CHAPTER 100 - QI-RFULLY YIN-JOYING A REUNION
🙞❤︎🙜
I walked through the portal into the Mysterious Glade. The first thing that hit me was the fresh, cold wind on my face which felt amazing to me after weeks of being stuck underground. I removed the sunglasses and took a deep breath, enjoying the scent of the forest and damp earth. I tilted my head up to luxuriate in the weak but welcome winter sunlight. My skin tingled. Every sunbeam and a stray gust of wind seemed to breathe new life into my weary body.
My new pet bounced down from my arms and started exploring, but I paid it no mind as I stood there caught up in the delightful feeling of finally escaping from the demon-infested southern wilderness.
“I did it!” I raised my hands to the sky and started to do a little jig when I realized that I was dripping brown goo on the ground. “Ahhh, I’m filthy!”
Since the Mysterious Glade wasn’t part of my farm, I couldn’t place a shower or bathroom here. I contented myself with placing the largest tent that I could in order to protect myself from the cold wind. Then I stripped my gooey clothes and shoes off. Using soap, buckets of water, and a washcloth, I cleaned myself as best as I could. My hair was an absolute disaster, tangled and sticky with the brown substance, so I used the Cash Shop to make myself bald. After vigorously scrubbing my scalp until it was free of slime, I gave myself a cute and simple ponytail hairstyle.
When I was done cleaning, I donned the elegant [Winter Brocade Set] and circled the Mysterious Glade to check for any interesting stuff that I could forage, but all I got were a few [Winterberries].
[Winterberry:
White berries that grow during the cold season. Their citrusy mint taste makes them a perfect addition to salads and fruit juices.]
I washed a berry in the stream, which reminded me of the time when I had gone fishing here with Prince Baiyu. As I popped a berry into my mouth, I wondered where he was. The berry was slightly sweet and had a strong fresh, minty taste. Maybe I could extract the juice and make it into a mouthwash.
“Chu!” My pet Cutie came bouncing back to me and I took her in my arms again as I crawled into the opening in the hedgerow that led out of the glade. I hid my new slime pet in the System’s [Pet] tab for now since I wasn’t sure how people would react to it.
I lit a few fireworks and, sure enough, a clan member came to check what the commotion was about.
“Hey! It’s me, I’m Violet,” I said as I waved at two clan members. I didn’t know these particular ones, but they were probably on the lookout for me after I disappeared.
“Baroness! Are you hurt? Do you need a healer?” A tall, gangly youth wearing bright green robes approached me.
“No, I’m fine. Do you know what happened to my household?” I asked.
The other clan member spoke up. He was older and looked similar enough to the other one that they were probably siblings or cousins. He said, “Your household is in Anwei. Everyone is fine.”
“I’m Bo and this is my brother Ming,” said the younger one. “Lord Shuye went to the Southerlands to look for you.”
“He did? Then someone needs to send word to him that I’m back,” I said.
The brothers exchanged a look. Ming cleared his throat and said tentatively, “Baroness, perhaps you need a little time to calm down? Your battle aura is quite fierce.”
“My what?”
“We understand that you’ve probably been through something dangerous quite recently. You might not be aware of it, but the qi surrounding your body is extremely ferocious right now,” said Ming.
“It is?” As far as I knew, there was nothing called a “battle aura” in Adventure Incarnate. What could it mean? “Okay, please give me a moment to calm down.”
Two of them bowed to me, and I bowed back.
“I’ll go and inform the clan of your return. Bo will stay here and help you with whatever you need,” said Ming.
“Thank you,” I said.
Then I walked a little away from them and hid behind a large tree. The fact that I didn’t have to say System commands out loud was great. Nor did I have to physically touch the menu buttons. Nonetheless, I was worried that my expression looked weird when I mentally interacted with the System, so I thought it would be good to put a little distance between us.
Though I didn’t know what sort of “fierce qi” my body was giving off, that was probably because I leveled up my combat skills. There were settings that I could tweak which might help. I browsed all the privacy options in the System and turned on a few. [Hide Stats] should do it. This was a setting that I never used in the game since, as a high-level player, I had nothing to hide. It was mostly newbies who hid their stats in the game.
A few minutes later, I walked back to where Bo was patiently waiting for me and asked him if my aura was okay now. When he confirmed that my aura was calm now, I asked him to help me get back to my farm.
If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.
***
Right before sunset, I arrived at the desert after spending the rest of the day explaining to various clan members what had happened to me, as well as a long trip on the flying carriage. The subordinates Shuye had left behind sent a messenger to the mines right away to let the rescue team know that I had returned. Then they arranged everything for my trip back to my desert home. I could’ve stayed in the forest, but I wanted to check on my [Greening the Desert] project.
It seems that seven days after I teleported, the house in the desert disappeared. That was when my household moved to Anwei to wait for my return.
Shuye’s staff had arranged for them to join me soon. Everyone also assured me that the White Tiger clan had taken care of the [Lizardwings] and trees during my absence. My apprentices had made weekly trips, too.
Once my flying carriage landed at the foot of Skyfang Mountain, I was greeted with the expected System screen.
[Desert Farm Deactivated Due to Inactivity.
Pay 1,000 Gold to Restore?]
