Chapter 6: Building a House

Chapter 6: Chapter 6: Building a House

Bringing back such a massive bundle of leaves and vines from Zone 8 of the Rose Corridor without making a sound was a major problem.

Fortunately, the vines were quite flexible. After Huai Yu stealthily squeezed through, she tugged them all in bit by bit, HUFFING and PUFFING, as if stuffing a sausage. All she had to do was drag it across twenty-nine more zones—a straight-line distance of over three kilometers—and she would finally be back at her chosen residential area.

"Help! This is way too far!" she thought.

She stood there in a daze, her cheeks flushed pink by the early spring sun. A few stray strands of hair clung messily to the side of her face, but her mind was entirely consumed by the vehicle she had seen last night.

"I want it! I really, really want it!"

But for now...

"A snail carries its heavy shell, crawling step by step..." Gasping for air, she hummed the little tune. She crawled for who knew how long before finally arriving back near the foundation.

The foundation remained the same. The bricks and stones in the ruins were still a messy jumble, and the grass sprouts poking up in the middle were tender and yellowish-green. She knelt in the tunnel and crawled forward—SWISH, SWISH, SWISH. Sure enough, at the end of the rubble, she spotted the sleeping bag she had left behind.

It was maroon, with withered flower petals scattered sparsely around it. She silently put the sleeping bag back in its place, then crawled back out. Looking at this vast expanse of land, for some reason, a profound sense of "home" welled up inside her.

Huai Yu pondered quietly for a moment, then nodded in affirmation. "That’s right. This territory is all mine, so it’s perfectly normal to have a home that spans a hundred acres, isn’t it?

"I’m so frail and don’t have many skills, so waking up every day in a two-thousand-square-foot bed with two hundred male servants is perfectly normal too, right?"

It was just that the male servants weren’t here yet...

A gentle breeze blew past, showering her face with pink rose petals. Huai Yu quietly puffed out her cheeks.

"Fine, fine!" she thought. The moisture in the air was growing heavier; it was going to rain in a couple of days. She needed to hurry up and build her house!

Building a house was actually quite simple. It was just that digging holes with a branch was a bit exhausting. Especially since she had so little strength. HUFFING and PUFFING, she poked, twisted, and dug at the yellow earth, taking a long time just to hollow out a shallow little pit. When she stuck the branch in, it only went about a half a foot deep.

"At this depth, how can it serve as a structural support?" she wondered.

Huai Yu felt a little annoyed. "It’s already amazing enough that I know how to build a house. I can’t be expected to do all this heavy labor too!"

Giving up on digging, she simply shoved the flexible branch she had snapped off the wisteria tree into the ground. "Hurry up, hurry up. Take root down there, and go a little deeper..."

Gripping it with both hands, her face flushed red as she strained again. "Nngh—"

A cool, refreshing energy surged from within her body, flowing entirely out of her palms and into the wisteria branch. But it didn’t last long. Soon, Huai Yu let go, gasping for breath.

Though her hands had released it, the branch didn’t tilt. Instead, it visibly writhed and wriggled, sinking deep into the earth. At the same time, a slightly bulging bud on the branch rapidly sprouted, split open, and unfurled its leaves. It continued to extend upward, growing thicker and thicker until it became a sturdy, robust vine nearly an inch in diameter!

Huai Yu instantly jumped to her feet. The tiny hole she had struggled so hard to dig had completely vanished. In its place stood a remarkably plump branch, entirely unyielding, its roots clearly anchored deep in the ground.

She grabbed the branch with both hands and yanked hard. Yet, even as her palms rubbed raw and red, the branch didn’t budge an inch—much like when she had wrestled with the mother wisteria vine in the mountains.

"Wow..." She beamed with joy. "It’s so sturdy! Once I turn it into a frame, not even heavy winds and rain will be able to knock it down!"

But...

She looked down at the shallow grooves she had traced in the dirt, realizing that to build a proper house, all thirty vines she had broken off needed to grow exactly like this. ℯℯ𝑙.

"Nngh—"

"Nngh—"

"Nngh—"

Huai Yu squatted there, her face crimson as she exerted herself with all her might. Sweat dripped down her forehead, plastering her soft baby hairs to her skin, making her look increasingly disheveled.

She spent the entire afternoon spurring the wisteria to grow. However, the energy within her body was far too weak. After stimulating each vine, she had to rest for a long time. By the time she was halfway done, she was already dizzy, and her stomach was growling with hunger.

HUFFING and PUFFING, she knelt on the ground, expertly crawled back into the tunnel, and fished a pouch of nutrient fluid out of her sleeping bag. This time, she could see it clearly. The label listed various trace elements, but the main ingredient was some sort of mutated wheat starch.

"?"

She furrowed her brow, horrified by the thought that after working so hard, she still had to drink something that sounded terrible just from its name. But she was just so hungry! So tired and so hungry!

"This world is so unfair to me," she thought. "I even have to build my own house. Why wouldn’t it issue me two hundred male servants?

"Even one would do!"

Feeling aggrieved, she swallowed a mouthful of the sour, weird-tasting nutrient "paste." It felt like she was chewing raw on a wooden thermos stopper that had been used for over ten years.

After resting for a moment, the sun gradually began to sink, casting a brilliant orange glow across the evening sky.

Huai Yu crawled back out with a sigh. Taking advantage of her recovered stamina, she bent the wisteria vines planted in the middle downward to serve as the main spine of the roof. Then, she took the symmetrical vines on either side and twisted them tightly around the "spine." Weaving them together like the ribs of a spine, she stimulated their growth while slowly piecing together the structural frame.

By the time the sun had completely set over the pitch-black wilderness, she had exhausted her very last ounce of strength tying the final two symmetrical vines tightly together at the archway.

Perhaps because she had exerted a little too much energy, or maybe because the section forming the archway was smaller than the earlier spine structure, once the stimulation ended, an indescribable rustling sound echoed from the sides of the wisteria branches. Huai Yu looked over in surprise, only to see flowering branches rapidly shooting out following the noise, quickly followed by the sprouting of flower buds.

A moment later—POP, POP, POP—three plump, heavy clusters of wisteria blossoms burst into full bloom!

In that instant, all the resentment bubbling in her chest vanished. The night breeze blew past with a chill. Huai Yu shivered, then reached out to pet the vine, gathering it into her arms before whining affectionately.

"Stop growing, stop growing! You guys should sprout and grow from the roots instead! I need these branches up here to build my house and block the sun; they can’t keep growing..."

She then added, "You all worked so hard to grow. My new house is so big and spacious!"

Her voice dropped to a soft, gentle whisper. "Thank you."

The wisteria didn’t respond—of course it couldn’t speak. Yet, hidden in the thick twilight where no one could see, new buds had already begun sprouting from its roots.

Huai Yu sat up in satisfaction and snapped off a slender side branch to chew on. Her face immediately scrunched up at the sudden burst of sour bitterness, and she quickly spat it out—PTOO, PTOO, PTOO—pretending she had just brushed her teeth.

The next moment, using the faint moonlight, she made out the silhouette of the foundation, found her spot, and skillfully crawled back inside. The maroon sleeping bag provided a decent cushion against the hard bricks and stones. Inside the enclosed space, the temperature gradually began to rise.

With her mere pound of soybeans placed right next to her, Huai Yu peacefully closed her eyes.