Chapter 21

'I need thirty jin of soil, wrapped in rapidly biodegradable wrapping paper nearly the same color as the soil. It should be packaged so that even when cradled in one's arms, it looks as delicate and elegant as a bouquet of roses. Leave a gap in the middle of the soil for planting.'

'I need a potting container that fits the shape formed by the thirty jin of soil perfectly. It should be thirty centimeters high and look natural when cradled diagonally in one arm. Its material and shape should be both understated... and luxurious.'

'I need Cremella Roses that are about to bloom, both noble and exquisitely beautiful. The roses should be fifty centimeters long from the roots to the highest bud. They need to be packaged separately but fit perfectly into the gap left in the soil.'

'Please include assembly instructions. I need to put it together myself.'

'An outfit without any logos that complements the potted roses once assembled. Note: the outfit must create the impression that I've just returned from an outing.'

'Please deliver everything to the apartment before today.'

Qin Su took a deep breath after sending the text.

He had carefully considered every item on the list.

The reason everything had to be 'presentable' was partly that the rules for using the space allowed things to be scanned into it in one world, but when he arrived in the other world, anything scanned into the space in that other world would appear as if he had 'dropped his equipment.'

As for landing at a designated location, that was too expensive. Being 'stingy' as he was, he couldn't bear to waste that many Life Points, so he could only continue to let his landing location be randomly generated.

Based on the rules of his previous landings, whether in the real world or the Comic World, aside from his first landing near the Protagonist Group, every randomly generated landing spot had been somewhere he had seen on the 'map' or already visited in reality.

Not once had he landed somewhere completely unfamiliar.

That greatly reduced the chances of the system dropping him in front of some bugs and sending him to his death, or making him appear before some important person and 'court death.'

To prevent himself from looking insufficiently 'presentable' if he 'landed' in front of the Comic World's natives, he had given Assistant Jiang these... bizarre requests.

On the other hand, with the thirty jin of soil cradled in one arm, disguised by its 'glossy, attractive exterior,' and the added impression that he had 'just returned from outside,' neither the Comic World's natives nor its protagonists would find it strange if they saw him appear.

Coming back from an outing with an 'expensive' 'souvenir' that also served an 'ornamental purpose' was perfectly ordinary.

Of course—

It was only 'ordinary' to people who didn't know the truth right now. As for Assistant Jiang, who had personally prepared everything for him...

Assistant Jiang must think he was crazy for making such unhinged requests.

But every cloud had a silver lining. Leaving everything else aside, going crazy had made him much more energetic. Every morning, he opened his eyes and was already strong. Pretty good.

Qin Su had always thought his family consisted of an arrogant dad, a domineering mom, a strong sister, and a silent him.

Now his dad, mom, and sister were all the same, but he had become the crazy one.

Qin Su: "..."

That was more like it. With his 'excellent' mental state, he had finally fit perfectly into this 'fractured' family. What a cause for celebration...

Like hell!

The bullet comments had called He Wenyuan a madman earlier, but Qin Su thought he was pretty unhinged himself now.

But more than ninety percent of the Comic World's natives were resting right now, while he still had to keep going nonstop. If he didn't go crazy, who would?

Next, he would have to trouble the all-capable Assistant Jiang to respect his 'madness' for the sake of the money.

As for why the items had to be both separable and assemblable, it was entirely because his search had shown that a potted plant of the same height—for example, sixty centimeters—would cost 1,080 minutes of Life Points to exchange for space.

But if he separated the potted plant and carried the necessary fifty-centimeter plant, thirty-centimeter container, and thirty jin of soil separately, the total exchange cost was only 980 minutes of life.

A whole 100 minutes less! Save where you could, spend where you had to. Life Points were saved minute by minute.

As long as he saved enough, death wouldn't catch up to him.

Jiang Cheng: "...?"

The text wasn't long, but...

He recognized every character, so why did they give off a sense of... calm insanity when put together?

