“This is Goldfish Branch. It’s actually a seasoning; you don’t need to add MSG to dishes with it. The dishes will be incredibly fresh,” Shadow chuckled. “It will truly make you feel like the world brightens up with every bite. However, it’s called Goldfish Branch because people who eat it will have terrible memory for a day, forgetting many things, just like goldfish. But sometimes, having too good a memory isn’t a good thing either.”

Qing Chen glanced at Shadow, who clearly had a hint of reminiscence in his expression.

Could it be that Shadow often used Goldfish Branch as a seasoning, wanting to forget certain things?

Shadow strolled through Forbidden Zone 10. Those terrifying creatures originally present there all stayed far away from him.

“You can put that purple grass away; it’s called Purple Orchid Star. Holding one in your mouth will increase your Cultivation speed. Seven ears grow on one stalk, and one ear can last you a week,” Shadow said with a smile to Qing Chen. “You’ve struck gold again; this isn’t easy to find. What unbelievable luck you have.”

Qing Chen shook his head.

Purple Orchid Star was important. Even he, who had never been to Forbidden Zone 10, had heard of this thing.

And Shadow was pretending not to know there was a Purple Orchid Star here.

But it still comes down to the same thing: it wasn’t Qing Chen’s good luck; Shadow clearly knew there was a Purple Orchid Star here, so he specifically brought him here to pick it.

This brother… now wanted to give him all the best things in the world.

“Don’t touch that thing that looks like a cantaloupe,” Shadow pointed to a spot in the distance. “It’s called Murdering Melon. Any creature that gets close to it and applies a certain amount of force will cause it to explode directly, creating a kill radius of about five meters.”

Shadow turned to the others: “In the early years, the Wildlanders used to wrap this thing in cloth as a weapon. After throwing it, the seeds of the exploded Murdering Melon would splash out, embedding themselves in the flesh of animals, using the animals’ blood and flesh as nutrients.”

In fact, the evolutionary direction of the plants in the Forbidden Zone is mostly aimed at ‘protecting themselves’ and ‘propagating seeds.’

For example, the Murdering Melon is relatively aggressive in its evolution.

Many more make their fruits bitter, so even if they are given to others to eat, others won’t eat them.

At this time, Qing Chen suddenly said, “Watch out!”

Shadow turned his head sharply, but saw Zard already standing beside the Murdering Melon, starting to poke it with his finger: “Let me demonstrate for everyone.”

With a loud boom, Zard’s bloated body was thrown more than two meters away, his chest blown open with a large hole, with the plants inside falling to the ground.

It was as if a bunch of equipment had exploded.

Shadow: “?”

Thankfully, they were standing relatively far away and were not affected.

But even someone as experienced as Shadow was a little unclear about Zard’s brain circuit.

Zard stood up, picked out the Murdering Melon seeds embedded in his Face[-], and his chest closed up at a speed visible to the naked eye. It looked as eerie as could be.

Zard looked at everyone and chuckled, “It’s quite powerful. Don’t worry, the Purple Orchid Star is fine.”

Qing Chen, on the other hand, was thinking as he watched this scene: this earth-type Awakened One is truly unreasonable. After his body elementalizes, except for fearing high temperatures that will glaze his body, it seems like he’s not afraid of anything?!

Shadow looked at Zard, raised an eyebrow: “Since you like to cause trouble so much, you’ll experience them one by one later.”

Zard beamed: “Okay.”

Qing Chen suddenly asked: “Zard, when you were a baby, the item you grabbed during your first-year ceremony was a medical record, wasn’t it…?”

Zard chuckled: “Yes, yes, yes…”

Given this guy’s attitude, Shadow couldn’t quite understand why that always calm and ruthless Head of the Qingshi Clan could tolerate the existence of such an eccentric killer?

However, Zhang Mengqian was the most miserable at this moment.

Zard got blown up, so all the plants that Xiao Mengqian had painstakingly dug up were also ruined, and he had to dig them up again.

The little boy’s skin was already damaged, and everything was excruciatingly painful.

Without Qing Chen speaking up, he didn’t even dare to use Chicken Blood Bud to treat his wounds.

Zhang Mengqian silently crouched on the ground, picking up the intact plants and handing them to Zard, then silently returned to the original path, digging up new ones to replace those that were unusable.

Only then did Zard finally feel a little embarrassed. He scratched the back of his head and looked at Zhang Mengqian: “Sorry… I’ll help you dig later.”

