Farming Together Chapter 169: Hundred Flowers Brew

Chapter 169: Hundred Flowers Brew

Translated by Addis of Exiled Rebels Scanlations

Editor: GaeaTiamat

When Ni Jiang found the Flower Lady again, she was giving out a task to a male player. It was obvious to see that the expression on the face of the Flower Lady was not very kind, just light, with a strong sense of detachment. As the male player bargained with her, she was more than a little impatient.

The male player was a boy who didn’t look very old. He received the task and didn’t leave immediately, but smiled at the Flower Lady as he asked, “Miss, what kind of flower seeds do you want? If I can’t find flower seeds, can I use the grass seeds I collected instead? Twenty seeds really are too many. Can I hand you only ten?”

Obviously, he wasn’t a very patient person. A flower seed required using the gathering skill at least five times to obtain. Twenty seeds would require a hundred tries to collect, so it took too much time, and delayed him around to play. He preferred digging in the mine to using gathering skills, and in the previous Village Chief’s Residence event his contribution was also based on submitting materials obtained from mining. This was just testing out the “NPC goodwill system.” He thought he could brush a few more NPCs’ goodwill, to see what the difference was between them.

The system prompted him with a -2 favorability rating for the Flower Lady, and the Flower Lady spoke up, “This villager, please don’t call me ‘Miss’, it’s too rude. If you don’t have time to help me, you can just say so. I can let other villagers help me.” In short, there was no mention of lowering the requirements of the task.

The male player wailed on the spot, “No, no, no, I can help! I’m going to go find you flower seeds. Twenty are enough, if not I’ll get you forty!”

After he said that, he didn’t care what the reaction of the Flower Lady was, and ran away in a flash. It was so terrible! They turned the other cheek at the drop of a hat, before deducting goodwill. It couldn’t be discussed and got him negative two points. Now he would have to do one more task to get that back. TAT!

“Pfft!” Ni Jiang covered her mouth and laughed out loud. It looked like the poor boy was deducted his goodwill value, ah.

That incident gave her a reminder. Never take advantage of the NPCs verbally, don’t try to bargain with NPCs, and if you got a task to complete in accordance with the requirements of the task. Laziness was absolutely not allowed. The only way to get their favor was to complete the tasks explained by the NPCs with a quality and quantity manner.

After the male player left, the Flower Lady spotted Ni Jiang’s figure, and wasn’t affected by what happened before. Her face quickly broke out in a smile.

“Ni Jiang, you’ve come over. Is the wreath weaving finished?” The Flower Lady asked.

Ni Jiang hurriedly took out all five garlands from her backpack, and displayed them one by one in front of the Flower Lady.

The garlands were made of soft twigs as a base, which was braided into a ring solid enough to wear on top of the head. The freshly picked flowers weren’t randomly embellished, only 2 or 3 colors of flowers were used on each garland, with a certain color as the main body and the remaining small parts lining it.

Ni Jiang’s sense of color was still good, and each wreath gave a very comfortable feeling. Two of them were even appreciated by the Flower Lady because of their creative matching.

The Flower Lady couldn’t stop holding the garlands and said to Ni Jiang with a smile, “Thank you. This is the garland I wanted. Your work is really great! To thank you, I’ll give you the brewing method for ‘Hundred Flowers Brew.’ You go back and ponder over it, and try to make a delicious and mellow ‘Hundred Flowers Brew’ as soon as possible!”

That said, she handed Ni Jiang a thin piece of paper, which was the reward for this mission.

The system message was also received by Ni Jiang, reminding her that the goodwill of the Flower Lady went up +10, the relationship between the two had become “passionate.” Ni Jiang’s eyes lit up. Her guess was right. Whenever the goodwill of NPCs got a qualitative leap, the reward for the player who completed the task would also be good. 

The name of the brew was a good thing!

“Thank you, Flower Lady! I will work hard!” Ni Jiang smiled and took the piece of paper from the Flower Lady’s hand, and sincerely thanked her before heading to her residence.

In the process of going back, she didn’t forget to call the several little sisters in her friends list, and asked them to come and gather at her house. She had good news to announce. Small Butterfly, Jiao Jiao, and Meng Ears soon arrived at Ni Jiang’s house, and soon after the meet and greet, they showed Ni Jiang the color that they had just dyed their fingernails.

The nails of the three of them were rosy red. The color was deeper and more intense than before, and they looked gorgeous. According to the girls, they dyed their nails with freshly grown rose balsam, from the only plant in the village that grew rose balsam of that color.

Ni Jiang took one look at it, fell in love with it, and yelled that she would go to the girls’ house and arrange for her fingers to be dyed when this event was over.

“Haha! Okay, okay.” Small Butterfly agreed readily, and then asked, “By the way, what did you call us over for? You said that there was a great surprise, so now that we are here, can we talk about it?”

