Chapter 244 | Chapter 245 | Chapter 246
Chapter 244: Cowpea Beans
Chen Xing sighed all the way until she dropped the two of them off at the Rose Corridor. She only dared to glance at Zhou Qian’s house from the roadside before slamming on the gas and leaving without a backward look.
Huai Yu watched the car drive away, clutching the two jars as she watched Zhou the Long-term Hired Hand continue to move the vats and jars. Then, she walked up to the Rose Corridor and whispered:
“Hey, how did you manage to make them all so afraid of you?”
The rose trellis swayed gently in the sweltering hot wind of midsummer. Even the light, faint fragrance of the flowers was transpiration into something intense. Flower buds grew incessantly; hidden beneath the oily-green leaves, sharp thorns lay flat and obedient.
Petals fluttered and scattered across the ground, only to be carefully gathered into a pile by Ketaro, who hugged the heap with all four paws. He kept dropping them as he walked, but in the end, he successfully transported them back to his house.
After all, if the petals were left to dry for too long, the balls he made wouldn’t smell fragrant anymore.
Huai Yu stared at the fallen blossoms, deep in thought, then called out to Zhou Qian: “Brother Zhou Qian, do you want to eat rose jam?”
Zhou Qian pulled up the hem of his shirt to wipe the sweat from his face. Seeing himself in such a disheveled state, then looking at the landlady standing under the flower wall covered in petals, he couldn’t help but laugh out of frustration:
“Instead of wasting energy daydreaming about food, why don’t you come help me move a vat?”
Huai Yu immediately looked down to study the petals. “Every trade has its master… fine, I won’t ask you anymore. I’ll make it and feed it to you directly!”
Zhou Qian just huffed.
However, talking about making it was one thing; real jam required honey, and Huai Yu currently had to rely on testing station staff just to find out where to buy sugar, not to mention honey.
She thought about it and decided—why not make flower cakes instead! But then the question arose: were the petals of the Rose Corridor edible?
Huai Yu carefully leaned against the Rose Corridor. “Are your petals edible?”
“After Ketaro turned the previous petals into balls, eating them seemed to make people have dreams… Zhou Qian wasn’t very happy for several days after his dream… will it be the same if I make them into flower cakes?”
She muttered her questions, and a slender branch nearby gently whipped against her shoulder, as if in displeasure.
Huai Yu understood well enough and decided to try it first—she wasn’t afraid of dreaming; she could eat them herself.
Who would have thought that as soon as she looked down, she would see Xiao Tian poking its head out from the grass, two bean-like eyes staring right into hers.
“Squeak!”
Xiao Tian let out a sound and turned to run, only to be snatched up by Huai Yu, who grabbed its tail and lifted it into the air: “Xiao Tian!”
She glared at the dangling Xiao Tian. “What is going on with you? We agreed to govern this world together, yet I haven’t seen you all this time. You’ve even been avoiding me like the plague… If you have the guts, stop stealing my peanuts and soybeans!”
As soon as she said this, the four little paws that had been frantically kicking at the air stopped instantly. Xiao Tian curled up obediently against its belly, the picture of honesty.
Huai Yu let out a “hmpf.”
Not a single bamboo rat had ever come to Kuang Biao’s bamboo grove, so whenever there was any disturbance in the vegetable patch, she didn’t have to wonder who it was.
This Xiao Tian—it had been quite quick to start stealing!
It didn’t just steal the peanuts; it left the leaves and stems scattered all over the ground.
The soybeans weren’t even ripe yet, but it had hauled away whole pods, and for good measure, it had bitten the vines in half… Huai Yu had noticed it the moment she went to pick vegetables, but the weather was too hot, and she had been too lazy to bother hunting it down.
Now that Xiao Tian had walked right into her trap, she grew triumphant. “See, I told you you couldn’t escape!”
“Come here!” She put Xiao Tian back on the ground. “You’ve been living here for several years now, right? You must have eaten the rose petals? Tell me, are they edible?”
The Rose Corridor allowed this little creature to dig holes under its leaves, so it must be quite tolerant. It was definitely because other people had ulterior motives that they made it out to be so terrifying!
In short, for Huai Yu, the Rose Corridor was well-behaved and obedient; aside from the occasional temper tantrum, it was very, very good to her.
Well… if only it hadn’t been so distant at the beginning, always wanting her to kowtow to it.
