Nan Yue and Zhu Xi Ning parted ways in the garden outside the western-style building. Zhu Xi Ning, wearing a dark brown dress with a white apron and her hair tied back with a white kerchief, hurried to the flower beds to gather.
Nan Yue, along with Bai La La and Su Hong, followed Sister Min to the castle to arrange roses.
The roses, still in full bloom, swayed delicately. Nan Yue took them out of the vases; after a moment's hesitation, she didn't throw them in with the trash but set them aside carefully.
The roses just sent from the flower beds were in perfect condition. Every petal was flawless, adorned with dew like sparkling gems.
Nan Yue carefully placed them into the vases, afraid of breaking them.
The vibrant roses in gilded vases set against the backdrop of medieval oil-painting wallpaper looked like a masterpiece.
While Su Hong and Bai La La didn't treasure the replaced roses and tossed them casually into the trash, they didn't go out of their way to destroy them either.
Most people want to preserve beautiful things.
However, Sister Min and the other maid, who had worked here for years, were numb. They took the discarded roses and snapped them in half before throwing them into the trash pile.
"Ah!"
"Aaaah!!"
Nan Yue whipped her head around, her gaze darting through the hall.
She had just heard a woman's shrill scream.
But the sound was very, very faint. Judging by Su Hong's expression, she hadn't heard a thing. Bai La La looked back a couple of times but didn't seem to take it to heart.
As for the two natives, they had no reaction at all.
Nan Yue knew Bai La La's abilities well; why hadn't she heard it?
Or rather, she hadn't heard it clearly. Based on her reaction, she might have heard some vague noise but didn't think much of it.
Was there a difference between them?
In an instant, Nan Yue thought of last night's dream.
Nan Yue had woken up first, then woken Bai La La. Su Hong hadn't realized there was a problem, so a simple wake-up call hadn't worked on her.
Could it be because of that?
These thoughts flashed through Nan Yue's mind as she returned to her work, keeping an ear out for the scream.
The screams weren't continuous; they were abrupt, starting and stopping suddenly.
It made it difficult for Nan Yue to pinpoint the source.
It wasn't until Nan Yue gathered the trash to throw it away that she heard the piercing scream again as Sister Min snapped a rose with a sharp crack.
Her heart skipped a beat.
Were the roses... screaming?
Nan Yue remained outwardly calm, carrying the remains of hundreds of roses to the cleaning room.
Cleaners handled the waste here, making at least twenty or thirty trips a day to ensure Eden Garden remained pristine and odorless.
Nan Yue walked with the roses wrapped in velvet cloth, listening for any sound, but the roses were silent, as if it had all been her imagination.
After a moment's hesitation, she reached into the cloth, gripped a snapped rose, and gently bent it again.
Nothing happened.
She then picked up an intact rose and lightly flexed her fingers. A sharp snap was accompanied by a brief, feminine scream.
Perhaps because Nan Yue's movements were gentle and not rough, the woman's scream didn't sound as agonized.
The roses were alive?
The roses that had already been snapped were "dead"; no matter how much more she damaged them, they wouldn't make a sound.
Nan Yue arrived at the cleaning room, where one of the transporters was a scavenger.
He was a boy with round glasses and a somewhat dull expression named Yang Ming.
Nan Yue placed the trash onto the cart. Even the waste here was processed; the trash carts were clean and lacked any unpleasant smell.
Yang Ming glanced at the trash Nan Yue had thrown on the cart and nodded without a word.
"Has... anything happened on your end?"
If the flowers in the garden were alive, were other things alive too?
Would one be more likely to encounter such things in the cleaning room?
Yang Ming looked at Nan Yue and shook his head.
Nan Yue had intended to exchange her findings about the roses, but Yang Ming showed no interest in talking. He turned to clean up the petals on the floor.
Nan Yue watched him for a moment before turning back to the East Hall to continue her work.
After Nan Yue left, Yang Ming straightened up and moved to the shaded side of the trash cart.
On the cart sat an elk specimen, discarded because its antlers were broken.
Such a specimen could be sold for enough to allow a person at the bottom of the Federation to live comfortably for half a year.
But in Eden Garden, a flaw meant it was no longer perfect and therefore no longer needed.
What caught Yang Ming's attention wasn't the expensive specimen, but a pool of red liquid beneath it.
Animal specimens were usually drained of blood during preparation to prevent rot and odors.
However, when Yang Ming had loaded it onto the cart, its belly had been sliced open by a piece of metal, and a blood-like liquid had poured out.
Yang Ming dipped a finger into the liquid and brought it to his nose.
There was no metallic scent of blood; it was likely some kind of preservative pigment.
Yang Ming's round eyes fixed on the elk. But just now, when the specimen's belly was cut open, he had heard a scream.
A woman's scream.
Yang Ming picked up a nearby shovel and plunged it deep into the specimen's belly.
A deafening scream suddenly erupted, a sound filled with such terror and pain that it would make anyone feel pity.
But Yang Ming didn't.
Without any expression or hesitation, he continued to drive the shovel into the specimen's belly.
He didn't stop until the woman's screams vanished along with the complete destruction of the specimen.
Yang Ming looked away and began using the shovel to crush the other items on the trash cart.
Nan Yue worked all day. She was meticulous, partly to find clues and partly because the items in Eden Garden were truly exquisite and magnificent.
She had never seen such sophisticated things before, and even in a mission world, she was reluctant to destroy them.
She noticed that the castle's primary color scheme favored red—curtains, wallpaper, furniture, and carpets were mostly red.
Nan Yue knew that red added a sense of luxury and opulence to such a castle, but her scavenger instincts made her uneasy seeing such vast expanses of the color.
During lunch, the group met up, and she shared her clues first.
Gu Xiang Kai meaningfully mentioned how Zhao Xiao Shu had seen the walls "come alive," which shared a strange similarity with the roses "coming alive."
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