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Chapter 847 Fatty's Third Attack on Ginseng Fruit

Finally, Gu Mian planted fifty ghost seeds in the large room of the cart.

To avoid confusing the cultivators with the ghosts they grew, Gu Mian personally dug all fifty holes and planted all fifty seeds.

The soil in the large chamber of the cart was difficult to dig. It took Gu Mian more than two hours to dig fifty holes—that was the time the fat man was keeping track of with an electronic timer.

As he watched Gu Mian plant the last seed, he asked in confusion, "Doctor, do you understand why the evil god let you into this instance? If you don't understand, what if these seeds suddenly sprout up after you water them and then suddenly run to the exhibition stand and rate themselves?"

“It’s okay,” Gu Mian said, picking up a water jug ​​full of water. “I’ll catch them.”

The fat man silently turned around and glanced behind him. The greenhouse door behind him was wide open, and a quilt was placed outside the door.

Gu Mian brought this down from the second floor. He decided to stand guard at the greenhouse entrance after planting the seeds to prevent the ghost from secretly ripening and being displayed on the exhibition stand.

"Actually, doctor, I think you only need to plant one." The fat man said, glancing at the evaluator outside the door. "Even if you only plant one ghost, the evaluator will surely be moved by your meticulousness and persistence, and will give you full marks without hesitation."

The evaluator nodded hastily: "That's right."

“There’s no food here,” Gu Mian said while watering the seeds. “If you’re unlucky enough to plant a ghost that takes ten or even dozens of days to grow, then the four of you will just have to wait to starve to death.”

"That's not true!" the evaluator quickly retorted. "You can look at the ghost models and descriptions in the hall. The oldest ghosts here only take seven or eight days to mature under normal care. If they are not properly cared for, they will only take ten days at most, and they will just starve to death."

The fat man scratched his head: "Being half-starved doesn't seem like a good thing. Why do you make it sound like we should thank you for being half-starved?"

The judge's face turned red and green, and he stopped speaking.

"I have great faith in my luck." Gu Mian had finished watering the plants. He put down the watering can and looked at the fat man. "I think the probability of me opening a rare blind box is extremely high. There are no descriptions of those rare blind boxes in the lobby, and we don't know their growth time."
"If I plant only a few seeds, I'm very likely to get a bunch of extremely rare ghost types that take half a year to mature, so it's safer to plant more."

"Speaking of which..." Gu Mian said, looking at the evaluator outside, "Have you ever seen anyone cultivate a rare type of ghost?"

“I’ve only seen it once. It was cultivated by the last team that entered this instance before it closed.” The evaluator said in a low voice, “They also used the same method as you, sending one person at a time to plant seeds to ensure that the mortality rate was minimized.”

"The first three members of that team died using this method, and none of them managed to get a perfect score. When it was the fourth person's turn, he successfully bred five ghosts. Fortunately, three of those five ghosts were of the same type—'hide-and-seek ghosts'."

Hide and Seek?
Gu Mian had just read the description of this ghost in the hall.

This is a ghost without facial features, with only one large eye on its face. That eye is almost as big as the entire face. It has no sense of touch, hearing, or smell, and can only use its single eye to explore its surroundings.

Once the Hide-and-Seek Ghost matures, it will play a hide-and-seek game with its breeder.

It will close its eyes and let people hide in the building, and after a minute it will open its eyes and start looking for the breeder hiding in the building.

The search time is ten minutes. If the breeder is found within ten minutes, he will die. If he is not found, the hide-and-seek ghost will voluntarily come on stage for exhibition.

"There's a trick to hiding from the Hide-and-Seek Ghost," the judge said, raising his voice as he glanced at Gu Mian, as if afraid she wouldn't hear him. "The Hide-and-Seek Ghost has no sense of touch, smell, or hearing; it can only use its big eye to see its surroundings."
"The fourth demon breeder in that team took advantage of this, clinging tightly to the back of the Hide-and-Seek Ghost during the minute it closed its eyes. The Hide-and-Seek Ghost could not see its own back with only one eye, and could not feel that there was someone on its back, so no matter how long it searched, it could not find the breeder clinging to its back."
"He's both lucky and clever," the judge remarked. "Once he figured out the hiding tricks of the hide-and-seek ghosts, the game became very simple. He used the same method to pass the remaining two hide-and-seek ghost games, and those three ghosts alone earned him nearly three hundred points."
"Then he completed two more ghost games that each gave him a 50-point bonus. Before he trained the sixth ghost, he was only 15 points away from a perfect score. At that time, I thought he was going to get a perfect score and complete the game."