Seriously, why?!

He had been such a perfectly fine kid. How had he gone crazy just like that?

Sure enough, if you didn't perish in silence, you went mad in silence. In Jiang Cheng's eyes, the Qin family had consisted of 'a gentle father, an elegant mother, a domineering CEO sister, and an aloof, taciturn younger brother.' Now the first three remained unchanged, but the last had become 'a calmly insane younger brother.'

Thinking of his annual salary of ten million, Jiang Cheng took a deep breath.

People died for money, just as birds died for food. As a highly paid corporate workhorse, he felt he could still be saved.

After exhaling, even though Qin Su couldn't see him, for the sake of money, Jiang Cheng, an all-purpose assistant whose 'dedication to serving the Qin family' had sunk into his bones, smiled as he typed his reply through the phone screen:

Jiang Cheng: Certainly. Please wait a moment.

He didn't understand, but he didn't need to. He only needed to respect his instructions and carry out every task perfectly.

Qin Su saw the message: "..."

As expected of Assistant Jiang. He had adapted well even to Qin Su's madness.

Qin Su typed: Thanks for the effort.

Jiang Cheng: You're too kind. It's my job. (Smile)

Jiang Cheng: By the way, did you receive the document I emailed you five hours ago? Please take a look and see if anything needs changing.

Following President Qin's instructions, Jiang Cheng had sent over a training schedule based on Qin Su's class timetable, but he hadn't seen the email being opened, so he dutifully reminded him.

Qin Su opened his inbox and quickly skimmed it. There was basically nothing that needed changing, so he replied to Jiang Cheng.

He had no classes today, but he did have a group assignment the teacher had given them in class yesterday.

He needed to meet the other two members of his group and try to finish his portion of the assignment in the shortest possible time. Then, following the schedule Assistant Jiang had given him, he would head to the training site for more than twenty days of emergency intensive training.

Qin Su arranged to meet his classmates from noon to two in the afternoon. In the family group chat, which unsurprisingly contained a string of '.' messages, he sent a '.' to show he was still alive, then devoted himself to studying for his courses.

At eleven that night, Qin Su returned to the apartment after finishing everything.

He had received Assistant Jiang's progress report two hours earlier, so he wasn't surprised to find three neatly packaged boxes in the apartment.

With half an hour left before he returned to the Comic World, Qin Su had already showered and changed into the freshly pressed new outfit in the walk-in closet. He went downstairs to unpack the boxes.

When he opened the three boxes, an air of 'considerable expense' washed over him.

As expected of Assistant Jiang, whom his parents had supported and specially trained since he was young. He never disappointed.

Even the soil, utterly ordinary in this world, now exuded an air of 'refinement' from every inch.

Not to mention the carefully selected Cremella black roses that had been flown in... Wait, how much did this variety of rose cost in the Comic World?

Qin Su had yet to learn about the 'varieties of roses' in the Comic World. Confronted with a gap in his knowledge, he sighed inwardly and silently added 'learn about plants in the Comic World' to his list of things to look into.

Some people could lie there after falling, but he had to get up and keep going, because if he lay down, he really would die for good.

No wonder shonen manga habitually made the person saving the world a teenager. Teenagers still held hope and endless fantasies about the future, and really didn't want to die yet.

As for him, after growing up and going through so much, he wouldn't 'spam 1' to hasten the world's destruction, but he would roll over and settle into a comfortable position to lie flat.

When he had landed in the Comic World's greenhouse, he had glanced at the materials of the growing containers while observing the flowers and their surroundings. On the surface, they hadn't looked much different from plant pots in the real world.

As for the flowers... there had been plenty of roses among them.

After checking all three boxes and confirming that everything had been 'sorted into categories' as requested, Qin Su raised a hand and rubbed his throat. Embarrassed inwardly but expressionless, he spoke to the empty room:

"QS is now using the space storage function."