Ni Jiang smiled mysteriously and took out the recipe for “Hundred Flowers Brew” and showed it to the three of them. “Dang, dang, dang! Look at the reward I got for my mission! I just went to the Flower Lady to do a task. Our relationship went from ‘acquaintance’ to ‘passionate’, and then she gave me this recipe. It seems to be a recipe for brewing. I plan to start making it when I have time!”

“Wow, you’re lucky then!” Mend Ears looked envious as she came closer to look. “But what is ‘brew’? It sounds like a drink. Have you guys ever had it?”

Ni Jiang and Small Butterfly both shook their heads that they hadn’t had any, but Jiao Jiao smiled smugly at the trio and said, “I’ve never had wine, but I’ve eaten food made from it. Not long ago I opened a beer duck, beef stew in red wine and chicken with flowers from the Food Basket. They used three different wines, each of which gave me a different culinary experience that I still look back on from time to time.”

It was a shame she never opened a wine drink directly from the Food Basket. The three dishes aroused Ni Jiang’s curiosity and she excitedly discussed with Jiao Jiao about the specific taste of the delicacy. Ten minutes later, Meng Ears gulped and concluded, “Oh no, I’m even more curious about the taste of wine now!”

Why, who wasn’t!

Ni Jiang thought of when she was at Adjutant Tang’s house in the early hours of the morning watching him open a gift bag, and one item was called “Apricot Blossom Fen Wine”. She was about to say she knew who had the wine on hand, but then remembered she had made a pact with Tang Ying not to tell him about it.

After a few seconds of disappointment, Ni Jiang suddenly slapped her head hard. How could she have forgotten, she obviously had wine too.

“I, I, I,” she excitedly said to the little sisters. “I seem to have wine! Its peach blossom wine! I also got it from doing the Flower Lady quest. I almost forgot about it.” With that, she fished out a very small wine jar ¹ from her backpack and placed it in the center of the table, “Ahem, the jar is a bit small, and I don’t know how much wine is in it, but how about…Let’s have a taste?”

Who could refuse such a temptation? Plus, the name seemed to indicate that it was a drink made from peach blossom petals, which further aggravated the curiosity of several people, who pulled out things from their own backpacks to eat.

One person took out a large bowl and placed it on the table.

Ni Jiang looked at it, and the corners of her mouth twitched, with such a small jar, she was afraid that even a normal bowl couldn’t be filled, all right?

After she thought about it, she bought a wine set from the game store, which she hadn’t seen before and had probably just recently hit the shelves. The wine set included a delicate white jade jug, plus exactly four small wine glasses of the same color ². The wine cups look very pocket-sized, and incomparably lovely when they rested in the palm of the hand. 

The four of them played with them for a while before they returned to the main topic. Ni Jiang, as the owner of the peach blossom wine, opened the clay seal at the mouth of the jar. Probably out of a sense of ritual, Small Butterfly urged Ni Jiang to pour the wine into the small jug, and she wanted to drink the peach blossom wine poured out of the jug.

Ni Jiang quickly complied and pounded away for a while before she filled up the jug with enough wine for each of the sisters. The wine was a clear, light red color, the color of peach blossom petals, and when they got close enough to smell it, they could smell a nice aroma.

“It smells good. This smell is too fragrant, right?” Jiao Jiao even squinted her eyes pleasantly, as she commented, “beer, red wine and flower carving wine had completely different tastes. To get it fresh…I like this taste.”

Meng Ears held the pocket-sized glass of wine in her hand.  She couldn’t control herself and took a sip, then nodded vigorously. “Yes, yes! It smells so good! This is really wine. I feel like it is a drink with a nice color!”

“It should be drunk with caution. I’ve heard that it’s easy to get drunk when you drink too much wine. Let’s drink just a little bit, that shouldn’t matter, right?” Small Butterfly finished, and poured that tiny sip of wine into her mouth.

The stimulation of alcohol made her eyes squeeze together quickly, and her features all wrinkled into a ball, without waiting for the others to ask her how she was doing, and then quickly stretched out. The alcohol degree of peach blossom wine wasn’t high, and after the initial stimulation, a light peach blossom aroma filled the entire mouth. It gave Small Butterfly the illusion that if she opened her mouth, she could have a “mouth fragrance.”

The smell was really fragrant, and less was really less, so soon a cup of wine finished. Small Butterfly was unable to control her eyes and began to glance in the direction of the wine jug. Delicious, she still wants to drink!

When they saw Small Butterfly’s appearance, the others knew that the taste of peach blossom wine was definitely not difficult to drink, so they all followed Small Butterfly’s example and drank their share.

After three identical expressions, the four looked at each other with crystal-clear eyes.

“Delicious!”

“Sweet and tasty! The taste is superb!”