[Yes] [No]
I mentally clicked on the [Yes] and the [Confirm 1,000 Gold Payment] buttons.
The clan members who had escorted me gasped in surprise when a huge magic circle appeared on the ground. It glowed brightly for a few seconds, then the courtyard house, greenhouse, mill, and decorations appeared in the same place they had been before.
“Uh, do you guys mind if I go right in and nap? I’m tired,” I said, yawning. In the distance, I could see several people flying towards us. No doubt they were the clan members who had been looking after and patrolling the area.
“Please do whatever you wish, and call us if you need anything,” said their leader Naru, a tall, red-haired man with bright green eyes and a cleft chin. “We’ll be right outside the house.”
Suddenly, I realized that I had committed a huge faux pas. “Uh, sorry, I meant, um, please come inside for some tea.”
“No, no need. You must be exhausted, Lady Violet,” he said.
“I couldn’t leave you outside in this heat, please come in.”
After a few more polite protests, they agreed to enter, and I quickly led them to a side room and offered them fresh, hot tea from the Cash Shop which they refused. They did accept glasses of plain soda water from the spring in the Mines though. We made a little bit of small talk about the weather and tree planting project, enough to satisfy the dictates of politeness, before they left to return to their homes in the Ancient Hill Forest.
I was just about to close the house’s main gate when I saw a small black dot in the sky rapidly growing bigger. A few minutes later I saw that it was a large flying carriage with an elaborately carved exterior painted gold and red. I placed an overstuffed armchair in front of the gate and sat down to wait for it to arrive. The moment its wheels touched the ground, the doors were flying open and three people jumped out of it. My apprentices came running towards me. They looked fine, more than fine actually. Perhaps because they had been living in a city, they were dressed in fine silk robes and wore elegant hairstyles decorated with gold and jade hairpins.
“Teacher!”
“You’re back!”
“Where did you go?”
Their screams of joy and questions melded together in such a way that I got confused as to who was asking what, but it didn’t matter. Mo and Kharli fell into my outstretched arms and we hugged each other tightly. Lari stood a little bit away from us, wiping tears from his eyes until Kharli grabbed him and added him to our group hug. I didn’t cry, but I felt my eyes get a little moist.
“It feels good to be back home,” I said.
“They kept on asking us if you were dead!” said Mo.
“We knew you were alive,” said Lari.
“I’m definitely alive. I would know if I was dead,” I said.
My little joke made Kharli cry. “Teacher, are you okay? What happened?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you after dinner,” I said.
I don’t know how long we stood with our arms around each other. Fengying, Deming, and the other staff filed past us without saying a word. I wondered how they had all fit into the carriage. They must’ve been squished together like sardines in a can.
When I finally pulled away, my apprentices’ faces were stained with tears and, in Lari’s case, snot. I offered them handkerchiefs and said, “Here, wipe your faces, and let’s go inside. I’m tired.”
“Teacher, the house disappeared! Some people said you might be dead,” said Mo. She looked thinner than before and she had dark eye bags.
“Yeah, you know how if you place stuff, like a bucket or a spade, somewhere, it disappears after a while?” I said.
They all nodded.
“It’s like that for the house. If I don’t live in it, it will disappear. I told you that before,” I said.
“See, I told you!” said Kharli to the others. “I remembered Teacher said that, but you two forgot.”
“How are the [Lizardwings]?” I asked.
“They’re fine! The walls and pen disappeared, so the clan members took them away for a few days until they finished building a wooden pen,” said Kharli. Out of the three of them, she seemed to have recovered her spirits the fastest.
In contrast, Lari was still sniffing and wiping his eyes.
“We went to live in Anwei and flew back every three days because there’s not a lot of water here,” said Kharli. “We brought tons of water for the [Lizardwings], trees, and clan members.”
“The clan members were impressed that we had such a large soul space,” said Mo. “Lari showed off by bringing them one hundred buckets of water.”
I laughed. “Really? One hundred?”
We chatted about random things that had happened, and I felt a lot better when we entered the house. The familiar surroundings and the beaming faces of my apprentices seemed to loosen a knot in my heart. It was great to be home.
CHAPTER 100.5
An excerpt from the journal of Shuye Skullcrusher, Guardian of the Ancient Hill Forest:
When I received the investigative report from the clan elders, I wrote a summary of it to send to Baroness Violet later. The teleportation stone was found to be inactive, and nothing they tried could activate it. Therefore, it was more or less proven that the whole thing was simply an accident though no one could explain why or how it happened.
The scholars who have been studying an ancient teleportation stone in the Ka’u region were also investigated, but a link between their experiments and the artifact at the Fox clan’s temple could not be proven.
It seems that the Fox clan was forced to take full responsibility for the incident since it happened at their temple grounds. They were ordered to pay 0.1% of the Fox clan's income last year as restitution. Most of that would be paid to Baroness Violet directly, but the rescue team’s expenses would be deducted from it first.
I was at the fifty-six level talking to a representative of the Fox clan about whether they wanted to pay in gold pieces, labor, goods, or a combination of all three when we got word that Baroness Violet had returned to the Ancient Hill Forest.
We cut the conversation short, and I immediately organized the rescue team’s retreat. My wife was going to be quite happy that I was returning two months before she was due to give birth to our child.