Chapter 277 | Chapter 278 | Chapter 279
Chapter 277: Broke
Heavens! Huai Yu was deeply touched! What an excellent neighbor! He had even explicitly included the extra compensation for the cleaning she did before! Boss Gao, anyone who wouldn’t offer their transaction code right now is simply not human!
But the moment their wristbands touched—
“Beep, beep.”
Transaction failed.
Gao Ming stared at his communicator for a few seconds. “Tang Hongji, it’s broken.”
Boss Tang let out a cold laugh. “It’s not broken. You’re just broke.”
“How many points do you think you have left?”
He used to have a decent amount of savings, but it had all been used to smooth things over and pull strings. Back when Gao Ming was first arrested, Tang had told him to act a bit more sincere, a bit more remorseful, a bit more like an ordinary person… but his acting skills were completely subpar! What do you do when the acting is subpar? You have to hand out points to smooth things over! In short, his already modest savings had become increasingly precarious.
Next came selling the car, which brought in only several tens of thousands of points. Building the house took 20,000, setting up the place with daily necessities took some, and buying instruments, materials, and the generator took another 40,000—and that was a stroke of luck since many instruments had already been hidden away beforehand.
How many points were left now? Slightly over 4,000 points.
It wasn’t even enough to settle the initial cleaning fee and the monthly salary for both of them.
Boss Tang remained expressionless. “I originally intended to use this money to buy you some instant meals and nutritional fluid, but since Xiao Yu is willing to take care of you—how about this: 2,000 points a month for food expenses. Xiao Yu, feed him well, let him eat whatever you eat, and I’ll settle the bill with you.”
“But, do not deliver food to him. Make him walk over himself. Otherwise, he’ll stay in his workshop until he draws his last breath.”
“As for the cleaning, do it yourself. I won’t even bother giving you a lecture on whether a grown man should be self-sufficient. Anyway, you’re broke now, so take care of it or don’t.”
He looked at the dumbfounded Huai Yu, giving an apologetic smile at this moment. “Um… cough, let me transfer 2,000 to you first.”
Huai Yu couldn’t help but burst out laughing. Zhou Qian glanced toward the direction of the toilet, feeling rather regretful at this moment—earning this money would have been even easier than selling vegetables! After all, tilling the earth was genuinely harder than scrubbing a toilet.
“Boss Tang, you made me miss out on an excellent boss.”
Huai Yu said with a giggle.
Boss Tang was also helpless. “There’s no other way, he’s broke—but then again, if he hadn’t insisted on building the house in this specific spot, a house that rudimentary could have been built for just over 6,000 points.”
In the end, when he was recruiting workers, everything was fine until they heard about the Rose Corridor. Even though Boss Tang repeatedly emphasized that it was far away, none of them dared to come—six years into the cataclysm, those who valued points over their lives had already died several times over, and the remaining ordinary people all possessed a great deal of survival wisdom.
Earning points was fine, but they wouldn’t touch anything remotely dangerous.
If not for that, they wouldn’t have ended up using ability users just to lay the brick walls!
Thinking of this, Boss Tang let out a bit of a sigh—if he hadn’t been afraid of exposing Huai Yu’s household situation, he had originally wanted to sign an internship contract with the military academy.
Dragging students who hadn’t graduated yet over to build houses for practice, where he could offer lower wages while providing them with ready-made materials to practice freely, wouldn’t that be a win-win situation for everyone! But that didn’t pan out, so the points had to be spent.
At this moment, Gao Ming’s sky had clearly collapsed.
However, he possessed a touch of obtuseness; despite his world collapsing, his expression remained completely unperturbed, his eyes dark and heavy. “Oh.”
He looked at Huai Yu again. “Where do you live? How long does it take to walk there?”
Huai Yu thought for a moment. “If you’re walking—about 15 minutes.”
“When you see a bamboo forest and a patch of sunflowers, oh, the sunflowers are gone now. Anyway, a bamboo forest and a house, that’s my home.”
Gao Ming didn’t know how perilous the geographical location was yet, merely nodding in silence at this moment, clearly lacking any sense of rebellion against his fate.
Huai Yu, however, was somewhat curious. “Um… do you miss Ketaro? Do you want me to bring it over for a visit? Also, the two goose eggs you researched and developed, Da Zai and Er Zai, I can bring them over to show you too.”
Her choice of words was very precise; “visit” and “show you” were clearly declarations of ownership, but Gao Ming still remained expressionless. “The goose eggs weren’t researched by me, I bought them from explorers at a high price—they were almost losing their vitality, so I just tried using some new formulas on them.”
“The results of the mutation are unknown.”