Fortunately, Assistant Jiang heard me talking to myself, or he'd probably have hauled me off to a psychiatric hospital by now, Qin Su thought, mentally exhausted after several hours of intense training.

After speaking as instructed by the rules for using the space at the top of the system's complete Life Points exchange list, Qin Su saw an interface appear before him. It looked much like the skin in the Comic World, except that its layout consisted of black frames of various sizes.

Qin Su took the items out of the three boxes one by one and held them before him to scan them into storage.

[Fifty-centimeter-long plant requires 166 minutes of Life Points to store. Scan passed.]

[Thirty-centimeter-high irregular container requires 138 minutes of Life Points to store. Scan passed.]

[Thirty jin of soil requires 676 minutes of life to store. Scan passed.]

[Scan complete. Fee for this use of the space: 980 minutes of Life Points. Please confirm storage.]

Several notifications flashed by in succession as he scanned the items, and the final notification box covered all the previous ones.

After the items were successfully registered for storage, Qin Su exploited a bug and assembled the three items into a potted plant before mentally clicking: confirm.

In an instant, the notification box and the 'potted plant' Qin Su had assembled vanished before his eyes. In one of the black frames on the skin, he saw a black silhouette of the potted plant he had just assembled.

Having successfully exploited the bug, Qin Su raised an eyebrow.

Just as planned.

It seemed that in the future, when he had less than a hundred years of Life Points and storing something whole cost more Life Points than storing it in parts, he could 'disassemble' what he needed into separate items that could be scanned into storage.

After they were registered, he could assemble them before confirming the deduction of Life Points. The space would still take the items in according to how they had originally been registered, letting him exploit the bug to save Life Points.

Any problem that could be solved with Life Points was a problem for him.

With life in such short supply, he didn't have much of a moral compass left.

Five minutes before crossing into the Comic World, Qin Su put on the trench coat Assistant Jiang had prepared to 'create the impression he had just returned from outside.' He used some hair products to style his hair so it looked casual, though he had actually arranged it with great care.

According to the information about the Zerg in the books Qin Su had read, things like insecticides from the real world only worked on ordinary bugs there. Against Zerg as overpowered as those in the interstellar world, they were no different from sweetened water, so there was no need to waste Life Points bringing them over.

A familiar white light flashed. Noisy voices reached Qin Su's ears from some distance away, drawing steadily closer.

"Damn it, how could I not know Qin Su's extraordinary? I don't understand why my dad keeps drilling it into me that I have to suck up to that Alpha in Class 6. Why doesn't he use his brain? Never mind that I'm in Class 18, far away from Qin Su's Class 6. Just look at how cold and unapproachable Qin Su is—I'd have to have the guts! I refused, and my dad said I was a disappointment. Seriously, can parents stop forcing the ways of their generation on us?"

"You were right to refuse. I heard a teacher at school say that even people from the Federation wanted to meet Qin Su, but he coldly rejected them. And something huge even happened within the Federation because they contacted him? A whole bunch of people were officially reprimanded over it."

"Oh, that? I know about that. My dad said some people had bad intentions and tried to hack Qin Su's Optical Brain and take it for themselves, but Qin Su somehow turned the tables on them. In the end, they tried to steal a chicken only to lose the rice used to lure it, and their collective attack hit the Federation's own servers."

Qin Su: "..."

So that was how rumors were born. If he hadn't been one of the people involved, he would have believed it.

Qin Su had been about to emerge from a secluded spot he had seen on the Fourth Military Academy's map, one he had specifically noted as 'concealable but visible to electronic surveillance,' when a familiar voice reached his ears.

"Muzhi, is that what happened?" Samuel looked at He Muzhi, who was walking beside him.

They had only recently finished their morning basic physical training class. Lin Yin and Lailisi had long since made plans to do something else together, so only the two of them were walking together now.

Remembering that the bullet comments had said He Muzhi had accidentally overheard something about the Federation contacting him, Qin Su stopped in his tracks.

He was curious what the truth looked like in He Muzhi's eyes.