Zhang Mengqian smiled: “No need, Boss told me to do it myself.”

“Oh,” Zard thought for a long time: “Then next time I come, I’ll bring you candy.”

It seemed that only at this moment was Zard relatively normal.

Sometimes Qing Chen would think that this guy and Huan Yu were a perfect match, a pair of neurotics.

“Big shot, what are you using these saplings for…? Don’t worry, we’re sensible, we’ll say what we should say, and we absolutely won’t say what we shouldn’t say in the Outer World,” Ma Jingjing said cautiously. “We’re just here to explore; we’re just curious about the world of the Forbidden Zone.”

Qing Chen glanced at him, with a smirk: “You’ll find out soon enough.”

After all, everyone will be future laborers in the vegetable garden… no, students of the Agricultural Academy.

After spending this time together, Ma Jingjing and the others would absolutely not ask what they shouldn’t, and absolutely would not leak what they shouldn’t. Although each of them had some minor flaws, they were all good workers.

After all, they are all outdoor enthusiasts; those with poor manual skills couldn’t survive in the wild.

Such students naturally need to be selected to go to the Agricultural Academy.

At this time, Qing Chen already had Purple Orchid Star, Chicken Blood Bud, and Oil Refining Fruit in his stockpile of plant seedlings, and he still needed Jingshan Tea.

Just then, Qing Ye suddenly received a call. He looked at Shadow: “Boss, the Chen Family is using bombers. They probably want to use life detectors to find our location and then conduct carpet bombing. The news came extraordinarily late this time. The Chen Family’s secrecy was excellent. It was our field troops hidden in the wilderness that discovered them using Phase-array Radar. They’ll arrive in about two minutes!”

Qing Chen was stunned: “Damn it, my Jingshan Tea!”

…

…

“Squadron T101 is en route.”

“Requesting entry into the target area, preparing for battle.”

In the Fighter Jet, the pilot reported the location in an impassive voice.

Someone responded equally coldly over the communication channel: “Permission granted to activate the fire system. Conduct blanket strikes on all targets in the target area that meet biological characteristics.”

The Federation’s active-duty ‘Meteor P-11’ Fighter Jet group, equipped with Turbine jet engines, flashed across the sky.

In fact, the Federation had also attempted to use more advanced ‘multi-pulse aerospace engines’ to improve the Fighter Jet, but later everyone discovered that making the Fighter Jet faster wasn’t difficult, but they couldn’t find that many suitable pilots.

Pilots require very good physical fitness. They have to withstand extreme weightlessness and overload conditions. Even with ordinary Fighter Jets, pilots have to withstand at least 6G overload flight states.

For example, withstanding 6G overload flight state means the pilot has to withstand six times their own weight.

Later, the Federation military tried to select super pilots from Gene Soldiers, but the problem was that Gene Medicine didn’t enhance the brain’s direction.

The first super pilot who boarded for a test flight had his brain turned into mush.

People who can withstand these conditions exist, but they are few. There are probably only five or six in the entire Federation. This cannot meet the number of Fighter Jets required.

From here on, it is human physical conditions that begin to limit humanity’s pursuit of airspeed.

At this moment, twelve air combat squadrons, twelve jets per squadron, rapidly swept across the treetops, green as a carpet.

The pilot in the Fighter Jet looked at the instrument panel: “Detected eight targets matching human biological characteristics. Should we fire?”

“Fire.”

The next moment, twelve Fighter Jets split into two groups, tilting their wings and diving towards the ground.

Their bomb bays opened, and the four air-to-ground missiles under each Fighter Jet, each equipped with a dual-pulse engine, trailed brilliant Mach rings, falling like meteors towards the ground below.

The moment the missiles were launched, all pilots performed tactical maneuvers, pulling their aircraft up towards the sky and beginning their return journey.

The squadron leader, wearing a protective mask, calmly watched the data on the instrument panel: “Confirmed target destruction, no survivors. Requesting return.”

“Return.”

As they spoke, the combat squadron, led by the T101 Fighter Jet, turned back.

From today onwards, they would enter a long period of silence, taking leave and being transferred from the flight unit to administrative positions. All details of this operation plan would be sealed in the top archives of the Chen Family military.

The pilots knew very well that if the outside world knew that they carried out this bombing mission, their entire families would probably be killed.

…

…

Return Countdown 6:00:00.

