Chapter 302: A Bit Boring

Chapter 302: A Bit Boring

This was a paid add-on for purchasing items. In any case, it was the buyer’s own choice. Items marked with a seal could not be forged on the seal itself because it carried the unique power characteristics of the owner, Zheng Yichen. Forgery was useless. As long as the item was returned to the Pick-up Zone and re-scanned, any forgery would be immediately exposed! And there would be a corresponding warning.

This was the last chance. If the transaction was agreed upon, that was fine. If not, then the original item had to be returned intact. If there was even a slight bit of damage, returning the item would be impossible!

As for any underhanded tricks by sellers, like leaving something on the item, that didn’t even need consideration. When an item was placed in the Pick-up Zone, it would be scanned. This scan contained the power characteristics of Zheng Yichen’s abilities. Any tricks would be directly assimilated and purged. Similarly, if such a situation occurred, the seller would also be warned, and the behavior would be recorded in their trading credit file. All traders could see it!

Zheng Yichen applied the add-on. Even though, due to trust issues at the moment, there couldn’t be truly valuable items traded on it, eventually there would be. As long as there was a beginning, what followed would become much simpler. As for the things in the Pick-up Zone, Zheng Yichen had no intention of touching them at all.

Without rules, nothing could be accomplished. The Magic Weapon Summoning Book was far too important. Zheng Yichen would never do something to destroy his own great wall out of momentary greed.

“Are you going to be busy again?” Lily asked, looking at the thing in Zheng Yichen’s hand.

“Not for now. An add-on like this doesn’t need to be applied immediately.” Zheng Yichen put away that crystal slice. This add-on wasn’t fixing a bug but was an improvement. Even if he waited ten days or half a month to put it up, it would be fine.

Regarding Lily’s arrival, Irene just glanced at her calmly before leaving the area. Afterwards, Annie eagerly came to the living room and directly grabbed Lily’s hand. Lily had met Irene before. Zheng Yichen had also told Lily about Irene’s Alchemical Avatar, so she wasn’t surprised to see Irene. However, it was her first time meeting Annie. And the other party came with such an enthusiastic attitude right away, which really scared her.

What surprised her even more was that the other’s arm, which didn’t seem very strong, actually made it impossible for Lily to budge it at all! Lily had always eaten well and grown healthily. Even though it wasn’t reflected in her height, both her strength and speed were increasing at an unbelievable rate, as if she had broken the shackles of human growth. As long as her nutrition kept up, she could keep getting stronger…

Even if this strengthening was plundered…

“Little sister, come, come, come to my room. Let’s do something interesting.”

“Wah! I don’t want to!!” After repeatedly trying but failing to break free, Lily couldn’t help but look at Zheng Yichen with pleading eyes. If she weren’t being held, she really wanted to ask who this weird woman with black and white hair was!

“Ahem, give me some face. Don’t trouble the kid.”

“Then why didn’t you give me face before?” Annie retorted. When she was here, she always wanted to get a bit of something from Zheng Yichen’s true body—scales, blood, things like that. Loris had quite a stockpile of those things, but Annie couldn’t forcefully take them. As for Zheng Yichen, even though this guy’s current strength was a bit weak, considering his identity and the potential power around him, Annie felt she should view him as an equal.

After all, the characteristics of Zheng Yichen’s own abilities were not inferior to a Witch’s in terms of rank. What he lacked was just his own power.

“I was worried you’d suddenly research something weird!” Zheng Yichen didn’t know how far cloning technology had developed on Earth, but in this Otherworld… Zheng Yichen really didn’t know what to say. Others might not be able to do it, but the black-and-white-haired girl in front of him could!

He had personally seen Annie’s experiment once, where she cultivated two identical creatures. Both creatures originated from the flesh and blood of a single Magical Beast. However, probably due to the world’s rules, Zheng Yichen found that the state of these two creatures was extremely stiff, with no conscious reaction at all. But their life fluctuations were real, like comatose patients.