Recalling what he had learned from his older brother, He Muzhi said cautiously, "I don't know whether what they said is right, but I heard that Qin Su generously provided the Federation with a great deal of data on the bugs."

Qin Su: "..."

Generously? That wasn't necessary. He had been paid in star coins.

Samuel's eyes lit up as he exclaimed, "That's Qin Su for you!"

He Muzhi continued, "The reason they were reprimanded was that people within the Federation came to blows at work over the precious chance to add Qin Su as a friend on their Optical Brains and contact him. It was so serious that they even destroyed countless important servers, so they were all reprimanded."

Qin Su: "?"

Was that right?

Everyone had a different story, and the bullet comments were in chaos:

[Which version is actually true?]

[They all sound true. Ever since the Federation contacted Qin Su, countless students at the Fourth Military Academy have received orders from their families to make themselves familiar to him. That's right, orders!]

[The Federation's gone mad for Su Bao, gone wild for Su Bao, and is banging its head against the wall for Su Bao!]

[Really? But when Raymond asked his dad, he was told that at the Federation's request, Boss 1 vouched for the Federation and activated his own vast network of connections behind the scenes, allowing the Federation to obtain lots of secret information that had previously been hard to get.]

[Whether they're true or not, these reports all lead to the same conclusion: Boss 1's network is so vast that even the Federation treats it with caution and wariness. Boss 1

is forever a god!]

[A god? Sounds like some new character's fan ate too much group-buying x takeout and got food poisoning hallucinations.]

The skin was filled with neat rows of 'Boss 1 is forever a god,' and the snide remark about 'group-buying x takeout' was quickly buried beneath the flood of bullet comments.

Qin Su glanced at the bullet comments, where true and false information were mixed together: "..."

Forget it. True or false, the rumors didn't matter as long as the favorability of the bullet comments and the natives kept increasing.

Samuel and He Muzhi were still chatting on and off. Qin Su judged the distance between them from their voices.

Realizing that the only way back to his dorm would take him right past He Muzhi and Samuel, Qin Su glanced at the potted roses nestled diagonally in the crook of his arm, adjusted the pot and the buds by hand, then straightened his trench coat.

Once everything was ready, Qin Su watched his surroundings. Before He Muzhi reached the corner, he chose a moment when there were as few people on the path as possible and they were as far from him as possible, then stepped out of hiding and into view of the electronic eyes.

Qin Su walked toward the corner ahead. As he passed a lush 'greenbelt' grown in nutrient solution, whose name he didn't yet know, he came face-to-face with He Muzhi and Samuel of the Protagonist Group.

At the same time, he appeared before the manga's automatic camera.

"Then he really is too awful, awf..." Caught off guard by Qin Su's sudden appearance, Samuel's eyes widened in surprise, and for a moment he forgot the complaint he had been about to make to He Muzhi about He Wenyuan's trickery.

When classmates 'ran into each other,' unless they had a blood feud, they would normally exchange polite greetings.

A brief, awkward but polite exchange was inevitable between them.

Having 'run into' his classmates, Qin Su calmly lowered his eyes and swept his gaze over Samuel and He Muzhi.

At the same time, the students who had been 'scattered' along different sections of the path also saw Qin Su facing He Muzhi and Samuel at the corner.

It's Qin Su!!!

As Qin Su's name flashed through their minds, everyone moved closer without exchanging a word, as if by unspoken agreement.

Looking at the sky, looking at the ground, stroking the plants in the greenbelt, touching their chins and pretending to think... each of them used every trick they had to stay on the front line of the gossip, pretending to be 'passersby' while secretly pricking up their ears, trying to catch every little development concerning 'Qin Su.'

They also noticed the variety of rose in the crook of Qin Su's arm, one they had never seen before, planted in expensive, fertile soil.

[!!! There he is! A critical hit from the boss's aura! Our 1-bao is as extraordinarily handsome as ever today!]

