When Hua saw the despondent Cosmo, she was rather surprised. She thought Li Ming had done something to him. After learning the reason, though... it was hard to judge.
After they finished eating, the atmosphere eased somewhat, and they began asking Chrono how he planned to prepare for the banquet.
"Brother Chrono, what do you need us to prepare?"
"Annoying."
"Chrono, we need to know."
"..."
"Brother Chrono, you need to speak properly, or I'll tell Mama Aponia!"
"That annoying woman... Fine!"
Chrono hid his face behind a bowl. "I've already prepared the ingredients, but I can't handle the banquet three days from now by myself. So I need to borrow your strength."
"Chrono, mind your manners. Say 'please'!" Hua said, unwilling to let him set a bad example for the children.
"Fine. So please let me borrow your strength."
The four looked at each other. How should they put it? That was so Chrono.
Li Ming couldn't help laughing. "Brat, what are you laughing at?"
"I just think Chrono is actually very gentle."
"Brat, are you looking to die?!"
Though he sounded fierce, Chrono didn't make a move. He merely cleared the bowls from the table, his face hidden behind the towering stack.
The four of them smiled, then went off to do their own things.
Li Ming had some questions about the design of the Kitten mascot costume and wanted Griseo's opinion. After that, Li Ming and Cosmo sat in front of the PSP and started gaming. What about Griseo? They weren't familiar.
The angry little Griseo kept running over to Li Ming.
But once it got late, Hua urged the three of them to go to sleep.
Early the next morning, the four got up and began helping Chrono prepare things. Many desserts needed to be proofed in advance.
Li Ming, Cosmo, and Griseo didn't know much about cooking, but Li Ming and Cosmo were strong! As for Griseo, she helped from the side. For example, when shaping pastries, Griseo, the number one stylist, took charge.
After working all day, from morning until night, Li Ming had witnessed Chrono's many different ways of hiding his face—cabbages, cream, flour...
For the first time, Li Ming clearly realized just how stubborn the Elysian Realm's NPC settings were.
He asked Cosmo and Griseo, and sure enough, neither of them had ever seen Chrono's true face either.
Li Ming stopped doubting the Elysian Realm after that. Only system settings could explain why Chrono's face was always impossible to see—because the system hadn't made a model for it.
After a day of work, Li Ming learned several new dishes, such as Alolan Stoutland buns and a whole series of Magical Girl Sweetheart Pies.
Li Ming truly couldn't imagine how they were supposed to bring themselves to eat those things once they were made!
Though the food looked beautiful, beautiful things were like mushrooms—the brighter the colors, the more likely something was wrong with them.
In any case, Li Ming, Hua, and Chrono unanimously agreed that it was best not to eat them.
The cake bases and the like were left to proof, ready to be made tomorrow.
Meanwhile, under Griseo's guidance as the number one stylist, Li Ming's mascot-costume project advanced rapidly. He soon finished the body section, though he still hadn't decided what to use as stuffing.
But because he had been helping Chrono, Hua unusually hadn't dragged Li Ming out for morning training today. Deep down, Li Ming was a little eager to try out his new Signet, but one less beating was still one less beating.
All he could say was that he was kind of asking for it.
Even so, Li Ming was still happy. Testing the Signet wasn't urgent; there would always be chances. One less beating was one less beating. It wasn't as if taking an extra beating would let him eat several more bowls of rice. He wasn't a masochist.
Wait, getting beaten one more time actually would let him eat several more bowls of rice.
One extra beating = greater energy expenditure = hunger = several more bowls of rice.
One less beating = one extra beating - one less beating = several bowls of rice.
Therefore, the final equation was: one extra beating = several more bowls of rice.
Yeah, his brain had definitely broken. How could he think something like that?
Sleep, sleep. Everyone would come tomorrow. He could finally meet Pardo, Eden, and the most, most, most adorable beautiful girl, Elysia.
Early the next morning, Li Ming was still dreaming about playing games with the adorable, invincible beautiful girl when Hua suddenly appeared and hit him with a Rising Dragon Fist, scaring him awake on the spot.
Then he discovered Hua was knocking on his door. Li Ming felt like every time he woke from a nightmare, it was because of Hua. Was this some kind of Fu Hua sensor?
But Hua had come to call Li Ming for morning training. They had been too busy yesterday to train, so Hua had gotten up even earlier today to make up for it.
"Li Ming, get up. You must not slack off in martial arts training." Hua looked at Li Ming in her training clothes.
"Fine, fine, fine!" With no other choice, Li Ming got up, grabbed a set of sportswear from the wardrobe, and changed. As for why there were clothes in the wardrobe, Li Ming attributed it to the system's power.
Come on, if he had a system, how could it not have one-click outfit changes and built-in skins?
When they reached the courtyard, Chrono was still asleep after working late into the night yesterday. Still, he would surely get up the moment it was time to make breakfast.
