Chapter 1 "Damn it, this is freaky!"

Mandison's barely audible curse was crystal clear in the quiet kitchen. If anyone else had been there, they would have certainly heard it.

Unfortunately, everyone else was in the front hall, including the shopkeeper couple who had promised to make them a delicious dinner.

When Mandison came out of the kitchen, he saw Charlie and the others sitting at the only large round table in the front hall, playing cards.

Lu Xiaoyao, Wang Wenfei, Leng Youyou, and Mingmei were playing.

Mu Chen and Charlie were watching the game.

Julian and Hu Yue were nowhere to be seen.

Charlie and Mandison exchanged a look. Seeing Mandison's dark expression, Charlie knew that what he'd seen sneaking into the kitchen was probably what Lu Xiaoyao and the others had described—a vegetable garden that looked like it was thriving.

Charlie was sitting behind Leng Youyou, and Lu Xiaoyao was sitting opposite Leng Youyou. When Lu Xiaoyao looked up, she clearly saw the expressions on both Leng Youyou's and Charlie's faces.

Not only did she see it, but the viewers in Lu Xiaoyao's livestream saw it clearly too.

[Um... what is that guy behind that pretty girl looking at?]

[Looks like he's looking in the direction of the NPCs?]

[No way? Signaling the NPCs? No, no.]

[Isn't he looking towards the kitchen? Is he already impatient for food?]

The audience in the livestream could see clearly, and Mingmei naturally noticed Charlie, who was sitting diagonally across from her, when she looked up.

Before Mingmei could turn around to confirm anything, Mu Chen turned around first and asked Mandison, who was standing outside the bar, in a gentle tone, "What's wrong? Are you eager for dinner? Then I'll go prepare it now."

"No... I was just seeing what other dishes there were..."

Mandison didn't feel like he needed to hide anything about being discovered. After all, everyone else had already gone to look, so there was nothing wrong with him looking now.

Thinking this, he glanced again at Mingmei's back, who seemed to be earnestly playing cards, and breathed a sigh of relief.

If she had suddenly turned her head and said those words, he thought he would have felt guilty and afraid.

Fortunately, it was the Mysterious Merchant who turned around!

It had to be said that all the players in this game had a very strong filter for the Mysterious Merchant NPC.

At least they thought the Mysterious Merchant was on their side.

"Instant kill."

Mingmei's excited voice came from the card table, drawing everyone's attention back to the game.

Mingmei had played all the cards in her hand.

The others still had several cards left in their hands, and Lu Xiaoyao had the most. Just looking at the handful of cards in her hand, you could tell how miserable she was.

She had barely had a chance to play a single card!

[I can attest, my darling's luck is really bad. The cards in her hand aren't that bad, but every time it's her turn, she can't play because the boss's cards are always precisely at the upper limit of what darling can play.]

[Darling playing poker looks just like me.]

[No, I think the other players who only have two or three cards left are even more miserable, right?]

[That's right. In the beginning, the boss didn't play much, but the other two players played surprisingly smoothly, but... they fell short!]

The viewers in the chat had gradually changed from calling Mingmei "Miss Merchant" to "Boss." There was no way Mingmei's performance in this round could be associated with the Mysterious Merchant image that everyone had seen in the past.

"Ah! How can you all play your cards so smoothly?"

Lu Xiaoyao complained as she threw out her hand of cards. Even the spectators couldn't bear to watch.

"If you calculate well, you can play, right?"

Wang Wenfei looked at Lu Xiaoyao, and her words were recognized by the other two players.

Soon, everyone saw Lu Xiaoyao's confused face. Mingmei asked incredulously, "You... don't calculate cards when you play?"

"Can you even calculate them?"

Mingmei: "..."

The others: "..."

How could you not calculate them?

For a moment, they didn't know how to explain this to Lu Xiaoyao.

But did it even need explaining?

"Playing cards is about psychological warfare. I don't know your hidden cards, and you don't know mine, right?" Lu Xiaoyao said with a straight face, "That's what makes it exciting! What's the point if you calculate everything?"

"Of course it's fun! It's about testing each other's hidden cards, tricking each other, and deceiving each other. That's what makes it fun!"

Leng Youyou was amused by Lu Xiaoyao's words.

"The number of cards in play is fixed. Wang Wenfei and I have already played some. Only you and the boss have cards left. You can just watch the cards we play and then combine them with your own, and you can almost directly deduce the cards in the boss's hand. Similarly, the boss can naturally infer yours through the cards that Wang Wenfei and I played..."

After speaking, Leng Youyou glanced at Mingmei, who nodded in agreement, and stopped talking.

Well, the boss was a smart person, and Lu Xiaoyao... Leng Youyou almost blurted out "It's just that you're hopeless" and stuck it on Lu Xiaoyao's head.

The atmosphere of the card game was lively. Mu Chen said hello and went to the kitchen to cook.

As candles were lit downstairs in the evening, Julian and Hu Yue, who had gone upstairs to rest earlier on the grounds of being tired, also came down for dinner.

Seeing their unpleasant expressions, Leng Youyou asked caringly, "Didn't sleep well?"

"Yeah, not very well. As expected, it's better to sleep at night."

Hu Yue forced an awkward smile. Julian held his bowl and subconsciously looked at Mingmei behind the bar, and the kitchen entrance that was completely blocked by her figure, and took a tasteless bite of rice.

The current situation was indeed a bit complicated.

That night, after the players went upstairs after dinner, Julian invited the girls to their room again. Charlie and Mandison guarded the door, preventing anyone from coming up.

"Are you sure?"

When Leng Youyou first heard that the view outside their window was completely different from what they saw downstairs, she didn't believe it at all.

Lu Xiaoyao was even more direct and wanted to open the window to take a look, but as it was dark and raining outside, she couldn't see anything.

"We can testify."

Seeing that Lu Xiaoyao and Leng Youyou didn't believe them, Wang Wenfei and Hu Yue raised their hands to indicate that they had also seen the scenery behind the house through the window before. It was indeed completely different from what they saw looking back from the kitchen.

"A desolate wasteland that can't even be called a vegetable garden, with a collapsed section of the wall in the backyard, and weeds growing everywhere in the yard."

Hu Yue described the scene she saw on the second floor, and then remembered the clean backyard and the thriving vegetable garden she had seen downstairs.

The shock was considerable.

Even Lu Xiaoyao, who was listening from the side, got goosebumps all over her body.

"Ew! You guys... what you... what you're saying..." Lu Xiaoyao's face turned pale, and she couldn't help but touch the goosebumps that were about to rise on her body, and asked, "If what you're saying is true and it's a wasteland, then what were the vegetables and meat we ate tonight?"

As soon as these words came out, the scene fell silent.