Chapter 318: Garden

Heavy rain in a tropical rainforest has many drawbacks: it pours down on your head, soaks your clothes through, and drums against the leaves with a deafening sound; it's not cool at all, just as stifling as before. Furthermore, it triggers all of Luo Qi's bad memories regarding Alien primordial ecosystems.

"Could there be Aliens here?" Luo Qi asked suspiciously, while sprinting through the rainforest behind Du Zhengyi.

"What kind of nonsense are you talking about?" Du Zhengyi said while running.

"Common sense has long been 'messed up'; who knows if the rules of the Highland Mages have changed too?" Before Luo Qi finished speaking, Du Zhengyi stopped beside a tree root. It was just a tree root, which to Luo Qi looked like a completely random spot. There were no markers, and the ground wasn't particularly flat either.

"How damn random..." Luo Qi muttered under his breath. Before he could finish, they had already entered the teleportation state, and his subsequent words vanished into a dry wind that smelled of scorching sun.

Luo Qi stared at the scene before him, his brain feeling somewhat numb from the visual bombardment. He clearly felt Du Zhengyi beside him also freeze for a moment, which showed that he hadn't seen a scene like this either. "Seriously... I originally thought 'four zones' just meant four seasonal gardens."

"What kind of garden could there be in winter?" Du Zhengyi asked him.

"Uh... you're right, there certainly wouldn't be a winter garden," Luo Qi said. "But you didn't expect this either, did you? You were clearly startled too."

Du Zhengyi ignored him and took a few steps forward. His leather shoes sank into the sand. He looked up to see a cloudless sky, with the scorching sun illuminating this golden desert. Around them, countless drought-resistant succulents formed a peculiar garden. Dunes rolled and undulated before their eyes, and cacti stood tall on the slopes, facing the sun.

The garden in the desert lacked the lush clamor of the plants in the tropical rainforest, nor did it have the burning, intense colors of tropical flowers, but the colors of the succulents had a mysterious tone of their own, somewhat like a garden of elves. Even for two Mages, this place was not very common. They strolled through the dunes for a while; the scorching sun overhead soon baked their soaked clothes dry, and the dry wind added a layer of sand to them in return.

A few trees grew on the dunes, about a meter tall, with upright branches and sparse leaves. Hanging from the thin twigs were fuzzy balls the size of lychees, possessing a tender yellow and tender red that melted Luo Qi's heart. Luo Qi picked a few of the fuzzy balls and secretly stuck them to the back of Du Zhengyi's clothes. "Who would have thought desert plants could be so endearing."

Du Zhengyi waded through a patch of light-red, mist-like tufted grass, completely unguarded about his back. He was the first to climb to the top of the dune, took a look at the other side, and laughed out loud. "Luo Qi! Luo Qi, come over here quickly. Stop picking fruit and don't destroy public property. Come over here and look at this."

Luo Qi dropped the fuzzy-ball tree and dashed over in two steps. Standing on the top of the dune and looking down, he saw that on the other slope there were actually hundreds of cacti of various sizes growing. They had round green heads with pale yellow thorns, and looking at them against the light, they seemed to have a layer of fuzz. "Hmm, nice."

"Nice what? Don't you think they look like you?" Du Zhengyi turned back to look down. "Short-legged and round, they look quite cute at first glance, and they even seem to have a layer of fuzz, but when you get close, you see they are actually all thorns. Standing here looking down, it's like looking down at hundreds of you. Hundreds of you standing on the hillside..."

Malice rose in Luo Qi's heart, and he kicked toward Du Zhengyi, wanting to push him into the cactus array. But Du Zhengyi was such an agile person; he dodged to the side, grabbed Luo Qi, reached out his hand to retrieve the few fuzzy balls stuck to his own back, and stuck them one by one onto Luo Qi's chest.

"Damn it, damn it, damn it, how did you know?" Luo Qi shouted in frustration, looking down at his chest where a dog-paw pattern had been formed.