“As for Ketaro… its mutation direction was catalyzed and induced by me, taking over three years from start to finish. But as you can see, the research results were very unsatisfactory.”
Huai Yu glared at him. “How is it unsatisfactory?! Ketaro is the most adorable Taro in the entire world!”
A flicker of incomprehension flashed through Gao Ming’s dark eyes. “Most adorable? But it isn’t of much use. Though it is still very good, very quiet.”
“I cultivated it to help me clean up the trash in the laboratory—but it clearly has a mind of its own, only touching plants, with zero interest in metal and anything else.”
“Although this direction of mutagenesis also holds great potential, it’s clearly not what I wanted… Is it cleaning up the house at your place?”
This time, it was Huai Yu and Boss Tang’s turn to be dumbfounded.
Good grief! A creature as mysterious and formidable as Ketaro was used to do chores and clean up? Gao Ming, oh Gao Ming!
The look in Boss Tang’s eyes was exceptionally sorrowful: You went down the wrong path entirely!
In any case, Huai Yu was thoroughly determined not to return Ketaro!
Presently, with her hands on her hips, she asked with quite an imposing manner, “Tell me, what do you want to eat for lunch?”
Feed him until he’s completely stuffed, let him eat exceptionally well, and ideally make him owe her a massive debt! That way, in case he ever opened his mouth to ask for Ketaro back, she would have an excuse to stall! Poor Taro, it probably never even ate its fill in the laboratory! It had to absorb nutrients by constantly chewing on plants; the Kelang pills it rolled out carried efficacy, and its own body could absorb them too.
No wonder its entire body was a glossy, shimmering black after being raised for only a short while. How miserable this poor child must have been before!
Huai Yu instantly felt a surge of heartache! And she decided that when she went back at noon, she would pull up a ginseng root hair and feed it to Ketaro to give it a proper supplement!
But Gao Ming hadn’t intended to ask for Ketaro back at all. For one thing, it truly wasn’t of much use, and for another, he couldn’t even feed himself, so what use would it be to have it back?
At this moment, he hesitated for a fraction of a second. “Tang Hongji said the vegetables from your house have a low mutation value—is it the same for what I’m eating?”
“If it is, then anything goes.”
“If the mutation value exceeds 15, I’ll just drink nutritional fluid myself.”
“What kind of nonsense is that?” Huai Yu patted her chest as she promised, “Is a mutation value of 15 something humans can eat? Even the chicks at our house don’t eat that!”
“At noon, we’re making stir-fried tomatoes and eggs, winter melon and minced meat soup, and tiger-skin green chilies—you’re not a picky eater, right?”
The chicks had successfully laid the very first egg of their lives at the beginning of the month. Aside from the ones they had eaten consecutively during this period, the three hens had saved up four eggs by now. It might be a little scarce for three people to eat, but it was truly VIP treatment! After all, it was already the second half of the year, and only a tiny amount of chicken eggs had begun flowing into the market consecutively, with the price being dead expensive!
If it weren’t for a VIP, whose family would willingly make stir-fried eggs!
Sure enough!
The moment she finished asking this question, she saw the always placid Gao Ming’s throat roll once, after which he shook his head. “Not allergic to a single thing.”
Chapter 278: Whipped by Bamboo Strips
Huai Yu fell silent.
After a short while, she suppressed her secret delight and asked, “Are you allergic to eggs?”
Gao Ming shook his head blankly. “No, I’m not allergic.”
Boss Tang couldn’t bear to watch any longer. “He used to be allergic back when he was still a coddled scion. But after a few years of the cataclysm, survival on nutritional fluid with all its ingredients, along with medicine, injections, and various new biopharmaceuticals… he’s long since cured.”
“Xiao Yu, just feed him whatever you want, don’t worry about it. I’ve prepared allergy medicine at his house just in case.”
Boss Tang’s deep, fatherly concern moved Huai Yu greatly. “Are you still not going to eat with us?”
Boss Tang fell silent for a moment. “Next time.”
“Next time I come, if Gao Ming is still doing well, I’ll join.”
When it came to treasuring his own life, he wasn’t lacking in caution either.
An autumn wind swept past, causing Gao Ming to let out a sharp “Achoo!” Boss Tang instantly flared up again. “Gao Ming, are you wearing your long johns or what?!”
Huai Yu and Zhou Qian exchanged a glance, thinking to themselves that it was only September, so why on earth would anyone be wearing long johns? Boss Tang really was too much of an overbearing father figure.
But regardless, the new neighbor didn’t seem hard to get along with, nor did he seem particularly useful.
To this, Zhou Qian could only sigh.
In the end, he was still the only hired hand.
