After Gu Jiaqi discovered that pork made up the majority of the meat, she sighed. When she discovered that there was also beef and mutton, she sighed again.
In fact, most of the meat consumed by the Empire now came from edible star beasts. It was absolutely impossible for pork to be among them, which was also why she had previously sold vegetables anonymously.
Gu Jiaqi picked out several large boxes of pork, beef, and mutton and continued keeping them in her space. As for the remaining chicken and fish, they were not particularly rare in the interstellar era. It was said that in ancient times, there had been a large, terrifying animal called a dinosaur, which was the ancestor of chickens.
As for the fish, she felt that they all tasted more or less the same, and their scales were also fairly similar. They should be sellable.
After removing the meat that could not be sold, Gu Jiaqi took stock of what remained. There were various leafy green vegetables she did not recognize very well, potatoes, radishes, eggplants, cucumbers, and so on, along with chicken and fish. There was quite a lot.
Of course, Gu Jiaqi did not recognize most of the vegetables and meat either, but the names were marked on the boxes, which made her look somewhat professional.
Throughout her not particularly long life, Gu Jiaqi had relied on nutrient solutions to meet most of her nutritional needs. She would eat proper meals when she earned merit, but she only cared about eating. Why would she care what dishes they were? As for vegetables, she only had a general impression of them. She had no idea what they actually looked like.
Thinking that she might be selling a lot of vegetables in the future, Gu Jiaqi decided that the next time she saw Nan Qingchuan, she had to ask him for a vegetable encyclopedia. It would be too embarrassing for a vegetable seller not to recognize vegetables!
Yawning, Gu Jiaqi stored all the pork in her spatial chip. She might as well stockpile it. Food that could be eaten would always come in handy eventually.
She called over several robots and had them scrape off the name of the vegetable farm and the four large characters meaning “Produced by Ming Country” printed on all the boxes. Come to think of it, it was actually rather amusing. These days, there were truly not many merchants willing to ship goods in cardboard boxes.
Compared with the lightweight stone boxes most commonly used in the interstellar era, cardboard boxes were expensive to produce and not very sturdy. They were generally only used by certain self-important people who considered themselves to have a certain “style.”
Following the same procedure as last time, Gu Jiaqi once again listed more than a ton of vegetables and meat on her personal account, waiting for some rich customer to buy everything at once.
Compared with those carefully prepared dishes, Gu Jiaqi was not worried about anyone discovering her vegetables. There was a mysterious organization in the interstellar era called the Blazing Sun Society. They could get their hands on all kinds of unusual things, including vegetables and food.
Therefore, compared with the exquisite cooked dishes that were extremely rare in the interstellar era, Gu Jiaqi selling these vegetables and meat in such large quantities would not arouse much suspicion about her source of goods. Whenever people discovered something unusual, they would automatically think of that mysterious organization.
As for whether the vegetables she sold would affect the Empire’s market…
That was ridiculous. There were more than a thousand planets inhabited by humans throughout the Empire, with a population numbering in the hundreds of billions. This little bit of vegetables from her could not affect anything.
To put it more realistically, even if all the land on Orange Star, where Ming Country was located, were planted with vegetables and sold, it would not affect the Empire’s market. How could one planet possibly compete with more than a thousand planets?
After the products passed the review, Gu Jiaqi began entering their prices. She first searched StarNet for the current market prices, then raised them somewhat accordingly.
For the more than one ton of vegetables, Gu Jiaqi set the price at 200,000 star coins. She only accepted bulk purchases. If someone wanted to buy them, they had to buy everything. Otherwise, she would not sell them. As for the eight full boxes of meat, she priced the whole lot at 100,000 star coins.
Next, she handed a table’s worth of exquisite dishes to the unmanned transport ship that had come to collect the goods, and her work for the time being was finally done.
By the time she finished everything, it was already past noon, and Gu Jiaqi genuinely felt tired.
She took several kinds of toys for Xiaoshu and told her that it was best not to leave the shelter. Then she set a four-hour alarm and immediately lay down on the bed and fell asleep.
