Chapter 87: Brother, These Mushrooms Smell So Good!

“Hello, miss!”

The young man at the head of the group stepped into the room with polite composure. “My brothers and I are on the road and happened to pass by. Would it be possible to borrow a little fire and warm ourselves for a while?”

The five men behind him nodded and bobbed eagerly, plainly in agreement.

Yet none of them could conceal the look in their eyes.

Before Su Miao even had time to answer, they were already crowding around the large pot, staring at the mushrooms simmering inside. Every one of them was practically drooling.

“Boss, there are so many mushrooms. They smell amazing!”

“And wild greens too.”

“Are those matsutake mushrooms? I’ve seen them before. They’re terribly expensive.”

“Oh, I know these. They should be fried, not boiled. Such a waste!”

“Mind your manners, all of you. Don’t scare her!” The young man at the front kicked one of his companions.

By then, Su Miao had already backed away three steps, her expression taut as she watched them.

She was terrified of strangers.

And the new clothes she had just changed into—if blood splattered all over them, she would waste yet another set. That would be troublesome.

“Girl, don’t be afraid. We’re only here to warm ourselves. We won’t hurt you.”

The young man coughed a few times.

He glanced at the pot beside him, at the mushrooms boiling within. Damn, they smelled incredible.

“Cough, cough. Girl, my brothers and I haven’t eaten for days. Would it be all right if we had some of the mushrooms?”

He tried his best to look friendly.

After all, no matter what they were going to do, they needed to be full first.

To be honest, the very first time he saw Su Miao, he had already decided she was probably some young lady from Shanghai. The more he looked at her, the more excited he became.

Su Miao was just about to reach for the crossbow when she heard them say they wanted to eat the mushrooms.

She immediately nodded.

She looked utterly frightened, and in truth, she was very frightened.

The six intruders were overjoyed. They quickly took bowls and cups from their backpacks and, without a shred of politeness, grabbed the ladle resting on the pot and served themselves huge bowls and cups.

“Boss, these mushrooms are amazing!”

“Haven’t had anything hot in days. This is delicious!”

“Did they put salt and seasoning in here? It’s way too good!”

“Xiao Sun, why aren’t you eating?”

“Brother Li, it’s a little hot. I want to wait until it cools down.”

“You’re so fussy, just like a cat with a sensitive tongue. Eat while there’s food, or when we’ve finished everything, you can cry all you want.”

“It feels like when I was little, my grandmother took me up into the mountains to pick mushrooms and brought them back to boil noodles for me. So fresh…”

As he spoke, tears streamed down one man’s face. He was thinking of his grandmother, long since gone.

The others, eating the beautiful mushrooms and drinking the soup, began to laugh at him.

To be honest, none of them had expected the torrential rain to last this many days, or for the world to become this dreadful. It was simply not giving people like them any way to live.

Still, at least today they could eat such delicious mushrooms.

With hot soup in their stomachs, they felt warm all over.

“Girl, you should have some of this mushroom too,” the young man at the front said cheerfully.

Though they still had work to do after they were full, giving such a pretty girl a good meal was nothing, especially with soup this delicious.

And what if, after all was said and done, the girl no longer wished to live?

Then at least they could say they had fed her.

Su Miao kept shaking her head, signaling that she did not want any.

She simply stood there, tense, watching the happy group eat the mushrooms while she counted the time.

Right around the moment these people finished their first bowl and were about to start on the second, the beautiful mushroom soup mixed with a highly toxic hallucination drug began to take effect.

Two of them had eaten a little too much and said they were sleepy, then collapsed with their bowls still in hand.

One began to giggle like a child, muttering, “Grandma, the mushrooms are so delicious. I want another bowl.”

Another seemed unable to restrain himself. He put down his cup and suddenly hugged the young man at the front. “Dong Ling, I’ve liked you for a long time. I want to sleep with you!”

Who was Dong Ling?

No idea at all!

The young man at the front kept shoving his brother away, screaming in utter terror, “Don’t come over here! Don’t come over here! I didn’t kill you. You were the ones who went courting death!”

By now, only the young man named Xiao Sun seemed unharmed.

He looked at the bowl of mushroom soup in his hands, then at his brothers, who were clearly poisoned, and his face went pale with fear.

Just moments ago, he had said the soup was too hot and that he wanted to let it cool before drinking.

But that was not the real reason.

He had seen many news reports about mushroom poisoning before and thought it would be safer to let his brothers eat first. He had never expected that being a little cautious would save his life.

Xiao Sun turned to look at Su Miao. Su Miao appeared utterly frightened, as though she herself had no idea the soup was toxic.

At once, Xiao Sun’s anger flared.

Damn it. This woman had killed his brothers.

But then he sensed something was off.

Su Miao’s clothes were too clean.

So clean she looked like she was out on a leisure trip.

Yet in more than a month, he had never seen anyone this clean.

“What, what are you?”

Xiao Sun forced himself to calm down, stepping back and knocking over the mushroom soup at his side.

Only then did he notice that after the soup spilled onto the floor, the ground immediately blackened.

What kind of poisonous nightmare dish was this?

In just those few words, Xiao Sun saw that the bodies of the brothers who had fallen earlier were already stiff.

