Chapter 88 - 87: Goose Egg

Chapter 88: Chapter 87: Goose Egg

There was a total of 2.4 catties of Bamboo Heart Tea. After being dried, this stuff really didn’t weigh much. It filled two whole large bags! Laid on top of the bamboo shoots, it made for a huge bundle.

Huai Yu did the math. Although extracting the bamboo hearts and roasting the Bamboo Heart Tea was physically easy, it was quite time-consuming. She had spent an entire afternoon yesterday filling a massive basket, only to end up with a little over two catties of dried tea. It yielded just over 400 points in total. Compared to bamboo shoots, the return on investment was rather low.

Her basket of bamboo shoots weighed thirty-eight catties, and it wasn’t even full. That was merely from a single morning of digging. While carrying them on her back was certainly exhausting and digging them up took more effort, she had already earned over 680 points!

She quickly tallied everything up and decided to make less Bamboo Heart Tea in the future. Instead of wasting time on these non-essentials that couldn’t even fill one’s stomach, she would be better off going up the mountain to collect Pine Pollen.

The deal was struck. After deducting the cost of the goose eggs she bought today and the fifteen catties of barnyard grass seeds, Huai Yu’s savings once again reached two thousand points. Ah, the sudden surge of security was truly fulfilling.

At this moment, Boss Tang finally remembered. He reached into his pocket. "Let me get the goose—uh?!"

When Boss Tang pulled his hand out, the goose egg in his palm had already cracked. A flat little beak was poking out from the middle. It was black, too.

"It hatched!" he exclaimed in pleasant surprise. "Little Sister Yu, you’ve really hit the jackpot!

"But why does this mutated goose have a black beak?"

He carefully cradled the egg. Huai Yu held her breath. Both of them stared wide-eyed at the egg in his palm, extremely tense.

Boss Tang was about to set it down on the nearby counter when Huai Yu stopped him. "Doesn’t it still need warmth right now? How about putting it in my hands?"

Her body had grown a bit stronger recently, but her palms were still delicate and tender, her hands petite. Compared to Boss Tang’s meaty, fan-like hands, she would barely be able to hold such a massive egg.

Boss Tang sighed. "Never mind, I’ll hold it."

He rested both arms on the counter and earnestly cupped the goose egg in his hands. After a thought, he freed up one hand to fish the second egg out of his pocket. No sooner had he placed it on a towel on the counter than a crisp CRACK rang out. This one was about to hatch too.

Well then! Now neither of them needed to be held. Boss Tang simply stuffed the towel into a cardboard box for insulation and turned around to fill a hot water bottle.

"We’re so silly. We should have done this earlier instead of holding them with our bare hands."

Huai Yu thought to herself that he was holding it earnestly, while she had been looking for a chance to see if she could transmit some of her Purification Ability into it... But since they were already hatching, there was no need to rush. It would be better to take them back first, lest she cause a commotion too big to cover up.

Meanwhile, Boss Tang was still rambling on.

"I really want to see what this mutated goose turns out to be! But you have to be careful. If you ask me, Gao Ming isn’t reliable at all!" He cursed under his breath, "What kind of rubbish is he selling! This one looks so ordinary, who knows, maybe it’ll mutate into something terrifying!"

Huai Yu pondered for a moment before saying hesitantly, "No matter how much it mutates, it wouldn’t turn into a dung beetle, right?"

The memory of that dung beetle rolling a ball of feces with its front legs had clearly left a deep psychological shadow on Boss Tang. He still couldn’t fathom the mental state of his friend.

For now, he could only try his best to ignore it and shift his attention back to the two goose eggs. "What do geese eat when they’re little?"

The two of them exchanged blank stares, at a total loss.

After a while, Boss Tang offered a suggestion. "Why don’t you go to the back street and find the bookseller? See if they have any breeding guides.

"Though, since they’re mutated, I can’t guarantee a regular breeding guide will be of any use. Let’s just have a look first."

"Books?!" Huai Yu’s spirits immediately lifted. In that instant, she completely forgot about the rare hatching of the mutated geese. After turning around to ask for the exact location, she practically dashed out the door.

Books! Books to pass the time! Living all alone in the Rose Corridor, she felt like she was going crazy from boredom whenever she had no chores to do. She desperately needed this kind of high-quality mental nourishment!

Following Boss Tang’s directions, Huai Yu spent quite some effort before finally locating the unremarkable bookstore tucked away in a corner. The owner was a young woman. Seeing Huai Yu walk in, she peeked outside before hurriedly pulling the door shut a little to conceal the interior.

Huai Yu was curious. "Why don’t you have a sign? I’ve walked down this street several times and never noticed this place."

"Sigh!" the girl whispered. "What we’re doing here isn’t exactly legitimate business. The authorities turn a blind eye as long as no one complains, so I have to keep a low profile and be self-aware."

What kind of illegitimate business could selling books be? Huai Yu thought about it for a second, then her eyes suddenly widened. "Are you..."

Before she could finish, the young woman eagerly explained, "It’s pirated copies! Just pirated books! Not what you’re thinking of."

As she spoke, she squatted back down to organize the bookshelf. Huai Yu looked a bit embarrassed. "I wasn’t thinking..."

The owner muttered, "Even if you were, it wouldn’t matter. You couldn’t see them anyway.

"Besides, all the good books are safely stored in the library. They haven’t finished restoring the archives yet, so it’s temporarily closed to the public... The books I have here are ones I collected from the internet before the apocalypse. There are also a lot of vintage novels. The kind you wouldn’t easily find even before the disaster."

While they were talking, Huai Yu squatted down beside her to help sort out the messy piles of books. She casually picked one up. The cover featured an extremely seductive woman surrounded by five, six, maybe seven or eight men. The massive title font was especially eye-catching:

[Eight Treasures in One Pregnancy: The Pure Maiden’s Domineering Control]

Huai Yu was absolutely flabbergasted!

She was profoundly shocked! She wasn’t sure whether to be more shocked by the "Eight Treasures in One Pregnancy" part or by how exactly this "Pure Maiden" achieved "Domineering Control." The title alone gave off an indescribably taboo vibe that made her want to avoid it!

But it really had been a very, very long time since she had had any mental nourishment. She resisted the urge over and over again, but ultimately couldn’t hold back. "Can I take a look?"

"Go ahead." The girl waved her hand. "These were all printed in my family’s own factory. Read whatever you like."

Filled with anticipation and apprehension, Huai Yu opened the book. She had no idea what kind of content she was expecting, but her eyes were immediately stung by three massive words—

[Guide to Wealth]

Beneath it was a smaller subtitle: This volume references [Postpartum Care for Sows].

[My name is Little Yan. I was originally an ordinary girl from a rural village. Having dropped out of school early, I was uneducated and lived in constant poverty.]

[Until one day, the Nongxin Agricultural Channel distributed a free copy of the Guide to Wealth to everyone in the village. Opening this book opened up a whole new world for me.]

[The story begins with the pig I raised...]

Huai Yu was rendered speechless.

At first, she was bewildered, then she found herself drawn in, before finally snapping back to reality. "Wait, isn’t this a romance novel?"