198: Chapter 198 Garden Guard

The voice of the White-Clad Garden Keeper faded away.

But the sentence, "Liu Cuilan's kitchen is the Garden Gate," remained on the Inverted Chessboard.

Like a white nail, it was driven into everyone's heart.

Tianshu Dragon Garden.

Liu Cuilan had just lifted the pot lid.

Steam rose from the pot, and the pork rib soup bubbled away.

The next second.

A white line cracked open on the tiles behind the stove.

There was a smell of soil from within the white line.

And a chill of freshly trimmed vegetation.

Jiang Jianguo's expression darkened, and he immediately gripped his ruyi heaven-breaking staff.

"Cuilan, step back."

Liu Cuilan did not step back.

She held her spatula, staring at the crack.

"My kitchen—who gave you permission to open a door here?"

The crack continued to widen.

A pair of white scissors poked out from the crack in the tiles.

Following it was half a face with no features.

Garden Keeper Soldiers.

This time, it was not a projection.

It had truly crawled out of Liu Cuilan's kitchen.

Over the comms, Li Yan exploded on the spot.

"Damn it!"

"They actually used Auntie's house as a teleportation point?"

Zero Seven's voice tightened.

"This is Garden Gate parasitism."

"The Garden Keeper drove the gate's shadow into Auntie Liu's kitchen."

"As long as the kitchen exists, the Garden Gate can keep reopening."

Holding her lunchbox, the Dragon Girl asked earnestly, "Can we just eat the kitchen?"

Li Yan glanced at her.

"Do you want to be chased and beaten by Auntie?"

The Dragon Girl immediately shut her mouth.

Jiang Feng had already turned.

He tore open the space between the Inverted Chessboard and Tianshu Dragon Garden.

He did not use a door.

He went straight home.

A flash of colorless divine light appeared on the living room floor.

Jiang Feng appeared at the kitchen doorway.

The scissors in the Garden Keeper Soldier's hand were just about to snip at the spatula in Liu Cuilan's hand.

It was not snipping the spatula.

It was snipping the action of "cooking."

A System prompt popped up.

[Detected: Pruning of domestic behavior.]

[Function: Prune target domestic routine, causing the kitchen to lose its home attribute and convert into a Garden Gate node.]

[Plunderable.]

Jiang Feng's eyes were very calm.

But the temperature in the kitchen seemed to drop instantly.

"You're pruning my mom's cooking?"

He raised his hand.

His two fingers clamped onto the scissors.

Snap.

The scissors broke.

Before the Garden Keeper Soldier could retreat, Jiang Feng pressed his palm onto its head and shoved it directly back into the crack in the stove.

"Plunder."

[Secret Art: Pangu Plunder activated.]

[Plundering Pruning of domestic behavior.]

[Obtained All Attributes: 5.2 asankhyeya.]

[Current Base Six-Dimensional Attributes: 63.16 asankhyeya.]

[Obtained Special Authority Fragment: Unprunable Domesticity.]

[Effect: Domestic routines acknowledged by the host cannot be forcibly pruned, replaced, or sacrificed by external rules.]

The white line in the kitchen immediately shortened by a section.

Liu Cuilan looked at her spatula.

The spatula was not broken.

She breathed a sigh of relief.

"Not bad."

"I'm used to using this spatula."

Li Yan was impressed over the comms.

"Auntie, you really don't treat higher dimensions as higher dimensions at all."

Liu Cuilan said, "He's drilling through the cracks in my tiles, and you call that higher dimension?"

"Even cockroaches know the rules better than him."

Over at the Huaxia Command Center, Xiao Zhenjiang was silent for half a second.

"Record this line too."

Li Yan: "..."

"Commander, the Name-Guarding textbook is about to turn into a collection of Auntie's quotes."

A second Garden Keeper Soldier crawled out of the kitchen crack.

It held a white rag in its hand.

It flicked the rag.

The grease on the walls, the scent of soup on the stove, and the traces of bowls and chopsticks on the dining table were all covered by white light.

Zero Seven immediately warned.

"It's erasing the traces of life!"

"Once the kitchen has no usage records from Auntie Liu, it will be judged as an ownerless space."

"At that point, the Garden Keeper will be able to take over this place with justification."

Jiang Feng walked over in one step and grabbed the white rag.

"My kitchen—what are you washing?"

[Touch: Garden Gate Cleansing Cloth.]

[Function: Erase traces of domestic use, reset spatial ownership.]

[Plunderable.]

Jiang Feng said, "Plunder."

