Chapter 199: Chapter 166: Departure!
This was Huai Yu’s first time not spending the night at home.
Everything felt incredibly novel to her. She even loved the brightly lit lamps in the hospital. "When electricity isn’t so expensive anymore, I’m going to install lights at home, too."
"You can install them now." Zhou Qian turned off the lights with a CLICK. "Conserve energy—you can run a power line from my place. Lights don’t use that much electricity."
Huai Yu thought for a moment and started chattering again. "I really want to buy a game console! Boss Tang said the Master’s Sword he bought is super, super fun!"
"Buy it," Zhou Qian agreed. "Life is hard enough. Happiness doesn’t come easy, either."
Huai Yu felt instantly satisfied. "Once I save up twenty thousand Contribution Value points, I’ll buy it!"
By that same logic... "And once I save up thirty thousand points, I’ll run that power line!"
Zhou Qian was speechless.
Very well. She was so young, yet she really knew how to budget her life.
His hand hung over the edge of the bed. A prickly, spiky head nuzzled against it, making a faint rubbing sound.
A moment later came the PATTERING sound of Big and Second running wildly away.
In the darkness, Zhou Qian felt the bed frame. He found a neat, clean cut right along the edge.
Great. Tomorrow morning, before the head nurse even arrived, he’d be docked at least three kilowatt-hours of electricity in compensation.
But thinking about Huai Yu going to the highway entrance all by herself, he silently comforted himself. Although Big and Second had slapdash names and a slapdash appearance, they at least possessed genuine skills.
At 12:30 a.m., a nurse came and knocked gently on the door.
Huai Yu was dazed for a moment before the overhead light flicked on with a CLICK. Zhou Qian was looking at her. "Take good care of Big and Second, and be careful."
"I will!"
The little girl looked as if she were heading to a midnight market. She placed her packed woven basket on the floor, carried the aggrieved Big and Second out from the bathroom, and placed them inside. Then, she waved excitedly at Zhou Qian.
"Rest up and recover well! I’m leaving now!"
As she passed the nurse’s station, she happily shared two pieces of rock sugar with the nurse. "Thank you, miss!"
The May night air still carried a hint of a chill. Huai Yu stood by the main entrance, bundled up in her jacket. It was pitch black with hardly any streetlights—primarily because many of the solar streetlights had been damaged previously, and a full power supply still hadn’t been restored.
Big and Second quietly poked their heads out of the basket, their sharp spikes faintly reflecting a cold gleam in the dark night.
Not long after, Uncle Zaozi rode up on a bicycle with a flashlight tied to the handlebars. "Come on! Hold on tight!"
He looked incredibly energetic. Huai Yu stifled a yawn, a bit curious. "Uncle Zaozi, how are you in such good spirits?"
Uncle Zaozi was puzzled. "Did you not drink any tea? In that clump of tea you sold me, there was one with a minty flavor. It’s incredibly refreshing to drink!"
Huai Yu was speechless. No thanks, she would stick to her ginseng tea. Whether it was refreshing or not didn’t matter; the main thing was that she didn’t want to exploit Ke Taichiro.
But Uncle Zaozi was still eagerly waiting for an answer, so she had no choice but to say, "I’m still growing!"
Uncle Zaozi burst into laughter. "That’s for sure! Sitting on the back seat, it feels like you weigh nothing at all. How about it? Isn’t my multi-speed bike pretty cool?
"I just picked it up. I had a back seat and a kickstand added. It’s got so much power when you pedal!"
It did indeed feel lighter and more agile than her own heavy-duty vintage bike. Huai Yu gave her earnest feedback. "It’s so fast! You pedal with so much strength, Uncle Zaozi!"
Uncle Zaozi beamed with pride. "A craftsman must first sharpen his tools. I’m going on a massive purchasing haul tonight. I’ve already got the burlap sacks ready up front. If the bike wasn’t up to par, it would take way too much effort."
Huai Yu blinked, suddenly curious. "Then... if you collect a whole sack full of goods, will you still have room to carry me?"