Gu Jiaqi placed such importance on getting enough rest because she was worried that fatigue would cause her mental power to collapse again. If something went wrong while she was already this destitute, she would have no choice but to wait for death.
Whatever happened could wait until she woke up!
Nothing unexpected happened while Gu Jiaqi was sleeping. She slept peacefully for four hours. When she woke up, she found Xiaoshu quietly playing with her toys beside her without making a sound.
“Xiaoshu, you’re such a good girl!” Gu Jiaqi could not help praising her. It was truly rare for a child this age to sit quietly for four hours.
Xiaoshu blinked and smiled shyly. Gu Jiaqi rubbed her head and got out of bed.
She still had many important things to do.
The first thing Gu Jiaqi did was check her StarNet account. There were still no orders.
As expected, very few people would buy a pile of vegetables of unknown origin on StarNet.
She then made reservations for a large number of vaccines on the Empire’s vaccination website. Of course, to conceal Xiaoshu’s existence, she prepared a certificate claiming that, as a disabled veteran of the Empire, she intended to receive all these vaccines herself. She had even made reservations for vaccines all the way up to the age of eighty. She could truly say she had gone to great lengths.
After submitting the application, Gu Jiaqi walked out of the shelter. She planned to organize those mechas. Now that she was, in a sense, a high-level merchant doing business with a country, she still had to organize her goods properly. These mechas were both heavy and enormous. If she left it to Nan Qingchuan to move them himself, who knew how long it would take…
“Xiaoshu, do you want to go outside with Big Sister for a while?”
Xiaoshu nodded excitedly, and the two of them walked over to a huge pile of mechas.
Gu Jiaqi told her to stand a little farther away, then piloted Xiao Hong and removed an old mecha from the top of the towering “mecha mountain.”
This mecha was worth five tons of vegetables! Gu Jiaqi happily took out her all-purpose cleaning cloth and gave the mecha a rough wipe-down, adding a little to its appearance.
After wiping it clean, she stored the mecha in her space, preparing to hand it over to Nan Qingchuan later. It should be midnight on the Ming Country plane now, so they should all be resting already. This time difference was truly annoying.
“That guy has been guarding against me this whole time. I refuse to believe you can figure out mental power on your own…” Thinking of Nan Qingchuan’s cautious demeanor, Gu Jiaqi muttered to herself.
Just then, Gu Jiaqi suddenly received a message on her old communicator:
“Planet Lord Gu, you can come and collect the second batch of food now.”
“Huh? Don’t they need to sleep this late at night?”
Gu Jiaqi really had not expected Nan Qingchuan to show up at this hour. She had no intention of letting Nan Qingchuan see Xiaoshu, so she planned to send Xiaoshu back into the shelter before going over. Unexpectedly, just after she had sent Xiaoshu into the shelter, she suddenly heard a tremendous roar coming from the direction of the black hole.
It was a star beast!
Gu Jiaqi was the sort of person whose actions sometimes moved faster than her thoughts. She immediately piloted her mecha toward the black hole.
When she reached the mouth of the black hole, she realized that the star beast’s roar sounded very much like that of a Tata Beast.
This type of star beast was carnivorous and had formidable combat power. Its greatest characteristic was its immense strength.
Sure enough, when Gu Jiaqi saw the Tata Beast, it was already very close to Nan Qingchuan. Seeing that this poor ancient man was about to be swallowed whole by the Tata Beast, Gu Jiaqi did not hesitate and piloted her mecha forward, firing a shot at the Tata Beast.
Unfortunately, because Gu Jiaqi was concerned about the black hole behind the Tata Beast, she used a small-caliber light gun. When the shot hit the Tata Beast, it was like a mere tickle and had virtually no destructive power.
Fortunately, the shot attracted the Tata Beast’s attention and turned its gaze toward her, allowing Nan Qingchuan, who had been under the oppressive force of the star beast, to breathe a sigh of relief.
The Tata Beast stared at the conspicuously bright-red mecha and let out a roar before charging toward it.
Seeing that it had already moved away from the entrance, Gu Jiaqi no longer held back. She raised the most powerful light cannon on the mecha, aimed it steadily at the Tata Beast’s head, and fired.
