Jiang Shu’s words made Jiang Wen laugh. “Relax, it’s edible. This sugarcane grove ripened once half a year ago, plenty of people came to harvest back then, the yield rate was just low.”
Xu Na nodded in agreement. “Yes, I remember when it first came out there were quite a few people selling it at the night-market stalls. We bought some, the flavor was hit or miss, either cloyingly sweet or no taste at all, the juice… about the same as drinking plain boiled water.”
At this Jiang Shu was greatly disappointed, no wonder nobody came to this sugarcane patch.
Moderate-toxin food was hard enough to find as it was, if the sugarcane you found had no flavor, then who’d want to waste the effort.
After scanning the surroundings, Jiang Zhi said calmly, “We’re already here, so let’s give it a shot. Maybe we’ll get lucky.”
Jiang Wen said with a smile too, “That’s the logic. If our luck’s bad and we can’t find sweet ones, we can take them back to press for juice, better than the base’s water.”
The base’s water was uniformly filtered, all moderate-toxin, with a faint whiff of disinfectant.
Jiang Shu could only say, “Fine.”
They’d come out early today, so for now there were only a scattered few people in the sugarcane grove.
Jiang Zhi pulled up the terrain radar and scanned the area, finding the danger index wasn’t high, so she found a patch with more green dots and planned to slowly harvest and test.
Looking at the great lush expanse of sugarcane grove, Jiang Shu got interested. “Brother Wen, how about a contest? Me and Ah Zhi as one team, you and Sister-in-Law as another, whoever harvests more wins.”
Jiang Wen: “Sure. The loser goes home and washes the winner’s underpants.”
The moment Jiang Zhi heard it, she knew they were playing one of their childhood games, and rolled her eyes. “Childish. Leave me out of it, I’m not playing.”
Jiang Shu got anxious. “Aw, come on, Ah Zhi, just count it as helping me, okay?”
Jiang Zhi curled her lip, but in the end gave tacit consent.
Xu Na said with a laugh, “Then we’ll take this left section.”
Jiang Shu grinned. “No problem, Ah Zhi and I’ll head over there next door.”
No sooner said than done.
The siblings worked together in perfect sync.
Jiang Zhi handled testing, and whenever a moderate-toxin sugarcane turned up, Jiang Shu would chop it down on the spot.
Whole stretches of sugarcane stalks, topped with bits of leaf, stabbed densely into the ground. The serrated leaf edges rustled in the wind. Jiang Zhi pushed a few stalks aside, and the heavy cane bodies seemed to gleam in the sunlight.
Jiang Zhi tested a thick, thigh-sized sugarcane—
“Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
As expected.
Jiang Zhi wasn’t discouraged, it’d be strange to hit the jackpot on the first try.
But the next several fine-looking mutated sugarcanes she tested all came back high-toxin.
So Jiang Zhi said, “Brother, let’s split up. I’ll take this patch, you take that one. Remember not to forget the cane leaves.”
Even if the cane leaves weren’t edible, if they were low-toxin they could be sold for money.
Jiang Shu gave an OK sign. “I’ll work hard, don’t you worry!”
For a while, the detector’s “beep beep” sounds rose and fell one after another.
Unfortunately, neither sibling ran into anything edible.
On Jiang Wen’s side, by contrast, the moderate-toxin chime sounded before long.
Then Xu Na’s happy voice rang out: “Ah Wen, I found a moderate-toxin one!”
None of them had expected Xu Na to be the first to hit.
Jiang Wen looked over with a smile. “Your luck’s good.”
Xu Na pressed her lips into a smile.
Her luck really was good. The sugarcane she’d found was a full two meters long and as thick as an arm, and tested moderate-toxin from end to end.
Jiang Wen dug the sugarcane out with the hoe and chopped it into six sections with the sickle.
Jiang Shu watched from the side, green with envy.
Such a long stalk! Why couldn’t he have been the one to find it?
Just as Jiang Wen was about to trim off the cane tips, a dozen-some thumb-sized flying insects suddenly flew out, giving Jiang Shu, who’d come over to look, a fright.
He quickly waved the bone staff. “What kind of bug is this? They don’t bite, do they?”
Jiang Zhi narrowed her eyes for a look. “Looks like cotton aphids.”
Jiang Shu blinked. “What’s that?”
“A kind of pest.”
Jiang Shu had just asked offhand and didn’t pay it much mind. With an “oh” he looked longingly at Jiang Wen. “Brother Wen, pass over a section of cane for everyone to try, see if it’s sweet.”
