For a person to lie on it, it needed to be made thicker, and the iron bed’s four legs weren’t quite steady enough on their own, it needed supports all around to work.
Xie Yi went to the pile of iron blocks, carried over a good half of them to the bedside, and used his ability to slowly add a thick layer to the outside of the bed, reinforcing all around the bottom.
By the time the reinforcement was done, the iron blocks he’d carried over were basically all used up. He wiped the sweat from his forehead, using his ability on so many blocks at once was a bit of a strain for him right now.
He straightened up, turned, and said to Ye Yi, “Done. Want to try again?”
Ye Yi walked over, tugged Xie Yi’s sleeve to pull him to the sofa, pressed him down onto it, and said stiffly, “You rest properly. I can handle the rest myself.”
His wound hadn’t healed, and he’d probably overused his ability just now, otherwise his face wouldn’t have suddenly gone so pale.
With that, she walked off awkwardly, went back to the iron bed, reached out and touched it, a gentle warmth spread from the bed into her palm. Then she braced both hands on the bed and pressed down with about half her strength, it didn’t budge at all.
She paused, then pressed down with all her might, still steady as Mount Tai. Only then did she carefully climb onto the iron bed, and once she was fully up, she sat cross-legged, not daring to move.
After a while, when nothing happened, she carefully leaned back and lay down on the toasty bedding.
It was truly so warm. Ha, she really was a little genius!
She turned to look, the iron bed was only half finished. The remaining iron blocks didn’t seem enough to make another bed. She couldn’t very well lie comfortably on the warm iron bed herself while telling an injured man to go sleep in a freezing room, could she?
This was a man who’d paid rent and contributed his ability. Be generous, give him half the iron bed. It was just that the middle of the bed would need him to build a partition with his ability, otherwise, seeing a man’s face while sleeping at night would feel a little awkward.
At that thought, she sat up, carefully slid down off the edge of the bed, ran to Xie Yi’s room, hauled up the two quilts from his bed, and carried them back to the living room, setting them on the side of the iron bed near the alloy door.
She spread one set of bedding on the bed to prevent burns from the high heat, and, too lazy to arrange the other, simply tossed it on top.
All this commotion drew no reaction from Xie Yi. Ye Yi walked to the sofa and only then discovered he’d already fallen asleep. Was he that exhausted?
Looking at the man lying stiffly on the sofa, she didn’t call out to wake him. She tiptoed over, quietly carried his bedding from the iron bed to the sofa, and gently draped it over him.
Then, lightly and softly, she sat by the fire basin, carefully added some wooden blocks to burn, and raised the whole living room’s temperature a little more.
Idly she tapped open the wristband and checked the supplies in the system Backpack: the starter packs, the plastic bags from Sister Ma, the honeycomb briquettes, the gun, the frozen food, the fruit knife, and finally she saw the seeds stored in the last slot.
Suddenly she remembered: she could grow vegetables in the room, and then she wouldn’t have to worry about running out of vegetables later.
And Xie Yi’s ability could turn the remaining iron blocks into those square planting boxes. She could dig some soil from the complex downstairs, plant some short-cycle vegetables, another kind of stockpile.
Sitting by the firelight, she couldn’t stop her mind from wandering for a while. Her eyes drooped shut on their own, fighting to stay open. She glanced with effort at the fire basin, the fire had shrunk, forced herself to add some big blocks, held out where she was for a bit, and finally, unable to hold on any longer, crawled groggily onto the iron bed, pulled up the quilt, and slowly fell asleep.
It was a very warm sleep. From the moment she’d entered the map, her taut nerves finally relaxed in the cozy embrace.
An aroma drifted through the air. Ye Yi opened her eyes to find the whole living room dark, with firelight only at the fire basin. How long had she slept?
Lying in the toasty bed looking out the window, lazy and reluctant to move at all, she listened to the crackle of flames from the fire basin.
Wait, the blocks she’d added should have burned out long ago after all this time.
She immediately rolled over, crawled to the edge, slid down off the iron bed, rubbed her sleepy eyes, and headed for the fire basin.
Her bleary eyes saw a figure sitting on the sofa, and her heart gave a thump of fright. Coming to her senses for a look, she found it was Xie Yi, and, steadying herself, asked, “You’re up?”
The black down jacket really was hard to make out in the dark, it had genuinely startled her.
“Mm. Let’s eat.” With that, Xie Yi looked up at Ye Yi, got up from the sofa, and lifted the lid of the stone pot on the stove. A wave of aroma drifted to Ye Yi’s nose.
She sniffed hard, a lovely smell. She stepped closer and looked down, plain congee.
Ah, utterly disappointing. The smell was so good she’d thought it was something tasty. She wanted meat.
Listlessly she sat down, took the congee Xie Yi handed her, and ate it in half-hearted sips.
Before long a bowl was gone, with no sense of fullness at all. She ladled herself another. Only after two bowls did she feel slightly, eighty-percent full.
Seeing Ye Yi had finished, Xie Yi poured all the remaining congee from the stone pot into his bowl, slurped it down, and finished it in a few gulps.
