35: Did you fall into a cesspool?

After leaving the administration building, the Old man and the youth walked along the wide tree-lined path of the campus. Under the swaying shadows of the trees, scattered sunlight fell upon them, making the scene appear both warm and silent.

Su Ze couldn't help but break the slightly awkward atmosphere and asked, "Teacher, where are we going?"

Lin Xi hummed an unknown tune while swaying his head, replying, "Where else could we go? To the place where this Old man feeds the livestock... my office, of course."

Su Ze asked in confusion, "Office? Shouldn't the teachers' offices all be in the administration building?"

The Old man grinned, revealing the gap from his missing front tooth, and said, "Those tiny, pathetic offices there don't even have enough room to stretch one's legs. How can they compare to my territory?"

Su Ze immediately became interested upon hearing this.

Although this Old man was dressed in a dirty sanitation worker's uniform, even the principal seemed to treat him with great respect. Combined with what he just said, could he really be a hidden big shot with a dedicated office area in the school?

This curiosity lasted until he led Su Ze to a breeding greenhouse in a remote corner of the campus.

Before even entering the greenhouse area, the stench of animal waste kept wafting into Su Ze's nose, making him frown repeatedly.

"Teacher, is this where you usually... work?"

"That's right. Well? Isn't it much larger than those offices in the administration building?"

He wasn't lying. Not only the greenhouse, but even the adjacent lounge was larger than the principal's office. Including the greenhouse, it almost rivaled the footprint of the entire administration building.

But the problem was that in such a large space, there were hardly any places for a person to stand.

Under the greenhouse, more than a dozen fenced areas were divided like a pig farm, housing various types of low-level demon beasts.

Most of them were black iron-rank demon beasts. To put it simply, they were just animals mixed with some demon beast bloodlines.

They weren't much stronger than ordinary animals, but it was said that their texture and flavor were significantly improved because of it.

But Su Ze wasn't interested in eating them. Recalling what Xiao Xu had mentioned in the office earlier, he asked, "Teacher Lin Xi, did you know my parents?"

Lin Xi didn't answer. Instead, he handed a bucket of mixed feed to Su Ze and said, "Sigh, the principal suddenly called me over just now, so I haven't finished my feeding work... If the feed clumps up in a while, it'll be hard to feed them."

Eager for an answer, Su Ze immediately took the feed bucket from him and said, "It's okay, leave it to me."

With that, he picked up the bucket, endured the smell inside the greenhouse, and walked in to pour it into a nearby trough.

However, the demon beast, which looked like a black pig with scales, only took one bite before wagging its tail and waddling away with its plump body.

Seeing this, Lin Xi immediately shouted from the side, "Hey, what are you doing? I've already fed this Scaled Pig. Can't you see the scales on its belly are stretched tight? Are you trying to feed it to death?"

His voice sounded urgent, but he didn't move at all. Instead, he dragged out a lounge chair, lay on it, and watched Su Ze leisurely. His gaze gradually grew hazy, as if he had fallen into some memory.

Su Ze stopped immediately. After thinking for a moment, he poured the remaining half-bucket of feed in front of another demon beast that looked like a goat but had three horns.

As a result, this demon beast behaved even more excessively. It just stepped forward, sniffed, and then began ramming the fence with its horns like it had gone mad.

Seeing this, Su Ze dodged and wondered, "What's wrong with them? They start ramming the wall when they see food. Are these farmed demon beasts' palates that picky?"

Lin Xi pulled out a small flask from somewhere and said while pouring wine into his mouth, "That feed has Triple-Horned Goat bone meal in it. If you feed it that, hehe, it'd be strange if it didn't ram the wall out of fear. Feed it to the Purple Hounds next door; they prefer eating bones."

Putting himself in its shoes, Su Ze indeed understood the Triple-Horned Goat's behavior.

Holding his nose with one hand, Su Ze used a ladle to scoop up the feed he had just poured into the trough and moved it all to the Purple Hounds' trough.

Seeing the large dogs with long purple fur eating heartily, he finally breathed a sigh of relief.

He hadn't expected that just feeding them would be so much trouble. Demon beasts were indeed much harder to serve than ordinary animals.

You know, even if you put crushed stones in the mouth of a domestic pig, it would chew them as if they were crispy and delicious crackers, not being picky at all.

Su Ze left the greenhouse and placed the feed bucket in front of the lounge. He wiped the sweat from his face only to find that some feed had splashed onto it at some point, so he quickly wiped it off.

Seeing this, Lin Xi seemed to be in a very good mood and said, "Haha, so alike! Truly alike!"

Su Ze asked curiously, "Alike what?"

Lin Xi replied, "Who else? Like your Old man, of course."

Su Ze immediately became excited. "Teacher, you really knew my father?"

"How could I not? I've worked here for so many years. Back then, Su Lin was still a greenhorn. When he first started his post, the former principal even arranged for him to raise demon beasts here for a while."

Then, seemingly lost in memory again, he added with a smile, "Just like you, he was all thumbs."

This was the first time Su Ze had heard someone talk about what his parents were like at work, and he unconsciously broke into a smile.

"Why did the former principal make things so difficult for my father?"

Lin Xi was stunned for a moment. "Why do you think it was making things difficult?"

"Having my father feed these low-level demon beasts—isn't that making things difficult?"

Lin Xi laughed. "Could it be that he thought highly of him? Just like you now."

But Su Ze frowned; he felt that he was indeed being given a hard time right now.

But he still asked, "Then what happened later?"

"Later? Later, he became a regular employee, became a researcher at the school, met your mother, got married, and had a child."

At this point, he sighed and said with immense regret, "Sigh, it's just a pity. An accident happened at such a young age..."

Su Ze hurriedly pressed, "Do you know what the accident was? What exactly happened back then?"

Lin Xi stood up and shook his head. "How would I know about those researchers' affairs? I'm only responsible for managing the breeding and sanitation of this area. It wasn't an experiment that happened under my nose, so how could I know what happened?"

Su Ze still asked unwillingly, "Then... have you heard others mention anything?"

Lin Xi walked into the lounge with his hands behind his back and said, "No. I'm just a miserable Old man. Who would tell me such things..."

He then issued an order to leave. "Alright, kid. Today was just for reporting. You go back first. Formal classes start tomorrow."

Seeing this, Su Ze felt that he must know what happened back then.

He wanted to ask more, but Lin Xi had already shut the lounge door tight, so he had to give up.

However, Su Ze made up his mind because of this. He had to get some information out of him, even if it meant helping feed these low-level demon beasts all the time.

Su Ze was in a very good mood. On his first day at school, he had found a clue about the past incident.

But there were also downsides... When he met up with Xu Yao to go home together, he was rarely shunned by her, and she kept a significant distance from him the whole way.

"Brother Su Ze, where did you go after we split up? Why... do you smell so bad..."

Smelling the odor, Xu Yao even suspected for a moment that after they separated, he had fallen into a cesspool!