At this, Jiang Wen peeled the skin straight off and cut it into a few portions, passing them around.
Jiang Shu took an eager bite, and juice immediately splashed out, dribbling all over his chin before he could catch it.
Jiang Shu quickly slurped up all the juice in the cane, but still dripped a good deal on himself, quite a sorry sight for a moment.
Jiang Shu spat out the cane pulp with a “ptooey” and said with disgust, “Tastes awful!”
This sugarcane not only had no flavor, even the cane juice was sticky.
Jiang Zhi took a small bite too, chewed a couple times, then spat it out as well. “The taste really is like plain boiled water.”
After mutating, the sugarcane’s texture was softer and the juice more abundant. It was just that, apart from giving off a faint sugarcane scent, the juice had no flavor, eating it left you with one feeling: tasteless to eat, yet a pity to throw away.
Thinking the siblings had been disheartened, Jiang Wen quickly consoled them, “Keep looking, maybe the next one’ll be sweet.”
They’d only just started, there was no sense in leaving before they’d gotten anything.
“Doesn’t matter.” Jiang Shu chewed a few more times. “I remember sugarcane pulp can be burned as firewood, right? Worst case, after we press out the juice, we’ll put it to use and give it to Mom and the others for the fire.”
Xu Na was tickled by Jiang Shu’s make-the-best-of-it spirit. “That’s a good idea.”
The four of them finished gnawing the cane in their hands, then started testing again.
The first edible sugarcane had been gathered on Jiang Wen’s side, and with that sense of urgency, Jiang Shu sped up considerably.
“Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
“Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
“Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
…
The “not edible” electronic voice grated on the nerves.
On the siblings’ side, not a single thing turned up.
Xu Na, by contrast, tested several more edible sugarcanes, one of which was the cloyingly sweet variety they’d mentioned before.
Jiang Shu gave it a try, about like full-sugar milk tea.
So sweet it turned bitter.
Disdainful as he was of the mutated sugarcane’s taste, Jiang Wen and his wife’s yield rate still made Jiang Shu’s eyes burn with envy.
Just yesterday he’d bragged in front of everyone about how high he and his sister’s gathering efficiency was, and now wasn’t this a stinging slap to the face?
Watching Jiang Wen and his wife gather more and more mutated sugarcane, Jiang Shu couldn’t sit still and ran over to his sister.
“I say, Ah Zhi, you’ve got to think of something. At this rate we’re going to lose.”
Then the unexpected happened.
A whole swarm of cotton aphids came flying out of the cane leaves.
In just a moment, dense cotton aphids gathered in midair, a black mass like a small storm cloud, beating their wings and buzzing about chaotically, sticking all over people’s necks and cuffs. Waving a hand couldn’t clear them off, the sight made one’s skin crawl.
“Whoa, what the heck is this?”
Jiang Shu quickly pulled out the bone staff and flailed it about.
Jiang Zhi, quick-eyed and quick-handed, caught one and studied the mutated cotton aphid thoughtfully.
The bone staff’s power was no joke. Within a few seconds, the cotton aphids in the air had all been driven off by Jiang Shu without a trace.
Jiang Zhi released the cotton aphid in her hand. “Brother, give me the bone staff.”
Jiang Shu handed it over suspiciously. “What for?”
“An experiment.”
As she spoke, Jiang Zhi walked over to the cane tips Jiang Wen had trimmed off earlier and used the bone staff to probe those few sections of cloyingly sweet cane tips.
Sure enough, no cotton aphids flew out from the cane leaves.
“Ah Zhi, did you find anything?”
Jiang Zhi knit her brows slightly. “There’s something off about these cotton aphids.”
Jiang Shu rolled his eyes. “Of course there’s something off, didn’t you say they were pests? They’re obviously the ones wrecking the mutated sugarcane. Aiya, let’s not bother with these, hurry up and open up shop—”
Before Jiang Shu could finish, he saw his sister bring the detector up to the cotton aphid in her hand.
Then a pleasant voice rang out—
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
Jiang Shu stared, looking in disbelief at the plump, mutated little meat-bug in Jiang Zhi’s hand.
“Hold on, this thing’s edible!?”
Jiang Zhi ignored him and grabbed another cotton aphid, one too stuffed to fly, and tested it—
“Beep. Low toxin level. Edible.”
Jiang Shu: …
He drew in a deep breath.
In the end he couldn’t help blurting out, “Holy crap! What the hell!! This is way too world-view-shattering! Even pests are edible?”
Hearing the commotion, Jiang Wen and Xu Na quickly came over.