“If someone kills you, the patriarch will definitely avenge you, but the premise is that you’re really dead,” Shadow sat on a lounge chair, looking at the Jingshan Tea garden in front of him and said with a smile, “Just now, I simply replaced us with eight Koshima spies to create false targets. In this situation, the patriarch will pretend nothing happened and won’t avenge you. But this time, they’re going to be serious. That’s good. My biggest concern is that the Chen Family wouldn’t make a move.”

Just before the arrival of the air combat squadron.

Shadow first sent Ma Jingjing and the others back to City 10, then took Qing Chen and the others to the Jingshan Tea garden, throwing the eight Koshima spies who were supposed to be planted in the ground into Forbidden Zone 10 to attract fire.

As for the Jingshan Tea saplings that Qing Chen hadn’t collected yet, Shadow had more here than in Forbidden Zone 10.

Shadow smiled: “This tea garden is yours; you can move as much as you want.”

Zard and Zhang Mengqian began digging up tea saplings.

This guy Zard even dug up a skeleton from the ground: “Wow, Shadow, you’re really using Metahumans to plant tea.”

Then, he even hugged a skull and went to secretly scare Zhang Mengqian and Yang Yang.

Zhang Mengqian was expressionless: “Are you bored or not?”

Yang Yang used his Force field to count the number of skeletons buried underground, and then looked at Shadow in shock several times.

Qing Chen asked: “It’s because you know that there’s a Qing Family hidden Phase-array Radar near Forbidden Zone 10, so you agreed to let me go there, right?”

This air strike was too swift. Even with radar monitoring, there were only two minutes left for everyone.

If Shadow didn’t have the Shadow Gate, they would probably all be dead.

However, Shadow’s expression remained calm and relaxed, as if it were just a small incident.

Shadow said: “The number of people who want to kill you is increasing… By the way, your ability to attract hatred is also impressive. I heard from Si Nianhua that even people across the ocean in the Outer World want to kill you.”

Qing Chen also lay on the chair beside him, looking at the Jingshan Tea garden in front of him: “There are definitely more people who want to kill you than those who want to kill me, but you’re too strong, so they don’t dare to show it.”

Qing Chen looked at the sunflower garden next to the Jingshan Tea garden, and that sea of sunflowers, and the delicate tombstone in it.

“Brother, who is that?”

Shadow gazed deeply at the tombstone: “When I was a child, I often played in the streets of City 5, pretending to be a poor boy, experiencing the so-called hardships of life. I’d get into gang fights; sometimes when I ran out of money, I’d rely on dancers for help. Fortunately, you and I inherited the appearance of our ancestor Qing Zhen; we never lacked food wherever we went.”

Qing Chen listened silently. It turned out that Shadow also had such a wild and unruly past.

Shadow continued to reminisce: “She was the most beautiful dancer in District 4 at that time. She didn’t know my identity; she was three years older than me. I snuck into her dressing room to sleep, and when I woke up, I found myself covered with a coat. I got up to look at her and saw her putting on makeup in front of the mirror. I think it was the first time I had ever seen someone so beautiful.”

“And then?” Qing Chen curiously asked.

Shadow seemed to recall something and smiled: “Then she saw me wake up and lectured me for two hours, saying that I was not doing my job properly at my young age, that even someone like her was working hard, and that I had hands and feet, so why didn’t I find a job? She even found me a porter job, letting me work hard in the construction site for half a year…”

“I didn’t have anywhere to live, so I would still secretly go to her dressing room to shower and sleep. She never seemed to mind the smell of sweat on me; she would even secretly bring me the leftover food from customers. She said that as long as I worked hard to support myself, then I could stay there.”

“Once, the security guards at the nightclub found me; they were going to beat me up and throw me out. She protected me like a little lioness, like an older sister,” Shadow looked back on that time with nostalgia: “A woman stood in front of me, doing things that even my family had never done for me. She didn’t know who she was protecting, and she never asked who I was or where I came from. It seemed that as long as I could muster the courage to Face[-] the world, she would be satisfied.”

Qing Chen asked: “Is it because of her that you don’t want to go to the Outer World to be a beta tester?”

“Mm,” Shadow nodded: “Every day after work, I would secretly hide on the steel frame above the backstage of the nightclub, silently watching her dance. The gorgeous dresses and lights, she was proud and beautiful, confident and self-loving. I hid in the darkness, feeling inferior, even my identity as a member of the Qing Family Conglomerate couldn’t give me the confidence to match her.”

Yang Yang squatted aside, propping her chin up with both hands, listening intently.

…