Chapter 193: Chapter 160: Ginseng Water
Huai Yu spent the entire night adventuring and fighting in the Fantasy Forest, struggling painfully and barely sleeping a wink. When she woke up in the morning, her head felt heavy and groggy. Even her morning greeting to Ke Taichiro was incredibly weak.
Fortunately, Ke Taichiro was very considerate. It turned around, reached into the large storage box in its nest, and offered her a green pellet. When Huai Yu took it, she caught a strong whiff of mint. She figured it must have found some wild mint somewhere.
However, she just didn’t have the stomach for it. Accepting it was one thing, but actually brewing it to drink was out of the question. Feeling a bit sheepish, she thanked the pet, then sorted the new pellets in Ke Taichiro’s basin by color before stuffing them back into a sealed jar.
Ke Taichiro truly was the ultimate worker. The large white porcelain bowl from before couldn’t even hold a single day’s worth of its labor. While scavenging through scrap, Huai Yu had found a storage box missing its lid. After washing and drying it, she completely replaced the bowl with it.
Ke Taichiro absolutely loved the new arrangement, especially since the box had a marked capacity of forty liters—more than ten times that of the old bowl. It became even more motivated, to the point where it wouldn’t even come home until after dark nowadays.
Huai Yu had found seven other storage boxes of the same style. They had been piled up in a mess, filled with instruction manuals for medicines and home appliances, torn plastic wrap, loose labels, and other random clutter. She strongly suspected they were previously used for general storage.
One of them had a chipped edge and could only be used as a scrap basket. Another had a deep crack; it was fine for storing everyday items, but it definitely couldn’t hold liquids. The remaining five were of various sizes. The smallest was only the size of a palm, which Huai Yu happily decided to use for her hair ties and scrunchies.
The largest looked like a massive trunk for luggage, boasting a full eighty-liter capacity. She didn’t hesitate to repurpose it as her water tank. Filling it once would last her for several days, sparing her the exhausting daily trips to fetch water.
At that thought, she gazed from afar at the barnyard grass tree by the pond and remembered the water well at Zhou Qian’s house. Her heart filled with genuine envy.
She then packed the two large pitchers of ginseng tea she had brewed yesterday into her woven bamboo backpack. Even though she hadn’t noticed any immediate effects after drinking a large bowl herself, she *had* dreamed all night! She wondered if the medicinal properties were simply so nourishing that they had overstimulated her nerves during the night. Regardless, she couldn’t let it go to waste; good things had to be saved for the patient.
Next came the peaches, whose skins were on the verge of wrinkling. There had been a massive basket of them when they were first delivered. Every time she visited Zhou Qian, she would bring two along, then bring the pits back to plant one by one along the edge of the pond. Since it had only been a few days, there were still quite a lot left. Looking at the remainder today, she gritted her teeth and dumped them all into her backpack.
After all that, the backpack was incredibly heavy again. Huai Yu was genuinely afraid that the weight would stunt her growth. Feeling a sudden pang of self-pity at the thought, she opened her sugar jar right before leaving and pinched out a piece of rock sugar. The sweet taste instantly revitalized her spirits, simultaneously awakening her concern for Zhou Qian.
At the hospital, Zhou Qian looked a bit haggard, but his spirits seemed quite good. When Huai Yu pushed open the door to his ward, he was slowly walking while holding onto the handrail on the wall. Aside from his sluggish pace, it was impossible to tell he was wearing a prosthetic leg.
She stared in stunned silence before cheering, "You can walk this quickly?"
"Yeah." A hint of joy was hidden in Zhou Qian’s brow. "It’s fusing very well with the new materials, and my body is adapting perfectly. It feels just like my real leg. If all goes well, I’ll be discharged in another three to five days."
He looked at Huai Yu as he slowly made his way over to the hospital bed and pulled open the drawer. Inside lay a trading bracelet. "Have you checked out the new house? If anything is missing, I’ll have to trouble you to buy it for me."
He gestured for Huai Yu to take the bracelet, but she replied awkwardly, "I forgot to look at the house when I went back last night... and this morning... I forgot this morning, too..."
Building a house these days truly was highly efficient. When she returned yesterday afternoon, the surrounding area had already fallen completely silent. Even the roof of Zhou Qian’s new house had been fitted flawlessly. There wasn’t a single sound this morning either, so the interior had likely already been fully sorted out.
"It’s fine," Zhou Qian insisted. "Just take it. It wasn’t easy for you to scrape together a round number of savings. Between my commendation reward for this mission, my disability subsidy, and a few other streams of income, my savings are far greater than yours right now."
Huai Yu thought for a moment but still shook her head, full of ambition. "I’m going to sell peaches today, which means another stream of income! I’ll check the house tonight and tell you what’s missing tomorrow."
Zhou Qian’s brow twitched. He ate two of those peaches every single day—how could he not know their quality? Yet Huai Yu spoke with such casual confidence that she had likely already found a reliable buyer.
After a moment of thought, he put the bracelet away. "Alright. Just be careful."
Huai Yu nodded cheerfully. Setting her backpack down, she pulled out eight large, fresh red peaches in one breath and stuffed them into the drawer one by one. "These are for you to eat."
Then—
"Look!" Huai Yu triumphantly pulled two massive pitchers out of her backpack.
One was an electric kettle commonly found in every household before the apocalypse, and the other was an ordinary stainless steel thermos. Of course, in this day and age, there was no difference between the two; they could only be used as regular water pitchers. The electric kettle was even missing its base—it was just another item Huai Yu had dug out of the scrap pile.
She lowered her voice conspiratorially. "I got my hands on some ginseng whiskers and brewed them into tea to nourish you! You need to drink plenty of it!"
Ginseng?!
Even though Zhou Qian had mentally prepared himself for Huai Yu’s endless array of secrets, he was still shocked. "Is this ginseng root dried ginseng from before the apocalypse, or is it a new mutation?"
Huai Yu gave him a blank, clear-eyed stare. All she knew was that it was fresh.
Zhou Qian was speechless. Forget it, he would just pretend he never asked.
While they were talking, Huai Yu had already filled his cup to the brim. After soaking overnight, the water in the pitcher had taken on a faint yellow tint, much deeper than what he had drank yesterday. Even the medicinal smell was noticeably stronger.
Zhou Qian wanted to say he wasn’t thirsty, but Huai Yu had already happily hoisted her backpack onto her shoulders. "Drink up quickly! I only have these two pitchers at home right now, so I’ll need to come back and fetch them later."
Zhou Qian stared at her in silence.
He quietly looked at the two pitchers. The stainless steel thermos had an engraved capacity of 2.8 liters, while the kettle was 1.8 liters. During his time at the hospital, he was on continuous IV drips, receiving five to eight bags of fluid a day along with various oral medications. In truth, his need for drinking water was almost nonexistent. He barely even took a sip from his cup all day.
But... this was ginseng tea!
He didn’t dare think about it any further. Instead, he took the cup and gulped it down. He could only thank goodness that the apocalypse had enhanced human physiques. At the very least, he wouldn’t suffer from water intoxication that easily... probably.
Huai Yu’s eyes curved into a bright smile. "You keep exercising, then! I need to hurry to the trading market while there are still few people around this morning."
This would also save her from getting jostled around on the crowded bus. If the peaches were exposed, it would bring about a whole new set of troubles.