“Dear Jiang, I still want to drink it…”

“Welp, you don’t have to take that tone. There’s still something to discuss about this!”

Not long after, Ni Jiang looked at the empty wine jar and the lone drop in the wine jug, and wanted to cry. The super delicious peach blossom wine! She actually gave the four a cup, I said a cup! One drink was fine! She had wanted to quietly save a little for herself, she said…

The four of them were all first time drinkers, and it didn’t hold back from their heads. At that time, their four faces were flushed, eyes flooded with water, it looked…

“Hahaha! You guys look so charming! Oh, come on, little beauty, give the master a smile!” Small Butterfly hooked the chin of Jiao Jiao beside her and showed a smile belonging to the old color batch.

Jiao Jiao was very cooperative, all soft in Small Butterfly’s arms, but also with a drunken smile.

In that state of being drunk, but not really drunk, it was the first time for the four people and they were very addicted. However, it wasn’t good enough, so Ni Jiang put away the empty wine jars and glasses on the table, opened the door and took the drunken three out to sit in the courtyard under the vine frame while the wind blew and killed the alcohol.

After another little half an hour, a few people came out of the state, looked at each other and laughed loudly together.

“Hahaha! So that is the feeling of drunkenness. It gives me the feeling that I’m a kind of spirit wandering in the illusion of reality and illusion. The brain is completely empty, with nothing to think, nothing to do. The feeling is also quite comfortable.”

“Peach wine is really good. Later I will go to the flower lady to take the task, strive to also get peach wine from her hands, and then buy you guys a drink, ah!”

“Why, after drinking peach wine, I’m starting to wonder if other flowers can be made into wine. Ni Jiang, didn’t you get the recipe for ‘hundred flowers brew’? Quickly see how to make it.”

After showing it to her little sister, Ni Jiang learned the recipe. The name “Hundred Flowers Brew” didn’t actually require a whole hundred kinds of flowers to make, the name was taken from the meaning of “all flowers can be brewed.” Which flowers the person wanted to drink in the wine, they could go collect the corresponding materials, and then start making it.

After she explained how to make a “hundred flowers,” Small Butterfly couldn’t help but applaud. “Wow, so this ‘hundred flowers’ recipe is even more precious! You can not only make peach wine, but also apricot wine, osmanthus wine, and rose wine! Hey, I don’t know what these wines will taste like.”

“Ah! Before Ni Jiang sent me the ‘flower cake’ recipe, I only knew that you can use rose petals, but didn’t think of the possibility of other flower petals. Wait until I go back and try it. If I make it please eat, ah!” Meng Ears said happily.

Jiao Jiao was even more direct. She pulled out a purse opened from the Dress Surprise Box with the sound of coins jingling inside, and said sharply, “Sisters! See if this is enough money. I want to book a few jars of peach blossom wine from you. You set a price, the money will be deducted from this purse. If it’s not enough, tell me, I will make it up to you!”

Small Butterfly and Meng Ears heard that and also reacted. They immediately glared at Jiao Jiao, also hurried to find Ni Jiang booked up. After the wine tasting action just now, the girls easily liked the taste of wine, but unfortunately the wine jar was already small. The four people shared even less, but they were addicted to drinking it! Now that there was a chance to drink a big mouthful of wine in front of them, who would like to miss it?

So Ni Jiang was given three bulging purses and an order for five jars of peach blossom wine for each person, and right now she didn’t even have any ingredients on hand.

“You guys…You guys are in too much of a hurry, right? The recipe says that to make a wine, in addition to the necessary material collection time, you also have to wait a full week to brew it…”

That one week was the time in the game. If it was reality, it would take even longer to get a good wine.

“Oh, what does it matter? We are willing to wait for a good wine! It’s not like you can only make one jar at a time. When you make it, you can just make a little more. In addition to the peach blossom wine, other flavors can also be arranged. When the brewing is done we can choose, ah!”

“Yes, yes! Only the peach blossom wine production can’t meet the need. When the three of us finish picking, we will accompany you to the evening market stall. I have a feeling that these wines will definitely trigger a new trend in our village!” Meng Ears added.

Ni Jiang was moved, and reluctantly accepted the so-called deposit, but also had an eye to write down the quantity of peach blossom wines requested by the three. 

After they drank the wine and placed their order, everyone had their own business to attend to, so they said goodbye to each other and parted ways. Before she left, Jiao Jiao asked Ni Jiang if she could share the story in the game forum, and after receiving Ni Jiang’s consent, she happily left.

As for Small Butterfly and Meng Ears, they ran off to find the Flower Lady to do a quest. According to Ni Jiang, as long as you did a dozen or twenty tasks at the Flower Lady’s place, the friendship level would rise to “passionate,” and the girls were full of motivation. It wasn’t necessary to get the friendliness to reach the “passion” stage. As long as the Flower Lady was willing to send a few more jars of wine in the task rewards, they were also willing.

