Blind Spot
Chapter 240 - 225 Awakening One

Chapter 240: 225 Awakening One

The next morning.

Li Chengyi was among the first to arrive at the botanical garden in Suiyang, watching the staff slowly slide the large iron gate aside.

He straightened his clothes, making sure the plant researcher badge pinned to his chest wasn’t crooked.

"Boss, here so early to enjoy the flowers? I’ll go look around for a breakfast place," Zhou Xingtong got out of the car, unable to suppress a yawn, covering her mouth with her hand before quickly touching up her makeup with a small mirror.

At 4:30 a.m., before dawn had even broken, the boss had called her to get ready to leave...

Poor her, after taking a bath and applying a facial mask, her sleep was cut in half by being summoned like this.

And now she was still groggy.

Admiring flowers at an ungodly hour... she had come to understand her boss’s torturous routine.

No... actually, it wasn’t really torture, since he himself had woken up even earlier...

She sighed. But, considering the double overtime pay, Zhou Xingtong rallied her spirits.

The life of a lunatic is full of joy, and now she understood the true meaning of those words.

He loved magic, loved scaring people, and immediately after scaring them, he’d go admire flowers, never letting the exhaustion and frayed nerves of the previous day carry over to the next.

This was her mentally ill boss’s idea of a happy day.

’Maybe I could start a daily post, documenting the boss’s happy life every day...’

"Ah, it’s alright, I’ve bought some food. Here’s a portion for you." Without turning his head, Li Chengyi handed her a bag with steamed buns, marinated eggs, and mung bean porridge packed inside.

"Alright, thanks boss," Zhou Xingtong said as she grabbed the food and started gobbling down, three bites per pork bun.

For a kid like her, who had grown up enduring hardships, pickiness was never an option.

"Let’s go, let’s take a look inside." Seeing that the botanical garden was open, Li Chengyi patted off the nonexistent dust on his clothes and strode forward.

Zhou Xingtong quickly maneuvered the car to the parking lot, then followed him at a brisk pace in her high heels.

Then she saw the boss exchange a few words with the guard at the gate, and soon a botanical garden employee, an older woman, started leading him inside.

The boss slipped the old lady a roll of cash adeptly.

The old lady’s face lit up with a smile, and she began to talk non-stop about the situation.

Zhou Xingtong gulped down the egg, then poked open the mung bean porridge and took a sip before quickly following.

Minutes later.

The three of them arrived at the edge of the Gladiolus Garden, which was still under construction and being watered.

After a few words of warning, the old lady turned and left.

"Xingtong, wait here for me, I’ll go do some research and then come back." Li Chengyi threw a comment behind him and cut into the flower field through a small path.

And then he began to touch each flower one by one.

After a short while, the boss’s expression darkened. His burly body bent down to carefully inspect the crimson gladiolus flowers that had been knocked to the ground by something.

Zhou Xingtong watched as he cradled the few crimson gladioli like they were his children, a look of deep sorrow on his face.

Then the boss called over the gardeners pruning nearby and blasted them with a rant, reeling off professional knowledge and questioning their methods.

’Even if the workers did a bad job, it’s got nothing to do with the boss, right? Shouldn’t it be the botanical garden’s management that steps in?’

Zhou Xingtong was puzzled.

But soon, something occurred to her, and she quickly pulled out her phone and browsed through it.

’Oh... the boss seems to have rented out this entire section of the Gladiolus Garden... um... let me see... renting it temporarily for half a month, the price is... nine hundred thousand! Tsk...’

Zhou Xingtong couldn’t comprehend it at all.

Looking up at the boss who had just scolded the gardeners, she brought up her phone’s notepad and jotted down: Likes—considers flowers as precious as life.

Phew.

Li Chengyi’s heart ached.

Though there were many varieties of gladiolus, with even more hybrids, to completely gather a hundred degrees of evolution in such mixed breeds, there were only about three types here.

This time, he had chosen the Crimson Gladiolus variant, and now some workers had knocked off several of its flowers, almost driving him mad.

The flowers were almost out of season, and now several had been lost; if it ending up stalling a few points of evolution at the last minute...

With this in mind, he hurriedly continued touching the flowers.

’32%’

’41%’

’55%’

’68%’

As the percentage of evolution grew higher, Li Chengyi looked at the dwindling number of remaining Crimson Gladiolus, and he began to feel anxious.

’Please don’t stall, please don’t stall!’

He moved faster and faster, not overlooking any gladioli that had fallen to the ground.

Some flowers had fallen, but their essence lingered on, still able to be absorbed.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Five minutes...

’97%’

Almost there, almost there...

Li Chengyi took a turn and stopped short in astonishment.

There was only one Crimson Gladiolus plant left!

Fortunately, it didn’t matter. A plant usually has many flowers, arranged in a line from top to bottom.

He stroked gently with his fingers, one flower to the next.

The cool essence of the flowers flowed continuously into his fingertips.

Finally.

With just two flowers remaining, the progress of the flower essence reached 100.

Sigh!!

Li Chengyi let out a long sigh of relief.

Then came the joy and anticipation that followed.

He stood eagerly in the field of flowers, directing the remaining Evil Thoughts with his consciousness, ensuring they were infused into the gladiolus.

The Evil Thoughts surged from 0 to 100 in the blink of an eye.

On the Evil Flower, the grid belonging to the gladiolus suddenly lit up with a golden light.

But quickly, the gold faded, morphing into a crimson hue.

Thump.

Suddenly, an inexplicable heartbeat sounded, echoing throughout Li Chengyi’s entire body.

He stood frozen in place for a moment.

Waves of feedback from the Evil Flower surged up his mind through the back of his hand.

’Due to fear and evil thoughts used to fill evolution purely, the Divine Flower Position of the Gladiolus has mutated.’

