Chapter 9: The “Genius” Label
The twelve-pound tarp truly exhausted Huai Yu.
The small difference of just two pounds became the last straw when placed on her shoulders. By the time she returned to her new house in District 37, the only thing she could do was throw down the tarp and collapse onto the ground.
So tired, so tired, so tired…
Waaah, where was her manservant… she was seriously exhausted!
She was drenched in sweat, her face undoubtedly a mess, and she hadn’t even properly brushed her teeth that morning…
But her body was so weak, she absolutely couldn’t bathe in this season—not even wipe down!
She took a few deep breaths, and once she felt the cold wind sneak into her clothes, she quickly got up again.
The progress on the house had already passed 80%. She wanted to push through and sleep in her new home tonight!
Thinking that, she suddenly felt filled with strength. She unfolded the tarp and dragged it bit by bit up onto the round, leafy rooftop.
The wisteria frame held firm without shaking at all, looking especially stable.
Huai Yu walked into her little tree house (since everything was built around trees) and saw that the slight gaps where light used to seep in were now completely darkened, with no light getting through at all. She grew even happier!
As expected! Asking the big pine tree for pinecones had been such a wise decision!
The good results gave her endless energy.
At the moment, she was weaving the remaining leaves together with fine vines at the entrance, creating a natural decoration that would hide the truth about the wisteria’s roots, even after the leaves dried.
I really am a genius.
Thinking this, Huai Yu silently added another label to her unknown identity.
…
Compared to the cold, hard bricks underground, this little tree house—or grass hut—was built directly on the ground.
It stood about two meters tall—maybe a bit more—since the highest part of the frame was tied up by Huai Yu when she was standing on tiptoe with her arms stretched overhead. When tying the leaves, she had to carefully climb up bit by bit.
Clearly, she had put a lot of effort into building the house.
From afar, the whole tree house looked like an upside-down, irregular bowl, or perhaps a crooked rectangle.
Overall, it was about 3.5 meters wide and long, so the total area was over ten square meters—quite spacious.
Huai Yu thought for a moment, and since it wasn’t too late yet, she went to a nearby foundation and started searching for loose small bricks, moving them slowly, like an ant moving house.
She was lucky. Either the builders had cut corners, or the construction needs were different, because part of the foundation used small green bricks instead of the large concrete blocks and base stones used elsewhere.
There was a messy pile of red bricks nearby too, but they were fewer and seemed less sturdy than the green ones, so Huai Yu decisively chose the green bricks.
Piece by piece, she moved them, her hands turning red and her waist aching as if it would snap.
By the time the sun set and twilight deepened, the floor inside the little tree house was raised and as leveled as she could manage.
Now even heavy rain wouldn’t scare her!
Well, not too heavy—if it poured continuously, she might still risk some flooding since she was at ground level.
At this moment, looking at her little house, Huai Yu felt a deep sense of satisfaction!
Actually, she should wipe the green bricks clean too, but after doing so much today, she was just too exhausted.
Huai Yu climbed back into the underground tunnel, stuffed the nutrient solution packs and soybeans into her sleeping bag, and dragged everything out.
From today on, she wouldn’t have to crawl back and forth anymore!
…
On the fourth day after coming down from the mountain, even the nearby broadcast, usually so grating, sounded pleasant.
[Today is March 21, 2066, Saturday, cloudy, air mutation index: 5. No abnormalities in Sanqing Mountain or the Wasteland…]
[Flower City’s original Hongsheng Pedestrian Street is temporarily designated as the Hongsheng Trading Market…]
[Spring equinox has passed. Agricultural Department experts encourage everyone to try growing their own crops in warm environments to ease the pressure on grain reserves…]
[The Health Department advises checking mutation values when foraging wild vegetables to avoid consuming plants close to critical mutation levels, which may cause bodily harm…]
[Escapees from the Third Prison are still at large…]
Huai Yu sat comfortably on a green brick at the doorway of her tree house, looking off into the distance. The rose corridor beside her kept growing forward, gentle and fragrant.
Sleeping inside a house felt so different from sleeping in an underground tunnel that even sipping nutrient solution with a straw didn’t seem as unbearable anymore.
The broadcast lasted a full thirty minutes. Huai Yu patiently listened to all of it, then promptly forgot everything—but that was okay. She still remembered what she needed to do today.
First, she needed to find some dry grass that wouldn’t crumble, and then figure out how to get a container to store some water and clean the green brick floor from yesterday.
But dry grass was easy to find; containers were hard!
Though no one said it outright, Huai Yu vaguely knew she was different from others and didn’t want to go to crowded places yet. So for now, she could only collect dry grass while thinking about solutions.
There were lots of tall, dry grasses growing on the foundation ruins. They had turned yellow in the fall but hadn’t rotted, still swaying gently in the breeze, protecting the tender new grass shoots at their base.
From afar, these tall grasses dotted the vast wasteland sparsely but in good numbers.
Huai Yu didn’t have a knife, so she could only snap them off one by one, bundle them up, fold them a few times, and pull out a stem to tie them together, making a makeshift broom.
Using leftover withered tung leaves from yesterday, she moved a brick with holes to a nearby pond.
She stuffed broken bricks into the bottom holes to make a support, layered the leaves across the gaps, and managed to create a very crude container.
Scooping handful after handful of water from the pond, she eventually collected about a bowlful.
Even though the hole was bigger than a fist, it would barely be enough for wiping the bricks.
Using the dry grass broom dipped in water, she scrubbed the bricks clean, then used the slightly moist tung leaves to wipe away the dirty water marks.
Now, the simple room only had a sleeping bag, a slightly chipped pinecone hanging from the center of the tree house by a vine—looking like a lightbulb that didn’t glow.
Clean green bricks, a reddish sleeping bag, twenty-four neatly stacked packs of nutrient solution, and a small net bag of soybeans.
Even though she had few possessions and the tree house was practically empty, Huai Yu felt her attitude toward a refined life was perfectly on display.
As for what was next…
Taking advantage of the daylight shining through the doorway, Huai Yu pushed aside a few hanging bunches of blooming wisteria and headed to the rose corridor:
“I’m going to pick a few flowers, okay?”
She pointed to the makeshift water basin—the brick with holes.
“Fresh flowers in the house will look so much better!”
