Chapter 202: Picking Vegetables and Preparing
Huai Yu stood in the vegetable field with a basket, shouting toward Zhou Qian, who was still huffing and digging: “How many people are coming tonight?”
Zhou Qian stomped his foot, reminded the creeping vines to behave, and then calculated: “Twelve!”
Huai Yu thought about his appetite, turned back to the utility shed, and quietly swapped her basket for two large ones.
Potatoes: dug up two plants first. She harvested 14 large potatoes, each about the size of a fist.
Sweet potatoes: turned over the vines, trimmed the overly dense and old ones, bundled five bunches of tender ones with a piece of grass, and left the rest at the edge of the field—Big Cub and Second Cub would bring their chicks to eat those.
Soybeans: not ripe yet, so no rush—everyone knew soybeans at this stage tasted bad, no need to draw attention.
Chili peppers: half a basket of red and green ones.
Cucumbers: also half a basket, plus five thick, bright yellow old cucumbers. Whether stir-fried with chili or stewed with meat, they’d be delicious.
Eggplants: picked more than ten; hers were round, plump purple eggplants, not too big but with great texture. Huai Yu thought she’d force another batch to ripen soon for pickling, which should last till winter.
Tomatoes: these weren’t fully red but had patches of green and yellow—still good to eat. Huai Yu ate them like fruit anyway.
Not much else to hope for—aside from a row of small peach trees near the pond, there were no other fruit trees. Even though Huai Yu had been diligently urging them to grow, the branches were only about a meter high now.
Who knew how long until they bore fruit—probably ages.
But since Zhou Qian was already her neighbor, she figured she could be a bit bolder and use more of her powers. Hmm, she’d urge them again tomorrow.
After picking about 20-30 tomatoes, her two baskets were full to the brim.
She stared for a while and then went back to get another basket. With big eaters like Zhou Qian, two baskets might not be enough.
She also dug up over ten iron-stick yams. She wasn’t sure if they were bringing any meat, but these would be great stewed in meat broth—soft, tender, and making the soup really tasty.
She pulled up a bunch of peanuts too. Covered in moist soil, the tender, pale yellow peanuts looked fresh. Huai Yu skillfully shook off the mud by banging the plants hard on the ground, then sat on the field ridge, plucked the peanuts, and filled another half-basket.
“Little house, red cover, inside lives a fat white guy…”
While patting the mud, she suddenly noticed a field mouse peeking sneakily: “Xiao Tian!”
Huai Yu was delighted: “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Thinking back, she’d been coming and going early and late, and Xiao Tian wouldn’t visit at night—so it made sense she hadn’t seen him. But she’d been home every day lately…
“Oh, have you been hiding because of strangers?”
Last time, when they ran into Lin Xuefeng at night, he trapped Xiao Tian in a water wheel, spinning it around until it was dizzy before letting it out.
Huai Yu didn’t know if Xiao Tian liked it, but later she found a pink plastic hamster wheel in the junk pile and left it at his old burrow.
No way around it—Xiao Tian was shy and still wouldn’t show her his new home.
Generously, Huai Yu grabbed a handful of fresh peanuts and handed them over: “Want me to dry them for you?”
“Oh, and Zhou Qian’s not a bad guy. I told him I have a field mouse friend—he won’t hurt you.”
“But don’t steal from his house! If he catches you and hits you dead, I’ll have to forgive him!”
Xiao Tian stood up, his round eyes glaring, squeaking furiously—it sounded like cursing.
But Huai Yu didn’t understand!
So she grabbed another handful of peanuts: “Want me to shell them for you? Don’t stash these fresh ones in your nest, okay?”
Xiao Tian was truly mad, but the peanuts were just too tempting! So fresh, with such low mutation values—way better than what he had stored before!
Of course, he didn’t know these peanuts were grown thanks to the seeds he’d left in Huai Yu’s place.
But anyway, the worldly-wise Xiao Tian calmed down. Faced with two huge handfuls of peanuts, he was momentarily stunned.
After a while, he grabbed one and ran off. Before long, he brought back three more mice—one big, two small.
Huai Yu blinked: “You solved your mouse problem so fast?”
“But only two babies per litter—doesn’t that seem a bit unproductive for your species?”
Such ruthless words—an absolute blow to the heart of a field mouse!
Xiao Tian squeaked angrily again.
Sometimes he seemed smart, understanding human speech; other times, he pretended to be dumb. Huai Yu had no idea if he was mutated or how exactly he had mutated.
But looking at the two curious little field mice, she thought—maybe the mutation was in their reproductive ability.
After all, what field mice work this hard and only have two babies per litter?
Xiao Tian’s family busily hauled the peanuts away while Huai Yu clapped the dirt off her hands and picked a big bunch of greens.
She finally piled a layer of long beans on top—three overflowing baskets of veggies in total. That should be enough for a dozen big eaters, right?
By the time she tidied up the sweet potato vines, it was already 4:00 p.m. With summer here, the days were longer, and the sun was still blindingly bright when Zhou Qian came to check things out—and was stunned:
“That much?”
“Yeah!” Huai Yu sighed.
“You alone can eat a huge bowl.”
Zhou Qian smiled wryly:
“That’s because of my bio-prosthetics—they need a lot of energy. Ordinary people don’t…”
He trailed off.
Because of their intense training and the lack of nutrition in today’s food, everyone actually ate a lot. Huai Yu’s haul would accidentally help them all fill their stomachs.
So he said no more. Huai Yu struggled to lift the baskets, face red and staggering, but Zhou Qian grabbed one in each hand: “I’ll bike these back first.”
He tied a rack to the back of his bike, hooked the baskets on either side, and rode off smoothly.
—Long legs were amazing.
Huai Yu was full of envy.
She went back inside to tidy up and, after much hesitation, decided to bring half a basin of her precious wild chicken jerky too.
She only had three basins in total and had already eaten half of one. Now she was giving away another half—no more after this!
It pained her so much.
If it weren’t for hoping to have more opportunities at the highway entrance later, she wouldn’t be so generous.
When Zhou Qian returned to pick her up and saw the stainless steel basin of meat, he laughed: “Told you they’d bring meat…”