Xiao Tian kicked its legs, turned its head, and saw Huai Yu still holding the tip of its tail. It squeaked twice, then used its two front paws to cup a fallen petal and stuff it into its mouth, chewing quickly before swallowing it down.
Huai Yu stared at it for a while and understood: “Got it, it’s edible! But why are you so distant? Just squeaking would have been enough; you didn’t have to show me you were eating it… how embarrassing for you!”
She giggled and asked again: “Do you want something else? I dried some cowpea beans a while ago; do you want some?”
The ripe cowpeas turned a faint purplish-white, and the entire pod would swell up as it lost moisture. If you peeled out the cowpea beans and steamed them with rice, they’d be fragrant, sticky, and delicious.
That giant python cowpea plant was just too big; some of the beans hidden in the vines couldn’t be picked in time, or she missed them while harvesting, so they simply aged on the vine.
The ones that weren’t too old, Huai Yu used to stew with meat, and they tasted wonderful.
The ones that were, she simply picked and collected the beans, sun-drying them to save seeds and keep them indefinitely.
She had collected a huge bag!
And the cowpeas were still growing; she would be able to harvest more in a while.
Since she rarely saw Xiao Tian, Huai Yu was being very generous!
Xiao Tian stared at her blankly, then let out two squeaks. Huai Yu released her grip: “Come on, wait for me in the house, I’m going to wash my hands first.”
Once back inside, Huai Yu grabbed a small Ziploc bag, scooped a handful of cowpea beans into it, tied it off, and handed it to Xiao Tian:
“Look, I prepared this for you—so much easier to carry! If you try to steal from the field one by one, you’ll probably have to haul them back for several nights—how pathetic that would be!”
Xiao Tian stared at her, squeaked twice more, and then carried the bag in its teeth, shuffling slowly out of the house.
That handful of cowpea beans was already bigger than its entire body.
Just as it dragged the bag to the doorway, it heard a stammering, childish voice:
“Y-y-you, steal, steal—the mouse is stealing, stealing things—”
You could tell it was shouting with all its might.
Huai Yu looked out the door and saw Da Pang, brandishing its plump, white ginseng legs. Its root whiskers were dancing wildly, claws bared, looking very intense!
After bracing its stance, Da Pang leaned its white, chubby body slightly forward, and the massive cluster of green leaves atop its head, along with its thin stalk, let out a whistling sound as it lashed out fiercely—
“Oops!”
With too many root whiskers and a top-heavy stance, it tripped, stumbled, and Da Pang face-planted hard into the ground.
Chapter 245: Da Pang’s Grievance
Huai Yu struggled mightily to hold back her laughter!
Da Pang clearly considered itself a member of the household, and it had even tried to intercept Xiao Tian. If she had burst out laughing right then, it would have been—
It would have been—
She simply couldn’t hold it in anymore!
The ginseng, Da Pang, lay on the ground, arching its body in a fit of grievance. Because the leaves atop its head had grown so lush and dense, its head was too heavy and its legs too weak for it to stand up despite struggling for quite a while. Just then, a fit of violent coughing erupted from Huai Yu’s side:
“Cough, cough, cough, pfft, hah, cough, cough, pfft, cough, cough, cough…”
Da Pang the ginseng lifted its leaves toward Huai Yu in bewilderment, not understanding why a human’s coughing sounded so weird.
But it had seen very little of the world. After thinking for a long time, it asked with deep concern: “Are, are you, sick, sick?”
By chance, there was a root hair on the ground beside it that it had pulled off while struggling earlier. At this moment, Da Pang used its remaining healthy root hairs to curl it up:
“H-here, f-for you!”
Huai Yu was suddenly overcome with shame. I’m really not a human for being unable to stop laughing even at this!
But… it was really so funny!
She clutched the root hair and coughed for quite a while longer before rubbing her stomach, which was aching from holding back laughter. She stepped forward, picked up Da Pang, and stood it upright. She glanced over at Xiao Tian, who was still casually dragging its bag along little by little, and finally introduced them: “He’s not a thief. He’s part of the family, too. His name is Xiao Tian.”
“But he has a bad temper and isn’t as obedient as you, so he moved out to live on his own.”
Huai Yu shook her head and sighed. “Look, he can’t even afford to eat; he’s so pitiful.”