……
Ever since autumn began, the quality of the meals at Huai Yu’s house had skyrocketed.
This wasn’t just because the chicks had finally started laying eggs, but also because the autumn days were crisp and the sun was pleasantly dry. Not only had the homemade sauces finished fermenting under the sun, but she had also prepared plenty of pickled and salted vegetables. On top of that, the recent bumper harvest of soybeans, mung beans, and wild yams meant that the variety of their three daily meals expanded considerably.
In particular, every morning she would spread sauce over a griddled flatbread, roll it up with a fried egg, and wrap it around a handful of crisp, tender mung bean sprouts or a couple of green leaves. It felt like absolute bliss.
Zhou Qian could easily devour three of these wraps a morning!
Of course, he was only allotted one or two eggs, because the chicks laid at most four eggs a day, and more commonly three—never any more than that.
Huai Yu was actually planning to save them up. Once she had several dozen, she wanted to make salted eggs to bring with them when they headed out into the wilderness! Now that Gao Ming had been added to the equation, the task of hoarding eggs became even harder to accomplish.
Sigh.
Now that it was already October, the lotus leaves in the pond had long since withered. She had gathered the dried leaves to use for steaming a few batches of lotus leaf rice.
Setting aside whether the flavor was exceptional or not, it certainly contained real lotus leaves!
The food was ready at 11:55 AM. The two of them waited by the dining table for a few minutes, and right on the dot at one minute before noon, Gao Ming entered the house exactly as expected.
Heaven knows what kind of experiment he had been conducting, but his jacket was torn in several places. Having gone unkempt for a while, his hair had grown long enough to block his eyes, so it was currently held back by a wire headband that Huai Yu had considerately provided.
His beard was a bit of a mess too, but because ants had crawled out of it once during a meal, Zhou Qian had pinned him down and shaved it for him—and because Gao Ming flatly refused to cooperate, two slender bloody scratches had been sliced onto his face.
As for now…
Huai Yu scrutinized his face up and down, finally letting out a sigh of relief. “The scratches are gone!”
Gao Ming, however, didn’t care in the slightest, focusing entirely on devouring his food.
He was always like this—eating unhurriedly but in absolute silence, putting down his chopsticks and leaving the moment he finished, as if he were racing against the clock to conduct his research.
Yet after all this time, no one had seen him research anything of note. Zhou Qian had initially harbored some complaints about this, but the moment he thought of Ketaro, his frustration instantly vanished.
That’s right, Ketaro still remembered his former master! Every day, it would cradled a ball and come over to steal a glance—look, even while Gao Ming was eating, it was standing by the door watching again!
Seeing this happen for the first time, Huai Yu’s heart ached terribly for the creature.
She had even specially led Ketaro to Gao Ming’s house, but this time, it was Ketaro who was unwilling. Its wings fluttered wildly while its antennae straightened up rigid; in short, it absolutely refused to step foot inside his house.
Was this… a case of homesickness mixed with trepidation?
Huai Yu was bewildered.
It wasn’t until Boss Tang came over for a visit once and saw this that he couldn’t help but sigh again. “Ketaro, Gao Ming doesn’t need his place tidied up while eating anymore. Go play by yourself.”
Turning around, he explained to Huai Yu, “As you know, Ketaro was originally raised to tidy up the room and the house. Gao Ming has terrible self-care skills, so Ketaro got used to waiting whenever he ate…”
“I reckon Ketaro is probably afraid that Gao Ming will make a mess of your house, so it’s specially waiting here to clean up after him.”
Huai Yu was deeply moved!
“Ketaro!” she promised once more. “The ginseng I picked for you last time is setting seed. As soon as the seeds mature, I’ll pull it up and give it to you to eat!”
She could use the remaining seeds to force-grow and replant them, and next year she would have dozens of little ginseng plants. Though they would be small and their efficacy limited, this type was the least conspicuous to sell, which was exactly what Huai Yu had planned long ago!
Ketaro curled its antennae slightly, finally leaving in thorough satisfaction.
And now, although Boss Tang wasn’t present, Huai Yu recalled their past encounters and couldn’t help but call out to Gao Ming, “We’ve been neighbors for over half a month now. Don’t you plan on saying a few more words to us?”
Gao Ming cast a deadpan glance at her. “The food is delicious. Thank you for your hard work.”
His words were polite enough, but spoken with that stiff, wooden face, it sounded almost like a mockery. Fortunately, Huai Yu understood his personality and sighed. “Don’t just focus blindly on your research. The scenery around here is so beautiful, don’t you plan on familiarizing yourself with the environment?”
