same shopkeeper he had just messaged.
Director Yang sat frozen, his jaw slack as he stared at the screen. “It’s Pet Love Home again…”
If the claim originated from that specific shopkeeper… his academic certainty began to violently splinter. He had to concede that this young woman possessed resources that defied modern logic.
“This… the bone density, the fur articulation… this is an authentic Iron-Eating Beast sovereign!”
“First the Snow Crystal Cats, then the combat-tier Sword Heart Huskies, and now she casually pulls a fully grown giant panda out of the wilderness?!”
“And navigating trauma that severe… she manually stabilized a dying sovereign and successfully extracted the obstructed third cub alive?”
“This crosses the line from highly advanced veterinary care into an absolute, literal miracle! A historic milestone for the entire companion beast discipline!”
“Who on earth… what on earth is the true background of this shopkeeper?!”
“No, I can’t sit in this chair for another second! I need to physically stand in that facility and see the truth with my own two eyes!”
Su Wudeng reviewed Professor Yang’s frantic reply, closed the interface, and resolved to wait for his starship to land.
Finally, every single operational task regarding the newborn pandas had been locked down. She checked the chronometer on her display; according to her calculations, Yulan should still be awake in her recovery pod. Unsure of her current physical status, Su Wudeng bypassed the text logs and initiated a direct video call.
The connection cleared instantly, and her sister’s face filled the holographic screen. Though Yulan’s expression still carried traces of deep physical exhaustion, her mental energy looked significantly more robust than her initial diagnostic charts suggested.
“Sis, you’re finally free, aren’t you?”
Yulan pouted through the screen, her tone laced with a slight, whiny grievance. “Hmph. I’m forcing the medical team to approve my discharge in a couple of days anyway. When I land, I’m going to personally audit your daily schedule to see what’s keeping you so incredibly busy that you’d completely forget about your favorite sister!”
She was thoroughly miserable stuck inside the trauma ward. From the exact microsecond her eyes opened, she had been subjected to a non-stop gauntlet of biometric scans, cellular therapy sessions, and neural diagnostics, leaving her zero time to even surf the Star Network. She had desperately wanted to hear her sister’s voice, but Su Wudeng’s status icon had remained stubbornly gray. An entire day had crawled past, and she had only now managed to claw out a free window to place a call.
It didn’t take a genius to guess that her sister had been completely consumed by managing the new cubs.
She couldn’t help but huff sourly, “Sis, I’m officially convinced I’ve been demoted. I’m no longer your number one favorite person!”
Su Wudeng laughed at her dramatic insecurity. If she allowed her to run with that narrative, who knew what manner of chaotic, imaginative interrogation Yulan would subject her to later. She quickly executed a tactical pivot to redirect the conversation.
“Alright, alright, cut the drama. Did you just say you’re leaving the Capital Star to come here? You aren’t staying on campus for the mandatory summer vanguard conditioning? Your lead homeroom professor personally called my line and stated that your academic placement is locked in an incredibly urgent bottleneck right now.”
“Oh, and regarding your primary beast crisis—relax. I have already initiated a plan to secure a magnificent, fully compatible companion beast for your new semester.”
“Your absolute, singular mandate right now is to lay flat, follow the medical directives, and wait until your biological foundation has achieved a one hundred percent recovery. Do you understand me?”
Su Yulan’s expression turned remarkably stubborn. “The summer break is officially active, Sis. I am traveling straight to your sector. Do you have any idea how many months have crawled past since we last stood in the same room? I don’t care about the regulations; I’m boarding that transport!”
“Besides, I can run my physical conditioning and forms perfectly fine on my own; there is zero logical reason for me to waste my vacation cooped up on campus.”
This stubborn little brat.
Faced with her absolute, unyielding resolve, Su Wudeng could only let out a helpless sigh. “Fine. Settle your discharge papers and come over. It happens that I have a massive, world-altering secret waiting to be unveiled to you when you land.”
She wanted to personally show this dense girl that her acquisition of the premium spiritual plants didn’t involve a single ounce of back-alley danger or smuggling syndicates.
Across the galaxy, her sister’s eyes ignited with pure curiosity. She rapidly calculated the flight paths in her head; if she forced the trauma team to clear her tomorrow morning, and factored in the transit speeds of the commercial star-liners… if she booked the high-speed route, she would touch down in her sister’s sector in roughly three days.
In less than seventy-two hours, she would finally be back by her sister’s side!
Pacified by the timeline, she obediently nodded. “Alright, Sis. I’ll follow your instructions.”
She reasoned that since her sister had witnessed the absolute brutality of her final dogfight, Su Wudeng would have parsed her strength and realized she didn’t need to risk her life cut deals with the black market ever again.
The only remaining structural hurdle was whether the patriarch’s estate would attempt to block her travel authorization. “Whatever. I don’t give a damn whether they approve it or not,” Su Yulan resolved secretly, her jaw tightening. “I’ll slide into the Capital estate, grab my personal belongings, and board the liner. Their entire cognitive capacity is focused exclusively on grooming my younger brother anyway.”
