Chapter 43.1

Mu Ling paused for a moment, then frowned.

Director Liu continued, “My friend has researched many zoos but found none satisfactory. He was about to give up and buy an island to house Magic privately. But then someone recommended a video of your Bi Ke Zoo to him.”

“Director Mu, your video quality is truly exceptional. After watching it, he became very interested in your zoo. That’s why he asked me to come and take a look today. After seeing it myself, I also think your zoo’s environment is excellent, and the relationships between the war beasts are very harmonious. I told him about it, and he’s already on his way here on a starship. He’ll arrive on Shenwang Star tomorrow afternoon. Director Mu, do you have time to meet with him tomorrow afternoon?”

Mu Ling hesitated, “Meeting is certainly not a problem, but Director Liu, our Bi Ke Zoo has a forest structure. Elephants, due to their large size and weight, are generally recommended to live in plains areas. Is your friend really sure he wants to send his battle elephant to a forest-structured zoo? Can the elephant adapt?”

Director Liu paused, “I’m not too sure about that. Why don’t you discuss it face-to-face when you meet tomorrow?”

Mu Ling had no choice but to agree. “Then please ask your friend to come directly to the zoo tomorrow. I’m sorry, but our zoo just opened a few days ago, and I can’t really leave. We’ll have to meet here at the zoo.”

Director Liu quickly replied, “No problem at all. I’ll let him know and have him contact you directly.”

After hanging up, Mu Ling sighed and turned to look at Xiang Bie.

Xiang Bie had already understood some of the situation from her conversation. He asked, “Elephant?”

Mu Ling nodded, “They say it’s called Magic, and it’s some commander’s war beast. Brother Xiang, can elephants live in the mountains?”

Xiang Bie pondered for a moment, “Mountains with gentler slopes are possible. Our park isn’t all forest either. The southernmost downstream area has about 20-30 kilometers of flat grassland. It’s just far from the main mountain road and has been left undeveloped.”

Bi Ke Jungle covers over 3 million square kilometers, with more than 1.5 million square kilometers cordoned off behind protective fencing. However, not all of the 1.5 million square kilometers on this side of the fence has been developed. Only the area with the best environment, easiest access, and most beautiful scenery has been turned into the zoo’s core viewing area. The upstream and downstream areas on the edges still retain their original jungle state, which is precisely why some retired war beasts particularly like to venture into those areas.

Mu Ling had never been to the southern downstream area. She took out the map and flipped through it, roughly determining the location. Then she said, “Let’s wait until we meet with that commander tomorrow before deciding. It’s not certain they’ll choose our zoo anyway.”

That evening, Mu Ling went to bed early after finishing her work. Since Pimi and Moonlight were still in poor condition at the veterinary station, Xiang Bie stayed overnight to keep watch.

While all the Bi Ke Zoo employees, exhausted from the opening day, were lying in bed replenishing their energy in preparation for the second day of operation, Bi Ke Zoo once again became a hot topic on the starNet.

#Bi Ke Zoo Opening#

#Animal Dormitory#

#Ferry Eagle Tayun#

#Qilin and Little Wolf#

#Who Says It’s Hard to See Animals at Bi Ke Zoo#

#Bi Ke Zoo Tour Route Selection#

#Bi Ke Zoo Postcards#

Countless hashtags related to Bi Ke Zoo could be seen everywhere on the trending list.

Clicking into them, one could see that the thousand visitors who had managed to get tickets and spent the entire day touring the zoo on the first day of opening were now sharing their first-hand experiences, explaining just how enjoyable Bi Ke Zoo really was.

「I really didn’t expect the experience to be so rich at first. I was prepared to see only a few animals, but in the end, there were so many animals that I couldn’t see them all. There were animals everywhere along the way, and I even interacted with many of them [picture] [picture] [picture]..」

「Today I saw many of the celebrity animals that appeared in wifey’s videos: Princess Lily, Baby Sister, Little Potato, Sticky Bun. Seeing them in person is completely different from watching them in videos. I couldn’t stop taking photos, frantically checking in and making memories. Of course, the most popular star at Bi Ke Zoo is still our Qilin Princess giving Qilin a bath [picture] [picture] [picture]..」

「Qingjiao is really a good mother. Real-time record: In three hours, Qingqiao licked the little wolf’s fur 83 times. She really loves the little wolf so much ..」

「Today I saw a new war beast in the animal dormitory called Tayun, a species of eagle. I couldn’t find much information about Tayun online, and wifey hasn’t posted any individual videos of it either. Wuwuwu, please hurry up and post about Tayun, wifey! They’re all S-class war beasts, doesn’t our Tayun deserve its own single Eagle vlog?」

「Showing off the free little gifts from Bi Ke Zoo. I’ve already started using the little pendant. I’m using the Qilin pendant, so now I’m Qilin’s person, hehe」

「Posting some cool photos of Lightning. All I can say is, the moment Lightning jumped down from the tree, it jumped straight into my heart」

「Bi Ke Zoo is really super fun. Because there weren’t many people, the staff really took care of every visitor’s emotions. With this kind of service, this hands-on guidance, and a ticket that’s only 239 interstellar coins—it’s truly the ceiling of cost-effectiveness, okay? It’s just, when can wifey open up more visitor spots? It’s really hard to get one of the thousand daily tickets. I want to bring my whole family next time」

Bi Ke Zoo’s popularity continued to rise. By 11 PM, Bi Ke Zoo occupied six of the top ten trending topics.

At this point, netizens who had managed to get tickets became even more excited about their upcoming visits in the next few days.

Those who hadn’t gotten tickets were voicing their complaints, frantically asking if anyone had tickets to transfer.

