Chapter 42: The 42nd Day of Livestream Selling
This time, Third Aunt not only easily suspended herself in the middle of the living room, she had also learned how to walk in midair. It was as if there were an invisible transparent skywalk above the Lin family’s living room, one only the great cat queen could see. She lowered her head and looked down, her tail swaying back and forth like a pendulum. Then she leisurely began pacing back and forth over everyone’s heads.
It was obvious that Third Aunt had still been somewhat cautious at first. Although her long, slender tail kept swaying, it remained raised upward the entire time, clearly trying hard to keep her balance.
But very quickly, this flying-and-burrowing enthusiast of a cat found her rhythm.
She walked over the coffee table and looked down at the fruit plate for a while. Then she walked above the TV cabinet and lightly brushed the top of the screen with the tip of her ringed tail, which looked like a little raccoon’s. Finally, she even attempted to speed up and run. Her hind legs kicked hard against the air, and her body shot out lightly. Amid Lin Zhao’s instinctive cry of alarm, she nimbly flipped and shifted direction right before crashing into the curtains, then began a round of… comfortable midair rolling.
It was as if the entire space above the living room had become a playground reserved for one little cat. Sunlight passed through her tumbling figure, casting shifting, leaping patches of light across the floor.
Lin Zhao stared, dumbfounded.
Obviously, Qin Xiaoman’s Third Aunt had been upgraded.
And just as obviously, the old lady Third Aunt had not suddenly started flying only now.
From his younger cousin’s explanation, Lin Zhao had long since understood that as long as an ability was used, it would inevitably cause the natural energy readings to rise and the energy field to fluctuate.
“Of course, there are a few rare examples where it doesn’t.” When Lin Xiang had said that, he had kept glancing subtly at his brother and 1114. “I’m also wondering exactly why that happens.”
Now, Lin Zhao looked at the lab coat his younger cousin almost never wore outside the laboratory and roughly understood just how anxious Lin Xiang must have been when he saw the energy levels at home suddenly spike.
“Sorry.” He immediately admitted his mistake, his tone full of guilt. He really had not meant to worry his family.
Lin Xiang looked at his brother, who looked like a magnolia lowering its head. Sunlight cast a small sorrowful shadow beneath his fluffy short black hair, and even his lips seemed to have lost their usual full, moist color. That beautiful face looked genuinely self-reproachful. He stood there pitifully, even the tips of his ears flushed red from nervousness.
What else could Lin Xiang say?
His brother was really too unfair. He had clearly calculated that Lin Xiang could do nothing to him.
In the end, all of Lin Xiang’s complicated emotions turned into a long sigh. “It’s not that I won’t let you go out. But you are, after all, still a patient right now, aren’t you? You left without saying anything. How worried do you think Mom and I would be? If there’s somewhere you want to go, we can go with you.”
“I didn’t go out alone,” Lin Zhao immediately said. “Manman and 1114 were with me.”
How to put it? Lin Xiang had guessed as much. The two people most likely in the world to accompany his brother in causing trouble were those two. “So, where are they?”
At this critical moment, Lin Zhao’s phone rang. The moment he picked up, Qin Xiaoman’s voice came through. “Linzi, did you know Director Kong’s wife has the same illness as you?”
How would Lin Zhao know that?
“We only just happened to hear about it while chatting.” Qin Xiaoman was warmhearted by nature. The reason he called was to ask Lin Zhao, “Didn’t you say last time that you were taking a special medicine from a world that Xiangxiang specializes in researching? How do you feel after taking it? Can you ask Xiangxiang where he bought it?”
Lin Zhao directly turned on speaker and looked at his younger cousin. Of course he could ask. He absolutely, absolutely could ask.
Lin Xiang understood then. His brother had probably gone somewhere with Qin Xiaoman to do good deeds again. To be honest, Lin Xiang, who was naturally rather detached, could not understand his brother’s Samoyed-like mindset of believing everyone under heaven was a good person. His own world was very small and could only hold the few people he cared about.
And unfortunately…
His brother was one of them.
Lin Xiang resigned himself to taking the phone and said directly to Qin Xiaoman, “Can medicine be taken recklessly? Different conditions require different dosages. Push my WeChat to Director Kong. Have him send me his wife’s examination reports, and I’ll ask my senior sister to look at them.” Zhou Mingda, as one of the few experts in the field of genetic disease, had been insanely busy ever since she began working part-time in specialist outpatient consultations on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings after the New Year.
Jiangzuo was one of the places with the highest concentration of natural energy in the country. The number of people awakening abilities here was the highest, and naturally, so was the number of people developing genetic diseases.