When Zheng Yichen witnessed that experiment, Annie was pondering the issue of the cloned creatures lacking consciousness. Zheng Yichen had thought about it too at the time. Later, out of curiosity, when he saw her dissecting the brains of the two cloned creatures, the brains were also complete and shouldn’t have any obstacles. Since they were complete brains with no problems, logically, they should produce some slight conscious reaction. Even if it was a newborn, tiny consciousness, it would still be consciousness.

The problem was, these things didn’t have a trace of consciousness! Probably this was the problem that troubled her, which was why she got so excited when she saw Lily… As for the cloning method, Zheng Yichen didn’t know if Annie had done this before. He only knew that after this woman flipped through some books on a shelf during his experiment, she did this kind of thing. Of course, the consequence of randomly rummaging was that Dan Marina had a talk with her, and Zheng Yichen got another small bottle of Water of Life.

“How could that be? That cloning works for some weak creatures, but for powerful ones, without properly adjusting and controlling the entire process, it only produces a bunch of disordered lumps of flesh.” While Annie was speaking, Zheng Yichen felt a chill run down his spine. “And before the consciousness problem can be solved, I plan to slow down this research.”

Phew~ Zheng Yichen let out a slight sigh of relief. Thankfully, the related information recorded in that notebook back then wasn’t much, and a lot of it was superficial. Things like genetics, embryo cultivation weren’t there. What Annie did relied more on external force stimulation. With her abilities, she achieved the ‘cloning’ effect. Zheng Yichen didn’t know how this effect differed from Earth’s cloning methods.

But since there was the saying that without proper control, they would just grow into blobs, there must be something wrong somewhere. Generally speaking… by relying on the genetic information of cells and carrying out normal cultivation, they should naturally grow into shape, right?

As for what it was really like, Zheng Yichen only kept it in theory. He wasn’t a biologist. These terms were also things he heard from others. His understanding came more from science subjects or other novels. Those made it sound easy—cloning just succeeded, with no process mentioned at all. Zheng Yichen naturally didn’t know the specific operational steps. What he had were only related partial theories. Zheng Yichen felt he could provide some follow-up theories and related knowledge information.

By filling in some of Annie’s knowledge gaps and helping her push open a new door, she might really be able to create the so-called Magical Modification cloning technology. But Zheng Yichen felt it was better if this technology didn’t appear for now… Even if his sense of belonging to this world wasn’t strong, he didn’t want to cause chaos in this world because of himself.

There were no absolute secrets, even for Witches. What if Annie really succeeded in her research and accidentally leaked the related technology? If others couldn’t replicate it, that would be fine. But what if they succeeded?

“Let’s not talk about this. The characteristics of the Corpse Puppet might help me solve this problem. Don’t be afraid. I have rewards.”

Lily looked even more panicked!

“Alright, stop bullying the kid, okay?” Zheng Yichen rolled his eyes at Annie and pulled Lily back. Annie still wanted to say something but suddenly sensed something. A light air current rippled in the air, and she disappeared from the spot. Lily couldn’t help but rub her eyes. Did a living person just vanish like that?

Magic? She was attending the Academy now and had learned the related basic knowledge. Magic wasn’t like this, was it…? Or was the teaching instructor too incompetent and hadn’t encountered this situation?

Annie quickly left the living room. Right after she left, the environment in the living room also changed slightly. Then a girl with milky-white long hair arrived here. She was also someone Zheng Yichen really didn’t want to see, despite her pretty appearance and kind demeanor!

“There’s still a long time before the agreed time, right? Why are you all so eager?” Zheng Yichen looked at her with slight distress. Lia’s expression held a bit of awkwardness. She didn’t quite understand why Zheng Yichen always had a mysterious feeling of rejection towards her?

Could it be that Dan Marina was bad-mouthing her behind her back in front of him? That… thinking back carefully, she didn’t seem to have any stains that could be used against her. She had always been very scrupulous. Well, except for recently occasionally playing with speeding… But that was just because there weren’t many acquaintances in Kaja, and it was a pastime out of boredom. Other than crashing into a few walls in the city when first learning, the rest of the time she was outside the city. There was absolutely no behavior disturbing the people.

