[Mysterious Seed: Can grow a random special plant]
A special plant?
Ye Mian couldn’t help but think of the special ingredients required for the three recipes she had. Although she wasn’t sure if there was a connection, it would be great if there were.
She decided to find an empty spot and plant it later!
With that in mind, Ye Mian opened the Seed Gift Pack from the stage reward.
[Obtained: Radish seeds x10, Peanut seeds x10, Cucumber seeds x10, Chili seeds x10, Garlic seeds x10, Celery seeds x10, Bitter Gourd seeds x10, Small Pumpkin seeds x10, Eggplant seeds x10, Scallion seeds x10!]
“Huh?”
Ye Mian was momentarily dazed by the excessively long text box. As she matched the crops to her memory, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
There was truly no one else who could have such a rich vegetarian diet.
If she gave all of these to Xue Kai, he would probably jump for joy.
Since she hadn’t had time to take out the supplies brought back from the city, and now she had even more bags of seeds, Ye Mian had to rearrange her storage first. Once she felt more comfortable, she opened the last item: the common mystery box.
[Congratulations! You have obtained the “Dream Brand Beverage Big Bundle” (Contains: Corn Juice x6, Carrot Juice x6, Wu Xue Juice x3)!]
Wu Xue Juice!
Ye Mian’s eyes lit up. Wasn’t this one of the materials needed for the Fruit Sandwich recipe?
She didn’t care that she was slacking off a bit too much at the moment and immediately opened the bundle to look at the two drinks other than the corn juice.
[Carrot Juice: A nutrient-rich vegetable juice that refreshes the mind and improves eyesight.]
[Wu Xue Juice: A sweet and sour juice that can be consumed directly or used as a flavoring ingredient.]
The former likely had a special effect similar to the corn juice; as for how much it would “refresh the mind and improve eyesight,” she would only know after drinking it.
The latter didn’t seem to have any unique properties; it was just a bottle of thick, ordinary juice, pure white mixed with black. It looked like it would have a soft, sandy texture, much like snow.
After manually grouping the special materials together, Ye Mian let out a sigh of relief. She was one step closer to completing that side quest!
Closing the interface, she saw that Xue Kai and Big Black had already harvested a lot of wheat. Ye Mian quickly knelt down to gather the wheat, storing it in the system warehouse before transporting it back indoors.
During the process, she took a moment to look at the newly refreshed main quests and clicked to accept them all.
There were five main quests this time.
Plant ten types of crops simultaneously (0/10)
Harvest and process three types of crops (0/3)
Reach thirty extra harvest procs in a single day (0/30)
Grow one mysterious plant (0/1)
Have three employees and raise their loyalty above 80 (2/3)
“Hmm?”
Ye Mian paused again, looking at the last quest.
She had originally planned to take her time finding more employees, but now it seemed that wouldn’t work.
This quest, which appeared to be the fastest and easiest to complete, was actually quite difficult.
The farm currently had nothing but a pile of seeds, and Ye Mian didn’t want to just “kidnap” any random Evolutionary she met on the road; she still had some standards.
Take Xue Kai, for example. The moment she saw his skill, she thought that someone with a skill like “Fortress” might seem like someone who only wanted to protect themselves—perhaps even a bit selfish—but in reality, it symbolized a firm heart that wasn’t easily shaken.
Coupled with the fact that he knew how to cook and farm, she had immediately decided to bring him back.
Then there was Lu Ning. What Ye Mian valued most was, of course, her Absolute Strength. At the same time, she admired the kind of person who was willing to give their life to avenge their companions.
Once such a person decided to do something, they would see it through to the end and do it to the best of their ability.
She believed this was one of the reasons Lu Ning’s initial loyalty was so high.
So, rather than saying Ye Mian was looking for employees, it was more accurate to say she was looking for partners who could help her maintain and expand the farm. Both their character and their skills had to be a good fit.
She would have to find time to go out again. Ideally, she could pair the trip with an exploration-type side quest to kill two birds with one stone.