That was also why Zhou Mingda had been assigned here. She led an internship team of nearly thirty people, some of whom were even older than her father. But everyone was working hard to learn new knowledge, wanting to help as many patients as possible.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you.” Qin Xiaoman said a string of thanks. In the background, 1114’s cheering could still be heard. “Xiangxiang is the best in the world!” the foolish system said. Everyone knew how difficult it was to see a doctor for this illness now. At first, Qin Xiaoman and 1114 had not even thought of making such a troublesome request. Unexpectedly, Lin Xiang was the one who brought it up first.
Wait.
No, Lin Xiang? Why would Lin Xiang be with Lin Zhao at this hour?
Qin Xiaoman and 1114 looked at each other in horror, as if they had seen a ghost. Who said China had no good horror movies? If Lin Xiang himself had been present, this useless man-and-system pair probably would have been frightened into hugging their heads and crying. For now, however, it was all right. At least they still dared to cling to hope. How could they throw themselves into chaos first? Calm down! Maybe it was just a coincidence, maybe…
“Stop thinking. You’ve been exposed.” Lin Xiang had truly had enough of these fools. “My brother already told me everything.”
The moment Lin Zhao heard his brother say that, he knew things were going badly. But it was already too late. 1114, which still lacked enough experience in interrogation, had already said, “Even about us buying the winery?”
Lin Zhao covered his face.
Lin Xiang smiled. “So that’s the Director Kong.”
Qin Xiaoman and 1114: “!!!” Aaaaah, Xiangxiang is way too despicable! How could he conduct cross-interrogation like that? Time machine, where’s the time machine?!
Unfortunately, in the end, they still did not find a time machine.
But the good news was that Lin Xiang did not strongly oppose his brother doing business. After all, in Lin Xiang’s view, his brother’s belief system was based on equivalent exchange. Since this matter benefited his brother’s recovery, he naturally would not stop it. He even considerately asked his brother, “Are you short on money?”
“You have money?”
“Some.” Chinese people valued subtlety, modesty, and low-profile behavior, and Lin Zhao’s younger cousin Lin Xiang was absolutely a model example. If he said he had “some,” that meant he had quite a lot.
“That Mercedes you said was borrowed…”
“Mm. It’s for you. Do you like it?”
Lin Zhao seriously began to feel that he was not human. How could he have deceived such a good younger brother? Sob.
The clever Lin Xiang retreated to advance and pressed his advantage. “I don’t necessarily want you to stay at home. I’m just very worried about your physical condition.”
And so, the next day, when Lin Zhao got out of the car at the winery entrance, he willingly had an extra watch on his wrist, one that could monitor his body and the surrounding energy readings in real time.
Qin Xiaoman and 1114 ran over joyfully and said in unison, “Great, you’re still alive.”
Lin Zhao told the truth. “Xiangxiang isn’t that much of a demon.”
Then Qin Xiaoman told him the second piece of good news. “Our wine really seems like it’s going to work.”
During the first twelve hours, the fermentation tanks in Workshop Two remained quiet, as if asleep. The pointers on the pressure gauges and thermometers did not move at all. Master Huang went to touch the tank walls every two hours. The cold stainless steel conveyed no information at all, filling his heart with anxiety and unease.
The change began at the eighteenth hour, which was this morning, when the village roosters had just crowed for the first round.
The first person to discover it was Master Huang’s female apprentice on the night shift. Through the viewing glass, she saw that the liquid inside, which had already turned an extremely pale pink, had begun to produce extremely fine wisps of white mist rising upward. It was like an invisible pen slowly sketching and stirring within the liquid.
The young apprentice almost thought she had hallucinated from staying up late playing cultivation games. She rubbed her eyes several times, and every time, she could still see that scene, as though spiritual energy was surging.
She had no choice but to quickly call her master, Old Huang, over.
Master Huang came in a hurry. Thin morning light passed through the transparent glass, and the scene inside made both master and disciple hold their breath at the same time. The liquor in the tank seemed like a miniature deep sea dotted with starlight. It began to shimmer again, the glowing specks brightening and dimming according to some slow rhythm they could not yet understand.
The liquor itself was also changing at a speed almost imperceptible to the naked eye, shifting from a cloudy pale pink toward clear transparency.
“Master… Master, what is this?” The female apprentice widened her not-so-large eyes in disbelief.
The reason she was not afraid was that the scene before her was simply too beautiful. It did not feel eerie; it only felt like an auspicious miracle.
The experienced Master Huang forced himself to stay calm. “It should be some kind of bacterial colony, right?”
After all, starter fermentation, put plainly, was bacteria. If some mushrooms could glow, bacteria naturally could too.
Before the master and disciple could wake Qin Xiaoman, the automatic machines in the workshop had already entered the next stage. After fermentation came distillation.