“Ah Zhi, Dashu, what’s wrong??”
As it happened, Jiang Zhi had caught another cotton aphid.
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Limited consumption recommended.”
Jiang Wen looked over in surprise. “Ah Zhi, what’s that in your hand…”
Jiang Zhi smiled, snapped off the cotton aphid’s wings, and held it out for them to see. “Edible meat.”
She paused, then added, “Low-toxin, at that.”
Jiang Wen and Xu Na’s eyes went wide.
They’d never come across a low-toxin creature before.
Jiang Wen: “This… this is the cotton aphid off the sugarcane?”
Even though it was only thumb-sized, anything low-toxin could fetch a good price!
But Jiang Wen quickly grew worried again. “Ah Zhi, who knows if this thing’s actually edible after mutating…”
Before he could finish, Jiang Zhi said, “It’s edible.”
In her terrain radar, these things weren’t marked red, so they were definitely harmless to people.
Xu Na asked from the side, “Ah Wen, do you know what this is?”
Looking at the plump cotton aphid, Jiang Wen calmed down and nodded. “Back when I worked the fields with Grandpa we ran into them now and then, we even had to spray pesticide to keep them from ruining the vegetable plots. But this thing’s changed a bit after mutating.”
Pests were edible, while the sugarcane they used to treat as fruit was now turned up at in disgust.
It was almost too much to accept.
Jiang Wen picked up the cotton aphid and looked it over, sighing with feeling, “When I came here half a year ago I didn’t notice this many cotton aphids. Who’d have thought it’d be our gain this time.”
Jiang Shu started. “Brother Wen, you mean these cotton aphids only showed up in the last few months?”
Jiang Wen nodded.
The Jiang siblings’ eyes met, their thoughts running uncannily alike—
“This has potential.”
Jiang Wen didn’t understand what riddle the siblings were playing at, and looked to Jiang Zhi. “Ah Zhi, did you figure something out?”
Jiang Zhi didn’t hide it, and laid out what she’d just realized. “I suspect the flavorless sugarcane is all because of these cotton aphids. If I’m not wrong, the cotton aphids should be edible, and their bodies should contain the sugarcane’s sugar.”
In Jiang Zhi’s memory, sugarcane cotton aphid colonies generally liked to gather on the underside of the cane leaves to suck the sap, which was why the leaves would wither and yellow and the cane’s sugar content would drop. Sometimes they’d line up and secrete honeydew on the leaves too, leaving the cane plants stunted.
Jiang Zhi had just observed that quite a few plants in this sugarcane grove now had withered yellow leaves.
Add to that the fact that the gathered sugarcane was basically tasteless, and Jiang Zhi reasonably guessed that these mutated sugarcanes’ nutrients had all been drained off by the cotton aphids.
Most importantly, these cotton aphids had only just bred out in such numbers!
Based on their three years of wilderness experience, the shorter a thing’s time living in irradiated land, the less the radiation toxin affected it.
In other words, these cotton aphids were very likely moderate-toxin or below!
At this thought, Jiang Shu got beside himself with excitement. “There’s so many cotton aphids here… We’re rich, we’re rich, we’re rich… Even with a low yield rate, this stuff is enough to feed our whole big family!”
After mutating, each cotton aphid was thumb-sized, whether boiled or roasted, they could count as a meat dish, if nothing else, the protein would be plenty.
Jiang Wen was excited too, but his excitement was over the sugarcane sugar inside the cotton aphids.
He worked hard to rein in his emotions and said, “These cotton aphids must have only appeared recently, not many people have noticed yet. In a couple of days word’s sure to get out. This discovery of ours won’t hold for long.”
Jiang Zhi nodded, knowing what her cousin was driving at. “So we have to seize the golden window of these first few days.”
Right now no one in the sugarcane grove took the cotton aphids seriously, everyone gathering here treated them as nothing but unavoidable pests.
As long as they were careful these few days not to be discovered, they could collect more edible cotton aphids!
Jiang Shu said excitedly, “Then what are we waiting for, let’s get to it!”
Jiang Zhi thought of a way to boost their efficiency. “Brother, you take the bone staff and herd them from the other end toward us. Brother Wen and I will catch them with bags, and Sister-in-Law will tie off the bag mouths for us.”
The bags Jiang Zhi meant were the Oxford-cloth bags that had held the camping gear, she happened to have two.
Each one was a meter twenty long, with an opening fifty centimeters in diameter, more than enough to bag cotton aphids.
