Transformed into a heartthrob's simp, every day is a battleground.

Chapter 268 Respecting the Elderly and Caring for the Young

Yan Xun stood behind, looking at the bamboo pole wearing a mask.

At first, he thought he was seeing things, until he saw the bamboo pole's evasive eyes, and then he realized who it was—

"Why are you working here?" Yan Xun asked, taking a few steps back and looking around at the other stalls, all of whom were unfamiliar faces. "Is this your own stall?"

But when he saw the bamboo pole yesterday, he didn't hear the other person mention this at all.

Did you deliberately keep it from him?

Yan Xun's eyes revealed this meaning.

Standing behind the machine, Zhu Gan saw Yan Xun take a few steps back, look around, and then look at him suspiciously. He knew that Yan Xun had misunderstood something.

He waved his hand. "No."

"It's a coincidence."

He told Yan Xun, "On my way home from work, I ran into the people in the white house."

He slowly said to Yan Xun, "They said there's an empty stall and they're looking for a part-time worker."

“I asked and they said it was a stall,” Zhugan said to Yan Xun. “I’ve worked in other places before, so I know how to do it. That’s why I’m helping out with the stall these past two days.”

Yan Xun was surprised that bamboo poles could be made. "Have you been working odd jobs all this time?"

"Yes." Zhu Gan nodded vigorously and took off his mask. "I just enrolled in school not long ago, and I found some jobs nearby."

"for example?"

“So many,” Bamboo Pole recalled. “Bars, fast food restaurants, cleaning companies… I even worked at a funeral home before.”

Seemingly realizing he had said too much, Zhugan looked at Yan Xun somewhat nervously, as if worried that the other party would dislike him because of his last work experience.

"...A funeral company?" Yan Xun repeated, then asked curiously, "Where did you find this kind of off-the-beaten-path part-time job?"

Finding that Yan Xun didn't look down on him because of this, Zhu Gan breathed a sigh of relief before slowly saying, "A friend I met at the bar, his family owns a funeral company."

"Because we don't have enough manpower, they asked me to help out," said Zhugan.

He recalled carefully, “My job mainly involved helping to set up the funeral hall, preparing some funeral supplies, and then accompanying the family to the funeral home, while explaining some precautions to them.”

“Sometimes I would even help fold gold ingots and make paper coins.” Perhaps sensing Yan Xun’s interest in this, he went on to say a lot more, “His family also has paper computers and televisions, which are made very realistically.”

At this point, he suddenly realized that Yan Xun hadn't responded. Zhu Gan glanced at Yan Xun nervously and began to wonder if he had talked too much.

Unexpectedly, Yan Xun only asked one question, "Does your roommate know?"

Bamboo Pole paused, then said, "...Maybe you know?"

“They know about my job,” he told Yan Xun. “I always come home very late, and if I’m working at a bar, I often don’t come home at night.”

“But only Muscular Man knows that I work at a funeral home,” Bamboo Pole said.

"You told him?"

“No.” Bamboo Pole shook his head. “He happened to have a distant relative pass away that day.”

The rest, even without Zhu Gan saying it, Yan Xun could guess.

It must have been the muscular man who happened to see it.

“But he promised me he wouldn’t tell anyone else in the dorm,” Zhugan said to Yan Xun. “On the condition that if I do something unlucky that day, I have to scrub myself with pomelo leaves and I can’t go back to the dorm that day.”

"You agreed?" Yan Xun looked at him.

"Hmm." Bamboo Pole nodded shyly, "It's normal for other people to have reservations about this kind of thing."

“My colleague at the bar only works there because he didn’t want to do this business and was more interested in bartending,” he told Yan Xun. “I heard this job doesn’t last long.”

“He said that before me, the company had hired a few people, but they would all have bad luck within six months, so they didn’t stay long.”

"I've been doing this for a long time."

How long have you been working there?

"More than a year," said Bamboo Pole.

"He won't let you go back to the dorm at night, so where will you stay?" Yan Xun asked again.

“When I worked at a bar, I couldn’t go home at night, so there was a staff lounge,” he told Yan Xun. “When I couldn’t go home, I would just spend the night in the lounge.”

"So you didn't know about the buzz cut and the shirt?"

The bamboo pole nodded.

It's no wonder that this information wasn't obtained from Shu Fan's home.