Boom!

The white rag exploded into colorless light.

That Garden Keeper Soldier also crumbled on the spot.

[Plundered Garden Gate Cleansing Authority.]

[Obtained All Attributes: 4.7 asankhyeya.]

[Current Base Six-Dimensional Attributes: 67.86 asankhyeya.]

[Unprunable Domesticity authority upgraded.]

On the stove.

The pot of soup suddenly boiled.

Steam dispersed outward.

The lights throughout Tianshu Dragon Garden all turned on.

The System prompt continued to pop up.

[Detected: Domestic Hearth and Home anchor point stabilized.]

[Blue Star Name-Guarding System acquired new passive: Hearth Fire.]

[Effect: All traces of diet, residence, and forms of address formed over the long term in local households can serve as anchor points to resist external spatial tampering.]

Huaxia Command Center.

The technician's throat was almost hoarse from shouting.

"Commander!"

"The residential protection System has also been upgraded!"

"Local anchor points have appeared in locations like kitchens, dining tables, doorplates, and old wardrobes!"

Xiao Zhenjiang's eyes lit up.

"Connect it to the city protection array immediately."

"From now on, every household will be a Blue Star Name-Guarding node."

Li Yan was stunned listening to this.

"Good heavens."

"A nationwide anti-theft door upgrade?"

Zhang Changlin said in a deep voice, "It's not an anti-theft door."

"It is a Hometown Array Eye."

Inside the Tianshu Dragon Garden kitchen.

The crack finally stopped widening.

But the next second.

Deep within the crack, a white umbrella tapped lightly.

All the tiles flipped over simultaneously.

A line of white text appeared on the kitchen wall.

[Garden Master's directive has taken effect.]

[This is Jiang Feng's path home.]

[The Garden Keeper has the right to take over.]

After reading it, Liu Cuilan was so angry she laughed.

"My kitchen—and it's subject to his directive?"

Jiang Jianguo swung his ruyi heaven-breaking staff and smashed it against the wall.

Bang!

The white text did not shatter.

Instead, it grew brighter.

Zero Seven's expression changed.

"This is a residue of the Garden Master's directive."

"Its status is higher than the Garden Keeper."

"Mr. Jiang, you cannot destroy it by force directly."

"Otherwise, it might implicate the information the Garden Master truly left behind."

Jiang Feng stared at that line of text.

The voice from the photo in the previous chapter rang in his mind for a moment again.

—Go find that bowl of rice.

Jiang Feng looked down.

The lunchbox in the Dragon Girl's arms was still there.

The character "Flower" on the bottom of the box had faded.

But on the inside of the lunchbox, a new shallow mark had appeared.

It looked as if someone had scratched it with chopsticks.

Jiang Feng reached out and took the lunchbox.

A line of text appeared on the bottom of the lunchbox.

[Home is not a gate.]

Liu Cuilan was taken aback.

Looking at these four characters, Jiang Feng raised his hand and pressed it against the kitchen wall.

"Did you hear that?"

"Home is not a gate."

"And it is certainly not your path."

A System prompt popped out.

[Touch: Garden Master's directive residue.]

[Current Status: Tampered with by the Garden Keeper.]

[Original meaning: Guiding Jiang Feng to find the true path home.]

[Tampered meaning: Using the kitchen as a Garden Keeper passage.]

[Tampered layer is plunderable.]

Jiang Feng's voice was very calm.

"Plunder the tampered layer."

[Secret Art: Pangu Plunder activated.]

[Zero-er synchronized trigger.]

[Garden Keeper's takeover authority erased.]

[Kitchen Garden Gate interpretation authority erased.]

[Plundered Garden Master's directive tampered layer.]

Boom!

The white text on the wall exploded.

From deep within the crack, a cold snort came from the White-Clad Garden Keeper.

[Obtained All Attributes: 8.8 asankhyeya.]

[Current Base Six-Dimensional Attributes: 76.66 asankhyeya.]

[Obtained Special Authority: Self-Defined Home Gate.]

[Effect: Domestic residences acknowledged by the host cannot be forcibly defined by external entities as passages, altars, cages, or archival points.]

The next second.

On the doorframe of Tianshu Dragon Garden, the rules Jiang Feng had left previously lit up again.

[Entry prohibited without permission from family members.]

This time, the rules were not just on the doorframe.

They spread from the entryway to the kitchen.

And from the kitchen, they spread to the dining table, bedrooms, and balcony.

The entire house lit up with a faint, colorless light.