Her toddler brother was currently being prepared to enter an ancient elemental heritage trial. Sourcing a entry token for a trial of that magnitude commanded a fortune of tens of millions of credits, even if it was just the absolute lowest tier of the heritage zone.
Su Yulan let out a cold, mental scoff. “They’re more than willing to drain the estate’s treasuries to line his pockets.”
But the thought of her sister immediately washed the bitterness from her heart. “It doesn’t matter. I have my sister, and she is the only true family I have left in this world.”
Right then, the pneumatic door of her recovery bay hissed open. Her primary trauma physician stepped into the room, accompanied by her homeroom professor, Li Nanhai.
The doctor initiated the routine biometric scans, his console chattering with endless streams of baseline indicators. But Su Yulan’s focus remained entirely detached from his diagnostics.
The systemic efficacy of the Astraea Grass had far surpassed her wildest expectations. She could clearly feel her neural pathways hum with a deep, unbreakable stability; her consciousness had firmly rooted itself within the Third Realm—the Telepathic Unity Realm. Her foundation was rock-solid. Beyond the neural leap, her physical constitution and muscular density had experienced a monumental, qualitative evolution.
The trauma physician stared at his data slate, his face an absolute mask of bewilderment. “Breathtaking…” he muttered under his breath, scrolling through the graphs. “In my entire medical career, I have never witnessed a human organism process cellular reconstruction at a velocity this extreme.”
Li Nanhai’s eyes brightened instantly. He hadn’t anticipated Su Yulan’s baseline physical constitution to be this phenomenal. To breach the Third Realm at such a tender age, backed by a biological framework that healed at supersonic speeds—her future evolutionary ceiling was practically limitless.
Fired up by her potential, his tone turned exceptionally warm and paternal. “Yulan, let’s map out your immediate schedule for the summer break.”
“Are you certain you won’t reconsider staying on campus? I can personally construct a highly customized, hyper-intensive training regimen tailored specifically to accelerate your synchronization parameters. I give you my word: after a single summer under my guidance, your combat metrics will skyrocket!”
How could Su Yulan possibly accept? She offered a polite, apologetic bow. “I am deeply grateful for your dedication, Professor Li, but my priority is to return home.”
“Furthermore, my travel plans have already been finalized with my sister.”
Li Nanhai’s expression stiffened. Her sister? She isn’t returning to the main patriarch estate on the Capital Star? She’s voluntarily traveling to that backwater, bottom-tier fourth sector?
This was an academic disaster. A remote sector like that lacked the barest tier of training infrastructure; she wouldn’t even have access to a baseline simulation chamber. Pushing a Third Realm prodigy into an educational vacuum for a whole summer meant her metrics would stagnate, if not completely regress due to a lack of high-density calibration.
“Yulan, I need you to step back and analyze the gravity of your choice,” Li Nanhai advised with intense, earnest gravity. “The university senate recognized your world-class potential and granted you an unprecedented promotion into the Apex Vanguard Class. This is a once-in-a-lifetime milestone.”
“But you must understand: the Vanguard Class is a den of absolute monsters. Every single student in that cohort is a proud, heavily resourced child of privilege, and their baseline synchronization training is a full year ahead of yours.”
“If you choose to waste this summer vacation lounging in a backwater sector, you will fundamentally lack the capacity to keep pace with your classmates when the new semester commences. The hardware gap will crush you.”
“What will you do when you fall to the bottom of the rankings?”
“Yulan… hear me out on this…” Professor Li pleaded, launching into a long, nagging academic lecture.
But Yulan wasn’t absorbing a single syllable of his warnings. Her mind was entirely consumed by highly vivid scenarios of her impending reunion with her sister. They hadn’t stood face-to-face in so long; she wondered if Su Wudeng had managed to put on some healthy weight or if she was still painfully thin. Had she been eating properly?
Also, she was dying to see if the shop truly contained the adorable creatures she had watched on the stream. The Snow Crystal Cat that looked like a perfectly round, snowy dumpling, the husky puppy with its comically fierce, tiger-like expression…
She wanted to skip the flight and materialize there right this second!
Professor Li spent fifteen straight minutes talking until his throat went completely dry. But when he finally lifted his eyes to check her reaction—marvelous. Su Yulan’s focus was miles away, her eyes beautifully glazed over.
She hadn’t heard a single damn word!
Faced with her absolute, unyielding stubbornness, he could only let out a defeated, helpless sigh. She truly was the most immovable student he had ever managed.
“Alright, fine,” he surrendered, shifting his parameters to salvage what he could. “Even if you insist on traveling to your sister’s shop, you must swear to execute your core forms and mental conditioning daily. Do not allow your hard-earned breakthrough to decay!”
Su Yulan snapped back to reality, offering a bright, crisp nod. “Please rest assured, Professor. I give you my word I will maintain my forms.” She needed every ounce of her power to act as her sister’s shield, after all.