Because the demand for ticket transfers was so high, the Federation Tourism Bureau issued an overnight announcement, urging citizens planning to travel recently to purchase tickets through legal channels and not to buy scalped or second-hand tickets to prevent fraud and fake tickets.

Mu Ling only heard about the online buzz from her employees the next day.

The next morning, Mu Ling woke up at 7:30. By the time she woke up, the other employees had already started working. The restaurant staff were preparing portable simple meals, the supermarket staff were restocking the shelves, and the zookeepers and patrollers were checking their vehicles. While working, everyone was chatting about the trending topics.

Mu Ling listened for a bit but didn’t have time to hear too much. After feeding the war beasts their breakfast and medicine, she still had to go into the mountains.

At 8:30 AM, Bi Ke Zoo opened its doors on time. Like yesterday, an endless, continuous long queue had already formed outside the gate.

Mu Ling was holding a long-tailed civet in her arms while helping Little Zhao check tickets.

The first visitor to enter the park saw the long-tailed civet in Mu Ling’s arms and was immediately delighted, “Oh, is this Little Boss?”

When Mu Ling first came to the zoo, the first animal she saw was a long-tailed civet. It was also this civet that led Mu Ling to find Qilin that was almost fatally injured.

Mu Ling later filmed quite a few videos of this long-tailed civet when she went up the mountain and gave it a name. Because it was particularly aloof and domineering, she named it Little Boss.

Mu Ling didn’t expect the first visitor to recognize Little Boss right away, as they had seven or eight long-tailed civets in their park.

Mu Ling smiled and said, “Yes, this is Little Boss. It’s on greeting duty today.”

The visitors who came in after were immediately amused, “So your greeting animal changes every day? I saw on the star network that yesterday it was a brown deer.”

Mu Ling replied, “Yes, it’s generally a rotation system. We can’t have the same animal working every day, can we?”

“Haha, right, right. So, are you still opening that animal dormitory this afternoon? We came specifically for Qilin and Lightning.”

“Yes, it’s open from 3 PM to 6 PM, every day.”

The visitors were immediately excited. Some people thought Mu Ling’s voice sounded familiar, very much like the zoo director wifey in the videos. They were about to ask, but more visitors came in, so they didn’t want to block the entrance.

The long-tailed civet was very popular today. Although it was initially aloof and fierce, after half a month of interaction with Mu Ling, it had now somewhat let down its guard against humans. Therefore, as long as Mu Ling was holding it, it could even accept a little non-offensive petting from other visitors.

Little Boss’s cooperation also made Mu Ling’s greeting work much smoother.

It wasn’t until 9:30 that all the visitors had finally entered. By this time, the service area was already bustling with activity.

Some people were buying things in the supermarket and restaurant, some were choosing mountain routes with their companions, some were taking photos and checking in with friends, some were paying attention to the huge glass house behind the supermarket building, and some were even live streaming with their light brain lenses, taking online friends on a virtual tour.

After a while, shuttle cars loaded with visitors started leaving one after another. By 11:30, all the visitors had gone into the mountains, and only staff members were left in the service area.

Xiao Zhao, who had been working all morning, was now sitting at the ticket checkpoint resting and whispering to the zoo director, “Director, I feel like we really don’t have enough staff.”

Mu Ling was feeding frozen dried food to the long-tailed civet in her arms and responded, “I know, I know. I originally wanted to experiment for a week. If the visitors’ feedback was good within a week, we would expand, hire thirty more staff members, and increase the daily visitor capacity to two thousand. But now it seems we might not need to wait a week. There are quite a few good reviews on the trending topics. How about this, let’s wait three days. If the feedback is still good after three days, we’ll immediately start recruiting.”

Xiao Zhao was finally satisfied. Then she looked at the civet quietly nibbling on the dried food and asked, “So, Director, do we really change the duty animal every day? Who’s on duty tomorrow?”

Mu Ling replied, “Golden rabbits. We’ll bring two golden rabbits tomorrow. But I won’t be here tomorrow. The golden rabbits aren’t as attached to me as the civet, so they don’t need me to watch them all the time. I’ll go help out at the restaurant tomorrow.”

Actually, for Mu Ling, helping out anywhere was the same, whether it was greeting visitors or restocking. The problem was that when she was helping with greetings, visitors always liked to take pictures of her. Although it wasn’t really her they were photographing, mainly the civet in her arms, but when people’s cameras were pointing at her, could she pretend not to see?

This morning alone, her face was almost stiff from smiling so much.

At noon, after Mu Ling had lunch, she went to feed and administer medication to the war beasts again.

Now that she had some time, and the visitors hadn’t come down yet, Mu Ling first did the mental assessments for the animals today. From what she could see so far, everyone’s damage values had decreased noticeably, although the decrease was very small, with some only decreasing by 0.1 or so each day, but at least they were all going down.

At 3 PM, Mu Ling opened the animal dormitory. Around 3:30, visitors started coming down one after another.

The first shuttle car to come down was Wei Li’s car. Seeing the visitors all rushing towards the capsule house, Wei Li took a sip of water and complained to Mu Ling, “They kept urging me saying ‘it’s three o’clock!’ What can I do? Three buses combined into one means slower speed—I can’t just floor it and risk accidents!”

Hearing Brother Wei’s words, Mu Ling’s heart skipped a beat. Was he hinting at her? Was he blaming her for not hiring more people, resulting in not enough shuttle drivers and having to combine three cars into one?

Stop scolding, stop scolding..

Mu Ling quickly said, “I’ll definitely hire more people in three days if the visitor feedback remains stable, really!”

Wei Li looked at the zoo director in surprise, not knowing why she suddenly became so nervous, but having more staff was definitely a good thing.