“Bang!”
“Roar!”
Normally, after taking a shot like that, whether it was a Tata Beast or the strongest star beast in the interstellar era, the Giant Rock Beast, it should not have been able to withstand it. Yet, unexpectedly, even after taking a shot to the head, the Tata Beast could still stagger toward her. Gu Jiaqi narrowed her eyes.
It must have mutated.
The Tata Beast chased after the mecha incessantly as if it had taken drugs. Gu Jiaqi kept firing her guns and cannons at it, but after taking the hit to the head, the creature had gone completely berserk, and Gu Jiaqi was unable to hit its head again.
Gu Jiaqi could not help feeling irritated again. She knew that this was not good. A doctor had once told her that whenever she felt irritated, she had to vent those emotions immediately. If she kept suppressing them, it was easy for her mental power to run wild.
She dodged twice more, and out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Nan Qingchuan was actually holding his gun and repeatedly trying to aim at the giant star beast’s head.
This guy actually hadn’t run away… She was somewhat surprised.
By now, the Tata Beast had been lured by Gu Jiaqi deep into the steel forest, at least half a kilometer from the entrance. Gu Jiaqi simply decided to use the weapon she was best at and which possessed the greatest destructive power: mental power.
Using mental power was an extremely profound matter, especially for someone like Gu Jiaqi, who possessed the highest level of mental power in the Empire. In theory, a full-powered attack from an SSS-level mental power user could directly kill any monster in the entire star system.
Just now, Gu Jiaqi had been too lazy to use her mental power, thinking that she could simply fire a few shots and kill it. But now that she was irritated, she had no choice but to use it.
While dodging the Tata Beast, Gu Jiaqi simultaneously condensed a sword of mental power in her mind and controlled it as it shot toward the Tata Beast.
This was the first time Nan Qingchuan had ever seen a mecha fight. He knew that there was nothing he could do to help, but he could not bring himself to retreat just like that.
Seeing that the monster’s attention had been drawn to the mecha and that he was temporarily safe, Nan Qingchuan simply took out his standard-issue gun and occasionally fired sneak shots at the soft flesh on the monster’s neck.
At first, he had been somewhat apprehensive, afraid that his relatively primitive weapon would be unable to hurt the monster. However, when he discovered that his small bullets could leave tiny holes in the monster’s flesh, it seemed that gunpowder weapons could still be used.
In fact, Nan Qingchuan had no need to bring a weapon here at all. Even with a weapon, he could not defeat Gu Jiaqi. But even if he could not win, he still had to be prepared. At the very least, it provided some psychological reassurance!
He was seriously firing sneak shots at the monster when he suddenly noticed that it had become completely rigid and was standing there motionless.
Another ten or so seconds passed before the previously vigorous, frenzied monster suddenly crashed to the ground, breaking several steel trees.
The monster’s tail happened to be not far from Nan Qingchuan. It was as thick as a water vat and covered in black scales. Even the scales gleamed with a bone-chilling light. It was truly a ferocious beast!
Yet Nan Qingchuan still did not understand why the monster had suddenly collapsed. Holding his gun up warily, he backed away several steps, afraid that it would suddenly spring back to its feet.
Only when he heard Gu Jiaqi speak from inside the mecha did he relax slightly.
“Mr. Nan, there’s no need to be nervous. It’s already dead.”
Gu Jiaqi piloted the mecha down beside Nan Qingchuan and climbed out. A smile was on her face, and she seemed to be in a very good mood.
“Planet Lord Gu, is this a monster?”
Nan Qingchuan pointed at the black Tata Beast.
Gu Jiaqi nodded nonchalantly. “This is a star beast. Its name is Tata. This thing is basically the equivalent of the wild boars from your era. It’s very tasty, but its attack power is too great, so very few people dare to hunt them.”
Hearing Gu Jiaqi say that this terrifying monster could actually be eaten, the corner of Nan Qingchuan’s mouth twitched. He could not help marveling at how hardcore this was.
“I’ll give you this Tata Beast. The chefs where you come from are very good at cooking. They should definitely be able to bring out its delicious flavor.”