Li Nanhai watched her, his heart filled with deep anxiety. Maintaining a placement within the Apex Vanguard Class was a brutal, unforgiving gauntlet. Surviving that track required an individual to command world-class talent, blood-sweating hard work, or bottomless corporate funding—you needed to clear at least one of those hurdles with a massive margin.
As of right now, Su Yulan only held the talent bracket. But the silver-spoon prodigies occupying the Vanguard Class routinely commanded two, if not all three of those brackets simultaneously!
Could a baseline commoner like Su Yulan genuinely survive the pressure?
Back at Pet Love Home.
Su Wudeng was currently engrossed in mapping out her shop’s physical expansion blueprints. Her primary objective was to construct a beautiful, enclosed botanical sanctuary right behind her residential area, establishing a dedicated spiritual plant garden.
After all, legendary spiritual plants delivered their peak nutritional and neural efficacy when harvested fresh from the soil; storing them for prolonged periods inside a spatial inventory inevitably resulted in a slow decay of their energetic parameters. Visualizing the look of absolute, jaw-dropping shock that would wash over her sister’s face the exact second she laid eyes on a private courtyard overflowing with priceless, extinct spiritual flora made Su Wudeng burst into soft laughter.
“She is going to completely lose her mind!”
“She’s going to grab me by the shoulders and demand to know how on earth I managed to cultivate an ancient ecosystem inside a retail shop.”
“Then she’s going to sprint down the pathways like a happy kid…”
“No, focusing exclusively on utility plants is too boring. I need to source some beautifully fragrant, exotic blossoms to cultivate a truly breathtaking botanical paradise.”
The ancient, deep-seated agricultural DNA embedded within her human heritage had been violently awakened! Merely turning the blueprints over in her head wasn’t enough to satisfy the itch. Su Wudeng rapidly activated her smart terminal, creating a fresh, three-dimensional CAD architectural model of the courtyard.
A sleek, translucent holographic layout immediately materialized in the workspace before her.
She willed her digital avatar to navigate through the virtual gateway. “The primary threshold leading into the spiritual garden can be framed by winding, bioluminescent vines, constructing a natural, living archway.”
“The exact second a visitor crosses the threshold, their senses will be greeted by the crisp, revitalizing aroma of high-density spiritual flora.”
“Then, we cultivate clusters of stunning, exotic blossoms along the walking paths. I can source premium strands of wisteria, midnight roses, cascading lilies…”
“And right in the heart of the sanctuary, we erect a classic, comfortable pavilion enclosed by fragrant herbs and soft grasses. It’ll be the perfect sanctuary for us to lounge, chat, and drink hot tea together.”
“Any plant lover would completely lose their mind over a layout like this.”
“Then comes the primary cultivation zone, which can be elegantly structured into four fan-shaped quadrants, with each quadrant optimized to sustain a distinct classification of spiritual flora.”
She murmured under her breath, her fingers rapidly selecting and dropping assets onto the virtual display. “In the first quadrant, we plant foundational medicinal spiritual flora—specimens like high-density Ganoderma, ancient ginseng, mutated Polygonum multiflorum…”
Inside the virtual environment, the three-dimensional rendering modules for the designated plants materialized one by one, looking remarkably lifelike.
“In the second quadrant, we dedicate the soil to rare, volatile floral spiritual plants—specimens like Moonlight Orchids, Star Soul Orchids, Dragon Breath Grass…”
As she selected the assets, the digital models illuminated the virtual courtyard with a soft, beautiful luminescent glow.
“The third quadrant will be dedicated exclusively to pomological spiritual plants,” Su Wudeng smiled, her eyes shining. “Spiritual fruit trees, celestial berries, star-shattered apples…”
The virtual fruits were rendered with such hyper-realistic fidelity that Su Wudeng’s own mouth began to water.
“And in the final quadrant, we cultivate highly specialized, utility-class spiritual flora,” her focus ignited. “Specimens like Silver Moon Grass to automatically purify and condition the ambient air, Astraea Grass to aggressively expand a tamer’s mental capacity, and Somnus Blooms to induce deep, cell-regenerating sleep…”
“Oh, right. A premium botanical sanctuary is fundamentally incomplete without a living water feature.”
“We carve out a dedicated aquatic biome right along the perimeter, planting spiritual lotuses engineered to automatically filter and purify the water, and seed the bed with bioluminescent night-shining algae.”
She could easily visualize the finished masterpiece. “The aesthetics at night will be absolutely breathtaking.”
Finally, she ringed the rest pavilion with clusters of delicate, light-scented spiritual herbs to round out the layout, creating a visually stunning, harmonious sanctuary.
Su Wudeng took a step back, folding her arms as she admired the hyper-realistic, three-dimensional holographic projection floating in her workspace. The virtual courtyard was a masterpiece of vibrant, living energy, bursting with diverse blooms and exotic greenery. It featured pristine, fresh spiritual fruits dangling from branches and a fully optimized, luxurious rest pavilion nestled in the center.
It was absolute, unadulterated perfection!
