The twelve-pound tarpaulin truly exhausted Huai Yu.
That mere two-pound difference became the final straw on her shoulders. By the time she returned to her new house in District 37, the only thing she could do was drop the tarpaulin and collapse.
So tired, so tired, so tired…
Wuwuwu… where is her manservant… she’s really exhausted!
Her whole body was drenched in sweat, and she knew without thinking how disheveled her face must look. She hadn’t even brushed her teeth properly this morning…
But with her body so weak, she absolutely couldn’t bathe in water during this season—not even a wipe-down!
She took several deep breaths, and when she felt the cold wind whistling into her clothes, she quickly got up again.
The house-building progress had already exceeded 80%. She wanted to push through in one go and sleep in her new house tonight!
With that thought, it felt as if her body had gained a surge of strength. She unfolded the tarpaulin and slowly dragged it onto the round, leafy roof.
The wisteria frame held firm without any swaying, looking particularly stable.
Huai Yu stepped into her little treehouse (after all, it was built against a tree) and noticed that the tiny gaps that had once let in daylight were now completely dark, with no light seeping through at all. She grew even happier!
Indeed! Her decision to ask the big pine tree for pinecones was truly brilliant!
The good results gave her boundless energy.
Now, she organized the remaining leaves, weaving them one by one with thin vines to create a natural decoration at the entrance. Even after they dried, they would conceal the truth of the wisteria roots.
I really am a genius.
Thinking this, Huai Yu silently added another label to her unknown identity.
…
However, compared to the cold, hard bricks and stones underground, this little treehouse—or perhaps grass hut—was in direct contact with the ground.
It stood about two meters tall—maybe a little taller, since the highest part of the frame was fixed and wrapped by Huai Yu while standing on tiptoe and stretching her arms. When tying the leaves, she had carefully climbed up to do it.
It was clear that she had put her heart and soul into building this house and had truly worked hard.
From a distance, the entire treehouse looked like an upside-down, irregular bowl or a non-standard rectangle.
In any case, with a length and width—or rather, diameter—of about 3.5 meters, the house’s area exceeded ten square meters, making it quite spacious.
Huai Yu thought for a moment and, while it was still not too late, went to the nearby foundation. She searched for loose small bricks one by one, then moved them bit by bit to her new house, like an ant moving its nest.
She was lucky. Whether due to shoddy construction or architectural necessity, one section of the foundation used small blue bricks instead of the large concrete and foundation stones found elsewhere.
Nearby, there was also a scattered pile of red bricks, but they were fewer in number and likely not intended for the foundation. They also didn’t seem as sturdy as the blue bricks, so Huai Yu decisively chose the blue ones.
Huffing and puffing, she moved them one by one. Not only were her hands red, but she felt as if her back was about to break.
But by the time the sun set and dusk fell, the floor of her little treehouse, spanning over ten square meters, had been raised and laid as flat as possible.
This way, even heavy rain wouldn’t be a problem!
Well, not too heavy—if it rained too much and for too long, there was still a slight risk of flooding on flat ground.
At this moment, Huai Yu looked at her little house and felt utterly content!
She really should have wiped the blue bricks again, but she had done too much work today and was truly exhausted.
Huai Yu crawled back into the tunnel, stuffed the nutrient solution and soybeans into her sleeping bag, and dragged them all the way out.
From today on, she would never have to crawl around like that again!
…
On the fourth day after coming down from the mountain, even the nearby broadcast sounded pleasant.
[Today is Saturday, March 21, 2066, cloudy. The Air Mutation Index is 5. Sanqing Shan and the Wasteland show no abnormalities…]
[Huacheng’s former Hongsheng Pedestrian Street has been provisionally designated as the Hongsheng Trading Market…]
[The spring equinox has passed. Experts from the Agricultural Cultivation Department encourage everyone to attempt self-sufficient breeding in warm environments to alleviate food storage pressure…]
[The Medical Department advises the public to test the Mutation Value when foraging for wild vegetables to avoid consuming produce nearing the Critical Value, which could harm the body…]
[Escaped convicts from the Third Prison are still at large…]
Huai Yu sat contentedly on the blue bricks laid at the entrance of her treehouse, gazing into the distance. The Rose Corridor stretched endlessly beside her, still gentle and fragrant.
Sleeping in a room felt completely different from sleeping in a tunnel. Even the nutrient solution she sipped no longer seemed so unbearable.
The broadcast continued for a full thirty minutes. Huai Yu patiently listened to every announcement, only to forget them all afterward. But it didn’t matter—she still remembered what she needed to do today.
For instance, she had to find some dry grass that wouldn’t shed debris, then figure out how to get a container for water to clean yesterday’s blue brick floor.
But while dry grass was easy to find, a container was hard to come by!
Though no one had explicitly said it, she vaguely sensed she was different and wasn’t yet ready to go to crowded places. For now, she gathered dry grass while pondering solutions.
The foundation ruins were overgrown with tall spear grass. Though it had yellowed and dried in the autumn, it hadn’t rotted or fallen. Instead, it swayed gently in the breeze, protecting the newly sprouted green-yellow shoots at its base.
From afar, this tall spear grass dotted the vast wasteland in scattered patches, and there was quite a lot of it.
Without a knife, Huai Yu could only break the grass stalks one by one. Once she had gathered a handful, she folded them twice, pulled out a stem to tie them loosely, and made a makeshift brush.
There were still some withered tung leaves left from yesterday. Huffing and puffing, she carried a perforated brick to a nearby pond.
First, she stuffed broken bricks into the bottom of the hole for support, then layered the leaves over the opening to create a crude container.
Scooping water from the pond handful by handful, she finally collected about a bowl’s worth.
Though the hole was slightly larger than a fist, it was just enough to wipe the floor bricks.
She dipped the dry grass brush into the water to scrub the bricks clean, then used the nearly dry tung leaves to wipe away the faint, dirty water stains…
Now, the simple room held only a sleeping bag and a large pinecone with a broken tip, suspended by vines in the center of the treehouse.
At first glance, it looked like a lightless lightbulb hanging there.
Clean blue bricks, a maroon sleeping bag, neatly arranged packs of nutrient solution, and a small net bag of soybeans.
Though she had few possessions and the treehouse was quite bare, Huai Yu felt she had already set the tone for a refined lifestyle.
As for what came next…
Taking advantage of the daylight streaming through the doorway into the room, Huai Yu brushed aside a cluster of hanging, blooming wisteria and made her way to the Rose Corridor:
“May I pick a few flowers?”
She pointed to the perforated brick being used as a makeshift basin: “A room looks much nicer with fresh flowers!”