After confirming that her ability was still with her, Mu Xi’s sense of security skyrocketed.
No matter the circumstances, one’s own strength was always the greatest guarantee.
That was the conclusion she had reached after struggling to survive through the apocalypse.
Before the apocalypse, Mu Xi definitely wouldn’t have placed so much importance on her own strength. After all, China had been incredibly safe before the apocalypse, leaving her with no opportunity to put such strength to use.
Compared with the public security of later generations, however, the era she was currently living in was indeed much more chaotic.
If her surroundings couldn’t give her a sense of security, then she could only rely on her own strength.
“There probably aren’t any spiritual plants in this world. If that’s the case, my combat power will be greatly reduced.
“If I get the chance, I’ll go into the mountains and have a look. If there really aren’t any, then I’ll just have to cultivate a spiritual plant myself.
“But what should I cultivate?”
Spiritual plants were plants that had absorbed energy and awakened spiritual intelligence.
The energy from her wood-type ability could awaken a plant’s intelligence, but cultivating one herself meant feeding it her ability energy every single day. It wasn’t something that could be accomplished in just a day or two.
Doing that during the apocalypse had obviously been far more trouble than it was worth.
After all, there had been plenty of spiritual plants in the wild.
Moreover, anything she cultivated herself would start at the lowest level.
For her, that had been completely useless. Even her lowest-level spiritual pet had been Level Five.
But now…
Sigh. Better not talk about it. Just thinking about it brought tears to her eyes!
In the room next door.
Mu You had already fallen asleep.
Jiang Yun, however, tossed and turned, letting out a sigh from time to time.
“Stop thinking about it and get some sleep. You still have work tomorrow.” Mu Changhong turned onto his side and patted her.
“Changhong, do you think we should arrange a matchmaking meeting for Xixi?”
Jiang Yun asked hesitantly.
Mu Changhong was silent for a long while before finally speaking. “Sigh. With so little time, where are we supposed to find someone suitable? If she ends up marrying the wrong man, then we’d truly be harming Xixi.”
Of course he didn’t want his own daughter to be sent down to the countryside, but even more than that, he didn’t want her to marry the wrong person.
If this were a later era, perhaps people might say she could simply find someone to marry first and divorce him later if they turned out to be incompatible.
But Mu Changhong was a man of the 1970s.
At this time, people didn’t divorce easily. Once a woman married, it was for life. No matter how awful or unreliable her husband was, she would usually make do and continue living with him.
He didn’t want his daughter to marry the wrong man and waste her entire life.
“But…”
“The city is becoming more and more unsettled these days. Life in the countryside may be harder and more exhausting, but at least it’s one of the few places where things are relatively peaceful.”
Jiang Yun opened her mouth but said nothing more.
That was indeed true.
These days, the city was overrun with Little Red Guards, while the Revolutionary Committee wielded the slightest bit of authority as though it were an imperial decree. Countless families were reported every day for all sorts of reasons.
And once someone was reported, regardless of whether the accusation was true, those people would storm in to search the place, smash things, and wreak havoc, just like Japanese invaders raiding a village. Some families were even completely destroyed because of it.
Even though they kept their heads down inside the workers’ residential compound, they still lived in fear every day.
With heavy hearts, the two of them remained awake for a long time.
Meanwhile, Mu Xi was sleeping quite soundly in the other room.
The next day.
Early in the morning, Mu Xi was awakened by the sound of people talking.
She sat up with her eyes half-closed.
From outside, she heard a woman saying things like “matchmaking,” “worker,” “marriage,” and “bride price.”
“Did a matchmaker come?”
It took quite a while before her still-sluggish, newly awakened brain finally finished rebooting.
Then she received quite a fright.
She hurriedly tidied herself up and rushed out of the room.
They absolutely couldn’t agree!
She was only eighteen, in the prime of her youth. She was still a child! How could she casually go on a matchmaking date and get married?
Mu Xi shot straight out of the room, afraid that if she were even one step too late, her dear mother might agree to the match just to keep her from being sent down to the countryside.
Although even if Comrade Jiang Yun agreed, Mu Xi certainly wasn’t going anyway.