Cosmo and Griseo were at the age when vacations meant sleeping in. Combined with yesterday's enormous workload—especially making an entire company's worth of Alolan Stoutland buns and magical girls—it was only natural that they were exhausted.
Hua looked at Li Ming and assumed a stance. "You have already mastered all six forms of White Tiger Listens to the Wind, and you are also very proficient in using Vermillion Bird Treading Clouds. However, your grasp of Inch Punch: Thunderbolt is not yet thorough enough."
"So today, I will mainly demonstrate how to use Inch Punch: Thunderbolt, as well as its variations and subsequent transformations."
Hua spread into her stance. Vermillion Bird Treading Clouds. Her body sank slightly as she lunged forward in a bow stance. Force erupted from her hand, and her body shot forward. The force remained hidden without bursting forth, while her body scraped a faint yellow glow through the air.
"Inch Punch: Mountain Collapse!"
Even though Hua stopped herself in time, Li Ming could still feel the immense power released from within her body.
The gale carried by her charge flattened the grass in the courtyard. Then Hua twisted, leapt into the air, and swung her fist down with overwhelming momentum. The entire little courtyard shook, and a huge pit appeared where Hua landed.
That move woke not only Li Ming, but everyone in the Golden Courtyard. When Li Ming looked inside, he found that beneath the courtyard had somehow been hollowed out. Peering down, he saw the pit filled with broken-down furniture—microwaves, refrigerators, ovens, and all kinds of things thrown inside.
Even stranger, most of the appliances had clearly been deliberately dismantled. Li Ming was especially curious about who had secretly dug such a huge hole in the Golden Courtyard. His scalp was tingling now.
"What are you doing so early in the morning?"
"What happened? What happened?"
"Wah! Cosmo, Brother Li Ming, I'm scared!"
The disturbance naturally frightened them badly. Once they came downstairs, they discovered the problem.
"What kind of pointless thing is this now?" Chrono stood before the pit with his hands on his hips after finishing breakfast. He was calculating how much work it would take to fill in the hole, but ultimately decided to settle today's banquet first. It was only the backyard, and normally nobody came here anyway.
Hua, Li Ming, and Cosmo worked hard to carry the things out of the pit, then examined the marks and labels on them.
Hua rested her chin on her hand, looking puzzled. "These seem to be the Model 1, Model 2, and Model 3 household units that Mobius had Klein make. They used to work perfectly, but then they suddenly began disappearing one by one. The Model 3 units all vanished overnight, and even the surveillance cameras saw nothing. Mobius thought they had been stolen, so the new Klein household units were equipped with tracking systems. I heard Klein had to work twenty-four hours of overtime to add those trackers."
"Mm, Grandma Mobius was very angry then. She said that if she caught whoever did it, she'd make him accompany Klein in overtime." Griseo, wearing slippers, steadied one of the machines. Her pink clothes and hat looked somewhat familiar to Li Ming. Wait, wasn't this the same style Cosmo wore yesterday? Heh heh, I caught you, Cosmo. And you still deny wearing women's clothing!
"Innocent furniture and appliances were cruelly attacked, only to be discovered buried in the backyard at dawn. Is this the collapse of morality, or the distortion of human nature? It seems this case has fallen into the hands of the great detective Cosmo. What do you think, Doctor Griseo?"
Cosmo held a magnifying glass as he opened up every appliance and carefully inspected each one inside and out. Suddenly, a chill ran down his spine, as if something had its eye on him.
At some point, Griseo had changed out of her magical girl outfit and put on a doctor's white coat. However, the coat that normally reached the thighs had become a dress on Griseo.
"Great Detective Cosmo, I believe there is something suspicious about this."
"Mm, I think so too."
Griseo's enthusiastic cooperation clearly pleased Cosmo greatly, and the two immediately got to work, not caring at all that the appliances were filthy.
Li Ming hesitated for a moment before carrying the two away, lest they cause further damage to the crime scene.
"Hua, sorry for the trouble, but please fill in this hole first. Otherwise, someone might fall into it again. I'll take Cosmo and Griseo to help Chrono."
"Alright. You go ahead. I'll be there soon."
After saying that, Hua directly took boards from the basement storage room and covered the hole. Then, using a shovel, she filled it in one scoop of dirt at a time. To make it look nicer, Hua even arranged the toppled furniture robots one by one around the mound of dirt in the center.
It took nearly half an hour to make everything neat and orderly. It still felt a little strange, though. If she planted a few flowers on the dirt mound in the middle, it would probably look more harmonious.
Hua wiped the sweat from her forehead and looked at the dirt mound with a deep sense of accomplishment. Before she could rest for even a moment, Li Ming's voice rang out from inside the house.
"Chrono, Hua, come help! The steamer's about to explode!"
Before Hua could move, a loud bang suddenly came from the kitchen. Black smoke billowed from the windows, followed by several charred things flying out of the house. Hua stared closely at them—but still couldn't tell what they were.
"What... are those things?"
Before you continue