Chapter 84 - 83: Quite Fat

Chapter 84: Chapter 83: Quite Fat

The idea of dispatching female team members to test the Rose Corridor was temporarily shelved due to a lack of cooperation from the group.

Meanwhile, Huai Yu contentedly grabbed a handful of Bamboo Heart Tea and dropped it into her cup. She poured boiling water over the leaves. Wow! A faint, refreshing fragrance instantly wafted out!

However, the tea was too hot. She blew on it a few times but still couldn’t take a sip. Glancing at her three newly acquired vases, she simply picked up a pair of scissors. After a moment of thought, she also grabbed a small basket.

She thought, "Rose Corridor, I’ll pick the biggest vase for you this time. You shouldn’t mind me cutting a few extra branches, right?"

Huai Yu hesitantly approached with the scissors, only to find that the Rose Corridor didn’t mind at all. It even actively swayed its branches in response.

Huai Yu instantly beamed. "Don’t worry, you’ll definitely be the most beautiful one!"

She selected the right branches and SNIP, SNIP, cut them down. Before long, she had gathered a large bouquet in her basket. The severed wounds on the vines healed rapidly, and immediately after, fresh clusters of glossy, tender leaves sprouted from the adjacent lateral buds.

As for the second vase, it naturally had to be the wisteria!

The original treehouse was completely unrecognizable, and she had torn off the slashed tarpaulin to stow away for now. Back then, only a few solitary frames had been left standing. However, Huai Yu hadn’t held back her Power of Induction in the slightest, generously feeding them a hearty meal. Looking at them now, the branches at the back had just begun to sprout green buds, while the front was already draped with strings of wisteria flowers in varying shades of purple. They swayed in the wind, looking exceptionally lovely.

However, wisteria wasn’t easy to arrange in a vase, and Huai Yu couldn’t bear to cut off too many of their branches—after all, they didn’t possess the aggressive growth capabilities of the Rose Corridor. Therefore, she carefully snipped off just two clusters as accents.

As for the main material... ah, she would just have to rely on her brand-new neighbor!

"Kuang Biao, I’m going to cut a few bamboo branches for a vase arrangement."

Kuang Biao’s voice was still a bit weak, but his spirits were high. He shook his leaves and proactively bent one of the bamboo stalks down, dictating instructions.

"That branch on the upper left... yes, yes, yes, that one! It’s the most vibrant and has a nice shape... look at those leaves, so shiny!

"You have to ask me about flower arranging. I’m an expert at it!

"I have great aesthetics.

"Unlike you." He sighed, clicking his tongue. The entire bamboo forest seemed to shake its head as a bamboo leaf pointed at Huai Yu’s clothes. "Look at your taste in fashion. It’s not just bad—it’s utterly non-existent!"

Huai Yu fell speechless. She wondered, "Is it my fault that I was so poor at the start that I had to buy a secondhand down jacket, and my pillowcase was a neon pink freebie? To think I’m now reduced to being judged by a bamboo stalk—there is something seriously wrong with this world!"

Muttering to herself, she brought the scissors down with a SNIP, cleanly cutting off the branch Kuang Biao had chosen. Admittedly, it really did look quite nice.

Kuang Biao continued to offer guidance. "Sometimes, you can’t just stick the bamboo branch in the vase at an angle and call it a day. I’ll teach you a trick—find a cross-branch with roughly the same diameter as the vase, split the bottom of the bamboo branch to create a slit, and wedge it in. This way, you can shape it and adjust the angle however you want..."

Huai Yu was silenced once again. Even when she had nothing, she hadn’t forgotten to stick a flower in a vase for a bit of romance, which made her feel quite cultured. But what kind of monster was this? A single bamboo stalk that understood floral arrangements and lectured on aesthetics—was this reasonable?

"How is it not reasonable?" Kuang Biao argued back confidently. "My master used to love arranging flowers, burning incense, and making fragrant balms right under my bamboo grove... Have you ever smelled plum blossom balm? Have you ever made rose lip rouge?

"Look at you, looking so unkempt. You don’t have an ounce of refinement in your life."

She thought, "Me, unkempt? I am, at the very least, clean and tidy, alright?"

Still, complaints aside, having Kuang Biao around to chat with added a touch of coziness to her quiet life. After all, being entirely alone was sometimes incredibly boring! The nearby plants were either too weak to speak or too strong to bother speaking... It was genuinely tough having to mutter to herself every single day.

And so, under Kuang Biao’s tutelage, Huai Yu successfully cut down three more bamboo branches. Finally, she glanced at the slowly growing bamboo shoots and decided to treat herself to a fresh meal that night!

And the Bamboo Heart Tea was truly fragrant; she would harvest some more of that, too!

With one small vase still sitting empty, Huai Yu picked up her basket and took a stroll around the area. "You’re the one! Light blue primrose!"

A tall, slender primrose happened to be growing in the wasteland. With a single SNIP of her scissors, Huai Yu successfully completed her three vase arrangements.

Now, on the brand-new long table in the house, the three vases stood in a row, arranged from tallest to shortest.

Near the door sat an exquisite, petite white porcelain vase with a narrow mouth. It held a single light blue primrose with a fuzzy green stem and clustered blossoms. The interplay of the three colors looked exceptionally fresh.

Next to it were the three diagonally arranged bamboo branches, tall and slender, exuding a unique charm. Hanging from the mouth of this slightly taller vase were two clusters of wisteria flowers in varying shades of purple, creating a vibe that was both vibrant and serene.

The final, large vase was entirely filled with Roses. Emerald green leaves and branches intertwined with pinkish-white blossoms, bunching together at the mouth of the vase to form a lush, bushy dome. The dome wasn’t perfectly symmetrical, as taller, thinner branches occasionally poked out. But this only made the arrangement look more vibrant and captivating.

Huai Yu sat at the table and studied it carefully for a while, suddenly realizing the benefits of having Zhou Qian around the new house. At the very least, the long table he had chosen was both aesthetically pleasing and practical—it suited her perfectly!

Then, she picked up her basket. It was still early, so she decided to gather more bamboo hearts. That way, she could dry them into tea overnight and have something to bring Boss Tang the next morning. Although there wasn’t anything she absolutely needed to buy at the moment, the destruction of her treehouse had made her realize that having plenty of credits was the true source of security!

While she was at it, she should also bring some good stuff for Uncle Zaozi to try. Huai Yu had realized that even though Uncle Zaozi’s goods weren’t necessarily cheap, he had a ton of connections, and dealing with him didn’t require owing favors. Whether she needed his services right now or not, it was best to maintain the relationship.

At this thought, she turned back to the bamboo forest and asked, "Kuang Biao, can you produce bamboo rice?"

Kuang Biao was stumped for a moment. "Bamboo rice? But I haven’t flowered yet."

"But didn’t you say you can flower whenever you want?" Huai Yu pressed. "Are you willing to flower? Are you willing to do it now?"

The bamboo forest had just sprouted, so no small animals had come around yet. But once it flowered and produced bamboo rice, wouldn’t it attract more rodents? Like, for instance, bamboo rats...

The entire bamboo forest immediately shook its head. "No, no, I don’t want to flower! If you want to eat meat, you’d be better off digging in that patch to my left. I can feel that the soil underneath is pretty rich."

Huai Yu was a bit surprised. "Really? Is there a burrow?"

"No, but there are a lot of earthworms," Kuang Biao said with absolute seriousness.