Chapter 36: Klein and Ali Return to the Golden Dragon Clan

Chapter 36: Chapter 36: Klein and Ali Return to the Golden Dragon Clan

After Tyler finished helping fetch water, he went outside to prepare dinner. Ophelia took this opportunity to enter the farm space.

The 100 square meters of wheat had ripened, yielding a successful harvest of 100 pounds. The remaining rice, fruits, and vegetables would take another one to three days to mature.

As soon as Ophelia entered, she turned off the one-click replanting feature. She planned to plant something else this time.

Thinking of the impending rainy season, she knew the temperature would plummet and the air would become damp. Under prolonged cold and damp conditions, the frail young females would be prone to catching colds. Medical knowledge in the Beast World was severely lacking. A simple cold or fever could easily take a life if not handled carefully; it was extremely dangerous.

However, there was no medicine in the farm space’s shop, and she had not yet unlocked the seed packets for herbal medicine. For now, she could only grow plants that induced sweating and provided warmth.

She recalled some of the agricultural knowledge she had learned in college during her past life. Scallions, ginger, red chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and bird’s eye chilies were all plants that could induce sweating and keep the body warm.

Thus, she bought four packets of each of the five plants—scallions, ginger, red chili peppers, Sichuan peppercorns, and bird’s eye chilies. The total of twenty packets perfectly filled the newly available 100 square meters of land.

She spent 600 points, leaving her with a balance of 29,400 points.

Scallion Seeds: 30 points. Level: 1. Maturation Time: 96 hours (4 days). Area: 5 square meters. Yield: 20 pounds of scallions.

The other plant varieties shared the same stats.

For the next three days, Ophelia didn’t go to the trading market to exchange for food. The crops in her space had all matured, so she harvested them and stored everything in the warehouse.

She planted sweat-inducing plants on the newly freed 250 square meters of land—ten packets for each of the five varieties. Meanwhile, the first batch of scallions and ginger was only twenty-four hours away from maturing.

To avoid suspicion while stockpiling enough food, Ophelia led a group of males to a secret cave every day for those three days, bringing batches of grain back to the Golden Dragon Clan. Of the fifty clay vats she had kept for herself, three were now completely full (each holding 100 pounds)—one vat of wheat and two of rice.

Warehouse: Capacity 5,000. Current Storage: 1,380.

(Prey: 100, Peaches: 40, Orah mandarins: 50, Bananas: 50, Rice: 60, Lychees: 500, Watermelons: 500, Bok choy: 20, Green peppers: 20, Potatoes: 20, Tomatoes: 20)

One day, the sky became densely covered with dark clouds. The air pressure dropped so low it felt suffocating enough to crush an elephant. This was the precursor to the rainy season.

The clan members hurriedly gathered the prey and clothing they had left outside to dry, bringing them indoors and shutting their doors tightly.

Moments later, rain the size of beans began to fall. The downpour was fierce and urgent, beating against the stone walls of the houses and creating a crisp SPLASHING sound. It was the heaviest rain they had seen in years. In no time, the yellow mud road outside was carved into small gullies by the rushing water.

Sitting by the window, Ophelia felt nothing but relief. Fortunately, she had arranged everything in advance. The only pity was that she couldn’t remember exactly how long this rain had lasted in her past life.

While her thoughts wandered, an urgent KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK at the door pulled her back to reality.

"Ophelia, open the door," her brother Laxus’s voice filtered through the cracks.

Tyler hurriedly opened the door. The moment it swung open, the biting wind blew rain into the room. Unable to dodge in time, Ophelia was sprayed with water. "..."

"Brother, you..." Before she could finish, she noticed two figures following behind him. "Clay Clan Leader? Why are you here?"

As she spoke, she realized that Klein was holding Ali in his arms. The young female’s face was deathly pale, and she was shivering violently. Klein’s body was also drenched by the rain.

"What happened to Ali?" Ophelia furrowed her delicate brows. "Come in quickly."