After all, it could relieve the pain of longing during a week waiting for Ni Jiang’s peach blossom wine brew.

Ni Jiang was bitter. Haha! The courtyard door closed and she went out to collect peach petals and other materials needed.

Jiao Jiao went back and soon told the story from the point of view of a bystander, about her good friend completing the task issued by the NPC, getting a superb reward, and then several people drinking and chatting together and finally placing a drink order.

In her description, the taste of peach blossom wine was magnified several times through the power of words, which aroused great curiosity among the players and fellow netizens in the forum. They were all curious to know what the peach blossom wine, which was boasted to be heavenly, actually tasted like.

[Damn it! My tears flowed down from the corners of my mouth indisputably. It’s okay to crave all kinds of food in the game before, but now I actually have to add a peach blossom wine! Damn it, damn it, damn it!!!]

[@Carefree Farmstead-Bai Li, dear LiLi. My Genetic Collapse Disorder is about to reach an advanced stage and I’m reverting to a juvenile state. It’s not a waste for me to walk in this world…]

[Upstairs, you are too cruel, right? You can’t even say that just to have a sip of wine, you’re cursing yourself! I’m different, I have a real terminal illness that can’t be cured, so LiLi look at me look at me! @Carefree Farmstead-Bai Li]

“…”

The topic was inexplicably brought to the matter of selling misery. A gamer sneered and said that he had never seen so many illnesses in all his life.

It was hard to get back to the topic, but finally the players discussed the NPC that caused the incident and her mission, as well as the “Hundred Flowers Brew” recipe that Ni Jiang got.

[The girl’s luck is really good. I also got the Fisherman’s side to the ‘passionate’ friendliness, but when I reached this stage and he gave me the task reward, it was actually just a mediocre turbot fish? Although the fish did taste good when steamed, it only satisfied my appetite for five minutes, and it’s not at all comparable to the weight of the ‘Hundred Flowers Brew’! So envious!]

[Envy +1, I don’t know why, I have not been very popular with the five new NPCs, and they talk to me in a bland tone. Not to mention, even after the completion of the task, the task rewards they give are also very ordinary. Do you dare to believe that the best reward I got was from the Naughty Little Child who gave me a small windmill. I put it in the yard, and when the wind is blowing, it can reduce the growth time of crops by 20%. Unfortunately, this thing is time-limited, after 24 hours, this windmill will only be ornamental…]

[Hey, it seems that the task at the entrance of the village where the Old King is the most stable. Help him collect house building materials or cut some grass to feed his precious cattle and horses, and you can get one or two coins. This coin is said to be used to ride the cattle car or wagon to other villages after level 30.]

[It’s stable, but there’s little incentive to do it. There’s an old saying on Ancient Blue Star, ‘Take a chance, turn your bike into a motorcycle.’ Brother, only when you take risks can you have greater rewards! I’d rather go help the Flower Lady collect flower seeds, spectate her and the Fisherman’s show love routine, or help the Fisherman catch a dozen kilograms of big fish from the riverside seashore, and then again, or play hide-and-seek with the Naughty Child throughout the village area. Only then, will we fundamentally cheer when we get the good stuff!]

[Laughing dead. Simply cannot get. What good item? Receive what task? Get what reward? Is it not directly dependent on the mood of the NPCs? I think, ah, this is ‘not a family, do not enter a door’. This family of three, all things are a lot, and it depends on the mood of the first! Woof woof big cry.jpg]

[Hahaha! I’d like to call them the ‘Mood Watching Trio’!]

[True, it’s too true!]

One by one, players full of grievances came out to share their miserable experiences when doing the tasks. They really didn’t share what they didn’t know, except to share their shock, that there were actually a lot of players who put in the hard work to do a task, but they only got the most common reward. For Ni Jiang the “flower cake”, and a “Hundred flowers brew”, but also to get the finished wine the number of players was almost none.

Jiao Jiao had been paying attention to the dynamics of the post, and she couldn’t help but see and tell Ni Jiang the news. She also suspected that Ni Jiang must have a very high status in the heart of the Flower Lady, and urged her that she couldn’t give up on this NPC. Weekdays when there was nothing to do she should remember to go there so she would glean wool.

Ni Jiang was full of promise.

The players who had vented a good deal in Jiao Jiao’s post were contentedly out of the post when they were hit with another message.

Just after 12:00, the Imperial Research Institute’s official starblog posted a message that the testing of all new virtual reality games online this year had been completed, and then they posted approximate testing data, and a website where they could view the details. Carefree Farmstead topped the list with a 90% “mental appeasement” score.

When players saw the familiar name, they felt their brains buzzing and had only one thought left: Amazing, my LiLi!