Da Pang looked at the plastic bag Xiao Tian was dragging, then looked at Xiao Tian, who was dragging it forward without hearing a word, and its root hairs curled up in sympathy:
“S-so, so pitiful!”
With its back turned, Xiao Tian released the plastic bag and squeaked a torrent of curses. Before Da Pang could even understand what was said, it continued dragging it forward, clearly wanting nothing to do with this human or the ginseng.
What a stubborn little thing!
Once Xiao Tian was far away, Huai Yu looked at Da Pang and hurriedly brought it inside. “It’s too hot outside, come in and play.”
Of all the mutated organisms at home, Da Pang was truly like a child, both in appearance and in behavior. And it wasn’t the kind of vexing child with a mouth like Kuang Biao, but the obedient, gentle kind that was very easy to deceive.
So, even though it had tried to sneak off initially, Huai Yu still found it incredibly cute.
Because of its ginseng nature, it didn’t like to be active in the summer. Seeing it come over so suddenly, she curiously sat cross-legged in front of Da Pang:
“Are you looking for me?”
Da Pang nodded, the thin stalk atop its head, crowned with a large cluster of leaves, rattling softly. Then, its body leaned forward, and it narrowly avoided tipping over onto its face again.
“Pfft!” This time, Huai Yu couldn’t hold it in.
But she quickly steadied Da Pang and inspected its leaves. “I forgot to learn how to grow ginseng—do you need me to prune these leaves?”
“No, no, no, no, no!”
It was rare for Da Pang not to stutter; it had said five words in one breath. Its root hairs held its big head steady, shaking its leaves with a loud rattle.
“I, I want to, to grow, grow a thicker, thicker stalk!”
“O-otherwise, my, my head, head can’t, can’t stay, stay up.”
But the chubby ginseng’s head was naturally huge!
Huai Yu stared at it for a while before understanding: “You want your stalk to grow thicker, is that it?”
Da Pang nodded eagerly. The leaves atop its head rattled forward, and then, finally unable to support its weight, its body—looking like a giant white radish—toppled toward the ground once again.
It arched its body repeatedly on the ground, its root hairs struggling to prop it back up:
“S-stalk, stalk, th-thicker, a-a little! Th-then, th-then, I w-won’t, won’t f-fall!”
It put an extra amount of effort into that last word. The moment it finished, its root hairs couldn’t hold the weight, and two of them snapped right before Huai Yu’s eyes.
Huai Yu: “…”
If she had known they were so brittle, why had she let it coax her into things earlier? This giant white radish was truly too easy to deceive!
She silently picked up the broken root hairs, placed them with the one from earlier, and decided to tie them up with a piece of thread to dry later. It was a shame—such good stuff, yet it was only attractive to mutated creatures.
Otherwise, if she sold them as simple tonics, they would be worth a lot of money.
Thinking about the few other plants she’d planted near the treehouse—they had only been given simple force-growth treatment and hadn’t been purified simultaneously—they hadn’t mutated like Da Pang. They only had high pollution values and grew a bit faster. Huai Yu decided that the next time she got her hands on a wild chicken, she would dig one up and try stewing it with the chicken!
Such tiny ginseng plants shouldn’t have much medicinal potency, right?
But for now… let’s just get Da Pang back on its feet, hahaha!
Once it stood up, Da Pang finally managed to support its own weight with great difficulty.
Huai Yu observed it and realized that when Da Pang first mutated, because the weather hadn’t been so hot yet, it had been quite proportional despite its lush leaves.
A big white radish with a thin stalk and a cluster of green leaves on top—its center of gravity had been quite stable.
It was precisely because of the extreme heat that plants were growing at their fastest. Between Huai Yu’s purified water and wood-ash fertilizer, Da Pang had been overfeeding itself!
Before she knew it, just like the other plants, it had grown a full head of leaves in midsummer.
However, its chubby white body hadn’t grown at all.
And so, it was like this: it was fine when rooted in the soil, but as soon as it tried to walk around, its root hairs would get tangled with the grass and leaves, causing it to fall to the ground and struggle for ages to climb back up…
This was really affecting Da Pang’s quality of life!
It was the only ginseng that could walk and run, and with the Rose Corridor here to guarantee its safety, it couldn’t keep tripping over itself like this!
Huai Yu understood, but—
“If I use more force-growth energy on you, I have no idea how big your body will grow.”
“For a ginseng to grow into someone like you, surely you must be one of a kind in this world? Can your body really keep growing?”