Bamboo Pole had kept it a secret from his two roommates for so long, he certainly wouldn't have revealed it at a simple gathering.

"Then why did you tell me?" Yan Xun asked. "Aren't you worried I'll tell the other two?"

“I don’t think you’ll tell,” said the bamboo pole.

"Besides, I'm also preparing to leave."

He told Yan Xun, "I will leave here after this month is over."

"Even if you tell others, it doesn't matter."

He sounded a little nervous as he said this, as if he wanted to tell himself that it didn't matter if Yan Xun told anyone, he didn't care.

Yan Xun stared at him for a while, then said, "I won't tell."

Zhu Gan breathed a sigh of relief. He watched Yan Xun standing in front of the stall for a long time without leaving. "How about I give you one?"

"As a bribe for confidentiality."

As he spoke, he poured the sugar granules into the machine, and silk-like threads, resembling silkworm cocoons, rapidly appeared as the machine rotated... Yan Xun watched as he deftly rolled one for himself and handed it to him.

The top is decorated with two black bean-like eyes made of chocolate.

"...What is this? A sheep?" Yan Xun asked, holding it up.

The bamboo pole nodded.

Yan Xun pointed to the flowers on the stall and said, "Give me one of these, I'll take it with me."

Without saying a word, the bamboo pole made the flowers for him.

"This is for you too."

Yan Xun: "?"

"Why don't you just pack up your entire stall and give it to me?"

“But you treated me to a drink yesterday…” Zhu Gan said, handing the flowers to Yan Xun, “Here, this is for you.”

Seeing that Zhu Gan was determined and wouldn't give up until he accepted the bouquet of macaron-colored flowers, Yan Xun had no choice but to take it.

Perhaps it was because the two things Yan Xun was holding were too eye-catching.

Others in the market were also drawn over and gathered around.

Seeing that there were quite a few people in line, Yan Xun stopped bothering Zhu Gan, greeted him, and left with his two portions.

He bypassed the crowd, carefully protecting what he was holding, and came to Lou Yanchuan's side.

"Want some or not?" Yan Xun asked.

Lou Yanchuan looked up at the two portions in his hand, "I'm not eating."

"I don't like sweets."

Yan Xun didn't care and bit off the sheep's head in one bite. "Then I'll find out where Shuangshuang is and give her this flower."

Lou Yanchuan: "..."

He discovered that Yan Xun could be incredibly thick-skinned at times.

He sighed slightly in his heart, but finally reached out his hand, "Give it to me, I'll hold it for you."

Lou Yanchuan took the things Yan Xun handed him, "Why is he working at a stall?"

Yan Xun explained the reason in a few words.

"What a coincidence?" Lou Yanchuan said. "I just ran into the people from the white house on my way back, and I'm able to help them set up a stall here?"

As they were talking, a man in a security guard uniform happened to walk by, and Yan Xun reached out to stop him.

"Hello?" The other person looked at Yan Xun with some puzzlement. "Is there anything I can help you with?"

“We’re new residents of this community,” Yan Xun said, pointing to himself and Lou Yanchuan. “I heard the market is hiring people to help out?”

"Can I try it?"

The security guard looked at Yan Xun, then at Lou Yanchuan, and asked, "Are you the new residents of the white-roofed building?"

Yan Xun nodded.

“There was indeed an extra spot yesterday,” he said, gesturing for them to look at the queue of stalls, “but we happened to find someone who could help.”

“If there’s another chance, I’ll contact you,” he said to Yan Xun.

Yan Xun nodded and then asked how they found helpers. "I was looking for a job recently, so I went to the convenience store near the entrance and found that they didn't have any plans to hire anyone at the moment."

He said to the security guard with some frustration, "If only I had known sooner."

"It's just a coincidence," the security guard reassured him. "The stall owner had an upset stomach early this morning and was unable to come to the market for the time being."

“We were originally planning to close this stall.”

“The young man at the convenience store overheard my colleague’s complaint and said he could do it, maybe we could give it a try,” the security guard said. “We had him make some samples…” He looked at the samples in Yan Xun’s hands. “He did a good job, didn’t he?”

Yan Xun nodded.

"The early hours of the morning?" He repeated the keyword, a surprised expression on his face. "Did this market start preparing at the early hours of the morning?"

“Of course,” the security guard said, looking at the market. “This is a huge project.”

"It has to start at midnight."

