Back in the shelter, Xiaoshu was indeed eating with sleepy eyes, almost as if she were sleepwalking as she picked at the food on her plate.
“Xiaoshu, are you very tired? You’ve already slept for so long…” Gu Jiaqi asked as she sat down beside her.
Xiaoshu froze for a moment before nodding. The exhaustion on her face was impossible to hide.
Gu Jiaqi took out the food cart as well. “There’s still plenty here. Just take whatever you want.”
She herself picked up a piece of spare rib and put it into her mouth. So delicious!
People in ancient times really knew how to enjoy themselves…
And so, Gu Jiaqi and Xiaoshu did not drink nutrient solution today. Instead, they had a hearty feast.
However, after finishing the meal, Xiaoshu yawned again. This time, Gu Jiaqi clearly saw that the whites of her eyes were blood-red.
That was enough to make Gu Jiaqi unable to sit still. She frantically urged the courier along, asking the unmanned spacecraft delivering the medical pod to increase its speed.
This child must have been poisoned.
While Gu Jiaqi was busy treating Xiaoshu, Nan Qingchuan was also busy on his end.
Many strange-looking people had appeared outside the park. They clamored to enter the “archaeological” site to take a look, and some even tried to climb the steel scaffolding that had been erected. The vast majority of them were foreigners.
These days, the slightest stir in Ming Country was enough to cause unrest internationally. These foreign “journalists” and “tourists” were even more familiar with the authorities’ movements than the locals.
“I’m an archaeology professional. I’m volunteering to enter the site and help you!”
“Thank you, but no need. We have professionals.”
“You’re discriminating against me! I formally protest!”
The scene became extremely chaotic for a while.
So, to prevent any classified information from leaking, the task force urgently requested the deployment of a reinforced company that had been training near Ning City. They set up tight security posts around the square to ensure that no outsiders could force their way in.
At the press conference that day, a spokesperson from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ming Country also responded to the relevant questions: “Ming Country has a profound history and culture. It is perfectly normal for us to discover some historical ruins. At the same time, we would also like to warn those with ulterior motives: If you don’t have it yourselves, don’t covet what belongs to other countries. Can stolen culture really be considered culture?”
With that, attention shifted once again toward cultural theft, and the international official discourse temporarily quieted down.
However, there were still some malicious reports claiming that Ming Country had established a secret experimental base to conduct inhumane experiments, demanding that footage from inside be made public.
A new storm was quietly brewing.
Of course, Nan Qingchuan knew nothing about any of this. He was currently reporting to the new leader.
Standing in front of Nan Qingchuan was a middle-aged man dressed in camouflage fatigues. Although wrinkles had already appeared on his face, he still had an imposing presence. He held a weapon Nan Qingchuan had never seen before, his expression solemn.
“Did she really say that?”
“Yes. She seemed very sincere. She didn’t look like she was lying.”
“Did you record it?”
“Yes.”
After a brief exchange, the two of them entered the tent together. A conference table and projector had been set up inside, with electrical wires running across the ground. It looked almost like a command center.
An expert in facial-expression analysis, the negotiation expert Old Tao, and two academicians from the Academy of Sciences took their seats. Nan Qingchuan removed the audio and video recording device he was wearing and handed it to a soldier from the technical division beside him. Moments later, the projector began playing footage of Gu Jiaqi speaking with him.
“…You know, when a backward country encounters an advanced country, no diplomatic means are going to be useful…”
In the video, Gu Jiaqi wore a smile. Although she had no makeup on, her dark eyes and red lips were strikingly beautiful, or rather, seductive.
But at this point, appearance was the least important thing. No matter how beautiful Gu Jiaqi was, in the eyes of everyone in Ming Country, she was an alien they needed to guard against.
The contents of their conversation were played repeatedly. Several experts kept jotting things down on paper. After half an hour, the newly appointed person in charge, Vice Minister Zhong Hua, spoke.
“Xiao Huang, contact the nearby vegetable farms. Have them harvest some fresh vegetables as soon as possible. Prepare some meat as well. Remember to get several different varieties and make sure they’re properly preserved.”
The young soldier standing nearby saluted and ran out, breaking the quiet atmosphere in the conference room.
Old Tao cleared his throat. “Judging from her facial expressions and movements, this alien does seem fairly sincere. What she said does make sense. Of course, we can’t rule out the possibility that she’s simply very good at acting.”
As soon as Old Tao finished speaking, several facial-expression and psychology experts sitting nearby also gradually agreed. Based on what they had seen so far, Gu Jiaqi indeed had not displayed any intention of harming them.
Recalling Gu Jiaqi’s words, Nan Qingchuan also nodded lightly.
Old Tao continued, “Based on our current assessment, this woman should be a retired soldier proficient in the use of various weapons. She obtained this planet, which is somewhat useless to her, and her current request is to exchange these abandoned mechas that are useless to her for things from us, thereby achieving her goal of developing the planet.”
Zhong Hua rested his chin on his hand. “If she has ulterior motives and wants something more from us, then let’s exchange one mecha first and see what happens. If there are no other unusual circumstances, I think we can establish a long-term cooperation.”
Back on the garbage planet, Gu Jiaqi’s courier arrived a full three hours after she placed the order. Once she signed for the delivery, the artificial-intelligence-controlled spacecraft immediately fled as if it were escaping for its life.
Gu Jiaqi wondered, Does my crappy little planet really scare people that much?
She took the medical pod out of its packaging and opened the energy storage box. The energy inside was full, so she could use it directly. However, cosmic energy was extremely scarce on this planet. She estimated that once the energy was depleted this time, she would have to attach an external energy box.