[But... what variety of rose is Boss 1 holding? Why haven't I seen it on the market? And that expression on Boss 1's face... he definitely heard Muzhi-bao and the others talking.]

[How awkward. This is giving me flashbacks to the tragic time my classmate and I were badmouthing our homeroom teacher while he was walking right behind us, listening. I can't take it, my secondhand embarrassment is acting up again.]

[Please delete this. A friend of mine has been emotionally devastated.]

[Everyone gathering for gossip looks just like me. I'm a pro at watching drama, so can we talk about swapping places? Let me go in and act for a couple of episodes?]

Qin Su, who was outwardly 'putting on airs' while secretly watching the bullet comments and waiting for the protagonists to cue him: "..."

Go in and act?

No thanks. One slip and things could get out of hand and cost you your life.

He Muzhi had also forgotten what he had been about to say to Samuel. Under Qin Su's indifferent gaze, he remembered how he and Samuel had just been gossiping about Qin Su, and he was so embarrassed he could have dug a castle in the ground.

The way Qin Su is looking at us... he couldn't have heard us, could he? Ah... this is so embarrassing!

He Muzhi was mortified, but he raised the corners of his mouth and greeted him guiltily. "Qin Su, what a coincidence."

Sure enough, you shouldn't talk about people behind their backs. The moment you did, you were bound to be caught red-handed.

[Muzhi-bao: Silence is tonight's...]

[Samuel: I'll behave now, please let me go.jpg]

[The direction he came from, plus the trench coat—is he just back from outside? And the plant in his arm: I don't know what variety it is, but everything from the leaves to the condition and color of the flowers, even the container, gives off an expensive, luxurious air... add in the fact that people from the Federation just contacted Boss 1... so, has Boss 1 just returned from the Federation?]

[No matter where he came back from, Big Shot 1 looks terrifyingly cold right now. Did something unpleasant happen in the Federation?]

Qin Su: "..."

No, no, no. The oppressive mood hanging over him was entirely because he had exhausted himself training in the real world not long ago.

After nonstop, high-intensity training without sleep or rest, even if he couldn't die, his pent-up frustration and irritability would still leak out.

With him around, did they need to sleep on brushwood and taste gall?

No, no, no. There was no need at all. They only had to taste him.

Feeling guilty about gossiping about him, Qin Su returned the courtesy when, as expected, one of the protagonists greeted him. He said evenly, "Hello, both of you."

Samuel clearly hadn't recovered from the suffocating awkwardness of being caught gossiping about the very person himself, which was why he hadn't spoken.

They were all part of the protagonist group. Whether to avoid offending them or simply out of politeness, Qin Su returned their greetings with equal courtesy.

Hearing Qin Su's response, He Muzhi breathed a sigh of relief.

Qin Su was a decent man. Even if he had heard them talking about him behind his back, he calmly maintained a decent front.

Both of you. Only then did Samuel recover. Even though he hadn't greeted Qin Su, Qin Su hadn't ignored him, instead greeting him and Muzhi equally.

Samuel clenched the hand at his side, then belatedly pulled out his smooth little combo of pleasantries. "Hahaha, yes, what a coincidence, classmate Qin Su. Where did you just get back frmmph..."

Before Samuel could finish, He Muzhi clapped a hand over his mouth.

"!"

[!]

At that moment, the "audience" both inside and outside the comic reached a consensus: they were ready to crown Samuel their best mouthpiece!

"Ahem, sorry." He Muzhi believed Samuel had really just blurted out a habitual conversational greeting and meant nothing else by it, but... Qin Su simply wasn't someone they could chat with casually.

Qin Su would surely think Samuel was trying to pry into his whereabouts, and for someone as extraordinary and mysterious in every respect as Qin Su, his whereabouts were inherently a secret that couldn't be divulged.

There were so many people around listening, too. That question was far too inappropriate!

How could Qin Su possibly answer?

Assistant Jiang: (Feed me peanuts [melting])