Chapter 7: The Huashan Pine Cones
The next day, Huai Yu woke up along with the broadcast again.
The sun had just risen, its morning light scattering across the ground and piercing through the frame she built yesterday, casting long, slanted shadows.
The wisteria vines were very obedient — their bare branches had only a few leaves. The only noticeable thing was a bunch of wisteria flowers swaying with the wind where the door would be.
Huai Yu sucked on a nutrition pack with a blank expression. After eating this for three days straight, the taste had gone from acceptable, to slightly bad, and by now, it was downright awful.
And she would have to eat this stuff for a month…
Wait!
She suddenly dropped to her knees skillfully and scrambled back into the underground tunnel, still sucking on her nutrition pack as she counted—
“One pack, two packs, three packs…”
There were 26 packs left.
When they were handed out, they said it was a month’s supply… But she drank one pack the first day, two packs yesterday! And this morning, she already felt hungry again. Could it be…
It’s only enough for half a month?
Sunlight shone through the holes in the foundation bricks into the tunnel, leaving dim light spots on the maroon sleeping bag. The soybeans huddled silently nearby. Clearly, with her current abilities, even if she accelerated their growth, she wouldn’t be able to harvest many beans.
No need to calculate — at most, it would be 40 catties.
And right now, never mind planting anything — her house wasn’t even finished yet!
“Plop.”
The empty nutrition pack fell to the ground, and so did her mood.
With this realization, Huai Yu puffed her cheeks angrily while heading to Zone 22 to collect branches — Rose Corridor Zone 1 covered 600 acres, divided into 37 zones.
Zone 22 was a small hill that had been thoroughly cleared by the Mutated Plant Defense Army, leaving only a few sparse tree stumps.
Huai Yu came here to snap off a thinner branch to use for the roof of her house.
From the top of the hill, she could see that the nearest defense troop camp was quite far away — probably not until Zone 60 if you followed the Rose Corridor’s zoning.
Actually, she had been unlucky that night — the incident at the Rose Corridor happened right near the border of Zones 37 and 38, which explained why the mutation detectors were set so closely there.
Zone 38 belonged to Rose Corridor Zone 2.
But right now, Huai Yu knew nothing about this, nor did she care. All she wanted was to finish her house before the leaves withered completely.
Once the main frame was built, the rest was just tedious small tasks.
Like now — Huai Yu was using a sharp, thin wooden stick to pry open the stems of the tung tree leaves she picked yesterday, creating Y-shaped splits.
She wedged these into the house frame — though the leaves weren’t big enough and made it look a little patchy, once she fixed them tightly with finer vines and layered enough of them, it would still be sturdy and airtight.
The only problem was that tung tree leaves weren’t very waterproof, but there were no better options nearby.
After all, Flower City had four distinct seasons and even snow in winter, so the plants there had relatively small leaves to avoid frost damage.
The task wasn’t hard, just tedious. Luckily, she had nothing better to do, so she calmed herself down and worked step-by-step to build a solid house.
However, after using half the leaves, she still felt that if it rained heavily, the house might not hold up.
But that was fine — she was so smart, she had already thought of a backup plan yesterday!
Or at least she should have thought of one. Even if she hadn’t, she could still come up with something now!
While struggling with this, Huai Yu suddenly remembered the maroon sleeping bag in the tunnel, and a lightbulb went off in her head!
She rummaged through the pile of leaves and pulled out the twelve Huashan pine cones she had collected yesterday.
It took Huashan pines more than ten or twenty years to bear cones, and the giant pine she encountered towered into the sky, its age unknown.
Naturally, the pine cones it produced were massive.
Each cone was nearly 10 cm in diameter and 20 cm long. Huai Yu drooled just looking at them, wondering how well the little squirrels must have been eating.
But she needed to trade these for supplies, so she only dared to pick the smallest cone and started prying off the seed scales one by one to extract the pine nuts inside.
She counted — one big cone produced over 100 pine nuts! How rich!
Big Pine Tree, you’re so kind!
The only issue was — whether due to the variety or from long exposure to wind and rain — the nuts weren’t as fragrant as Korean pine nuts, and they lacked even the faint scent unique to Huashan pines.
They were a little astringent too.
Huai Yu ate two and lost interest, sighing again—
“How did I know so much before? I could even distinguish different kinds of pine nuts… I was so rich!”
Now she didn’t even have a proper place to live. The contrast was too cruel. The world had truly wronged her!
She grumbled, but knew her current survival was more important — the big bed and male servants were dreams far away.
Even though the pine nuts weren’t as tasty as she remembered, they were still valuable. Seeing how the minimum ration was only one pound of soybeans per person these days, she knew these nuts were precious.
Huai Yu picked up a thin vine and tied the cones together, quickly stringing up eleven large pine cones.
Dragging them along the ground wasn’t a good idea if she wanted to trade them, so she thought about it and slung them across her shoulder.
A waterproof rooftop, here I come!
She happily walked away.
Meanwhile, at the Mutated Plant Defense Army camp in Zone 69.
Because it bordered the Rose Corridor — the city’s frontline against the wastelands — the camp was always on alert, but rarely saw civilians.
Now, the guard at the gate looked out and spotted a girl walking slowly toward them, carrying something strange.
Guard: …
He picked up the radio to report it. By the time someone came out, the girl had already reached the gate.
Only then did the guard see clearly — she was carrying a giant string of pine cones over her shoulder.
The soldier who came out to check was stunned:
“Little girl, it’s you?”
Huai Yu was exhausted. She waved her hand weakly, unable to even speak, just breathing heavily and raggedly.
After all, the pine cones were massive — each nearly a pound — and with eleven of them, it was at least ten pounds.
Walking from Zone 37 to Zone 69 was over 3 kilometers… No wonder she was dead tired.
When she finally caught her breath and saw the familiar face of the soldier frowning at her, she hesitated and asked:
“The other night, a big brother said their captain told him to bring me a sleeping bag… was that you?”
After thinking a moment, she added: “Captain big brother.”
