Chapter 89 - 88: Unattainable Lover

Chapter 89: Chapter 88: Unattainable Lover

The bookstore owner clicked his tongue. "Why are you being so stubborn? Can love possibly be more important than making money?"

Huai Yu widened her eyes. "But I *am* making money! As for love, I don’t even know... Besides, what if romance novels are actually a good read?

"And we’re not talking about love right now. We’re talking about how the title of this book doesn’t match its contents at all!"

The owner’s gaze wandered. "I told you, it’s a pirated copy... Pirated! Isn’t it completely normal for pirated books to slap a random title onto unrelated contents? Just look at the printing quality—at least the story itself is complete, right?"

Huai Yu was speechless.

She looked down and quickly flipped to another page of *Eight Treasures in One Pregnancy*. It was indeed a story about the protagonist, Little Yan, raising pigs to get rich. Later on, there was Wang Shitou raising scorpions and Li Fugui raising giant snails...

What they all had in common was that they had struck it rich.

Wait! That wasn’t right!

Huai Yu suddenly snapped back to reality. "I came here to see if you had a guidebook on raising geese!"

She had been so distracted by this book that she almost forgot Boss Tang was still waiting for her!

"Oh, raising geese..."

Seeing that she was no longer arguing about the mismatched title, the owner breathed a sigh of relief and pointed to a nearby bookshelf. "Third book on the right. The one with the blue sky, white clouds, and green lotus leaves on the cover."

That cover seemed like a perfect fit for a book about raising geese. Huai Yu secretly sighed in relief. Then she glanced at the title and instantly felt her brain short-circuit again.

*Unattainable Lover*.

"What! What exactly is this?"

"It’s about raising geese! The female lead’s family runs a goose farm. It’s written in great detail, though she raises swans!

"Tell me, is a swan not a type of goose? Don’t they pretty much look the same?"

Huai Yu was at a loss for words. "I want a proper one. A serious guidebook on how to raise geese."

"I don’t have that." The owner shook his head. "Don’t you know how highly sought-after those kinds of books are after the cataclysm? How could I possibly have one?

"Let me tell you, I’ve read all these books, and this is the only one that even touches on the subject of geese. Do you want it or not?"

Huai Yu immediately fell into a dilemma. "Then... I’ll take it! Grab me two more good ones. How many points is that?"

The owner instantly beamed with joy. "Let me tell you, this *Eight Treasures in One Pregnancy* is actually super interesting. I highly recommend you take it. And this one too... Blah blah blah..."

In short, by the time a dizzy Huai Yu walked out of the store, she realized she was holding four books and had tragically lost a hundred points!

So expensive! What a luxury! And they were pirated copies on top of that!

But... at least they were all very thick with tiny print. They should last her a good while for killing time...

Clutching the books, she hurriedly made her way back to the shop.

Meanwhile, back at the shop, Boss Tang was pacing around anxiously!

Seeing her return with such a large stack of books, he quickly went to greet her. "Are the reference books really this thick?"

Ah, well.

Huai Yu felt a bit awkward as she pulled out the book with the blue sky, white clouds, and green lotus leaves on the cover. "Only this one is."

"What’s this?" Boss Tang took a glance. "*Unattainable Lover*? What is this, a toad trying to raise a swan?"

GASP!

As expected of Boss Tang!

What an incredibly accurate assessment!

Huai Yu thought in shock, "No wonder the cover looks like that!" She hadn’t even made the connection. Her life experience was still too shallow.

At this moment, she could only nod in admiration. "Pretty much... The store owner said he didn’t have a guidebook on raising geese, so this swan-raising one was the closest match.

"He also said that in the first Chapter, the female lead is already raising newly hatched cygnets and feeding them fresh vegetable leaves... I figure it should be about the same for geese?"

Boss Tang did have fresh vegetable leaves here, and their Mutant Value was quite low.

But the problem was...

"Does it really take this long for a goose to hatch?"

The rustling noises seemed to be growing fainter and fainter. Could they be stuck inside?

The two novice breeders looked at each other in dismay.

Huai Yu tentatively touched the two slightly greenish-gray goose eggs. The more she felt them, the more unsure she became.

"Should we... maybe help them break the shells?"

Boss Tang also hesitated. "Will that work?"

Would it work? Neither of them knew. What if they broke the shells before the goslings were fully developed?

Huai Yu stroked the smooth eggshells, sensing the dense Mutant Value radiating from them.

Once it reached a certain level, the sensation it gave off was no longer "dirty," but rather an entirely different, unfamiliar feedback.

She hesitated, unsure if she should impart a bit of energy to help them grow. But the question was, should she use her Purification Ability in this situation? Or should she use her growth-acceleration powers?

If she purified them, what if the two unhatched goslings ended up like those two snakeheads from before—quieting down and refusing to hatch... wouldn’t they suffocate to death?

But if she accelerated their growth... what if the reaction was too violent?

After much hesitation, she ultimately decided to release a tiny sliver of her Purification Ability first.

However, the goose eggs remained perfectly still, as if they had fallen asleep. Even the egg that had just started to pip showed no signs of movement at all.

Huai Yu started to panic. She hastily switched to her growth-acceleration energy.

Still no reaction.

She thought, "That can’t be right, can it? I’ll give it a bit more... Why is there still no movement? Are they actually dead? But they feel like they should be alive! Just a little more!"

Just as she infused more energy, a sudden CRACK echoed through the air as an eggshell fractured.

Boss Tang dashed over in a single stride. He carefully stared at the two goose eggs, letting out a sigh of relief as he lamented, "This is my first time incubating eggs."

Huai Yu couldn’t help but shoot him a look, thinking, "Didn’t you just stuff a hot water bottle underneath them? You call that incubating?"

Before she could ask, Boss Tang voiced another doubt. "Why is the eggshell cracking so densely right down the middle? And the fractures are surprisingly even... You know, it almost looks like it burst open from the inside, hahaha—HUH?!!!"

His eyes bulged.

Huai Yu’s heart leaped, and she instinctively withdrew her hand.

Spiderweb cracks uniformly covered both eggshells. Accompanied by a final, violent CRACK, two chubby, plump, dusty-gray mutant goslings stood up from inside the ruins.

They then shook their bodies, sending all the fragmented shell pieces tumbling into the box.

Their sparse fuzz was still damp and clumped together, making them look rather bald.

Boss Tang subconsciously clenched his fist and carefully placed it next to a mutant gosling.

The creature’s visibly solid, robust body was already larger than his fist!

With such a massive frame... the goose eggs from earlier now seemed utterly petite in comparison. Wasn’t this direction of mutation a bit too bizarre?

"Bone-shrinking technique? And this eggshell... it really was burst open from the inside..." He stared at them for a long while before sighing in awe. "I reckon these geese will grow even larger than normal ones..."

Huai Yu guiltily lowered her head.

But she quickly raised it again. So what if they burst out? It wasn’t a big deal.

Growing big was a good thing! Bigger geese would lay more eggs, and they’d be far more ferocious too.

She reached out, attempting to pet a gosling. Glancing at their flat, black bills, she couldn’t help but ask curiously, "What breed of geese are these? Aren’t goslings supposed to be yellow?"

Boss Tang shook his head. "I don’t know either. I never paid attention to that kind of trivia back when I used to eat roast goose."