Judging from the tone of the judge's last sentence, it seems that the fourth demon hunter failed to complete the game.

"But what happened next?" the fat man asked curiously.

"He died later." The evaluator shook his head with a regretful expression. "He probably used up all his luck when he cultivated those three Hide-and-Seek Ghosts. The sixth ghost he cultivated was a rare ghost with an extremely dangerous level."

Oh, right. The fat guy should have realized it sooner; it was only after the doctor asked the evaluator if he had ever seen a rare ghost that the evaluator told them this story.

"Was he killed by a rare ghost?" The fat man felt it was a great pity, as he was only 15 points away from a perfect score.

“No,” the rater shook his head again, “he killed himself.”

"The condition for the ghost to voluntarily go on stage for exhibition is the death of its cultivator?" Gu Mian guessed.

"Yes, it's hard to say whether he was lucky or unlucky. It just so happened that the fourth person to cultivate the ghost 'Sacrifice Ghost' was only fifteen points away from passing the level. The Sacrifice Ghost is the kind of ghost that looks the most normal."

"Its score for being exhibited on stage is 500 points, but the price is that the breeder must die;"
"If the first person to cultivate the demon is the one who creates the sacrificial demon, then everyone will be happy, as long as he is willing to sacrifice himself, the remaining four people can all leave."

"If the second ghost breeder cultivates a sacrificial ghost, it's not a loss. As long as he dies, the remaining three people can leave. If the number of people continues to cultivate sacrificial ghosts, then it's not worth it."
"Unfortunately, he was the fourth. Teams that implement the single-suicide method often put the most valuable people and the stupid people at the back, because the valuable people need to be protected, while the stupid people are useless even if they are put at the front, they are just going to their deaths."

"The fifth Seeder was the dumbest person in the team. The fourth Seeder obviously knew that if the fifth Seeder were to participate, it would be impossible to reach 500 points, so he simply sacrificed himself and cleared the level."

"So in the end only the dumbest number five survived?" The fat man listened, his eyes welling up with tears, and he reached out to wipe them away.

"Yes, in the end only number five left the instance alive." The rater tilted his head slightly upward, as if recalling the scene at the time. "That team was the only one that successfully carried out the single suicide method, so I have a deep impression of them."

"Because of the dungeon's trigger conditions, most of the teams that come here before the matchmaking system closes are friends and family. Many of these friends and family members have turned against each other here, since nobody wants to die. There have even been instances where one player killed another in a fight over the greenhouse."

"But that group never seemed to care about themselves. Their only goal was to leave the instance. As long as one person left, it was considered a victory. In the end, they won."

At this moment, the fat man wiped away his tears and asked the evaluator, "By the way, what did that sacrificial ghost look like?"

"It looks like a normal person, but it's different from what you'd find here. After all, the ghosts here are all strangely shaped, so a ghost with a normal appearance would seem abnormal here."

As the evaluator spoke, he glanced at the pile of strangely shaped ghost models in the hall behind him. He knew that those ghosts looked weird. After the dungeon was shut down, he had thought about throwing away these ghost models, but he was afraid that one day his dungeon would reopen. If he threw them away, he would have to work odd jobs to buy props, just like Coach Che.

"Why are you asking this?" the judge asked the fat man. "Are you afraid he might also create a sacrificial ghost?"

The "he" here refers to Gu Mian.

Before the fat man could answer, the judge continued, "There's no need to worry so much. Sacrificial ghosts are extremely rare, with a success rate of almost zero percent. Besides, your doctor looks fierce, so even a sacrificial ghost wouldn't dare to come."

"Given your doctors' tendency to kill at the slightest provocation, would he really sacrifice himself? If a ghost of sacrifice were to appear, who knows who would be the one to die..." The evaluator added quietly at the end.

The fat man continued, "When that sacrificial ghost was a child... when it sprouted, didn't it look like a little person crawling out of the ground? Two hands and two feet, and it looked a bit like the ginseng fruit from Journey to the West."

"Yes." The evaluator asked, somewhat puzzled, "How did you know?"

“I saw it,” the fat man replied.

what?
The judges widened their eyes and followed the fat man's gaze.

In the soil that Gu Mian had just planted, a seed had already sprouted. The sprouted seed grew into a tiny person the size of a palm with two hands and two feet, which was none other than the ginseng fruit that the fat man had been talking about.

Oh no, is Auntie going to regress?! No way—