She sighed. Looks like she would have to keep energy boxes in stock on her planet from now on.
After putting the medical pod into operation, Gu Jiaqi walked into the shelter and carried out Xiaoshu, who had fallen asleep again, placing her inside the pod.
“I’d like to see what’s causing this excessive sleepiness.”
Gu Jiaqi pressed the examination button. The screen paused for a few seconds before quickly displaying the cause of the illness: J526-type neurotoxin.
Sure enough, she had been poisoned. Gu Jiaqi opened the toxin’s description and skimmed it. It was a toxin transmitted by some kind of poisonous insect. Perhaps Xiaoshu had accidentally been bitten by one, which was why she had ended up like this.
Looking at Xiaoshu, who was sleeping in a daze, Gu Jiaqi let out a soft sigh. The ancient era really was dangerous.
She pressed the treatment button. The display showed 46 minutes remaining for the treatment. Looking at the sky, which had already begun to brighten, Gu Jiaqi finally realized that Xiaoshu’s deep sleep probably also had something to do with it being nighttime.
Scientific research had shown that when people relaxed in a dim environment, they indeed became more prone to fatigue and drowsiness.
She had stayed at the black hole to keep watch for Nan Qingchuan, and with Xiao Hong’s super-bright lights, she had completely forgotten that it was nighttime.
This was also related to the environment she had lived in before. The places where the Zerg attacked at the edge of the galaxy were dark all year round. She had already grown accustomed to fighting in darkness.
“Ah… After all that, I’m actually the abnormal one.”
Gu Jiaqi rarely felt somewhat melancholy. Had she really been overly tense? Could mental-power instability really affect so many things?
She rubbed her temples and looked at the light of the approaching dawn, letting out a sigh.
However, she was only melancholy for a few minutes. After all, she still had robots to dismantle!
Looking at the medical pod’s forty-minute countdown, Gu Jiaqi went to dismantle the other boxes first.
Although the fifteen robots she had bought this time were somewhat lacking in agility, they looked almost indistinguishable from real humans on the outside. Gu Jiaqi planned to use them to make the place look more populated, lest people from another world really think she didn’t have a single helper.
Her wallet had been completely emptied buying them. Gu Jiaqi carefully set up their movement routes and daily tasks, then adjusted the sensitivity of their voice controls to the highest level before giving them their first task:
“Go clean yourselves up and put on human clothes.” As she spoke, she took out a pile of clothes from her space for them to change into. Because the Zerg smelled terrible, every soldier carried dozens of changes of clothes. These cheap combat suits were practically like aprons, specifically meant to block the smell.
“Go organize that pile of garbage over there and throw the broken fragments onto that garbage heap over there.”
Even Gu Jiaqi herself felt troubled saying this. Wasn’t she just moving the garbage from one place to another, tearing down one wall to patch another?
“Ah…” Once she had money, she would definitely rent a starship and haul all this garbage away.
After finishing all that, Gu Jiaqi took some food out of her space to eat. Naturally, she took large portions, the kind served on a huge plate instead of just a bite-sized serving. She really didn’t like those tiny portions.
With that thought, Gu Jiaqi simply opened the StarNet and registered a seller account on a shopping website. She did not open a store because opening a store on StarNet required a 3,000-star-coin security deposit. She was poor and could not afford it.
Selling things through a personal seller account was slower, and the review process was somewhat more troublesome, but at least she only had to pay a small processing fee.
While waiting for her account to be approved, Gu Jiaqi took all the food from the drawers and photographed each item one by one, then uploaded them all to her account. These days, sellers generally covered shipping costs. If she sold these dishes individually, she couldn’t even afford the postage, so she decided to sell them all together. Besides, there were plenty of rich people in the Empire.
Of course, the products still had to undergo a holographic inspection by a StarNet reviewer before they could be listed for sale. Gu Jiaqi didn’t mind. The food was definitely safe. She had tested it long ago.
Sure enough, the review passed quickly. Gu Jiaqi’s feast was officially listed for sale, just waiting for some rich customer to place an order.
At that moment, the medical pod began beeping. The treatment was about to finish. Gu Jiaqi walked over to the medical pod and looked at Xiaoshu’s face through the transparent cover. She was no longer as pale as before. Although the medical pod was small, it was fully equipped with all the necessary functions and was quite useful.
“Next is the vaccine…” Gu Jiaqi had Xiao Hong make a note of it so that the viruses here would not make Xiaoshu sick again.
She opened the medical pod. Xiaoshu still hadn’t woken up. A body this small had been injected with a neurotoxin, so she really needed to recuperate for a while.
Gu Jiaqi easily carried Xiaoshu back to the shelter. She was just about to rest herself when she suddenly heard Xiao Hong’s voice.
“Master, humanoid life forms have appeared at the entrance of the black hole.”
Gu Jiaqi shot to her feet. “Are they people I haven’t seen before?”
“There is one person I haven’t seen before.”
Gu Jiaqi’s expression immediately became wary.
When Gu Jiaqi reached the black hole, the first thing she saw was not the two people standing there, but the boxes of vegetables piled into a small mountain.
She looked at Nan Qingchuan in surprise. He had changed into a green camouflage uniform. With a solemn expression, he pointed to a middle-aged man beside him and spoke.
“Miss Gu, this is my superior, Vice Minister Zhong Hua. He is currently the only person in our country who can successfully enter here with me.”
“Also, these vegetables, meat, and other food supplies are emergency provisions we urgently requisitioned. We’ve brought two tons to help you through this difficult period. Please accept them.”
Gu Jiaqi was stunned.
Two tons?
People in ancient times really were generous…