Uncle Zaozi froze in embarrassment.
He had completely forgotten that he needed to bring Huai Yu back on the return trip.
Fortunately, Huai Yu was just asking out of curiosity. She quickly followed up with another question, "It’ll be almost daylight by the time you’re done buying, right? Are there any buses nearby?"
"Yes, yes, there are!" Uncle Zaozi perked up. "It’s nearly one o’clock now. We’ll arrive a little after two.
"The convoys at the highway entrance don’t all return at the same time, so the schedule isn’t fixed. If we don’t manage to score any good items right away, we might have to stake out the place until morning—"
He thought for a moment. "The buses start running at half past seven. Little Yu, you..."
Having volunteered to bring her along only to forget about her in his plans, Uncle Zaozi sounded a bit sheepish.
But Huai Yu remained cheerful. "Then I can just take the bus! The bus is very convenient!"
She had Big and Second in her basket, so she didn’t plan on buying anything anyway. She was purely there today to broaden her horizons.
Uncle Zaozi made it sound easy, but riding a bicycle with a passenger for over an hour was exhausting work. Huai Yu was actually quite touched and naturally didn’t mind his minor oversight.
Uncle Zaozi silently breathed a sigh of relief.
However, Huai Yu was still very curious. "Uncle Zaozi, did you use to ride out there in the middle of the night a lot just to collect those dates with a Mutant Value of 23?"
That would be a bit extreme!
When they hadn’t known each other, Uncle Zaozi could be thick-skinned about it, but now he felt a little embarrassed and flustered.
"You can’t frame the cause and effect like that!
"It was because I traveled all that way and ended up with absolutely no good items that I picked up someone else’s leftover dates to bring back.
"It’s called..." He racked his brains, tapping into his reservoir of knowledge, and pulled out an idiom to summarize his actions. "It’s called a thief never leaves empty-handed!"
As soon as he said it, he felt something was slightly off with the analogy, but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. Instead, he remembered how he had tried to fleece Huai Yu with outrageous prices when he first saw how young she was. He sheepishly explained further:
"Well, selling things is all about the fun of the back-and-forth haggling... Even though my initial asking price was high, I ended up selling them to you at a steep discount, didn’t I!
"Since then, I’ve never dealt with that kind of stuff again!"
Huai Yu thought about it and brightened up again. "Not at all. I think you have a great eye, Uncle Zaozi. The quality of the things you pick is really good."
She truly didn’t mean that sarcastically.
"And it’s not like you stopped dealing with those kinds of things later on. You even bought mutant ginseng."
Hehe, she was the one who had bought the mutant ginseng, too.
If it weren’t so inconvenient while sitting on the moving bike, Huai Yu wouldn’t have been able to resist opening her thermos to take a sip of ginseng tea.
Not for any particular reason, just to fit the occasion.
Uncle Zaozi was speechless.
Young people these days! Why did she have to take things so literally?
He cleared his throat and decisively changed the subject.
"Then... then why did you choose to live all by yourself in the Rose Corridor?"
Huai Yu was too embarrassed to admit that she had started out with absolutely zero Contribution Value, so she hemmed and hawed.
"I... I was afraid there might be bad people if I lived alone in the city.
"Besides, I’m especially good at farming, and they gave me six hundred acres over by the Rose Mansion!"
Continuing this topic wouldn’t be very pleasant either. Huai Yu remembered something and carefully asked,
"Uncle Zaozi, that time you were selling the chicks, the salary for the temporary worker... who filled that out?"
At the time, he had said his daughter was just doodling, but Boss Tang had mentioned that his children had long since...
She didn’t mean to reopen his wounds. She just wanted to figure out who was telling the truth.
Uncle Zaozi fell silent.
After a while, he finally spoke up slowly, "You mean that extra zero... Early that morning, your aunt had been rambling on about the kids drawing all over everything, and I just said it out of habit..."
He sighed softly. "What kids do we have anymore?"