Looking at the now-clean stone pot, Ye Yi put the bowls and chopsticks in it, carried it to the kitchen, and washed everything clean.
After washing up, she filled the stone pot with water, carried it to the living room, and set it on the stove to boil.
Sitting by the fire basin, she held her hands, icy from washing dishes, near the firelight, and before long they warmed up again. Thinking of the planting boxes she’d mused about before sleeping, she turned to check Xie Yi’s complexion, fairly ruddy, his ability had probably recovered?
She asked him tentatively, “Um, has your ability recovered?”
“What is it?”
“Could you help me turn the remaining iron blocks into planting boxes?”
Warming himself idly by the fire, Xie Yi looked up at the sound and asked curiously, “What’s a planting box?”
From the words, he understood it was a box related to planting, but he didn’t know what it looked like.
Ye Yi organized her words and explained, “It’s a rectangular box, just without a lid.”
She didn’t know whether he’d understood from that.
“I’ll try.”
Hearing him agree, Ye Yi happily stood, ran to the iron blocks, hoisted them, carried them over beside Xie Yi. “Here, for you.”
Very attentive service, she picked up a big iron block and handed it to him, all but hugging his leg in gratitude.
Xie Yi calmly took the block, used his ability to shape a rectangular iron box, and asked, “Is it this?”
“Yes.” Ye Yi took it happily, looked inside, about the size of a shoebox, turned it over and hesitated. “The shape’s fine, it’s just a bit small. Can it be a little bigger?”
Xie Yi knew the shape was right, so the rest was easy. A few seconds later he’d made a box half again as large, and, getting Ye Yi’s satisfied approval, turned all the remaining iron blocks into boxes.
There were 5 large ones in all, plus the small one in Ye Yi’s hand.
Ye Yi glanced at the system Backpack, full, with nowhere left to store things.
She took everything in the system out and set it in the living room, then reorganized:
3 starter packs (already had 2 down jackets and 1 small medicine box removed). 1 bottle of gathered snow-water, the two plastic bags of supplies from Sister Ma, 90 honeycomb briquettes. In one plastic bag: three grass carp, a piece of pork, and some frozen food, plus 5 packs of frozen dumplings, 4 chicken breasts from the supermarket, a fruit knife, and 30 bags of vegetable seeds.
Aside from the boards she’d taken out and snapped earlier, there were: 73 boards and 62 blocks.
And some heating supplies previously kept in the living room: 4 lighters, a bit over 4 bags of hand warmers, 1 flashlight, 10 candles, and the 3 hot-water bottles she’d used before.
Back in the kitchen, she made several round trips to carry all the supplies bought at the supermarket to the living room, then sorted them: 1 bag of rice (a little used), 1 bag of salt, 4 five-liter jugs of water, 1 small bag of flour, 6 packs of compressed biscuits, 1 carrot, 10 potatoes, 5 tomatoes, a little over 1 knob of ginger, 3 heads of garlic, 2 stalks of green onion, and most importantly, 4 bottles of fat-house happy water.
On the coffee table were also the big jug of corn oil she’d been using and a bottle of soy sauce, an opened bag of salt, and there seemed to be a carton of eggs still in the kitchen.
She arranged everything neatly by category on the living-room cabinet. The foods needing to be frozen, the fish and meat, she kept in a plastic bag stored in the system Backpack.
Only when everything was organized did she turn her attention to the two plastic bags from Sister Ma. She hadn’t opened them yet and didn’t know what was inside.
Xie Yi had watched Ye Yi bustling about the whole time. Looking at the small mountain of supplies, he froze and asked her, “All this? ‘Very poor’?”
Ye Yi paused, then remembered what she’d said before. Lowering her head to work at the tight knot on the plastic bag, she answered calmly, “Of course. As a survival enthusiast, having only this little bit of supplies, if that’s not poor, what is it?”
Compared to her supplies back in reality, this was nothing, a drop in the bucket.
Xie Yi was at a loss for words. Sure enough, he’d fallen out of step with the times. Compared to her, he was the poor one. Well, he really was poor, up to now he’d been mooching food and drink at Ye Yi’s place and hadn’t even paid for board. At that thought, he quietly took out his wallet, removed the remaining cash, and slipped it onto the coffee table.
After Ye Yi’s efforts, Sister Ma’s plastic bag finally came open. She grabbed the bottom of the bag and flipped it, dumping everything onto the floor in one go, and sweet potatoes came rolling out one after another.
Yellow-skinned sweet potatoes, her favorite. Ye Yi looked at the twenty-odd sweet potatoes scattered across the floor, happily picked them up one by one, and put them back in the bag.
There were also some peanuts and nuts, all farm-grown produce.
Dumping out the other plastic bag, it was all hot-pot base, chili, garlic, green onion, potatoes, greens, tofu skin, pork belly, alcohol, pork ribs, and at the very bottom, a whole chicken.
Looking at all this, Ye Yi suddenly felt like crying. She’d only offhandedly told them some information, and they’d prepared all this food for her. For a moment she didn’t know how to respond to such ordinary, everyday kindness.