Jiang Wen hesitated. “Ah Zhi. How about Dashu and I both herd them? With just one person herding, the cotton aphids might scatter everywhere…”
Jiang Zhi said with a smile, “It’s fine. My brother can handle it.”
Jiang Shu hefted the bone staff in his hand. “Don’t worry, I’ve got a secret weapon, just watch and see.”
With that, Jiang Shu jogged off in the opposite direction.
The spot they were standing in was rather out of the way, with no one nearby, so making a bit of a fuss wouldn’t be noticed.
Once Jiang Zhi and the others were ready, Jiang Shu, standing a few meters off, called, “I’ll start on the count of three, remember to move fast.”
Jiang Zhi: “Get on with it!”
Jiang Shu took a running stance. “One, two, three, go!!”
The instant the word left his mouth, Jiang Shu lifted the bone staff sideways over his head and slowly jogged toward Jiang Zhi and the others.
What opened Jiang Wen and his wife’s eyes was that those cotton aphids, as if driven by some force, all took to the air, startlingly many of them, so dense they nearly blotted out the view, forming what looked like a black cloud, a heart-stopping sight.
Seeing Jiang Wen frozen, Jiang Shu couldn’t help shouting, “Brother Wen, what are you standing there for? Hurry! Bag all the bugs!”
On the other side, Jiang Zhi had already sprung up, and with lightning speed aimed the Oxford-cloth bag’s opening at the bugs, swept it over them, and swiftly cinched the mouth shut.
Having completed the whole sequence in one smooth flow, Jiang Zhi pinched the bag mouth in her hand to keep the cotton aphids from escaping.
“Sister-in-Law, help me tie the bag.”
Xu Na had never seen anything like it. At the words she scrambled to tie off the bag mouth with rope.
On the other side, Jiang Wen came to his senses and nimbly bagged one too.
These were games their country-boy days had left behind, their efficiency went without saying.
Seeing both of them succeed, Jiang Shu eagerly retracted the bone staff and ran over. “How’d it go?”
Jiang Zhi reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of cotton aphids.
“Brother, get out the cloth bag on you. We’ll test them and drop them in.”
Jiang Shu agreed at once.
Jiang Zhi snapped off the cotton aphids’ wings one by one, then tested—
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
…
The seven or eight cotton aphids in Jiang Zhi’s hand were actually all moderate-toxin.
At this even Jiang Wen’s breathing turned a little heavy.
“These… these are all edible?”
He stared at the cotton aphids with burning eyes, as if to bore a hole through them.
Jiang Wen and Xu Na’s expressions gave Jiang Shu a great sense of accomplishment. He smugly explained the pattern they’d discovered: “Bet you didn’t expect it. The shorter something’s been irradiated, the smaller the chance of mutating. These cotton aphids only bred out these past few months, so even if they’re affected by the radiation toxin, it won’t be much, so the odds of testing moderate-toxin are high.”
Jiang Wen’s heart surged like an eagle’s. If it really was so, it meant a vast fortune, their house-building might just be settled before long!
To put it dramatically, getting rich wasn’t out of the question!
Xu Na, meanwhile, was awed by that strange ability of Jiang Shu’s just now. She couldn’t help asking, “Dashu, what was that just now? Are you an Evolver?”
Jiang Wen wanted to know too, and the couple stared at Jiang Shu with burning eyes.
Under their stare, Jiang Shu felt enormous pressure and scratched his face, explaining, “I’m no Evolver, it’s all this staff’s doing.”
“This bone staff repels insects.”
Xu Na went wide-eyed. “This, what is this thing?! It actually has an effect like that!?”
Jiang Shu handed it over to satisfy their curiosity. “It’s probably a wild boar’s bone. We discovered the insect-repelling effect by accident.”
Jiang Wen looked it over, murmuring, “So that’s how it is, so that’s how it is…”
Jiang Zhi: “Brother Wen, what’s ‘so that’s how it is’?”
Jiang Wen came to himself. “The owner of the secondhand shop I worked at, he actually started out as just an ordinary guy peddling used goods. Word is he later sold a tree vine he’d picked up out in the wild and made a big pile of money, which was how he had the money to open the shop. People said what he’d found was a special item, the kind even Evolvers fight over…”
“I didn’t believe it before, but it turns out it was real.”
Jiang Zhi went alert.
“Brother Wen, do you know who bought that vine?”
Jiang Wen shook his head. “I didn’t believe it at the time, so I didn’t pay attention.”
Seeing something off in Jiang Zhi’s expression, he asked, “What is it?”