They had not been sleepy and preparing to rest.

They were dead.

And his eldest brother and the others had already gone nearly silent, death not far off.

Su Miao raised the crossbow and aimed it at Xiao Sun. Her hand trembled slightly. “You don’t want to drink the mushroom soup?”

Xiao Sun froze rigidly.

Was this woman insane?

It was already obvious the soup was deadly, and she was still asking whether he wanted to drink it.

But when he saw the crossbow in her hands, his expression turned uglier than tears: “Sister, I was wrong. They forced me to be their little brother. I haven’t done anything bad. Please don’t kill me…”

Su Miao glanced at the five corpses on the ground.

The diluted and blended toxic hallucinogen had already become pure poison. Although the process had preserved the rich freshness of the beautiful mushrooms, the effect was still quite good.

However, the onset of the poison was clearly faster than expected.

Still, it should count as a success.

Also, the corpses looked as though the poisonous mushroom soup they had eaten had already begun to corrode them. They would need to be dealt with quickly.

“Carry these bodies out to the balcony and throw them down, and I won’t kill you,” Su Miao said tensely.

“Really?”

Xiao Sun’s face grew even more frightened.

In the blink of an eye, all five brothers had been poisoned to death. He suspected there might be pufferfish toxin in that soup…

“Really.”

Su Miao struggled to keep her expression cold, but her hand trembled, and it looked as though she could barely control the crossbow.

“I’ll move them. I’ll move them right away.”

Xiao Sun immediately dragged his brothers’ bodies toward the balcony and, once he reached the edge, tossed them down one by one.

Su Miao worried that if she didn’t supervise the bodies being moved, he might run.

So she followed him out, keeping the crossbow trained on him and watching him carry the corpses.

“Don’t keep pointing that thing at me. I’m scared…”

Xiao Sun was on the verge of tears.

If he ever had the chance again and saw a beautiful girl dressed this cleanly and standing alone, he would definitely run as far as he could. He would never even think of approaching her.

“I-I’m scared too.”

Su Miao’s hand trembled again.

Xiao Sun had indeed been thinking of bolting as soon as he stepped outside, but who could have guessed that Su Miao would follow and say she was scared too?

Damn it.

He dared not delay. Terrified that Su Miao might lose patience, he hurriedly hoisted another brother’s corpse and threw it over the balcony.

When he had been together with his brothers before, Xiao Sun had not felt much.

But when he was truly carrying their bodies, he realized they were unbearably heavy.

By the time he reached the last two corpses, his hands felt a little sticky. Xiao Sun did not pay much attention. He only wanted to finish quickly, hoping Su Miao would keep her promise and let him leave.

“I’m done moving them. Can I go now?”

Xiao Sun stood on the balcony, nerves stretched to the breaking point.

For some reason, perhaps because the corpses had been so heavy, his arms hurt a little.

“Mm.”

Su Miao nodded.

Xiao Sun was granted a pardon from heaven. He bolted toward the stairwell and fled in a blur, escaping this place that seemed like the mouth of a demon’s den and into the hell outside.

Su Miao stood on the balcony, watching Xiao Sun run away.

About thirty seconds passed.

From far off came a shrill, agonized scream.

“You promised not to kill me, ahhh—!”

Su Miao heard it clearly. It was the young man named Xiao Sun.

Because the poison’s effects had been accelerated, the bodies of those who had eaten the mushroom soup were decomposing at a rapid pace.

Xiao Sun had been too nervous while moving the corpses and accidentally got some of that poisonous, decaying liquid on himself.

Once poison began corroding the skin, death would come just as quickly.

It must be said clearly: Su Miao had kept her promise.

She had not killed a single one of them, including Xiao Sun.

They had brought it on themselves.

Su Miao looked at the backpacks the men had left behind. Aside from a few stinking pieces of clothing and several gold rings and gold necklaces, there was nothing else.

She kept the gold and threw the remaining backpacks off the balcony.

Then she returned to the room, added more stored tap water to the pot, and fed more firewood into the stove beneath it.

She intended to boil the beautiful mushrooms until they dissolved completely.

With a little more dilution afterward, it should be about right.

By around midnight, the beautiful mushrooms in the pot had been cooked into a pitch-black transparent liquid, somewhat like grass jelly.

Su Miao added a little more tap water, diluted it properly, and stored it in a crystal bottle.

This should be enough for a long while on the road ahead.

It was worth mentioning that while Su Miao was boiling the beautiful mushrooms, several more groups of people had come by downstairs. But after seeing the backpacks tossed carelessly on the ground and the corpses at the edge, reeking of blood, they all quietly slipped away.

After being busy most of the day, Su Miao fell into a deep sleep inside the tent.

This time, she slept until five in the morning.

After a quick wash with a water spell and a simple breakfast of a savory sauce pancake, Su Miao shouldered her backpack, opened her silver umbrella, left the little building, and continued walking along the road ahead.

According to the map, the city ahead was Lake City.

From the map, Lake City lay in a low-lying region, crisscrossed by lakes and waterways. No one knew how much of it remained unsubmerged after the flood.

Su Miao only hoped she could pass through smoothly.