Chapter 259: Chapter 259 -The Earth Elf That Was Driven Into A Pillar
2
Translator: Dragon Boat Translation Editor: Dragon Boat Translation
As Ren Suo rubbed the dead skin off his calves with the soles of his feet, he recorded down on his laptop the keywords from the ‘personal experience’ of the last customer in Shenhai City.
Ren Suo was slightly surprised that he managed to reach the end of the fifth night in “Fleeing Ghosts in the Night” without any difficulty.
As Dai Yuxing was the first customer and left very early in the night, Ren Suo had thought that it would not be long before a group of Countermeasure Pract.i.tioners would come to eat free meals.
If this had been the case, Ren Suo would have no choice but to read the savegame again—he would have to skip Shenhai City and select another nation or city to set up the stall instead.
Dai Yuxing had already mentioned that the Countermeasure System obtained information from the yellow-haired teenager, as well as detailed intelligence from the spies they planted in the Federation. With that information, they determined that the fleeing ghost stall would only be set up in parks within large cities, so Ren Suo could simply choose not to ‘flee ghosts’ in large cities instead. There were many foreign cities with just a slightly lower [Degree of Concealment], so Ren Suo had many options to choose from.
However, as the night pa.s.sed, the customers who appeared were all ordinary monsters who were anti-social or had the intent to kill people, so Ren Suo also relaxed and seasoned their food for them.
Ren Suo also found that, in general, the customers who came at the beginning were monsters that were easier to see through and more forgiving of the intensity of the flavors. Ren Suo simply needed to extract the keywords, and he would be able to handle them well most of the time.
In the last hour, however, the customers who appeared were more vicious. Not only did Ren Suo have to extract the right keywords, but they were also very particular about the intensities of the flavors. They could be dissatisfied that there was too much of [Happiness], too little of [Confidence], insufficient [Love], or the like. Following this, they would slam the table and engage in a fierce battle with the female stall owner.
At that juncture, Ren Suo had no other choice but to subdue each monster with punches.
When it came to the last customer, which was also the boss of the night, a battle was inevitable. What Ren Suo could do then was also only to weaken the enemy as much as possible with the seasonings.
However, thus far, apart from the boss in Hong Kong where he managed to season the food perfectly, the other four bosses were only slightly weakened.
The boss in Shenhai City was even more intriguing—he was a ‘beast’, and one who did not seek a free meal at that. He was a customer willing to talk about his life.
That was also the first time Ren Suo encountered a customer that was a ‘beast’. Such a customer had a somewhat strange appearance as well—he wore a black robe with an embroidered golden dragon and was completely hairless. His bald head glistened in the light, his skin was white and tender, and he had large eyes and a small mouth. He was a young child less than one meter tall.
The moment he spoke, Ren Suo immediately knew that he was surely not a spirit, ghost, or demon.
The bald child slammed the table and shouted: [Sister, give me a tonne of cement. It needs to be hot, and not mixed 1:1 like the kind used to fill the gaps between washroom tiles. Only a 1:3 mix would be tasty enough.]
That order was the most ridiculous of all the orders that Ren Suo had encountered thus far. The more amusing thing was that the female stall owner actually took out a bucket of cement.
Then, the bald child began telling him about his life—
[I am a pillar.]
The bald child lit a cigarette, then inhaled it deeply and directly extinguished it. An aged, depressed expression emerged on his face as he said: [I am the Pan’an pillar supporting the overpa.s.s over Yan’an Road… You know what a Pan’an pillar is, don’t you?]
[When the overpa.s.s was being built, the pillar at the intersection of the elevated segment of road running from east to west and from north to south could not be driven into the ground. Later on, a monk came to perform a ritual, and finally, the pillar could be anch.o.r.ed.]
[Not only that, but they also wrapped the pillar with stainless steel and bronze dragon patterns. It was only after I awoke that I discovered that the people then had thought there were dragon veins at that spot. At that time, the monk had come to ‘drive away the dragons’, and the dragon patterns were used to ‘placate the dragons’…]
With each sentence the bald child said, he finished one stick of cigarette, and the box of cigarettes in his hand was now already half empty. He continued: [However, the truth was, whatever the monk did had no effect at all, and the dragon patterns were also meaningless. It was just that after the monk came, the engineering team had also switched to another more powerful set of piling machines, and the pillar could be driven into the ground.]
[I don’t know why there were dragon patterns on the pillar either, but perhaps it was because they had excess money at that time, or because the leader was superst.i.tious.]
The bald child looked depressed as he said: [It was not until a year ago when I awoke and found myself turned into a pillar. I feel that I am extremely unfortunate.]
