Chapter 150 - 119: Cowpeas and Dreams

Chapter 150: Chapter 119: Cowpeas and Dreams

Thinking about what Zhou Qian had said, Huai Yu unconsciously kept channeling her Superpower into her hands, until—

SMASH.

The excessively long, tangled vines, having continuously climbed and grown upwards, finally couldn’t support their own weight. With a loud SLAP, they all crashed down onto her head and face. Because they had grown so long and tall, the impact was actually quite heavy!

It knocked the crouching Huai Yu straight onto her backside.

She sat in a daze for a good while before withdrawing her hands. Looking at the cowpea plant in front of her, which had practically coiled into the shape of a banyan tree, she was completely dumbfounded. She then quickly scrambled up, frantically dragging and spreading the vines onto the ground on the other side to prevent them from crushing the entire vegetable plot.

Now came the problem. These rapidly accelerated cowpea vines were so long and massive that they looked extremely abnormal at a glance. Should she just chop them down?

But they had already grown so big...

Forget it.

Huai Yu glanced around the deserted Wilderness. "No one comes around here nowadays anyway," she thought to herself. "I’ll just leave it be."

The solar lamp set to the side attracted countless tiny flying insects that buzzed around it. Before her eyes, the vines that sprawled across the ground like a long dragon slowly began to bloom in the dark.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single bee or butterfly around at the moment. Huai Yu had no choice but to pluck a piece of foxtail grass and meticulously pollinate the flowers herself, bit by bit.

So, accelerating growth also depended on whether the plant had the ability to reproduce on its own, right?

As she continued to pollinate, she couldn’t help but admire those scientists who researched plants. From her experience, flora and fauna that had their growth forcefully accelerated would all exhibit some degree of mutation. Yet, only the seeds of the various fruits and vegetables permitted for circulation in the market remained frighteningly stable, no matter how much their growth was accelerated. To achieve this seemingly ordinary stability, countless people must have endured unspeakable hardships.

As she flipped the vines in the darkness, she almost had the illusion that what lay before her weren’t cowpeas, but sweet potato vines. Although these cowpeas had stable traits, their Mutant Value was actually quite high. Huai Yu had to alternate between her two abilities, slowly purifying them as she turned the vines over.

By the time she started feeling tired, the vine in front of her had already spread several meters further. Meanwhile, the pollinated flowers had rapidly withered away, giving way to long, tender-green bean pods. They lay scattered alongside the vines on the grass, resembling green tassels quietly blooming under the night sky, exuding a uniquely delicate beauty.

Looking at the other cowpeas that were still just tiny seedlings, Huai Yu felt happy again. To have an endless supply of beans for the entire summer—what a blissful prospect this was for her right now!

She went back to the house, brought out her baskets again, and harvested from this single accelerated cowpea vine alone, filling two large baskets to the brim. A bunch here, another bunch there... There was no end to them! She simply couldn’t pick them all!

She felt like a landowner who had secretly struck it rich in the dead of night. One moment, she was calculating how to stir-fry a handful with meat for tomorrow; the next, she was debating whether to pickle the rest into sour cowpeas or dry them out.

The more she looked, the more she envisioned a grand harvest. Puffing and panting as she hoisted the baskets to head back, she suddenly remembered—if she wanted to pickle sour beans, she didn’t have any leftover containers to store the vegetables in.

There were still several days until the end of the Labor Day holiday. It seemed pickling sour beans was out of the question for now; she’d have to dry them first. Anyway, the beans would keep growing continuously throughout the summer, so there was no rush. Mentally listing the tasks for tomorrow and thinking about how the bus runs were even less frequent than usual, she went ahead and washed and prepped all the beans.

In this deserted Wilderness, the faint fragrance of the Rose Corridor drifted quietly through the air. The flashlight flickered, emitting its final, overburdened glimmer of light. Crouching under a barnyard grass tree in the dark, Huai Yu washed the beans. Even the chirping of insects seemed sparse tonight.

Perhaps she was too exhausted. That night, she dreamed again.

In her dream, there was a bustling street lined with row upon row of diverse shops, all radiating a hazy glow. The air seemed to swirl with sweet, salty, savory, and spicy aromas. Huai Yu desperately widened her eyes, trying to read what was written on the signboards. Whether it was a milk tea stall or a roasted pig trotter stand, it made her drool profusely in her sleep.

But the dream was beyond her control.

After the scenes flashed by like a rapidly spinning lantern, the image froze on a young man and a woman. They were blurry, their faces indiscernible. She could only vaguely tell that they were very young, probably around twenty, not much older or more mature than she was now.

The young man with the blurred face radiated youthful student energy. Carrying milk tea, he emerged from a shop and happily walked over to the girl waiting by the roadside.