"I am a Battle Mage; you are as slow as a turtle," Du Zhengyi said.

"Then guess what the next garden is like?" Luo Qi asked indignantly, starting to walk back the way they came along the slope of the dune, quibbling, "I was dizzy from the sun, that's why I slowed down."

"I suspect the next one won't be very suitable for a post-meal stroll either," Du Zhengyi said.

Sure enough, their next teleportation point landed on a bridge, and Luo Qi was very disappointed the moment he landed.

"A muddy pond?"

Du Zhengyi walked forward ten meters, looked around, and laughed, saying, "That depends on how you look at it; it seems to me there are quite a few water lilies here."

"Oh, I get it," Luo Qi said suddenly. "This is a swamp."

"Does it make that much difference what it's called? Does calling it a swamp make it high-class?" Du Zhengyi asked, puzzled.

"No. Don't you understand? We just went to the tropical rainforest, and we also went to the desert; this is a water-filled swamp. Plus the fourth garden—we saw it from the window of the room—it's similar to a temperate forest. God, you still don't understand? There are four vastly different climates here. The Highland Mages created four such different climatic conditions, surely not to be used as a park; they are for growing different plants! It's obvious that some plants need a tropical environment, some can only grow in a dry, rainless desert, and some plants need to grow by the water or in the water. Some might not be so picky about how much water there is, but they need a place where the temperature is relatively lower," Luo Qi said.

"This is a laboratory for the Highland Mages to cultivate plants," Du Zhengyi nodded, though he looked indifferent.

"They..." Luo Qi thought for a long time, not knowing how to put it, and finally said, "really have a lot of leisure time!"

"Doesn't matter, growing flowers doesn't bother anyone anyway. Do you still want to wander around here?" Du Zhengyi asked.

"I don't like it here, it's stinky," Luo Qi said, crossing his arms and being picky.

"Then shall we go to the north, where we can both adapt better?" Du Zhengyi said.

"Don't you think the Highland Mages are really like botanists? Like human botanists..." Luo Qi's sentence was cut off by the teleportation. As soon as they emerged from the Teleportation Track, Luo Qi immediately started chattering again, "I mean, can you believe they actually assign numbers to plants? And they created such a huge greenhouse to cultivate them! They have as many plant seeds as a planet, but the Qionglin has a bunch of Sealed animals; it's six of one, half a dozen of the other. Oh god, don't you think it's strange? Did they split up the family back in the day?"

"Luo Qi, look, there's a deer," Du Zhengyi said suddenly.

Luo Qi hurriedly turned around. In the middle of the tall northern forest, the shadow of a deer flashed through the deep woods. In many legends of the Mages, seeing a deer in the deep woods is a very lucky thing. Luo Qi opened his mouth in surprise; he hadn't truly seen any animals in the first three gardens. It stood to reason that the area here wasn't particularly large and wasn't suitable for large animals to live in, not to mention that a botanical garden used for research shouldn't have animals trampling and grazing.

The way the deer's shadow disappeared was also suspicious. A thought struck Luo Qi, and he suddenly turned his head to stare at Du Zhengyi, just in time to discover a trace of a cunning smile on Du Zhengyi's lips that he hadn't managed to hide.

"You did this?" Luo Qi frowned. He remembered the battle Du Zhengyi had with Zhao Zhiyan. "It must have been you! This is the way you Battle Mages set bait, isn't it?"

"Alright, Cactus, why so serious? I just didn't want to listen to you talk nonsense anymore."

"What?" Luo Qi shouted. "If you think I'm talking nonsense, then you can just tell me to shut up! Why do you have to use Magic! Your energy cannot be outputted casually! You wasted your life to conjure a deer just to play a joke!"

"Luo Qi," Du Zhengyi interrupted him softly and sighed, "can't I tell a joke?"

Luo Qi was silenced.