“No need.” Gao Ming remained completely placid. “There is a bamboo forest behind your house, and the bamboo forest and the Rose Corridor have strangely linked up to form a bamboo forest tunnel that serves as your warehouse. You’ve opened up an unexpectedly large number of vegetable patches, and Zhou Qian is very capable.”
“Knowing this is enough. Nothing else matters.”
He was practically a monk, entirely devoid of desires or pursuits, leaving Huai Yu utterly speechless.
After a long pause, she murmured, “But my bamboo forest can talk, and it even wants to date a sunflower… I wanted to ask if you had anything to talk about with that little chatterbox.”
If he was willing to chat, she could considerately contribute a handful of sunflower seeds to Gao Ming, letting him use his choking way of speaking to properly discipline the gossipy Kuang Biao.
Otherwise, every time she turned around to crack sunflower seeds, she would have to listen to Kuang Biao tragically mourning the complete destruction of its first love’s corpse…
Huai Yu, who currently had the corpse of its first love in her mouth: …
Zhou Qian, who especially favored the dark plum-flavored corpse: …
Lost in thought, she failed to notice that the opposite Gao Ming went rigid the moment he heard the word “bamboo.” A moment later, with a terrible expression on his face, he stood up:
“What is so good about a mature bamboo whose mind is entirely filled with romance? It will only corrupt children. If you need it, I have a saw at my place.”
This was the first time he had openly expressed aversion to something. Linking this to how he would intentionally take a long detour to avoid passing through the bamboo forest whenever he walked over from Area 3, Huai Yu understood—
There was no rhyme or reason to love and hate; Gao Ming must have been soundly whipped by bamboo strips in his past.
Fine, she couldn’t force him on this.
But watching his figure recede into the distance, she still had one more question to ask: “The temperature is about to drop soon, and we plan to install a stove in our house—if we install one in your house, will you remember to stuff firewood inside?”
Chapter 279: Winter Preparations
This was a good question, and Gao Ming thought about it seriously.
Constantly needing to add firewood would be a hassle.
If he didn’t add wood once the temperature dropped, his cold hands and feet would affect his efficiency, which would also be a hassle.
Moreover, according to Huai Yu’s explanation, installing a stove in the small living room with iron pipes running through would ensure that the bedrooms and workshop on both sides wouldn’t get too cold—especially the workshop, where many instruments utilized biological materials that couldn’t handle low temperatures.
He came to a painful decision. “Let’s burn coal.”
“If the chunks of coal are larger and given less oxygen, they will last much longer.”
Although the temperature would be quite low that way, he wouldn’t need to add it frequently; following the rhythm of his three daily meals would be enough.
Huai Yu blinked. “We were planning to burn coal anyway.”
Boss Tang had said he had a channel to buy more of those large chunks of coal. It just so happened that Zhou Qian planned to completely remodel the storage shed, and he was heading out today to buy supplies.
When the house was built, in order to rush the job and be efficient, and considering that Huai Yu would be living alone, they hadn’t built a separate kitchen for her. But now that there were more people eating at home, cooking had become quite inconvenient.
Although the storage shed was currently working fine, once the temperature dropped, chopping vegetables or cooking while the icy wind howled would be truly miserable.
Especially now that they had a car, they could buy cement and bricks to their heart’s content, and Zhou Qian could handle the construction all by himself. Since they were doing a centralized bulk purchase, he had to ask Gao Ming.
But Gao Ming didn’t care about these things. Since he had already given his answer, he held out his wristband. “There are 1,600 points left. Is it enough?”
Huai Yu blinked. “We haven’t even asked the price yet… Let’s just buy it back first.”
If it really wasn’t enough, his ‘Daddy Tang’ would cover it.
Gao Ming still wore a weary face, while Zhou Qian reminded him, “You said yesterday that you would shave your beard today. Don’t make me do it tonight.”
Gao Ming: “…”
He cast a glance toward the corner of Huai Yu’s living room. “Even though you are criticizing my unkempt appearance with such confidence, it doesn’t mean you maintain the place very well yourselves—at least mushrooms aren’t growing inside my house.”
Having said his piece, he walked away triumphantly.
Huai Yu and Zhou Qian looked at the log stump poking out of the hole in the corner floor, and the massive cluster of tender yellow mutated golden oyster mushrooms on top of it, and they couldn’t help but feel annoyed.
The golden oyster mushroom wanted to find a warm place to survive the winter; what did that have to do with her tidying up the house! When all was said and done, it was all Kuang Biao’s fault. If it hadn’t poked such a large hole first…
“Hey, hey, hey!”
