Chapter 21 The anger of little Qilin
'I'm totally an idiot!
'Why am I still excitedly and stupidly stood here! I can check the status out in detailed later.'
'The current priority is to escape. This is the beast den. The nest of some gigantic creatures!'
'And I already smashed one of her eggs!'
As he was flustered to think of a way to escape from this mess, suddenly he just remembered what he had just saw.
Inventory...
So, a miraculous thought suddenly came to his mind!
What if he could first hide the evidence! This way the mother beast would not notice that there's an egg missing.
'After all, what beast can use numbers to count?'
Brilliant! I can also test how does Inventory function works.
Thinking that there's 125 slots available, it should be enough to take all the evidence on the ground. In fact, why not just scoop the whole thing including the ground itself!
Thus, he squatted and touched the ground. Then suddenly realized, he doesn't know how to use the inventory. There's no cursor like the games!
"Inventory," he quickly thought of the most common trick in novels, games, and anime; and whispered.
"..."
Nope, nothing happening.
Was it the pronunciation problem? After thinking about it, maybe he needs to access it from status menu.
"STATUS...INVENTORY," he whispered.
After receiving the command, the status menu had opened. And then...nothing happened.
"..."
He tried again. This time he said, "Open INVENTORY."
This time, the inventory menu successfully popped up.
There are 125 slots in the inventory menu. Besides the numbering for each slot, there's also labels below each one of them.
There's a short instruction right on the top of the inventory menu, telling him how to access and use the inventory.
'I guess the designer really thought it through. Since I don't have the spirit and mental strength, it provides instructions so that I can read it manually. There's even a labelling function.'
'But if he was so thoughtful, why can't he just simplify the process of using it?'
'Didn't he know that the current trend is to have simpler command set?'
He kept complaining in his heart.
---
Back at home, the elder brother who accompanied the family to coax his little sister, Lin Qing, suddenly sneezed.
This scene was before the previous scene Lin Qing were finally coaxed. Several minutes before
"I don't think I'm sick." he replied.
At this moment the father and grandfather had just arrived reach the entrance's gate.
"Maybe someone was badmouthing you?" his father teased him.
"Nah, I'm sure it was Lin Ren that was complaining about you. That kid always like to let his mind wander endlessly and complains when he was annoyed, " the grandfather who was all too familiar with his grandson, directly guessed it was that bear child's fault.
"Maybe he was annoyed about something you did. Aren't you the one who configured his ring?"
"Yes, I did. But..." he replied when his grandfather asked. But before he could finish his words, his grandfather interrupted him.
"So maybe there's something in the ring's program that annoyed him. Well, don't care about it. We don't need to spoil him too much.
The brother could only give a wry smile. He had thought that since his little brother likes game so much, he tried to implement similar concept when configuring the ring.
'Was it not to his liking?'
At this moment the father and grandfather heard the crying sound of Lin Qing. They hurriedly entered the house.
---
Halfway up the mountain, Lin Ren's location.
"INVENTORY store item one," he tried to use what he read in the instruction to practice.
As a result, an almost 4-feet deep cuboid hole were dug and gone in a blink of an eye. The place his hand touch is the boundary of the hole edge. Meaning everything in front of his hand were put into the space ring.
And in slot number one, the image showed the slot was filled with soil with on top of it the broken egg's residue. Seeing this changes, Lin Ren didn't show any reaction. It was within expectation.
"INVENTORY release item one," and the previously lost soil and egg residue appeared back to its original place.
So, he now understood some of the rules said in the by the instruction.
According to instruction, unless he had cultivated a little bit of spiritual and mental strength, he has a very limited flexibility when using storage ring without Spirit Soul help.
As of this moment one of the limitations proved that if he were to use inventory, everything in front of his hand, that's connected to it as a whole, within the limit of slot's size, would be taken into the inventory.
Meaning that if the object was held by him without touching the ground, he could only take that object. Though if the object is smaller in size compared to the slot size, he would waste the space as the one item per slot rule applies.
But if he was holding a chest or box, then under the 'connected as a whole' rule of thumb, he should be able to store the whole chest or box, including the content, into a single slot of the storage ring.
He wondered about what the other rules were, such as does time stopped or passed at the same rate as outside or slower. Whether the food and medicines would expire or preserved. He wondered how the ring actual deal with matter's state like being on fire, heat properties and so on rules. Would the heat dissipate?
The instruction didn't mention anything about it, but he once read several 'Isekai' genre manga and novel mentioning about the storage cheat's various rules and how the protagonist test and exploit the storage cheat's rule.
'I guess I'll also have to experiment it like that guy'
He thought as he once again deposited the egg residue (plus the soil) into the storage ring. This time, he adjusted the location and angle so that all the egg residues were taken into the space.
Since he didn't have time to carefully gather the residue together and collect it, he spent 3 slots to get everything in. Afterall, when the egg was crushed, the broken egg does spread across wide area.
As a result of Lin Ren's crude action, there's a huge hole there that appear baseless.
He also took his Elemental Jade Fruit into the fourth slot.
'Well then time to move on before she gets here.'
'I also need to clean the residue on my body so that she won't smell it and use it to track me.'
Suddenly there's a large roar near him and he was sent flying to a distance.
He became panicked. He slowly tried to stand again and look towards behind.
'Was there any other beast around near here beside the mother beast? Did I not notice it?'
'Or did the mother beast managed to come over in an instance? And she can appear here without any indication, so suddenly?'
He was sure here was not some bird's nest because there's large foot mark that seems like a paw there. And if here's a bird nest, why would the ground be still vibrating with deep thud coming nearer?
Then he saw the Qilin was roaring and starting at him fiercely. It was him who had just knocked him over.
Now he felt really wronged. When did he annoy this stupid beast? What had he done that makes the Qilin angry?
"Hey big guy. I know you're a Qilin. And since you grow up in Lin's family back mountain, you should understand my words, right?"
"Did I do something to annoy and make you angry? Look, we are both from a civilized world. I'm sure we can talk it out. Let's first be calm."
Lin Ren thought of calming the Qilin first. There's no way he can escape to safely if the Qilin was making trouble.
Plus, on the Qilin's body, there's also the egg's residue all over!
That's a definitive prove of them smashing the egg, the evidence that he had just tried to cover up.
This was a big problem. If he doesn't solve it, then his effort to hide the evidence previously was in vain!
This happened for a reason.
Just when Lin Ren was busy with his thought process, the Qilin who had just regained consciousness was finally sober.
Remembering what had just happened, he was bewildered. He thought hard trying to find the reason why suddenly he was falling from the sky and hitting something white? And he was still confused to the whole situation.
But he still remembers.
Yes, he remembered the very reason he rushed to garden, which he was prohibited from entering. The reason he took the risk to intrude onto the platform.
That alluring sweet smell.
That summon from the bloodline that urged him to get it.
That attractive almost translucent fruit.
His very own miracle fruit!