Chapter 6: Building a House
It was a real challenge to secretly bring back such a huge bundle of leaves and vines from Zone 8 of the Rose Corridor.
Fortunately, the vines were flexible enough. After Huai Yu snuck through first, she huffed and puffed, squeezing and tugging at them bit by bit, like pulling sausages, until she managed to drag them all through.
She just needed to haul them across 29 more zones — over three kilometers in a straight line — before reaching the residential area she had picked.
Help, someone save her! It was way too far!
She stood there in a daze, the early spring sun reddening her cheeks, stray hair sticking to her sweaty face. But all she could think about was the car she had seen the night before—
She wanted it so badly! Really, really badly!
But for now…
“Snail carries its heavy shell, crawling step by step…” she gasped out a tune as she crawled along. After who knew how long, she finally made it back to the area near her foundation.
The foundation was still the same mess — scattered rubble and bricks with fresh green sprouts poking through. She knelt in the underground tunnel and scurried forward, finally spotting her sleeping bag at the end of the rubble.
It was dark red, with a few dried petals scattered around it.
She quietly put the sleeping bag back in place, then crawled back out. Looking around at the vast, empty land, she suddenly felt an inexplicable sense of home.
Huai Yu thought about it, then nodded to herself — of course! If this whole area was hers, then having a six-hundred-mu (~40 hectares) home was totally normal, right?
She was so delicate and weak, and not very skilled either. Waking up every day in a 200-square-meter bed with 200 male servants… sounded perfectly normal too, right?
It’s just that she didn’t have any servants yet…
A breeze blew by, showering her in pink rose petals. Huai Yu puffed up her cheeks in frustration.
Alright, alright! The air was getting more humid — it would rain in a few days. She really needed to start building her house!
Building a house was actually pretty simple.
It was just that digging holes with tree branches was exhausting.
Especially since she was weak. She kept poking, twisting, and scratching at the ground with a branch, and after a long struggle, she only managed to dig a shallow little hole.
The branch only went in about ten centimeters deep.
How was that supposed to anchor a support beam?
Huai Yu got a little mad.
She was already amazing for even knowing how to build a house — she couldn’t possibly do everything herself, right?
So she simply jabbed a flexible vine branch, broken off a wisteria tree, into the ground and grumbled, “Hurry up, hurry up, grow some roots, dig deeper…”
Holding it with both hands, she strained until her face turned red:
“Mmnn—!”
A cool, refreshing energy surged from her body into her palms and into the wisteria branch.
But she couldn’t sustain it for long. Soon she had to let go, panting heavily.
Even though she released it, the branch didn’t tilt or wobble. Instead, it visibly squirmed and pushed itself deeper into the ground.
At the same time, a tiny bud on the branch rapidly sprouted, split open, and spread its leaves… continuing to grow thicker and stronger, until it became a sturdy vine about two centimeters thick!
Huai Yu jumped up in excitement!
The tiny hole she had painstakingly dug was gone, and the branch stood there firm and unmoving, clearly rooted deeply.
She grabbed the vine with both hands and pulled, but even after scraping her palms red, the vine didn’t budge — just like when she wrestled with the mother wisteria tree in the mountains.
“Wow…”
She was thrilled: it was so strong! Once she built the frame, even heavy wind and rain wouldn’t knock it down!
But…
Looking at the shallow grooves she had marked on the ground, she realized that if she wanted to build a proper house, all 30 vines she had would have to grow like this.
“Mmnn—!”
“Mmnn—!”
“Mmnn—!”
Huai Yu squatted there, face flushed, straining with all her might. Sweat dripped down her forehead, sticking her messy bangs to her skin, making her look even more bedraggled.
She spent the entire afternoon growing wisteria vines. But her body’s strength was so faint that she needed a long rest after growing just one vine.
By the time she managed to grow half of them, she was starving and dizzy, her stomach growling loudly.
She crawled back into the tunnel on her hands and knees and fumbled for a bag of nutrient paste from her sleeping bag.
This time, she could read the label clearly: it listed various trace elements, but the main ingredient was some kind of mutated wheat starch…
“?”
She frowned tightly, unable to believe that after working so hard, she still had to drink something that sounded so unappetizing.
But she was so hungry! So tired and so hungry!
Life was so unfair to her — she even had to build her own house. Why didn’t anyone send her 200 male servants? Even one would be nice!
Feeling wronged, she forced down the sour, weird-tasting nutrient “paste,” which tasted like she was chewing on a wooden thermos stopper that had been used for over 10 years.
After a short rest, the sun was starting to set, painting the sky with a deep orange glow.
Huai Yu crawled back out, sighed, and while her strength recovered, she bent the middle wisteria vine to form the main “spine” of the structure.
Then she twisted and wrapped the symmetrical vines on either side around the spine, shaping them into a [丰]character frame, strengthening and weaving as she went.
By the time the sun had completely set and darkness filled the wild field, she had used up the last of her strength, tightly winding the two final symmetrical vines around the archway.
Maybe because she had exerted herself so much — or maybe because the archway was smaller than the main frame — after she finished, a few strange sounds came from the side of the wisteria vines.
Huai Yu looked over, surprised, and saw tiny flower buds quickly sprouting after the noise…
Moments later, three thick clusters of wisteria flowers bloomed in a rush!
At that moment, all her resentment vanished.
The night breeze was cool. Huai Yu shivered, hugged the vines close, and murmured softly:
“Don’t grow anymore, okay? Start growing again from the roots! I need these vines here to block the sun, they can’t grow too much…”
She added gently, “You guys grew so hard, my new house is big and spacious!”
Then, even softer:
“Thank you.”
The wisteria didn’t respond — of course it couldn’t speak. But under the deep twilight, unseen by anyone, tiny buds quietly sprouted again at its roots.
Satisfied, Huai Yu sat up, bit down on a thin side branch, and chewed — only to wrinkle her face at the sudden bitterness and quickly spit it out, pretending she had brushed her teeth.
Next, by the faint light, she spotted the outline of the foundation, found her way back, and crawled in expertly.
The dark red sleeping bag still cushioned the hard rubble, and the sealed space gradually warmed up.
Her precious one pound of soybeans lay beside her. Huai Yu closed her eyes peacefully.