After making up her mind, Ye Mian set the quest aside for the moment and focused on gathering the wheat.
With Big Black’s help, the two of them hurried along and managed to finish harvesting the entire wheat field before dark.
The other vegetables in the house’s warehouse were moved to the basement, leaving only the wheat ears piled high in the storage room.
Ye Mian leaned against the door to rest for a while and then looked at Xue Kai, who was drenched in sweat but had a surprisingly healthy flush on his face.
“What’s next?”
“Um…” Xue Kai looked at the warehouse full of wheat ears and hesitated for a moment. “Without a threshing machine, we can only rely on manual labor.”
“A threshing machine?”
Xue Kai scratched his head. “Yes, a type of agricultural machinery. It runs on diesel. Although it can still be used now, diesel isn’t that easy to find.”
It sounded troublesome and difficult, but it wasn’t necessarily impossible.
Ye Mian made a mental note of it and then nodded. “Let’s leave it for now, then. We’ll deal with it slowly tomorrow.”
Coincidentally, Lu Ning had finished processing the gray rabbit. Xue Kai agreed and went to the kitchen to prepare dinner.
Ye Mian took a sip of corn juice to recover her strength, washed her face, and then opened the system warehouse again to officially begin organizing all of today’s gains.
Since she was on the first floor, she took out some furniture and placed them in appropriate spots to fill the overly empty living room.
Then, she tried placing a refrigerator in the corner. After plugging it into the room’s built-in socket, she found that it still wouldn’t power on.
“It seems it’s not a problem with the electricity…”
Unplugging it, Ye Mian felt the material of the refrigerator before putting it back into the warehouse.
With the living room done, the next stop was naturally the kitchen.
When Ye Mian’s organizing reached the second floor—arranging the bedrooms and bathrooms other than her own, and taking out some clothes and shoes to put away—Lu Ning, who was resting, joined in and selected her room.
Lu Ning used to live alone. Because she usually ate all her meals at the boxing gym and didn’t cook much, she spent most of her time alone decorating her small home.
Thus, Ye Mian only needed to take out the furniture and supplies, and Lu Ning handled the detailed arrangement.
The two worked well together. In no time, the rooms on the second and third floors were cleaned up. If anyone else arrived, they could move in directly.
Just then, the aroma of meat from the kitchen downstairs wafted up. Lu Ning, who hadn’t eaten meat for several days, instinctively swallowed her saliva, and her stomach growled twice.
Seeing the woman’s heroic face turn slightly red, Ye Mian smiled. “Let’s go. I’m hungry too.”
Because of the bountiful harvest from the supermarket today, Xue Kai gave full play to his decent culinary skills, making a large table of dishes and cooking a pot of fragrant rice.
There was only one problem: of the eight dishes, five were a sea of red. It felt as though he had used all the dried chilies from the supermarket.
Seeing Ye Mian pause for a second, Xue Kai gave a guilty cough. “I thought rabbit meat would only be delicious if it was spicy, so my hand slipped and I added more. But the rabbit with potatoes and the braised rabbit aren’t spicy; they’re very good too.”
Lu Ning wasn’t picky. She looked at the different sets of tableware and habitually found her seat.
“It’s fine. I… I should be able to eat it.”
Her original self didn’t eat spicy food, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t.
With this thought, Ye Mian’s first bite was from the dish full of red chilies. After trying it, she was stunned by the unprecedented spicy and fresh flavor. Moreover, the rabbit meat was very chewy, and every bite filled her mouth with an incredible fragrance.
It was the kind of fragrance that the previous vegetarian dishes couldn’t compare to.
“It’s delicious, not very— cough, cough…”
The spicy afterburn surged up almost instantly. Ye Mian turned her head and coughed repeatedly. Her originally pale face immediately turned red, and she couldn’t speak.
Xue Kai vanished for a moment and returned with a glass of water. “My bad. Take it slow.”