Kuang Biao protested from outside the window, “I may have poked the hole, but you dug up the bamboo shoot and the mushroom took over the spot. Why am I still getting blamed for this?”
That Gao Ming is really a piece of work! Although they hadn’t met, the golden oyster mushroom had been lonely for too long, and now it could constantly switch bodies to gossip!
Therefore, Kuang Biao also knew that he didn’t look like a good person!
The golden oyster mushroom had given him such a large plate to eat yesterday! The moment he finished eating, he refused to acknowledge it. Pah!
……
Even though they were criticized, the things that needed to be prepared still had to be prepared.
Only Huai Yu was a bit hesitant. “Aren’t we supposed to start preparing things for the wilderness? If we fix up the house now, we’ll leave as soon as the temperature drops next month, and no one will be home. Why don’t we handle it when we get back?”
Zhou Qian shook his head. “You handle the provisions, I’ll take care of fixing up the house.”
“Otherwise, when we return in the winter, not only will the materials be unable to set, but things might also go up in price, and it won’t be convenient to use.”
When it came to enjoying life, Huai Yu actually had a broader outlook than Zhou Qian. At this moment, she nodded repeatedly. “Alright, let’s do it now.”
Therefore, she didn’t know that Zhou Qian actually harbored another hidden worry—if they were injured in the wilderness, on the off chance they were fortunate enough to return, at least the house would provide a more comfortable and reassuring environment.
Even for recuperating from injuries, it would be much more comfortable.
Furthermore, he wasn’t completely fobbing Huai Yu off; the freezing cold would make construction difficult, so right now was indeed the best time.
If nothing else, when winter arrived, Da Zai and Er Zai couldn’t possibly keep living in the bamboo forest, right?
He calculated the things he needed to prepare, and then drove the car out.
According to Huai Yu, the trading market sold cement, sand, and bricks, but Zhou Qian only found out after calling Boss Tang that the market dealt in retail for small households to patch things up; they couldn’t provide large bulk orders.
In addition, the prices weren’t low.
“Nowadays, families don’t have cars, so our trading market has become increasingly standardized, even offering tricycle delivery services—people from the urban area buy here so they don’t have to carry it back themselves.”
“If you want a large bulk order, go straight to the manufacturers in the Northern District to buy. You have a car anyway, so it’s convenient.”
After asking for the detailed address, Zhou Qian drove straight over. There were indeed quite a few residents planning to make preparations before winter set in, and the stock of various distributors in the urban areas was tight, so they were currently queuing up in front of the main gate.
Production capacity was limited; this once-famous company now had only a tiny handful of staff left, and they hadn’t even been willing to hire more hands for moving goods. After placing his order, Zhou Qian watched those bosses grunt and groan as they moved goods with the workers they had hired, and he couldn’t help but sigh.
There was also a worker squatting by the entrance waiting for labor, but after Zhou Qian asked around, he found out that the man had a past back injury and couldn’t lift heavy objects; he was staying here to see if any family needed to hire a carpenter or the like.
While they were chatting, someone over there was already shouting that the goods they wanted had been bagged. However, the only two handcarts were being snatched back and forth by others. He watched for a moment, glad that he had come prepared.
At this moment, he took off his jacket, revealing the old clothes he had worn intentionally underneath. Without a second word, he shouldered a bag of sand.
After carrying bags back and forth like this for over a dozen trips, the cement and river sand were all piled up in the truck bed. Only a large heap of bricks remained, requiring him to use a brick carrier to lift and transfer them to the truck by himself.
In this October weather of only ten to twenty degrees, the exertion managed to leave him drenched in sweat.
Right at this moment, several low-profile, battered vehicles drove over from outside. Bai Yu sat inside a car she had specially sourced, and as she took a casual look at the road while driving, she couldn’t help but freeze.
“Stop the car,” she ordered.
The car quickly pulled over to the side of the road. The driver was one of her team members, who couldn’t help but turn his head in curiosity. “What’s wrong?”
“I see someone familiar.”
Bai Yu stared across the road at the man who was working painstakingly, carrying bricks. The clothes on his body were already pilling and frayed, stained with traces of mud and ash, leaving her somewhat dazed.
“An acquaintance?” The team member also looked over, then raised his eyebrows in surprise. “His strength is pretty good!”
The bricks stacked in all directions on the carrier he held were clearly not light, yet he could carry them effortlessly with flying strides; he truly belonged to the category of people with outstanding physical fitness.
Bai Yu, however, knit her brows. “That is the member of the Defense Army I told you about, the one who dragged out the black widow spider alone and nearly counter-killed it—but when I left, I heard that his life hung in the balance in the medical pod, and it looked like he wasn’t going to make it.”
