CHAPTER 153: THE SECOND YEAR OF THE APOCALYPSE HAS BEGUN

"Jing Shu, the medicine you gave me last time was truly outstanding, even better than expected. The patient has fully recovered. I was wondering if you have any other medicinal herbs? Also, where do you get these medicines from?"

Medicines nourished by the Spiritual Spring were bound to be Spiritual Medicines; how could the effects be anything but excellent? Heroes don’t ask about origins, and we’re still good friends.

Jing Shu scratched her head vigorously. "Do you know why my grandma lived to be eighty years old?"

Su Malie replied, "Because she took the Detoxification Medicine you gave me?"

"It’s because she never meddled in my affairs."

Su Malie said, "I see. My grandma lived to ninety and was still sharp because she worried about me every single day."

Jing Shu was speechless. There’s no talking to her.

"So, where did your medicine come from? I’m just asking for someone else."

Jing Shu touched her chin. She knew that once these herbs were out there, it would inevitably attract inquiries, but she also needed to pave the way for the herbal medicines that would appear later.

"I grew them myself."

"How did you grow them?"

"I just scattered the Seeds and watered them, and they grew."

Su Malie was speechless.

「Meanwhile, in a sanatorium in Wu City」

A middle-aged man, looking quite scholarly with gold-rimmed glasses, stared at a message on his phone, murmuring, "Grew them herself? Even with lights and air conditioning, you can’t fully simulate the climate conditions, and yet the quality is good. Growing medicinal plants that turn out to be all crooked and split is the norm."

A middle-aged man with a grim face and stern demeanor scoffed in disdain. He had checked the transaction records of recent years; indeed, there were no records of medicinal herbs, but there had been a purchase of Seeds a year ago. Maybe she really grew them herself but just wasn’t sharing her secret.

As the grim-faced man reached out, an elderly man behind him timely offered him a cup of milk coffee.

Another man, bald and one-eyed, flexed his muscular body. He was looking at the message on the gold-rimmed-glasses man’s phone while holding his own for a video call with another old man. "That girl said she grew them herself. Just scattered some Seeds, watered them, and they grew."

Then, a voice came from the video call, "BULLSHIT! Complete, utter bullshit! If she can grow them like that, have all of us in the pharmaceutical lineages been eating dog shit this past year?"

The man with the gold-rimmed glasses gently pushed them back up. "Oh? But Old Su mentioned that her medicine is much more potent than what’s available on the market. Look, you couldn’t cure the poison and even had to go elsewhere to find a remedy, while a little bit of that young girl’s medicine solved it."

The elderly man in the video blushed and said furiously, "I don’t believe she can grow such high-quality medicinal herbs in that kind of home environment unless she sends me a photo!"

The middle-aged man with gold-rimmed glasses chuckled and conveyed the message.

Meanwhile, Su Malie was biting a straw while drinking Wang Zai milk, looking at a personality test on her iPad: People who like to bite their straws have strong desires.

Su Malie stared at the straw, which she had almost bitten through, and fell into deep thought, her mind already conjuring various scenarios...

Meanwhile, Jing Shu frowned as she looked at the message Su Malie had sent.

Su Malie is being particularly curious and persistent today, she thought, deciding not to respond directly. However, it wasn’t long before Su Malie offered to trade a Honeysuckle for a can of compressed natural gas.

Fine then, it’s about time to clear the air about this cultivation business anyway. I’m not just doing this for a can of natural gas, Jing Shu mused.

She then transplanted the Honeysuckle into a flowerpot. After a moment’s thought, she also transplanted the astragalus and took a photo to send over.

The man with the gold-rimmed glasses shook his head with a "tsk tsk" sound and showed the photo to the old man on the video call. He then heard the old man panting heavily.

"This is an outrageous abuse of natural treasures! Forget the Honeysuckle, but if astragalus can survive being planted like that, I’ll livestream myself eating dung! No, I have to go back immediately! I want to see with my own eyes what tricks this person is playing!"

The old man was clearly doubting his own sanity. It was as if someone had suddenly told him that one plus one could equal five, and he didn’t know whether he or the world had gone mad.

Su Malie messaged, "Someone said if the astragalus survives being planted like that, they’ll livestream themselves eating dung. He’s rushing over from Guangdong to see for himself. Take good care of the astragalus, okay? Make sure it doesn’t die."

Jing Shu was bewildered. ??? What just happened? Wait... Could it be that an expert has arrived? A little thrill went through her; this was exactly the effect she wanted. The more she used such seemingly amateurish methods to grow even better medicinal herbs, the more she would appear to be a true expert who had cultivated them herself but was unwilling to publicize her methods. Everyone would assume she was deliberately hiding her skills and being enigmatic. This was the strategy of ’acting in a diametrically opposite way’ from the Thirty-Six Stratagems.

Su Malie sent no further messages, and Jing Shu wasn’t in a rush. She had to be cautious with medicinal plants, as they were even more precious than food. Revealing a little would let the experts see the value in cultivation, but disclosing too much could provoke greed. One shouldn’t reveal something that people much stronger than oneself might covet; it would only invite trouble.

「In the blink of an eye, it was mid-December 2023」

This was a month during the apocalypse when everyone enjoyed the most peaceful and mild conditions. There was no lack of Five Grain Worms to eat or water to drink. During this time, Jing Shu had finally finished completely revamping the villa.

The villa’s PVC plastic waterproof umbrella perfectly covered it. This umbrella was equipped with switches for its wipers, angled pipes on each corner leading to four large water collection tanks. Beneath the tanks were outlets and additional channels to divert water to the mountain behind the villa.

The RV garage, built in the empty space behind the villa, was now also covered with a PVC waterproof umbrella.

The coal shed, added outside the villa in March, was also enclosed and protected.

Jing Shu had placed small packets of quicklime in various nooks and crannies to act as desiccant. Dehumidifiers, dryers, and wall-mounted furnaces were all installed and ready.

The fish and shrimp in the pond were proliferating again. Jing Shu took advantage of the last of the high temperatures to dry a large batch of dried shrimp, salted fish, and various other seafood, storing them in the basement. The crayfish were also overflowing, so Jing Shu cooked up a full cubic meter of spicy crayfish, perfect for late-night snacks.

The chickens, ducks, rabbits, and pigs in her dimensional space were also multiplying rapidly. Jing Shu slaughtered a batch, processing them into various dried and cured meats. She stored these in the space as her personal snacks for the coming year, not intending to take them out.

She also dried the last batch of vegetables and fruits, making various dried goods and storing them in the space as reserve food.

She prepared feed for the Domestic Poultry, combining vegetable leaves, weeds, and roots from the space with dried shrimp, orange peels, and garlic to create a nutritious and long-lasting mix, which she then stored in the space.

She also dried chicken manure that had been stored for a long time. After it had aired out, she mixed it with other ingredients to make feed for the black pigs, ensuring her Domestic Poultry wouldn’t lack food for a long time to come.

The fish feed was even simpler. Leftover bones and the intestines from slaughtered Domestic Poultry weren’t discarded. Instead, they were coated in egg liquid and tossed into the pond, prompting the fish and shrimp to put on a spectacular display reminiscent of "carps leaping over the Dragon Gate."

The extreme heat gradually subsided, almost unnoticeably, day by day, eventually dropping to 40°C. Just as everyone breathed a collective sigh of relief, believing the apocalypse was finally coming to an end, the second year of the apocalypse began.

When the water level in the villa’s collection tanks was low, the first heavy rain finally arrived as anticipated, moistening the parched earth.