’The Floral Dress has mutated.’

’The Flower Language Technique has mutated.’

’New Floral Dress, Flower Language Technique begins to generate....’

*

*

*

Yunshan Base.

Pop.

A piece of bubble gum shot out, landing precisely in a trash can not far away.

Rainbow Candy sat with her legs propped up on the desk, leaning back in her leather chair, frantically playing a fighting game on a handheld console.

Now she was the only one in the base. Da Xiong had gone back to manage the company, and Xiao Zhong had gone out to purchase some new parts.

As a result, this vast base had become hers alone to enjoy.

Beep beep.

A holographic circular screen suddenly appeared out of thin air next to her, showing an incoming call display.

"Answer it," Rainbow Candy glanced at the name and decisively turned off the game she was about to lose, dropping the remark ’You guys are just lucky I’ve got something to do, or I’d smash you all!’

Feeling much better, she sat up straight, posturing her upper body to look even more shapely.

Only then did she look towards the screen.

Click. The screen revealed the somewhat aged face of Xindela.

"Rainbow Candy, the report from the Rose has arrived. Concerning the new Blind Spot Dark City, Xiao Yi has found a message from Lien. Should we shift our attention from Yunshan to Dark City for the time being?"

Even when addressing Rainbow Candy, who was much younger, Xindela spoke with considerable respect and equality.

This was a key reason why everyone on the team deeply respected him.

"Dark City... Lien’s message? Uh..." Rainbow Candy got caught up in her game and hadn’t had a chance to see it yet.

Xindela saw through her at a glance but didn’t call her out, just smiled.

"According to the description of Dark City provided by Xiao Yi, it’s extremely dangerous there, but there must be special methods to avoid the dangers. Rose has already begun to search for correlations with its real-world prototype. I’ve also asked some acquaintances at headquarters to help me search."

"Isn’t that already quite thorough? Then why the call?" Rainbow Candy asked in confusion.

"Lien’s message mentioned a Crescent Moon mark. I’m a newcomer, so I wanted to ask if you all had the Crescent Moon mark before?" Xindela said.

"Yes," confirmed Rainbow Candy.

"Can you describe its shape?"

"Sure, no problem." Rainbow Candy quickly and carefully described the shape of the Crescent Moon to Xindela.

"This characteristic... I think I’ve heard of it somewhere before..." Xindela paused after listening and then said.

"Hm? Have others got it too?" Rainbow Candy became interested.

"I can’t remember clearly. I need to recall, maybe even check my old notes. But I’m certain, I have definitely seen this mark before," Xindela stated emphatically.

"The boss entered Dark City from Luo An. Let’s do this, we’ll head to Luo An tomorrow. If you have any questions, you can ask in person." Rainbow Candy quickly said.

"Okay. I’ll have Xiao Zhong keep an eye on the company in the meantime. Remote handling is not a problem," Xindela agreed.

*

*

*

Click.

The car door closed.

Li Chengyi sat in the back seat, slowly leaning his back against the leather seat.

The feedback from the Evil Flower was as he expected.

Indeed, the evolution count for the Gladiolus had reached its end, which meant that the fifth time was the Ultimate Form.

The feedback provided information that the evolution was complete. The Ultimate Form had revealed a new secondary Flower Language Technique.

It was similar to the Glint Flash during the Sunflower phase.

Only, the second Flower Language Technique given by the Gladiolus seemed somewhat incomprehensible....

"Boss, where to now?"

"To a place nobody knows about," Li Chengyi replied offhand. He planned to find a place to test the effects of the Ultimate Form Gladiolus.

The pure fear and mutation of evil thoughts, he didn’t know what impact they would bring.

"....." Zhou Xingtong started the car, fell silent upon hearing the answer, aware that her boss’s ’illness’ was acting up again.

Usually in such times, she just had to wait a bit longer and repeat the question to get a normal answer.

"Oh, just take me back to Luo An," Li Chengyi realized and replied.

"Alright."

The car started moving slowly.

Testing the Ultimate Form Gladiolus Floral Dress might not be safe even in the immediate area, which was a conclusion Li Chengyi drew from his discussions with Rose.

This place was different from Suiyang; Rainbow Candy allocated most of her equipment and energy to managing Suiyang, so the various monitors, safeguards, and shields there were much more sophisticated, even though they still couldn’t compare with the official ones.

Luo An was even more different in this regard.

With Luo An Science and Technology University around, the coverage of the Heavenly Eye was much wider than in Suiyang.

The key was the continuous traffic of Feiyi Masters around, for exchange, sparring, studying, and researching. Compared to Suiyang, the number of Feiyi Masters in Luo An was at least dozens of times greater.

Furthermore, those at the professional level were not uncommon. Not to mention his newly sworn mentor, Tang Zhiwei, who was a professional-grade Feiyi Master with a high standing in Luo An.

Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to work as a professor for special combat.

’It seems I can only test in the Blind Spot for now...’ Li Chengyi suppressed a strong expectation and impulse.

Now that Gladiolus had reached the Ultimate Form, the next step would be the Wisteria Flowers. Unfortunately, the Wisteria Flower Variant was out of season now, so he would have to find Wisteria still in bloom elsewhere to absorb.

The Purple Magnolia, however, wouldn’t be as much trouble... it was just the right season.

The car slowly left the botanical garden and headed back to the villa near the university.

The performance of the Evil Thoughts were better at night, so after checking in with his mentor, Li Chengyi went to study the Green Light Greatsword that he had just acquired.

In the basement.

He held the greatsword in his hand and lightly swung it at a human-shaped target a few meters away.

Click.

A streak of lightning flashed by with a speed he couldn’t react to at all, crashing down onto the target.