The continuous distillation tower, several stories tall, was filled with complex trays and packing. The mash entered from the top of the tower. Under precisely controlled temperature and pressure gradients, substances with different boiling points were separated layer by layer. The chromatograph worked online to ensure that the flavor curve of every batch of liquor remained highly consistent.
Once the pointer on the pressure gauge stabilized in the green zone, the liquor visible through the viewing window had become completely clear. The glowing specks that had been swimming inside it had once again vanished as if by magic.
Only when the liquor flowed through a hose into the transparent glass settling tank would it occasionally flash with beautiful flowing colors under the not-particularly-strong sunlight.
Only the constant fluctuations in the energy readings on Lin Zhao’s watch betrayed the fact that the scene was absolutely not ordinary.
Director Kong, who deeply understood that one could not be a good elder without pretending to be deaf and dumb, asked Lin Zhao, “Would you like to taste it?”
Lin Zhao nodded, then shook his head. Ordinary people should not touch it for the time being. Although Lady Hu had said spirit wine had no problems and that mortals drinking it would only strengthen their bodies, could mortals in the cultivation world be the same as mortals on Earth? Just to be safe, Lin Zhao still had 1114 test it first.
At the tasting table, Master Huang opened the hose tap and filled a paper cup that could be found anywhere in the factory for 1114. The liquor swayed in the cup, with faint glimmers of light flashing inside.
Although Master Huang remembered Lin Zhao’s instruction and did not instinctively taste it out of professional habit, he still smelled it. That extremely faint, indescribable fragrance quietly spread from the cup. It was not floral, nor fruity, nor ordinary liquor fragrance. It was more like bamboo forest after rain, stone slabs in the early morning, or spring water just beginning to thaw beneath ice, mixed with an extremely faint warmth and sweetness like steamed grain.
In short, it smelled wonderful. It made one’s heart sway and gave the feeling that the whole world had become clear and bright.
When 1114 conducted the test, the entire workshop fell silent. Everyone anxiously awaited the result, eyes fixed tightly on 1114’s electronic face.
A few seconds later, the system opened its eyes. Although that was a strange way to put it, everyone seemed to see a fan-shaped chart in its electronic eyes: thirty percent astonishment, thirty percent wild joy, and forty percent dazed disbelief.
“There’s no problem, Zhaozhao. Everything is normal,” it said.
1114 immediately transmitted a bottle to Lady Hu the demonic cultivator. Boss Kong’s factory had many small coarse pottery bottles. They had originally been prepared as wine bottles for his children’s weddings, but he had prepared too many, leaving some behind. They happened to be given to Lin Zhao as well. The liquor was poured into the clay bottle, sealed, and pressed with wax. The first bottle of wine from Pingtu You Congmu Small Winery was complete.
Lady Hu also gave her evaluation: the taste was good. Although it always felt slightly different from wine brewed after being buried deep underground, that did not matter. The speed alone was enough to make up for everything.
Then?
Of course they signed on the spot. Soon afterward, Pingtu You Congmu Small Winery called all the workers back and began full-capacity production.
—
One month later, Captain Yan of the Jiangzuo Special Administration Bureau looked at the consecutive air anomaly reports submitted by his subordinates over the past several days and was utterly puzzled.
“Grid E-56, eastern suburbs of Qingzhou City next door, has detected continuous low-intensity natural energy fluctuations. The spectral characteristics are temporarily unknown, but they do not belong to any known awakening type.”
Captain Yan listened to the analysis from a front-line staff member of the Environmental Monitoring Department and rubbed his dry eyes, then projected the data stream sent back by the drone onto the large screen in the meeting room. As the leader of the operations team, he had seen far too many energy anomalies: runaway flames that nearly burned half a pasture, snow and ice filling the sky and freezing an entire warehouse, and all sorts of other disturbing energies.
But this time was different.
The curve of the natural energy fluctuations was as smooth as AI modeling. It did not seem to pose any major danger. It was simply slowly and continuously expanding, perfectly merging with the natural energy in the air.
Lin Xiang from the Special Research Office and Zhou Mingda from the Genetics Office were also sitting at the conference table, looking at the preliminary report marked with anomaly points.
There were quite a few anomaly points, but the one repeatedly underlined in marker was the most eye-catching:
Within this region, the number of newly added genetic collapse cases over the past week was zero. The cases they had previously identified as possible early-stage genetic collapse and had already manually intervened in had not worsened further. It was recommended to conduct further historical data comparison and on-site verification.
Was this normal?
It definitely was not normal.
But was this good news?
Hard to say. Hopefully, yes.
Zhou Mingda’s hands were trembling.
Author’s Note:
P.S. In case it wasn’t clear, and some dear readers didn’t understand: it’s the spiritual energy diffused from the winery’s distillation, hahahaha. Environmental protection is urgent—not.
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