Liu Cuilan looked down at the pot.

The soup hadn't spilled.

She nodded.

"Now that's more like it."

Jiang Feng returned the lunchbox to the Dragon Girl.

"Hold onto it."

The Dragon Girl hugged the lunchbox tightly and asked earnestly, "The bad guys can't crawl out of the rice anymore, right?"

Jiang Feng said, "If they crawl out, we'll stew them."

The Dragon Girl's eyes lit up.

"Can we eat them?"

Liu Cuilan immediately said, "Don't eat just anything."

The Dragon Girl nodded obediently.

"I'll listen to Grandma."

The kitchen crack began to close.

But just before it closed completely, Jiang Feng suddenly reached his hand into the crack.

Behind the crack, the White-Clad Garden Keeper wanted to retract the umbrella tip.

Too late.

Jiang Feng grabbed the afterimage of the umbrella tip.

A crimson System prompt popped up.

[Touch: White Umbrella Kitchen Anchor Pin.]

[Function: Pin the domestic space as a Garden Gate.]

[Plunderable.]

Jiang Feng twisted his five fingers.

"What are you running for?"

[Secret Art: Pangu Plunder activated.]

[Plundering White Umbrella Kitchen Anchor Pin.]

[Obtained All Attributes: 6.4 asankhyeya.]

[Current Base Six-Dimensional Attributes: 83.06 asankhyeya.]

[Self-Defined Home Gate authority upgraded.]

Behind the crack.

The White-Clad Garden Keeper's voice finally turned cold.

"Jiang Feng."

"You have taken away the Garden Gate anchor pin."

"The kitchen no longer leads to the Garden."

"But you have also lost the safest path home."

Jiang Feng said, "I don't need your path to go home."

The White-Clad Garden Keeper did not speak again.

The crack closed up.

The kitchen returned to normal.

The pot was still bubbling.

The aroma of the pork rib soup wafted out again.

Liu Cuilan scooped a spoonful of soup and tasted it.

"A bit too salty."

Jiang Jianguo looked at the wall, confirming there were no holes, and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Salty is good."

"It suppresses evil."

Li Yan laughed over the comms.

"Uncle, have you started getting metaphysical too?"

Jiang Jianguo said, "This is life experience."

Jiang Feng stood at the kitchen doorway, not moving.

Because the System prompts hadn't stopped.

[Garden Master's directive original layer has been revealed.]

[Read it?]

Zero Seven immediately said, "Mr. Jiang, this might be the true main thread of the flower stamen."

Jiang Feng nodded.

"Read."

The "Flower" character on the bottom of the lunchbox lit up again.

A very short scene appeared on the kitchen wall.

In the scene, there was no Inverted Chessboard.

No flower stamen.

No white umbrella.

Only a dining table.

Beside the dining table sat a woman whose face could not be seen clearly.

She pushed a bowl of rice toward the opposite side.

A boy sat opposite her.

The boy lowered his head to eat.

Beside the bowl lay half a piece of black jade.

The woman said softly:

"Eat this bowl of rice."

"And then forget me."

The scene flashed and cut off.

On the wall, only one last line of text remained.

[The Garden Master is not an enemy.]

[But she has killed you once.]

The kitchen went quiet.

Li Yan's mouth twitched.

"Not an enemy, but killed you once?"

"That logic is scarier than a client."

Liu Cuilan put the soup ladle into the pot.

"Killed my son, and she still expects me to give her a nice look?"

"No way."

Jiang Feng looked at that line of text.

There was not much fluctuation on his face.

"Next, I'll find her."

Just then.

The lunchbox in the Dragon Girl's arms suddenly opened on its own.

The last piece of pork rib inside floated up.

A small golden dot appeared on the pork rib.

The small dot split open.

It turned into an extremely tiny eye.

That eye blinked.

A woman's voice came from the pork rib.

"Don't look for me."

"First, find the first bowl of rice you ate before your Transmigration."

"It is in the Forbidden Garden Outside the Flowers."

"And also in Liu Cuilan's dreams."

Inside Tianshu Dragon Garden.

Liu Cuilan's vision went black.

She held onto the stove so she wouldn't collapse.

The soup in the pot suddenly reflected a white Garden Gate.

Inside the gate.

A boy sat in front of a dining table.

He slowly looked up at Liu Cuilan.

That face.

It was not the current Jiang Feng.

Nor was it the Original Jiang Feng.

The boy spoke, his voice very soft.

"Mom."

"You finally dreamed of me."