[That’s because I was clearly the earth elf of this area.]
[The reason why the pillar was not as easy to drive into the ground was simply because I had protected myself hundreds of years ago, so the layer of rock at that spot was thicker. There were no mines nearby, so I thought that no one would cause any trouble, right?]
[Who would have expected that the people today are so strong? That monk was also asking for it—he emptied his bladder on me while he was performing his ritual. If not for the fact that he had already died a long time ago, I would certainly have gone to get my revenge. Subsequently, the pillar was able to be driven into the ground, forcibly dispersing my body and I had no choice but to attach myself in the pillar.]
[The earth elves nearby all came to mock me. I am the only earth elf who was trapped inside the pillar, so this is so maddening!]
At that juncture, the bald child pointed to his head and continued: [Moreover, because of the pillar, my physical form could not even grow taller. I can only look like this small ghost that I am, and I still look exactly the same as I did hundreds of years ago… Ouch!]
The cigarette that the bald child was holding in his right hand came into contact with his bald head. He grunted in pain and looked funny and cute.
After he finished smoking the pack of cigarettes, the child slammed the table forcefully again and demanded: [Hurry, I want my cement! I’m very hungry!]
Then, Ren Suo, who was holding his laptop, was bewildered.
—That was it for his story?
Ren Suo had intentionally purchased a cup of Holy Water, but although his player privilege was triggered and he did not need to pay, it now seemed as if there was no difference whether he drank it.
Not even a single keyword appeared as the bald child talked about his life!
“How shameless! I got conned out of money!”
Indeed, how could it be that easy to defeat the boss, just by making a purchase with merit points? Ren Suo, who was almost conned out of his money once, took it as a lesson and reminded himself not to waste his money on the last customer in the future.
As for the bald child, Ren Suo could only let him experience what it feels like to be trampled on once again.
However, at that juncture, with the wit of a Level 4 Player, or perhaps it was due to the [Hat of Cultivation and Practice] that he was wearing finally having an effect—
“Is the Holy Water really useless?”
The purpose of the Holy Water was to extract the keywords related to the desires and resentments that were important to the customers, based on what they said. Since there were no keywords extracted, it meant that the customer did not care about what he had just said.
He lost his freedom after being turned into a pillar;
He felt miserable after being trampled upon;
He felt humiliated after being mocked by the other earth elves;
He felt furious when he awoke after hundreds of years to see himself in such a state;
All of that, the bald child did not care.
The Holy Water was not completely useless, for it gave a reminder to Ren Suo: The bald child did not care about all of what he said. It would be meaningless if he added seasonings based on what he said, whether it was ‘sweet’ or ‘garbage’.
With the same line of reasoning, the bald child actually did not care that he had turned into a pillar and did not mind that he was trampled upon. In fact, he even thought that it was ‘fun’ as he was talking about all of that. On the other hand, he smoked only to mimic other smokers; he did not actually think that smoking was beneficial, but he just felt that it was fun.
Indeed, he was a playful child.
Hundreds of years ago, Shenhai City was just a small fis.h.i.+ng village. It was far away from the Reiki veins of the Central Plains, so the spiritual intelligence of the earth elves here might not be that high.
As such, the bald child was actually very dangerous, for he could cause ma.s.s-casualty incidents just because he thought that it was ‘fun’ and interesting.
What was he most afraid of? Boredom.
What did he seek for most? A sense of novelty.
Very quickly, Ren Suo knew how to season his food—
The female stall owner took out three bottles of seasonings and poured their entire contents into the cement.
One was [Creation];
One was [Happiness];
One was [Freedom].
The bald child took the bucket of cement and gulped all of it down, as if he was swallowing ice cream.
After he finished, he wiped his mouth, then looked at the female stall owner, slightly dazed. He then burst into laughter.
The bald child remarked: [Wouldn’t it be fun if I made the dragon patterns on the pillar fly into the sky in the middle of the night? I think it would be fun if I told every driver driving past me that ‘I am behind you’!]
[Thank you, Sister, I am going back to play!]
The bald child began to walk away, but then he turned back. With his hands, he rubbed himself underneath his own clothes, and a bead was formed. He said: [Here, a gift for you, Sister!]
The female stall owner took the bead and inspected it:
[Remains of the Old Cement of the Earth Elf: When consumed, HP +1000, Attack +100; When used as a seasoning in food, it can deal damage equivalent to 50% of the enemy’s HP.]
Looking at the back of the bald child walking away, Ren Suo felt that the scariest and the naughtiest child in the entire history of Shenhai City would soon emerge…