“But I didn’t hear anything,” Yan Xun said. “With so many people, how could you all remain so quiet?”

"Of course we won't disturb the residents' rest," the security guard said.

He looked at the market with some pride. "I think you will definitely like this market."

Yan Xun expressed his appreciation for this, and at the same time inquired about the frequency of the market.

“It’s not every weekend,” the security guard said. “It’ll be open once every two weeks at the shortest, and maybe every two months at the longest.” He told Yan Xun, “There are lots of fresh fruits and vegetables here, and the market won’t be open if they’re not ripe.”

"...So, if we miss this market, it will take at least half a month before we can see it again?" Yan Xun asked.

"That's right." The security guard nodded.

He seemed to still have patrol duties to perform, and after saying goodbye to Yan Xun, he continued walking forward.

Yan Xun was left with only a wooden stick. He held the stick up, searching for a trash can. "Why do you think there's a market in this instance?"

He quickly spotted the black trash can next to the amusement park ride and threw the stick in.

"Perhaps there's something in the market that we'll need for the mission later," Lou Yanchuan said.

“The market is held at least once every two weeks, and we can’t wait for the next one.” Yan Xun agreed with Lou Yanchuan’s statement. “There should be some things here that we need to complete the main quest.”

The question is... what is it?

The main quest of the instance is to keep them alive in the community for 15 days.

It's been three days now, and two rules have been updated. As long as players are willing to stay home and not go out, the first two rules won't be triggered at all.

Dungeons cannot keep players in the safe zone indefinitely.

Yan Xun thought for a moment, "The rules that follow might be related to my family."

"The first two are situations we encounter when we go out, whether it's a neighbor or a foggy day."

"If there really is a player who plays like a turtle, staying at home and not going out, these two rules have no effect on him."

"The rules that are updated later are most likely related to our home."

“But the facilities in each of our homes are different, so the new rules that the community updates must be universally applicable…” Yan Xun thought about the facilities in their rooms, “Doors? Windows?”

"Or are you referring to a source of fire?"

He remembered Shu Fan saying that there was no open flame in her house.

The same is true in other people's homes; this is what they have in common.

If this were an apartment building, Yan Xun could understand why there wouldn't be any open flames, but this is a detached villa, and none of the players' kitchens have any open flames... that's strange enough.

"Should we extinguish the fire immediately if it breaks out?" Yan Xun guessed, then consulted Lou Yanchuan, "What do you think?"

When Yan Xun looked at Lou Yanchuan, he realized that the other man had been staring at him the whole time.

As he lowered his head, Lou Yanchuan put on a somewhat hypocritical smile again. "I think there's some truth to that."

"How about we go find a fire extinguisher?"

"If fire extinguishers were sold here, that kind of rule might actually come into being."

They were near the food stalls, and according to the simple map at the market entrance, the area selling daily necessities was on the other side of the carousel.

Yan Xun pushed Lou Yanchuan and headed there.

Because there were too many people in the market, Yan Xun had to keep shouting "Excuse me, please make way" before he could successfully push Lou Yanchuan to the area where daily necessities were sold.

At the flower stall, Yan Xun finally saw his parents and Shuangshuang.

Shuangshuang looked listless and uninterested in the flowers.

Upon seeing Yan Xun, she immediately grabbed her mother's hand and shook it vigorously. After greeting her, she skipped over to Yan Xun.

Lou Yanchuan saw Shuangshuang and handed her the flowers in his hand, saying, "Your brother gave these to you."

"To be precise, it was given to you by that older brother who looks like a bamboo pole," Yan Xun said.

Shuangshuang first thanked Yan Xun, then thanked Zhugan, and then took a bite before curiously looking at the white goldfish that Lou Yanchuan was holding.

Lou Yanchuan deliberately raised it and placed it in front of Shuangshuang, saying, "Your brother got this for me."

Upon hearing this, Shuangshuang immediately grabbed Yan Xun, "I want one too."

Yan Xun: "..."

He handed Shuangshuang the goldfish hanging from the armrest of her wheelchair, saying, "It's yours."

Seeing that she also had goldfish, Shuangshuang immediately thanked Yan Xun again with great joy.

Lou Yanchuan just looked at him with a half-smile, "You prepared the goldfish early this morning, thinking of giving them to Shuangshuang?"

“Of course,” Yan Xun said matter-of-factly. “I respect the elderly and care for the young, and I never show favoritism.”