Chapter 15: Su Consortium Takes Control of the Tourist Garden! …

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Su Jianglou cleared his throat lightly. He also realized that his question wasn’t quite appropriate, but he didn’t pay it much mind and casually changed the subject as if nothing had happened. “I misspoke. Third Brother is asking what you’re doing and if you’ve been adapting to things over there these past couple of days.”

Since the person could still answer the phone and make sounds, he was naturally still alive.

It seemed he really had been too sensitive. Any little disturbance on Second Brother’s side always made him think of Xiao Mu.

But then he recalled the things Second Brother had done over these years, and Su Jianglou felt it was no wonder he was so sensitive.

On the other end of the line, Su Ximu also figured Third Brother had probably just slipped up. Otherwise, no normal person would open with a question about whether someone was still alive.

Because he was taking a call, he habitually stepped a couple paces to the side. When Third Brother asked if he was adapting, he tilted his head toward the distance and said lightly, “Mm, I’m much more adapted today than yesterday. Blue 242 Leader has been good to me. We got off work together today, and we’re heading back to the dorm together later.”

He thought that maybe here, he was about to make his first new friend.

Blue 242. Su Jianglou searched his memory but couldn’t recall him. When he had dropped Xiao Mu off at work, he hadn’t paid much attention to the other weirds anyway.

Since he had confirmed the kid was fine, Su Jianglou narrowed his eyes at Eldest Brother, who had just entered from the living room door. He chatted casually with Xiao Mu for a couple more sentences before hanging up, then turned to question Su Xuanxiao, who had just returned home. “Big Brother, were you deliberately hiding from me that Second Brother wasn’t coming back today?”

“Why would I deliberately hide it from you?” Su Xuanxiao countered.

Su Jianglou shot back immediately, “Of course because you’ve had issues with me lately.”

Because he had acted on his own, created a new dungeon, and brought back Xiao Mu.

“On the first day, you beat me up, and it seemed like things were over.” Su Jianglou’s tone grew heavy. “But that’s only because you didn’t make a move. If Second Brother wants to do something, you won’t stop him, right?”

He would even provide convenience when he guessed what Second Brother might do.

Like casually delaying him for a day.

Su Xuanxiao had the most mature and steady appearance among the three Su brothers. As he listened to his younger brother’s malicious speculation, he sat on the sofa and spread his arms. “I’m not that bored.”

In his view, this was just a game born from his younger brother’s excessive boredom. It wasn’t worth his attention.

If he had to say he was dissatisfied, there was a little. But it had no major impact.

Kids always developed some twists in their thinking during growth.

The game had just begun now, and Jianglou still found it novel. In time, he would realize for himself how laughable self-deception really was.

By then, there would be no need for Yuzi to step in. He would punish himself.

Through round after round of games, he would come to understand one thing he had always refused to: In countless worlds, there would be countless Su Ximus, but never a completely identical flower.

If there were, Yuzi never would have ended up like this.

Ximu…

The man on the sofa pressed his palms together. “Jianglou, you’ve reminded me.”

With the opening of this new dungeon by Jianglou, he had passively recalled many things.

“Don’t mention these things in front of me anymore.” Su Xuanxiao closed his eyes. “I’ve already been very tolerant of your nonsense lately.”

“Even when he stands before me, I feel a moment of daze, but we shouldn’t immerse ourselves in the illusion.”

A weird skilled at weaving illusions, yet deceived by its own illusion.

Su Jianglou opened his mouth and silently cursed.

He really couldn’t figure out why Big Brother and Second Brother were reacting so strongly to him opening a new dungeon.

He didn’t feel like he was looking for a body double. Weird and humans, in a certain sense, weren’t even the same kind of creature.

In his self-assessment, everything he was doing now amounted to a brother who had lost his younger sibling. Out of excessive longing for his brother, years later he painstakingly made a doll that somewhat resembled his brother to serve as a memento.

Yet the weirds always had such extreme ideas, thinking he was seeking a replacement and wanting to tear up his doll.

But with the weird under his roof, for the sake of his prized doll, Su Jianglou decided to bow his head. He dropped the subject and went along with it by bringing up something else. “Fine, I won’t mention it. Big Brother, didn’t you say before that you had your eye on that tourist garden? How’s the progress these past couple days? Is the tourist garden’s Park Chief still dodging you?”

His tactless younger brother had finally brought up something that improved his mood, and Su Xuanxiao’s lips curved. “Almost there.”

In the weird world, completing an acquisition could sometimes be very troublesome, sometimes not so much.

If commercial methods didn’t work, he could only try other ways.

After all, his time was too precious to waste on meaningless cat-and-mouse games.

“I’ve almost caught him.”

After hanging up, because of Third Brother’s interruption and because Blue 242 Leader truly seemed to have no interest in feeding the fish, the two only lingered briefly by the pond before heading toward the side of the mansion.

On the way back to the dorm, Su Ximu was still thinking about the mushroom he had planted that morning. He wondered if that mushroom could really grow.

“It can,” Blue 242 said affirmatively. “I didn’t damage the roots when I picked it. These mushrooms have strong vitality.”

As he spoke, his gaze lingered on the other blue hats they passed on the road. “If it really dies, you can just pick a new one. There are plenty of blue mushrooms here.”

“Plenty?” Under the streetlights, Su Ximu carefully looked toward the green belts on both sides of the road.

He felt a bit dejected.

From when he had come in the morning to now as they left, he had looked very carefully along this commute route, but he still hadn’t spotted the specialty mushrooms Blue 242 Leader had mentioned.

Blue 242 affirmed, “Plenty.”

Su Ximu blinked. “Were there some just now too?”

“There were.” Not just blue mushrooms.