Da Pang was stunned, too.
But a moment later, its root hairs covered its entire head of green leaves: “I, I don’t want, don’t want to cut, cut the leaves!”
Honestly.
Huai Yu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry: It wasn’t this reluctant to part with its precious root hairs, so why was it so protective of these leaves that had no medicinal value?
She reached out her hand: “Alright, let’s give it a try.”
Her palm rested gently on Da Pang’s rough body. Da Pang, whose skin was far fairer than the yellowish bodies of other ginseng plants, stood there obediently. Strands of energy flowed from Huai Yu’s fingertips into its body. Da Pang became dazed, losing all sensation, as if it were being filled with energy.
She didn’t know how much time had passed—it might have been a moment, or it might have been a very long time—before Huai Yu withdrew her hand.
In the next instant, the ginseng standing before her finally couldn’t support itself. Its body swayed, and it toppled face-first onto the ground again.
This time, no matter how much it struggled, it couldn’t climb back up.
Huai Yu scooped it up, looked at the massive crown of green leaves that looked like it had been maintained by a professional gardener, and lowered her head, feeling a pang of guilt.
Chapter 246: Inquiring for News
Ginseng was aggrieved!
Ginseng wanted to say it out loud!
But it was a stutterer! So it felt even more aggrieved!
At this moment, its head full of green leaves rustled loudly, sounding just like its shattered heart:
“D-d-do, do, do ginseng, ginseng n-n-not, not n-need, need, need a-a-a f-face, face?”
This long, long sentence was its accusation against Huai Yu.
But… Huai Yu didn’t know what had happened either!
When she force-grew it, she had simply given it pure energy. Da Pang himself had grown leaves first instead of gaining body mass, so why should she take the blame for this?
However, the little stutterer was clearly the vulnerable one right now. Huai Yu quickly hugged it, doing her best to support its chubby, top-heavy body.
“Um… um… this can’t be blamed on me either!”
“This has to be your own doing! Ginseng doesn’t like direct light, but that doesn’t mean you don’t need any sunlight at all. Tell me, did you hide inside the treehouse and never come out?”
“When I give you my ability, it naturally grows toward wherever you need it most. You suddenly grew so many leaves because you need to engage in proper photosynthesis, right?”
“Look at the other trees; aren’t they lush and verdant in the middle of summer, too?”
She spoke with absolute certainty, as if it were an undeniable fact.
“R-r-really?” Da Pang was clearly bewildered by her logic.
It had indeed been rooted inside the treehouse where the light wasn’t great. Other ginseng plants seemed to have heads full of green leaves too—it was just that its own head was extra, extra, extra large now.
“Then…” it sounded utterly crestfallen. “I-I-I, c-can’t, can’t, w-walk, walk a-anymore!”
If it was top-heavy, it could only honestly stay rooted in the soil to grow. It could no longer scramble around in the grass like before, its root-hair legs treading the earth to sense all the different smells.
But it had already been rooted in the soil for a very, very long time!
It liked running around now!
In short, the ginseng was truly aggrieved!
Huai Yu fished out a pair of scissors. “Then… do you want me to help give your head a trim?”
The few root hairs at Da Pang’s sides instantly clapped down over the leaves atop its head, clearly very unwilling. Huai Yu looked it over, unsure if its weak root hairs could even grip a cane, so she had no choice but to deploy her ultimate trump card:
“Brother Zhou Qian!”
Before long, Zhou Qian walked in, wiping away his sweat. “Master, you called me—might as well have me sign an indentured servant contract today. Working as a long-term hand for you is no better than just selling myself directly for cash.”
Huai Yu giggled and played dumb. Zhou Qian’s moods had become increasingly casual lately, quite a contrast to the steady, reliable Defense Army soldier she had first met. But the more he was like this, the more she wanted to order him around…
Hiss!
How was it that she used to be so poor, yet now she possessed the mindset of a capitalist?
She quickly laughed guiltily. “Look at Da Pang, he can’t stand straight anymore, and several of his root hairs have already snapped. Can you make a walking stick for him?”
Zhou Qian stared at Da Pang, whose head was covered in lush greenery, and was left completely speechless.
“You…”
He wanted to say something but gave up in the end, grabbing the scissors directly. “Come here, a little trim will fix it.”