Jiang Zhi thought of the man she’d encountered yesterday carrying several gold-marked items, and her face turned grave. “If what you say is true, then these specially-functioning mutated items very likely only circulate among Evolvers. We ordinary people probably aren’t qualified to know about them.” Jiang Zhi said no more. “Never mind, this is just my guess anyway, and might not be right.”
Jiang Shu was being driven up the wall by them. “Aiya, can you two stop chatting? Keep talking and my meat’s going to fly off!”
Jiang Zhi shot Jiang Shu a white-eyed look.
This show-off, really pleased with himself.
She grabbed a handful of cotton aphids from the Oxford-cloth bag while urging Jiang Wen, “Brother Wen, time is money. Let’s get to work first.”
“Right, right, Ah Zhi’s right, I’ll test now!”
Jiang Wen followed suit, grabbing a handful of cotton aphids, snapping off the wings, and testing them one by one.
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
“Beep. High toxin level. Not edible.”
…
Of this handful Jiang Wen tested, two-thirds were moderate-toxin.
This hit rate was approaching a hundred percent, and it thrilled Jiang Wen and his wife to no end.
Jiang Shu watched, itching with envy, and said to Jiang Zhi, “Ah Zhi, let me have a try too, maybe I can turn up some low-toxin ones.”
Jiang Zhi handed him the Oxford-cloth bag directly.
Jiang Shu eagerly grabbed a handful and started testing.
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
“Beep. Moderate toxin level. Suitable for limited consumption.”
“Beep. Low toxin level. Edible.”
“Beep. Low toxin level. Edible.”
He really had called it—Jiang Shu’s odds of hitting the jackpot were a good deal higher, and it had him grinning from ear to ear.
Jiang Zhi put the low-toxin ones into a small lidded bamboo basket.
To boost efficiency, Xu Na started testing too.
The three of them were lost in the joy of testing cotton aphids, unable to pull themselves away.
Once they’d tested all the cotton aphids in both bags, the four of them teamed up again, repeating the earlier bagging routine.
From six in the morning to eleven at noon, they caught two full snakeskin sacks of moderate-toxin cotton aphids.
Even the bamboo basket of low-toxin cotton aphids was filled, with barely room to spare.
Jiang Shu weighed it in his hand, reckoning the low-toxin ones alone came to twenty or thirty jin.
Before they knew it, noon had arrived. Jiang Zhi, drenched in sweat from the heat, quickly called a halt.
“Let’s find somewhere to rest, it’s too hot.”
Jiang Wen and the others weren’t faring well either. The steadily climbing temperature had flushed their faces, so he said, “I know there’s a cave over here by the sugarcane grove. We can go rest there.”
So the four of them pushed the cart to a cave.
From the outside the cave didn’t look big, only a meter wide, its mouth blocked by dense, interwoven vines.
These vines, varying in thickness, twined around one another, forming a natural barrier.
But inside, the cave was another world entirely.
The space was enormous, the ceiling soaring, jagged rocks everywhere, stalactites scattered in fine arrangement.
Standing inside, it was quite cool, and now and then you could feel a faint, almost imperceptible current of air.
Jiang Shu sprawled on the ground without a shred of dignity. “Brother Wen, this place is pretty cool. How’d you find it?”
Jiang Wen said with a smile, “I came here before with a friend, he brought me.”
Jiang Shu: “Then your friend’s all right, willing to share such a good spot.”
Jiang Wen was silent a while, then said, “He’s dead.”
Jiang Shu choked, coughing frantically in his embarrassment. “Uh, that, Brother Wen, I…”
Jiang Wen shook his head with a faint smile. “It’s fine. Life and death are fated. In this world we’re all the same anyway, live one more day if you can.”
Afraid of making everyone uncomfortable, he changed the subject. “Are we continuing this afternoon?”
Jiang Zhi and Jiang Shu exchanged a glance and nodded in unison. “We’re continuing!”
A windfall like this wasn’t something you got every day. The gold-marked carp was rare, but with too much uncertainty, better to reap this wave of cotton aphids first.
Jiang Wen suggested, “Then this afternoon let’s switch to a different patch, or I’m afraid someone will catch on.”
The Jiang siblings had no objection, and Xu Na always went along with her husband, so she had none either.
At noon there were four full hours they couldn’t go out. After the four of them finished the foxtail-millet rice balls Ye Qingyun had prepared for them, they took turns resting.
Jiang Zhi rested a little over an hour, then woke her brother to take her place.
Around three in the afternoon, just as Jiang Zhi was thinking of getting up to stretch her limbs, she felt a faint breeze brush across her face the moment she stood.
But this was a cave…
How could there be wind?