Chapter 41 - 40: Uncle Zaozi

Chapter 41: Chapter 40: Uncle Zaozi

Huai Yu once again experienced the taste of sudden wealth. Boss Tang had given her 260 points for a little over 2kg of bean sprouts. Although the pickled bracken fern didn’t look like much, it was quite heavy, coming to a total of 550 points.

She stroked her worn-out bracelet, lost in thought. "Sure enough, as long as a person has their initial capital, making more money becomes much easier," she thought. However, she was now truly out of resources on hand. Wild vegetables couldn’t be harvested infinitely, so Huai Yu curiously asked, "Boss Tang, do you know where I can buy beans? My brother said the beans outside taste terrible. Just how bad are they?"

Boss Tang was staring at the bean sprouts and incessantly sending messages. He froze upon hearing this. After a long while, he couldn’t help but click his tongue in his mind. "What a classic case of ’let them eat cake’!" he thought.

He led Huai Yu to the door and pointed out the direction for her. "See that? Right behind that Jiufu Jewelry store. Just walk around it, and you’ll find the seed shop.

"But Little Yu, regarding those seeds, just get a few to satisfy your curiosity and leave it at that. Absolutely do not touch anything with a Mutant Value over 20! They taste awful, absolutely terrible. One bite will kill your appetite for days."

Huai Yu remembered the Zaozi the man was selling the other day. "When I came here for the first time, I saw someone selling Zaozi with a Mutant Value of 23..."

Boss Tang’s face darkened. "He’s selling something with a Mutant Value of 23? Which sucker was he trying to scam? Even dogs wouldn’t eat that trash. You didn’t taste it, did you?"

"No." Huai Yu wrinkled her nose. "I was also afraid it would taste bad, so I told him to eat one for me to see first. I told him I’d buy it if it was good."

Boss Tang fell silent for a moment before replying, "Then it’s fine."

If that scammer really had the guts to eat those Zaozi, he deserved to earn that money. But looking at the girl in front of him, she clearly hadn’t bought them, though she had probably built up quite a bit of curiosity. Looking back at his bean sprouts with a Mutant Value of 9, Boss Tang couldn’t even fathom what kind of family could raise such a naive young lady. Logically speaking, his own family’s conditions weren’t bad either! But if he dared to raise a child like this, his old man would surely break his legs.

Boss Tang shook his head and watched Huai Yu’s retreating back. Then, he quickly pulled out his phone to call and notify his clients one by one.

Meanwhile, after walking around the block, Huai Yu indeed spotted the seed shop Boss Tang had mentioned. The storefront wasn’t large and looked quite bare-bones. Several large plastic storage bags sat wide open at the entrance, filled with all kinds of soybeans. There were slightly greenish local soybeans, larger and rounder high-yield soybeans, and varieties mainly grown for harvesting green beans.

Displayed at the very front were fast-growing vegetables like bok choy, baby greens, and high-yield cowpeas. The seeds were sealed in transparent ziplock bags and hung on racks, each with two numbers simply scribbled on them in black marker.

Huai Yu stared at them for a while, unable to hold back her curiosity. "What do these two numbers mean?"

Someone who had just walked into the store heard her and casually replied, "The top one is the Mutant Value, and the bottom one is the price in points—oh, hey, it’s you!"

She turned around and saw a familiar face. "Uncle Zaozi."

The man’s face darkened, and he waved his hands repeatedly. "Just call me uncle. Drop the ’Zaozi’ part. I don’t ever want to eat another Zaozi for the rest of my life."

Saying this, he felt a bit guilty because this very girl in front of him had bought the last of his Zaozi. Even though they hadn’t sold for many points... He cleared his throat. "Ahem. Are you here to buy seeds?"

"Mhm," Huai Yu nodded. "I want to buy some more soybeans, but I don’t know which kind is best."

The middle-aged man sighed as well. "Buying soybeans? I need to buy some too. Here, don’t bother looking at all the fancy ones, just pick the high-yield varieties."

As he spoke, he reached out and grabbed a handful of soybeans, listening to the PATTER of the beans falling back down while cursing the blasted heavens. "It’s the crucial time for farming, and suddenly there’s a downpour... I painstakingly carried a dozen bags of soil up the stairs to the tenth floor, and because of this heavy rain, the soil is completely polluted!"

He grumbled and cursed. Showing his familiarity with the process, he whipped a plastic bag out of his pocket, shook it open with a RUSTLE, and then picked up a scoop to fill it with soybeans. "Where’s your bag? Come on, I’ll bag them for you. This seed shop doesn’t haggle anyway. The prices for legumes are all set by the government.

"Also, you should buy a bit more. Don’t be stingy with the seed money.

"Plant a batch, and when the seedlings grow to about ten centimeters, pull them up and plant a second batch. After cycling through a few batches, they should have absorbed most of the pollution in the soil."

Speaking of this, he couldn’t help but complain again. "I have the rottenest luck. When I was assigned a house, I stubbornly smashed all the glass windows on the balcony just to get good ventilation and sunlight for growing vegetables. Who knew that just two days after I smashed them, there’d be this sudden heavy rain..."

It was simply terrible luck.

Huai Yu silently took out a plastic bag and handed it over, calmly asking, "If you pull them up so quickly, won’t they be unable to produce any soybeans? Is this how they handle polluted areas outside, too?"

The man didn’t mind the question. He lifted the plastic bag to test its weight before grabbing the scoop again. "The government doesn’t care about private land reclamation. Once you’ve reclaimed the land, just register it. Then you can take your time planting and waiting for the beans to grow. If the government buys them, even a little bit of profit is still profit."

At this point, he cast a curious glance at Huai Yu. "For public planting areas, they have to mobilize those with the Wood Element. But there probably aren’t many in our Flower City. The truly capable ones have all joined the Guard Army or become Explorers.

"Besides, even if they have the ability, it’s useless. With such a massive land area, Wood Ability Users wouldn’t be able to clean it all up even if they worked for months without eating or drinking.

"After all, it’s not just this rain; the everyday mutation index in the air is also quite high."

Huai Yu was lost in thought, feeling like she had just learned something new again. After a while, she suddenly remarked, "The fabric of my brother’s white uniform is so beautiful, yet I still have to wear old clothes..."

The small, bone-chillingly cold words formed by condensed ice were still at the head of her bed, showing no signs of melting.

"Well, of course!" The middle-aged man was straightforward and carefree. He pulled her plastic bag over and scooped beans into it for her. "I couldn’t tell, little girl. I was wondering why you were dressed so plainly yet still recklessly spending money on Zao—*cough, cough, cough!* I mean, you’re quite generous with your spending.

"So it turns out you have family in the Guard Army... or are they an Explorer? What Element are they? The Guard Army’s uniform is meant for frontline combat, so the fabric is specially made.

"First, to ensure the fabric remains smooth, they added some kind of special coating to it. This prevents bloodstains from seeping into the textile threads, which could allow parasitic seeds to take root.

"Second, the frontlines are either the Wilderness or forests, or filled with deeply rooted massive trees... Anyway, with all those vines, branches, and leaves flying around, it’s blindingly chaotic. That coating contains some unique fluorescent sand or something, making it visible from a distance. It’s meant to facilitate coordinated combat and rescue operations..."

He suddenly paused midway through his sentence and turned to look at Huai Yu. "How come you don’t know any of this?"