Chapter 106: Rainbow Keta Rō (Part 2)
The glass jar was now filled with a shallow layer of colorful little balls, looking like it held the dreams of a rainbow.
If Huai Yu hadn’t personally washed that jar, you’d never guess it was previously used to store pickles.
She stared at the multicolored balls inside, truly curious—what on earth was Keta Rōu using to make them?
Back at Boss Tang’s place, they were all black balls, likely made from whatever random garbage it could scavenge.
In the bamboo grove, it had given her a green one.
And now, at home, she had red, yellow, purple, blue, and white…
She stepped outside a few paces, “Keta Rōu! Keta Rō!”
Just as she was calling, she spotted clusters of red and yellow on the grass ahead.
Huai Yu walked over and saw Keta Rō standing there, holding a yellow dandelion flower in its front claws, shoving it into its mouth. On the ground was a pile of shredded yellow fragments.
A breeze blew by, sending some of the topmost pieces fluttering away.
“Aiya!”
Huai Yu felt a little regret.
Keta Rōu was already munching on the next dandelion petal.
Beside it was a pile of sky-blue veronica persica flowers, tiny and stacked adorably. She couldn’t imagine how Keta Rōu had collected so many.
There were also purple ones—though she only found two tiny, stripped-clean sprigs of lilac nearby.
But something was different this time. Among the piles, there were also several rainbow-colored balls.
And oddly enough, they really were rainbow-colored. Somehow Keta Rōu had learned to blend the colors perfectly—it was oddly eye-catching.
Huai Yu sat down quietly, watching Keta Rōu work. She felt herself relaxing, even getting a bit sleepy.
Then she saw Keta Rōu munching on a few green leaves—but the bits it spat out were colorful.
She perked up instantly, “What kind of leaf is that? It actually changes color?”
She picked one up—looked just like a dandelion leaf!
Strange. Bamboo leaves were green, and made green balls. Purple flowers made purple ones… but dandelion leaves gave off vibrant, colorful scraps?
Even more surprising, Keta Rōu soon chomped on another wild plant with small yellow flowers—wild celery?
No—is that Saxifraga stolonifera?
“Keta Rōu! You can’t eat that, it’s poisonous!”
She reached out to stop it, but Keta Rōu obediently let her remove the plant. Yet, when it opened its mouth again, it still spat out colorful scraps.
Huai Yu fell silent.
After a while, she put the plant back, “If you’re not afraid of poison, I guess… you can keep doing your thing.”
It didn’t seem clueless. The piles of red, yellow, blue flowers and balls were all neatly sorted.
Even the blossoms looked carefully picked—all at peak bloom.
With that level of attention, Keta Rōu must have known what it was eating.
She studied the leaves and petals around it again. Most of the other plants produced balls in colors close to their originals, whether light or dark.
Only this batch in front of Keta Rōu—from dandelion to saxifrage to plantain—were all medicinal herbs.
Potent ones, too.
And once Keta Rōu chewed them, they turned into dazzling rainbows.
And it looked completely fine.
So… could it be that Keta Rō’s real ability was immunity to all poisons?
Huai Yu stared a while longer, then finally reached out and stroked Keta Rōu’s smooth back shell, “Alright, you keep playing here. I’m going to build your new house.”
She hadn’t cleaned up the bamboo stalks she dragged home yet.
Keta Rō’s new home wasn’t by the chicken coop, but on the other side of the front door.
Huai Yu carefully paved the floor with green bricks, laid thick dry grass on top, then lined up chopped bamboo poles and covered the top with a waterproof tarp…
The tarp had been cut from the old treehouse one. Too damaged for large-scale use, but perfect in small patches—for the chickens or for Keta Rōu.
And since Keta Rōu seemed to love making balls, the house was made extra roomy. She even dug out a big white porcelain bowl that Zhou Qian had given her.
A white bowl full of rainbow balls—Keta Rōu would be thrilled.
Now that it was dark, she grabbed a basket to go collect Keta Rōu’s latest creations and bring this busy little guy home.
But just as she stood in front of it with the basket, Keta Rōu’s wings trembled, and it turned its gaze toward a distant road half-hidden behind sparse woods.
Huai Yu looked in the same direction.
In the night breeze, she heard faint car engines—one, two, three… headlights came from afar and quickly sped past into the distance.
“Hm?”
She was curious.
“Another midnight operation?”
But the Rose Corridor hadn’t issued any alerts today.
Still… for some reason, her grip on the basket tightened. Her heart felt like something heavy had settled over it.
She looked down at obedient little Keta Rōu and gently patted its shell, “Come on. Let’s go home.”
Keta Rō clutched a freshly-made rainbow ball, watching as Huai Yu knelt and gently scooped the rest into the basket. Then it followed her back obediently.
Its two back legs, once used for rolling dung, were now strong and steady for walking upright with a ball in hand. As it walked, its tiny wings flapped open and shut.
Huai Yu glanced back and burst into laughter.
“So cute.”
“Keta Rō’s really happy now, huh?”
“There’s so much stuff here… and it’s free. Isn’t it better than the trading market? Tomorrow we’ll go up the mountain—there’ll be even more.”
“Have you ever been up a mountain before?”
Meanwhile, in the Flower City, in the central hospital that Huai Yu had never set foot in, night had already fallen. The hospital entrance was nearly empty.
But an ambulance, sirens wailing and lights flashing, roared down the wide roads and stopped abruptly.
As soon as the door opened, doctors and nurses jumped out. Together, they rushed a gurney forward—still pressing on the bleeding patient.
“Go, go, go!”
“From the Wasteland! Hurry! Thirteen critically injured, twenty-four lightly injured, two still being resuscitated at the roadside—”
“Mobilize everyone! Whoever’s available, now—”
“Get the doctors! All departments, move!”
It had begun.
