Chapter 215: Heavy Rainstorm
How should ginseng be processed? Neither of the two people present had any experience, so in the end, they chose the clumsy method—
Sun-drying.
They simply dried it in the sun.
Under the scorching heat of 30 to 40 degrees Celsius, the thin ginseng roots were tied with ropes at the door, spinning in the wind, quickly beginning to shrink.
Once they shrank, they became even finer. With the bright sunlight, Huaiyu stared at them until she almost got a squint. Without looking at the rope, it was hard to find them at all.
“How many days of sun exposure will it take to be effective?”
Zhou Qian thought for a moment and cautiously answered, “Three days, maybe?”
“Alright!” Huaiyu took out her notebook and noted the date: “We’ll collect it after three days, then wait a month or two to try it and see if it works.”
And now—
Huaiyu looked at Zhou Qian. “Zhou Qian, do you want to buy a fan?”
The weather was just too hot.
Zhou Qian shook his head. “What fan? Didn’t you say you want to buy a car? I can just move in here to sleep at night.”
With both the Rose Corridor and Kuang Biao present, there wasn’t a single mosquito here. Now, aside from working in the morning and evening, the two of them had set up camp here.
Looking at the overlapping rose branches by his side, Zhou Qian couldn’t believe that he was actually so bold now.
However, it wasn’t completely free from interruptions.
At least every day, those lovey-dovey courtship dramas were hard for him to endure.
Over the past half month, the sunflowers had grown several feet taller, and every inch of their growth was being closely observed by the nearby Kuang Biao.
“Xiao Yu, Xiao Yu! You’re not working now, could you read a poem for me?”
“Xiao Yu, Xiao Yu! The poem you picked yesterday wasn’t good, could you read the original one again?”
“I like the quiet, gentle sunflower. Could you read it again?”
Every day, he would make various rambling requests, and every day, a few of his branches would be broken by the big cubs, only for him to repeat the same thing the next day.
Now—
“Zhou Qian, Zhou Qian, you’re older, you read two poems.”
“Why not pick one today? After thinking about it carefully, Xiao Yu might be very in line with the public’s aesthetic, otherwise, why would the big and second cubs like her so much?”
“Or maybe it’s because you give a sense of security. How about you read poems from now on?”
“Otherwise, if my girlfriend falls for someone else before she grows up, wouldn’t my head be green?”
Zhou Qian: “… isn’t your head already green?”
When he said that, Kuang Biao was displeased: “Where’s it green? Where’s it green? This is my survival state, it’s my biological display.”
“What I meant by green on the top of the head is more of a mental thing. Do you understand the concept?”
“Ah, you’re really so crude. You should read more poetry, it’ll help refine yourself.”
Zhou Qian almost burst out laughing.
If it weren’t for the fact that he couldn’t beat him and considering Huaiyu said Kuang Biao was only six years old, he really would—
Wait a minute!
At this moment, he put down the metal rack he was adjusting, which he had picked up from a pile of junk, and suddenly got curious.
“You always talk about your girlfriend, your girlfriend… has the sunflower even responded to you?”
What a fatal topic!
Huaiyu was cutting eggplant when she suddenly perked up.
Kuang Biao immediately shouted, “Does love really need a response? Can’t we have a tacit understanding?”
“You humans are really so superficial.”
“Even if it doesn’t respond to me now, so what? We’ve known each other since childhood, and once it becomes aware, it will definitely accept my pursuit.”
Zhou Qian: …
He hesitated as he looked at the large patch of sunflowers ahead. Because they were mutated and tall sunflowers, after being purified and nurtured, they had grown to nearly 2 meters tall.
In another month, when they bloom, they might even exceed the height of the house. But despite their height, they still showed no signs of awakening, which seemed to be something Huaiyu had intentionally controlled.
Then—
Zhou Qian suppressed his laughter. “What if the sunflowers don’t respond even after they bloom and bear fruit? Does that count as a broken heart?”
Kuang Biao never expected this situation!
How could they not have awareness?
The Rose Corridor has awareness, he has awareness, the ginseng has awareness, even the two non-speaking weeds by the pond have awareness!
How could the sunflower not?
“It’s impossible!” he said firmly. “We mutated plants can easily gain awareness.”
Though most of them were simpler, even less aware than the weeds by the pond, at most they could feel hunger, thirst, or anger. Growth and reproduction were their instincts.
So… he remembered when the sunflower was first planted, its mutation value was one of the highest among the plants Huaiyu had brought back. How could it not have awareness?
But somehow, just thinking about it made the entire bamboo forest uneasy. It shook its bamboo leaves and said fiercely, “It will gain awareness sooner or later!”
“Then, it will recite poetry to me. As a mere human, you can’t even think about it, and even thinking about it is a crime.”
Zhou Qian: …
He put down the rack in his hands and thought again: Have we really reached the point where we’re casually chatting with bamboo?
It feels like the life-and-death experience in the wilderness was from a distant past.
But after this interruption, Kuang Biao stopped insisting on them reading poems to the sunflowers and instead began to stretch his branches in the wind every day, bending down to secretly touch the sunflower’s leaves and then lightly poking them.
“When will you speak to me?”
“Do you want a polluted rain?”
At that moment, it seemed like Kuang Biao had become a harbinger of doom, as the next day’s weather forecast once again predicted heavy rain.
The heavy rain started in the morning, not long after the morning broadcast. Large drops of rain fell one by one, quickly merging into a loud, heavy downpour.
Huaiyu stared at the eggplants she had just hung out to dry yesterday. The moisture hadn’t dried yet, and after a few days of continuous rain, they were bound to rot. She could only grumble and take them down.
“We’ll have eggplant for the next few days.”
Zhou Qian sighed. “Eggplant is best when stewed with meat.”
But then he looked outside the door, feeling an involuntary resistance and the restless mountain climber vine on his leg, both signaling that this rain was no ordinary one.
Even Huaiyu stared at the door and then suddenly said, “This rainwater is so dirty!”
A moment later, both of them fell silent.
Having had experience, they realized that after the heavily polluted continuous rains of spring, another heavily polluted storm was coming in the summer.
When Huaiyu looked through the back window to see the outside, she saw that in the midst of the strong winds and torrential rain, new bamboo shoots were sprouting in the gradually thinning bamboo forest where Kuang Biao had been.
Even the big and second cubs had gathered with the chicks in their shelter, their steel-like fur lying smoothly against their bodies, not wanting to get a drop of water on them.
