Chapter 87: Goose Eggs
A total of two jin and four liang of bamboo core tea.
(Note: 1 jin ≈ 0.5 kg; 1 liang ≈ 50g, so 2 jin 4 liang = 1.2kg)
This stuff, once dried, really doesn’t weigh much—it took up two whole large bags! Laid over the bamboo shoots, it looked like a big, bulky bundle.
Huai Yu did a quick calculation. While harvesting the bamboo core and drying it into tea wasn’t hard, it was definitely time-consuming. She spent the whole afternoon gathering a huge basketful, and after drying, it only became a bit over two jin.
A bit over 400 points in total. Compared to bamboo shoots, the value-for-effort ratio was a bit low.
She had 38 jin of bamboo shoots in her basket—and it wasn’t even full. That was just from a single morning of digging.
Sure, carrying them back was tiring, and digging was hard work, but she now had more than 680 points!
After crunching the numbers quickly, Huai Yu decided she’d scale back on making bamboo core tea in the future.
For all the time it takes, she might as well go up the mountain and collect pine pollen instead.
With the deal wrapped up and subtracting the cost of the goose eggs and the 15 jin of barnyard grass seed, Huai Yu’s savings climbed back up to 2,000 points.
Ah… that instant sense of financial security really felt so satisfying.
At that moment, Boss Tang finally remembered something and reached into his pocket:
“I’ll get you your goose—huh?!”
When he pulled his hand out, he saw the goose egg had already cracked, and a flat little beak was poking through the middle.
It was black.
“It’s hatching!”
He lit up with surprise. “Little Yu, you’ve got some serious luck!”
“But how come this mutant goose has a black beak?”
He held the egg gently while Huai Yu held her breath, both of them staring nervously at the hatching egg.
Boss Tang was about to set the egg down on the counter when Huai Yu quickly said, “Doesn’t it still need warmth? Let me hold it in my hand instead?”
Her body had gotten stronger lately, but her hands were still soft and delicate—and small. Compared to Boss Tang’s meaty, fan-sized hands, hers looked barely enough to cradle the big goose egg.
Boss Tang sighed, “Forget it, I’ll hold it.”
Then he rested both hands on the counter and carefully supported the egg with full attention.
After a moment, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the second egg. Just as he placed it on a towel on the counter—crack!—this one was hatching too.
Well then! No need to cradle either one now. Boss Tang just stuffed the towel into a cardboard box to keep them warm and went to fill a hot water bottle.
“We’re such idiots, huh? Should’ve thought of this earlier instead of holding them by hand.”
Huai Yu thought to herself: You were seriously trying to help… I was just hoping to sneak in a bit of purification ability while holding it…
But now that both were hatching, there was no rush. Better to bring them home—no need to cause a scene and draw attention.
Meanwhile, Boss Tang kept muttering:
“I really wanna see what kind of freaky mutation this goose ends up with! But you be careful, alright? That Gao Ming guy doesn’t seem reliable at all!”
He grumbled, “What kind of trash was he even selling? This one looks so normal—watch it end up mutating into something crazy!”
Huai Yu hesitated and asked:
“Even if it mutates… it’s not gonna turn into a dung beetle, right?”
Yep—Boss Tang was clearly still traumatized by that beetle that used its front legs to roll poop balls.
He couldn’t wrap his head around what kind of mindset his friend must’ve had…
So he focused on the eggs instead:
“What do baby geese eat, anyway?”
The two of them looked at each other, totally lost.
After a while, Boss Tang had an idea: “There’s a bookstore on the next street over. Go see if they’ve got any kind of farming guide.”
“But they’re mutants, so I can’t promise it’ll help. Still, go check.”
Books?! Huai Yu’s eyes lit up—she didn’t even care about the rare moment of a mutant goose hatching anymore. She asked for directions and dashed out the door.
Books! Books to kill time!
Living alone in the Rose Corridor with nothing to do was driving her nuts. She desperately needed quality mental nourishment!
Following Boss Tang’s directions, she finally found the humble little bookstore tucked in a corner. The owner was a young woman. When she saw Huai Yu enter, she glanced out the door quickly, then discreetly pulled a board across it.
Huai Yu was curious: “Why no signboard? I walked past this street several times and never saw this place.”
“Pshh.” The girl whispered, “It’s not exactly… a legal business. As long as no one reports me, the authorities won’t crack down. I gotta keep it low-key, y’know?”
How illegal could selling books be?
Huai Yu was puzzled—until her eyes suddenly widened in realization.
“You…”
Before she could even finish, the shopkeeper quickly explained:
“It’s pirated! Pirated books, okay? Not what you’re thinking!”
She squatted down to organize the shelves while Huai Yu, feeling a little embarrassed, mumbled, “I wasn’t thinking that…”
The girl muttered, “Wouldn’t matter if you were. Even if you think about it, you wouldn’t find that kind of stuff here.”
“And besides, all the good books are stored in the libraries, but since the disaster, re-digitizing hasn’t finished, so they’re not open to the public yet… The books here are ones I collected online before the disaster. Lots of old classics that you couldn’t easily find even back then.”
As they chatted, Huai Yu squatted down to help tidy up the scattered books.
She picked one up and glanced at the cover. It featured an overly seductive woman surrounded by four, five—no, eight—men, with big flashy title text: “Octuple Babies: Innocent Girl’s Overbearing Takeover”
Huai Yu: ?!!!
She was shook.
She didn’t know what was more shocking—the idea of having eight kids at once, or that an “innocent girl” was the one in control.
The title alone screamed “forbidden” and “do not want”…
But…
It had been so long since she’d had any kind of mental entertainment.
Unable to resist, she asked, “Can I read this?”
“Go ahead,” the shopkeeper said, waving a hand. “We print these at my family’s little workshop. Read whatever you want.”
Excited and nervous, Huai Yu opened the book, not sure what to expect. But the huge title that jumped out burned her eyeballs—
“Path to Prosperity”
And below that, in smaller font: This volume references “Postpartum Care for Sows”
“My name is Xiao Yan. I used to be an ordinary village girl who dropped out of school early and had no education. Life was hard.”
“Until one day, the Agricultural Heart Channel gave every villager a free copy of ‘Path to Prosperity.’ Opening that book opened a whole new world for me.”
“This story begins with the pig I was raising…”
Huai Yu: …
First came confusion.
Then curiosity.
Then realization.
“Wait… isn’t this supposed to be a romance novel?!”