“…Thanks.” After half a glass of water, Ye Mian recovered slightly. Her tongue, which had been nearly numb just now, seemed to slowly regain its sense of taste, giving her a very satisfying thrill.
Lu Ning suggested, “You can rinse it in the water first. That way it won’t be too spicy. Then you can gradually move from mildly spicy to medium spicy, and you’ll adapt slowly.”
“Okay.”
Ye Mian immediately tried her method and found it indeed workable. The subtle spicy flavor did add a lot of depth to the rabbit meat.
Seeing that Ye Mian was finally able to eat the delicious rabbit meat, both Xue Kai and Lu Ning were relieved.
However, the two of them soon realized it wasn’t that Ye Mian couldn’t eat spicy food at all, but rather… that there were indeed too many dried chilies.
When the sounds of coughing from the spice echoed one after another at the table, someone started laughing. Then the second person joined in, and the third person couldn’t help but laugh along.
By the time this choking yet satisfying dinner was over, the moon was already hanging high outside the window.
Xue Kai quickly cleaned up the mess and then excitedly soaked the rice seeds. He then started tinkering with the water pipes and the rice fields outside, not stopping for a single moment.
Lu Ning, who was still a bit dazed from being full and felt as though this was all a dream, only snapped back to reality when she saw his busy figure.
She somewhat understood why Xue Kai didn’t want to stop. After all, if there was even a moment’s gap, she couldn’t help but think about everything that had happened in the last few days; the memories were exceptionally clear.
“I’ll go help him.”
Hearing this, Ye Mian remembered the mysterious seed in her warehouse and followed them out.
But her stamina was, after all, inferior to the other two. After a day of running around and being busy, even with the corn juice to keep her going, she was mentally exhausted.
So, after planting the mysterious seed alone in an empty spot on the side of the house, Ye Mian went upstairs to rest.
Lu Ning, who was learning how to do farm work in the rice fields with Xue Kai, saw that he was used to it and couldn’t help asking, “Does she always go to sleep this early?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if it’s because her body is weak, but these past few days she’s been early to bed and early to rise. She never stays up late.”
Speaking of which, Xue Kai felt a bit emotional. “She’s nothing like young people these days.”
Lu Ning nodded thoughtfully. “She really isn’t. She’s too stable and reserved, and there’s a kind of… feeling that she’s disconnected from this world.”
The reason she said this was because when Ye Mian faced the mutants, she was neither afraid nor did she feel complex pity. It was as if she just treated them as obstacles blocking her path—if she could deal with them, she would; if not, she didn’t mind taking a detour.
“Right…” Thinking about his observations of Ye Mian over the past few days, Xue Kai murmured, “She always seems to have a vague understanding of common sense. She looks like she’s never eaten many common foods before. Even though Li City is her hometown, she’s less familiar with it than I am… I’m starting to think she’s an alien.”
“And she doesn’t hide the fact that she has a ‘system.’ she told me directly, thinking that trust between people is a bit too simple.”
Lu Ning was stunned. “System?”
“Uh,” Xue Kai only then remembered that Lu Ning knew nothing about the system. He said awkwardly, “You should just ask Ye Mian about that yourself. She’ll probably tell you the truth.”
Although Lu Ning, who didn’t read novels much, wasn’t sure about the specific functions of a system, she somewhat understood. “So that was her secret.”
Xue Kai looked at her. “I thought you weren’t curious since you didn’t ask anything.”
“This is my payback.”
“Huh?”
Lu Ning swung the hoe unsteadily, a faint smile on her face. “Because she also didn’t ask anything and just accepted me.”
Xue Kai was stunned for a moment and then laughed too.
Hadn’t Ye Mian treated him the same way? She had only asked why he appeared in that small forest, and never asked anything else.
It seemed those things were no longer important. The new life ahead was what truly needed to be grasped and experienced.
Ye Mian, who had gone to sleep early, naturally didn’t know the two were talking so much. When she woke up the next morning, she called the two of them over with a serious expression.
“Come, let’s have a meeting.”