Da Pang began to struggle. “I, I, I—”
It stuttered “I” for ages, but the more anxious it got, the less it could speak. All it heard was a sharp snip from above. It froze for a second, then instantly burst into tears:
“M-m-my, my, l-l-leaves, leaves!” Sob, sob, sob. Being a little stutterer was so pitiful; it couldn’t even cry fluently.
In the next instant, however, it felt its body lighten as its entire chubby frame was scooped up into Zhou Qian’s arms. “Just teasing, I didn’t cut them.”
He held Da Pang up high with both hands, inspecting it carefully. This was likely the first time in the fat ginseng’s life it had stood at such a height to view the scenery. Even its green leaves perked up, swaying left and right, clearly finding it all very novel.
Zhou Qian then concluded: “A walking stick probably won’t hold him up. Tell you what—go back to the field and grow for a while, and I’ll make a support frame for you.”
…
The support frame was simple enough.
Zhou Qian went to the utility shed and rummaged through the pile of junk he had organized a while back. He dug out three swivel wheels and found a large resin flowerpot.
He hollowed out the bottom of the pot completely, distributing the three wheels evenly along the base. Around the rim of the pot, he used wire to secure four simple support brackets. With a few quick adjustments, the task was finished in no time.
Afterward, he tucked Da Pang inside and let go. “There, see if you’re still falling over.”
It still tipped a little, but the moment its body leaned, it was caught by the support frame. The two chubby ginseng legs at the bottom of the pot shifted, and the freshly oiled swivel wheels rolled smoothly forward…
It took even less effort than running on its own!
Although the massive crown of leaves atop its head still made it wobble slightly, because the pot was wide enough and the support frame kept its body within a small, controlled radius, it wouldn’t let its center of gravity tilt too far. And so—
“It-it, r-really, r-really, d-doesn’t, doesn’t f-fall!”
Zhou Qian inspected it closely and found that with the little thing fitted directly inside the pot, anyone looking from a distance wouldn’t notice the rapidly moving legs underneath. The top of the ginseng happened to reach right up to the rim of the flowerpot…
“Not bad.” He was quite satisfied too. “In the future, if someone comes by while you’re running around, just curl up inside this pot and don’t move. Don’t let anyone else discover that you can walk and talk.”
“Until your body grows larger, this will be your support frame.”
He clapped his hands and turned around, only to see Huai Yu looking at him with eyes full of adoration. “Brother Zhou Qian! You are amazing!”
Zhou Qian: “…”
“It’s not really that impressive.” It really had taken only a few moments of work, but seeing Huai Yu’s joyful expression, he couldn’t help but feel pleased as well. He then pointed outside. “All those vats and jars have been moved to the bamboo grove tunnel. They’re all clean inside.”
The temperature in the bamboo grove tunnel was lower than elsewhere, making it ideal for pickling vegetables without them spoiling. Seeing the whole row of containers, large and small, lined up in the distance was quite an impressive sight.
Right in front of them, the fat ginseng was already nestled in the dark green resin flowerpot, its two legs pattering away as it drove the swivel wheels forward through the grass with a bit of effort, looking immensely pleased.
Huai Yu then picked up the few root hairs from the table. “Brother Zhou Qian, do you want to drink some more ginseng tea?”
Zhou Qian paused, then nodded. “Mm.”
“Also, the broadcast this morning mentioned it’s going to rain over the next few days, and the temperature will drop a bit.”
“Once the rain stops, before the heat picks up again, let’s take a trip into the mountains.”
His expression turned serious. “If you can’t even handle going deep into Sanqing Mountain, then we drop the matter of the wilderness entirely. That place is not somewhere you can gamble with your life.”
Huai Yu nodded, her expression very solemn. “Alright!”
So how deep do we actually have to go? The plants on the mountain all have very good tempers!
The giant pine tree had been willing to give her pollen, and though the other mutated plants hadn’t borne fruit, they hadn’t argued or fought with her either. Some of the flowers bloomed beautifully, simply wishing to show themselves off…
In short, there shouldn’t be much of a comparison between Sanqing Mountain and the wilderness, right?
The mutated plants on the mountain were far too gentle!
Besides, she had gone quite far along the mountain path before. During that entire day’s journey, apart from Kuang Biao himself, she really hadn’t encountered a single ounce of danger.
She thought about it, then pulled out some paper and a pen. “I’ll go find Kuang Biao first to get some information about the situation in the mountains.”