“Is there some misunderstanding between us?” Lia glanced at Lily standing beside Zheng Yichen and asked. Judging from the little girl’s stance, she was very dependent on this young man. Could it be he was worried she would take the person away? If that was the case, she just wanted to say Zheng Yichen was overthinking it.

There were many orphans in this world. Since Zheng Yichen was willing to adopt one, as long as there was no malicious abuse, even if there was some ‘small’ purpose, it was a good thing for this girl. Being an orphan would only lead to a more difficult life.

“No, no, no. It’s just your timing is a bit… off.” Zheng Yichen patted Lily’s head, the hint very obvious. Look, we’re having a reunion here! “Let’s not talk about this. Since you’re here, have a seat first.”

Zheng Yichen pointed to the table. After Lia and Lily each found chairs to sit on, Zheng Yichen took out the Magic Weapon Summoning Book. Under Saintess Lia’s curious gaze, he quickly operated on the Magic Weapon Summoning Book for a while. “Alright, let’s wait a bit.”

… A while later…

“!? … Huh?” She looked at the plates Zheng Yichen took out from a crack opened on the Magic Weapon Summoning Book with an incredulous expression… Empty plates were one thing, but the key was those plates were all carrying steaming, sumptuous meals!

The takeout function… This was a plan Zheng Yichen provided as payment when he asked Qin to mobilize the power of her guild behind her to solve some problems with the Trading Module. Although it wasn’t involved in buying and selling goods, because it was unique enough—others simply couldn’t think of such an operation—it allowed her to be the first to seize the bulk of the takeout business in the Trading Zone!

There were quite a few guilds in the commodity trading business, so even with a head start, she could only take a relatively large piece of the pie, not completely monopolize it. But takeout was different. After gaining complete priority, Qin could perform all sorts of impressive maneuvers in this industry… Even though what Zheng Yichen provided at the time was just a few sentences, from a merchant’s perspective, it was absolutely worth it.

Not many days after the Trading Module appeared, the related takeout business developed. Plus, with the reputation and foundation of the Purple Vine Guild, the development trend of this takeout business was not worse than commodity trading. Buying things might involve being scammed, but buying food… who hasn’t done that? And with the Purple Vine Guild’s certification label there, buyers had little worry about being cheated.

“It can be like this too?” Lia’s tone was full of surprise. She knew about the Trading Zone and had browsed it, but her focus was basically on commodity trading. She hadn’t paid much attention to other things. Those alone were novel enough to keep her entertained for a long time.

“Of course. This kind of service is really convenient.” Zheng Yichen said sincerely. If takeout on Earth could ignore delivery time and directly take food in such a way, he estimated the takeout industry would experience explosive growth.

Deya spread open her right hand, and the Magic Weapon Summoning Book appeared on her palm. Because she didn’t have many things to buy and was sufficiently restrained, her attention was still on some necessary information on the Forum. As for trending posts, she just looked at a few to understand and that was it.

Those trending posts mainly discussed the Trading Zone, with similar content but from different angles. After her daily allotted leisure browsing time ended, she would get to the main topic. Therefore, she hadn’t studied the newly appeared Trading Module thoroughly at all.

When she intentionally looked for it, she easily found the takeout section. This part wasn’t as numerous as Online Stores; currently, there were only about a dozen. But each one had high sales numbers, showing their popularity. Especially looking at the pictures of those colorful, complete meals… Lia felt a bit hungry.

“This must be very popular with Adventurers and Mercenaries.” Lia closed the Magic Weapon Summoning Book and said sincerely. Being out on adventures or doing Quests was hard. Not only did they face the elements and sleep rough, but they also faced various sudden dangers. Eating mostly involved dry rations and roasted game. Since they were Mercenaries or Adventurers, don’t expect them all to have superb cooking skills.

In such an environment, if they could eat sufficiently sumptuous and exquisite meals, it would be a great boost to morale and mindset.

“It’s more popular with people like me who don’t like going out. Tell me, what’s the matter?”

“Uh… Because I was a bit bored… so I wanted to come over and see.”

“…” Zheng Yichen lightly twirled his chopsticks. The more he listened, the more this didn’t sound right? It was like a leader dropping by for an inspection because they had nothing better to do?