Blue 242 counted them out for him. “One red mushroom, five green mushrooms, six cyan mushrooms. Lots of blue mushrooms, and lots of gray ones too.”

Red mushroom?

Su Ximu vaguely remembered that 242 Leader had told him red mushrooms were very rare in the tourist garden. Just like the Park Chief’s red hat was rare.

Had they just passed by the growing area of such a rare red mushroom?

“Was it in a spot that’s really hard for people to notice?” Su Ximu really didn’t want to doubt his own eyesight.

Fortunately, Blue 242 Leader affirmed his words. “Mm, in a spot that’s really hard for people to notice.”

Seeing the youth beside him stirring with curiosity, Blue 242 added emphatically, “I can’t take you there. It’s very dirty. You won’t like it.”

Dirty?

“These mushrooms like growing in places with rotting matter.”

The lower-grade the mushroom, the cleaner it was, because they didn’t deserve suitable land for growth.

Likewise, only such mushrooms were worthy of being potted and raised.

Blue 242 felt a little bad inside for refusing the youth.

That night, after Su Ximu had returned to his dorm, in the green belt behind the dorm building where he lived:

Two park staff in wedding escort attendant uniforms walked toward the dorm entrance, arms around each other’s shoulders.

As they walked, they seemed to spot an acquaintance. One casually raised a hand in greeting. “Blue…”

He had only said one word when the two attendant-dressed staff suddenly widened their eyes in terror.

A sticky red mist enveloped their surroundings.

The next second, amid the red mist, the attendant-dressed staff vanished without a trace. Two blue mushrooms that had already opened their umbrellas fell from midair.

The newcomer crouched down, picked up the mushrooms from the ground, carefully planted them into pre-dug holes, then continued waiting by the roadside.

Not enough.

A little later, the phone in the mushroom-squatter’s pocket rang. He answered it.

“Hello? I’m busy. Mm, I’m on a business trip in Sunshine Neighborhood in the next city over right now.”

“Sigh, I really don’t have time. My time is precious too. Why should I help you catch some tourist garden Park Chief? It’s too far.”

“? The Park Chief you’re trying to catch is also hiding in Sunshine Neighborhood?”

“…”

“Fine, I’ll try.”

After hanging up, Blue 242 sighed.

If the tourist garden Park Chief was in the next city over, then what was hiding in the dorm building now?

With good-natured resignation, he set off, following the direction of his senses.

When he reached the dorm supervisor’s duty room and pushed open the door, there was only a little old man curled up like a rat beside the desk. On his head sat a ridiculous red pointed hat.

Around the red-hat little old man lay a floor full of mushroom corpses—yellow, green, cyan…

In his hand, he clutched an orange mushroom that he was tearing into, and as he tore, faint pained screams echoed faintly in the tiny duty room…

It was probably around eleven at night when someone knocked on Su Ximu’s dorm door.

He opened it to see Blue 242 Leader whispering mysteriously to him, “I found a huge patch of mushrooms. Want to go see? There’s even a red mushroom, and the spot where this red mushroom grows isn’t dirty.”

Su Ximu looked at Blue 242 Leader’s somewhat disheveled work clothes, shoes apparently caked with mud, and a bit of grime on his face.

He clutched at his chest a little helplessly, not quite sure how to describe the feeling at that moment.

He just felt a tingling, swelling sensation surging up in his chest.

He nodded vigorously. “Mm! I want to go!”

Blue 242 smiled. “Then grab the basket. Let’s go pick mushrooms.”

With Blue 242 Leader leading the way as his superior, Su Ximu learned that tourist garden employees could pick mushrooms from the garden.

That night, he returned fully loaded.

The huge patch of mushrooms Blue 242 Leader mentioned was very close to the dorm building. Pushing aside the wildly growing tall plants on the barren ground, mushrooms of all colors stood in piles of dead leaves, like a scene from a fairy tale.

He didn’t get greedy and only picked one red mushroom and two blue mushrooms for now—these were to be planted back at the dorm.

As for mushroom soup, it was already very late tonight, and he wasn’t hungry, so no need to eat yet.

The three newly picked mushrooms were planted together by Su Ximu and Blue 242 into the pots on the balcony.

Su Ximu stuck the red mushroom in the middle, with the three blue mushrooms guarding the sides. That way, it didn’t look as lonely as when there had only been one mushroom before.

The next day, just as dawn was breaking,

A purple hat staff member returning from the night shift stood downstairs from the dorm building. He happened to look up and shouted out in stuttered disbelief, “Pa-Park Chief!!!”

“Qu-Quick, come weirds!!!”

“The boss’s relative potted the Park Chief too!!!”

His voice was loud and woke up many of the first-floor employees.

Then, these awakened employees accompanied him in hearing the park broadcast: 【Warm! Heartfelt! Welcome! The Su Consortium officially takes control of Tanzhong Traditional Customs Tourist Park!】

【Tourist Garden closed for three days. All employees, please pause your work.】

【Awaiting the arrival of the powerful, wealthy, and generous Su Consortium Chairman Mr. Su to inspect and guide the work at the tourist garden!】

The three broadcast sentences reeked of sycophancy.

The broadcast voice was so loud it echoed throughout the entire tourist garden, including the Wang Family Mansion.

In the Wang Family Mansion, Rao Fei shot up from the bed in a single bound, clutching his pounding little heart.

He had just gotten the key clue and was about to clear the level, but now the tourist garden broadcast told him the tourist garden had changed leadership?!

Wouldn’t that leave him stuck in the dungeon?

Su Consortium—this name was so damn familiar.

What kind of miser was the boss behind this consortium, anyway? Why were there dungeons of his everywhere in the weird world!