"We hadn’t reached the White Tiger Clan before the rain started," Klein said. "Ali has a weak constitution, and after getting drenched, she developed a fever. So, I brought her to your clan."

Ali needed immediate medical attention, and the Golden Dragon Clan was the closest to them.

"I already went to fetch the clan doctor," Laxus explained, clarifying why he had led the two of them here. "Since Ali is a young female from a Foreign Clan, it’s not appropriate for her to stay in the main tribal settlement. So, I brought them to your house."

Klein’s hands trembled as he held Ali. A rare pleading expression appeared on his usually cold and stern face.

Ophelia instructed Klein to place Ali on the bed. She reached out and felt Ali’s forehead; her temperature was indeed higher than usual, but it was still manageable.

"Alright, you guys wait by the door. I’ll help Ali change into some clean clothes first."

By the time she finished drying Ali’s body and changing her clothes, a male arrived with the clan doctor. The clan doctor was carrying a wooden medicine box in his hands. Seeing this, Klein hurriedly pulled the clan doctor into the stone house.

"Quick, save my sister."

The clan doctor took out some unknown powder from his medicine box, mixed it with water, and fed it to Ali. "Young Clan Leader, Clay Clan Leader, this is all I can do. Whether her fever breaks or not will depend on the young female Ali’s luck."

However, after waiting for a long time, there was no sign of Ali’s temperature dropping, nor had she broken a sweat.

Everyone in the room grew anxious. Ophelia picked at her fingers nervously. If Ali didn’t sweat, the heat trapped inside her body couldn’t dissipate. And without dissipating the heat, the fever wouldn’t break. If the fever continued like this, she would either die or suffer brain damage.

She diverted a bit of her consciousness into the space and checked the progress—it would still be twelve hours before the scallions and ginger matured. She sighed, hoping that Ali could hold on for another twelve hours. For now, the only thing she could do was help Ali control her temperature and prevent it from rising any further.

"Tyler, go boil some hot water."

Without asking for a reason, Tyler obediently went to do as told. Before long, the water was ready. She dipped a cloth into the hot water, wrung it out, and began wiping Ali’s body. Then, she placed the warm cloth on the girl’s forehead.

"Sister, will this help?" Laxus asked with concern, looking at Ali’s flushed face.

"I don’t know, but we have to try."

"This..." The clan doctor watched from the side, at a loss for words.

Seeing Ophelia begin to wipe Ali’s private areas, Klein closed his eyes, desperately hoping this method would work. The males turned their backs while Ophelia finished the first round of wiping.

"Ophelia, can I stay here?" Klein asked. His eyes were bloodshot, and he looked entirely disheveled, completely stripped of his usual aloof aura as the White Tiger King.

"You can. I’ll have Tyler hang up an animal skin in the room as a partition. I’ll stay by Ali’s side tonight."

For a single male to stay in a young female’s home when they had no intention of becoming mates was against the rules. However, Ophelia understood Klein’s desperate anxiety, so she agreed.

Just like that, Klein sat behind the animal skin curtain without sleeping a wink all night. He simply listened as Ophelia continually wiped Ali’s body, while the fire in the room burned brightly.

The firelight cast Ophelia’s elongated shadow across the floor. As Klein stared at her slender silhouette, an indescribable feeling welled up in his heart.

The next morning, upon hearing some movement, a groggy Ophelia reached out to touch Ali’s forehead.

Klein asked in a hoarse, tense voice, "Has her fever broken yet?"

"No, but it hasn’t gone up either. That’s a good sign. It proves that wiping her body is working." The only problem was that she still hadn’t broken a sweat.

"I should take Ali back to the White Tiger Clan to see our clan doctor," he said. Even if she truly had to die, she should die in the White Tiger Clan... At that thought, Klein’s heart clenched in pain.

Just then, the system let out a DING-DONG, DING-DONG sound.

[Vegetable: Scallions have matured!]

[Vegetable: Ginger has matured!]

...