Perhaps it was because he had absorbed so much information in a single day, thoroughly draining his mental energy, or perhaps it was because he was no longer alone in the room, surrounded instead by the warmth of human presence.
That night, Cheng Ye slept exceptionally soundly and peacefully.
For the first time since transmigrating to the wasteland, he felt truly well-rested.
Except...
"How is it only seven-thirty?"
Cheng Ye sat up and took several deep breaths, quickly expelling the stale air from his chest.
When he first arrived in the wasteland, the original host's body had been frail and sickly. Leave alone comparing him to peers in the wasteland, he would have lagged far behind even modern people who ate takeout every day and never exercised.
Now, two months had passed, and despite having slept only five hours last night, he felt invigorated.
This positive change brought him genuine delight.
"You're awake?"
When Cheng Ye walked out of the bedroom, Luo Xiaoxue was already up as well, holding a watering can to tend to her plants. Seeing him emerge, she looked up to greet him.
The apartments allotted to inspectors by the chemical plant were mostly standard two-bedroom units. However, people in the wasteland had long ceased cooking, so the kitchens were almost universally repurposed into utility rooms.
Liu Bi's home, for example, had converted the kitchen into a small patch for growing vegetables.
"Big Brother Cheng Ye, you're up! Come quick, come quick!"
Hearing Cheng Ye get out of bed, Liu Yi came trotting over from the living room.
Although public order in the Happiness City Buffer Zone was far better than elsewhere in the wasteland, it had not reached the luxury of building schools. Naturally, Liu Bi and his wife could not bear to send their newly turned five-year-old daughter into the Inner City just for an education.
As a result, since birth, the farthest Liu Yi had ever traveled was within the Chemical Plant Staff Housing District, and the people she interacted with were essentially adults around Liu Bi's age.
Cheng Ye was practically the first young person she had ever come into close contact with.
Children were naturally trusting, and Luo Xiaoxue had done nothing to discourage her from warming up to Cheng Ye. After a single night, Liu Yi was already quite familiar with this newly met "big brother." At this moment, she tilted her rosy little face upward, tugged on Cheng Ye's sleeve, and pulled him toward the living room to show off her vegetable patch.
"This is big cabbage, this is small cabbage, this is round cabbage, this is chubby cabbage..."
Several flowerpots sat in the living room, planted with somewhat wilted Chinese cabbages. Based on their sizes and shapes, Liu Yi introduced them with great zest, sorting them into different varieties.
Cheng Ye squatted down and brushed aside a cabbage leaf, asking curiously, "Huh? Doesn't Yiyi like growing other vegetables?"
"I do, but Daddy only brings home cabbage seeds!"
"Then how about next time Big Brother goes out on fieldwork, I bring you back some other seeds?"
"Yay! Thank you, Big Brother Cheng Ye!"
At the mention of other vegetables, Liu Yi's eyes sparkled, looking just like a furry little beast that had picked up the scent of prey.
Tidying the planters nearby, Luo Xiaoxue shook her head in amusement and could not help calling out, "Cheng Ye, don't spoil her. In the area around our Happiness City, vegetables simply can't be grown."
"Can't be grown?"
"Go wash up first. I've already prepared water for you. You'll understand what I mean in a bit."
"All right."
Cheng Ye agreed and turned toward the washroom.
Perhaps because the plumbing in the suburbs was relatively new, the tap water had a faint milky hue, without a trace of the pungent chlorine disinfectant smell found in the city center's tap water.
By the time he finished wiping his face and stepped out, Luo Xiaoxue had already started boiling water on a simple induction cooker in the corner of the living room, with three freshly torn cabbages resting beside her.
"Sister Luo, I can just drink nutrient paste. There's really no need to cook vegetables for me, is there?"
Just how precious were vegetables in Happiness City?
At least in the original host's memories, Cheng Ye could find no record of them. It seemed everyone drank nutrient paste from birth. That included residents of the Inner City; nobody ate fresh vegetables. Even during holidays, they only celebrated by putting a few slices of synthetic meat or farmed chicken between bread.
"You're mistaken. This stuff actually has very little value—it's just rare around here, that's all."
"Don't rush..." As Luo Xiaoxue spoke, she tore the cabbage apart with her hands and tossed the pieces into the boiling water.
After scalding them for a dozen seconds, she fished them out with chopsticks.
"Come, have a taste?"
"Then I really will dig in."
He was already staying at their home, so what was one meal? Besides, after drinking nutrient paste every day for over two months, his mouth had grown utterly bland. At the thought of cabbage's fresh sweetness, Cheng Ye's Adam's apple bobbed involuntarily. He picked up a mouthful with his chopsticks and put it into his mouth.
Yet the moment he chewed twice, his expression changed.
First came surprise, then a furrowed brow, and finally deep contemplation.
"Why does this... have no flavor at all?"
Calling it like chewing wood might have been a slight exaggeration, but the actual texture was perhaps even worse than wood. It felt as though a mouthful of sawdust was tumbling around his mouth. Leave alone the taste of cabbage, his tongue could not detect even a shred of flavor.
"It seems you really did eat normal vegetables in the Inner City. Cheng Long sure spared no expense on you, kid. Shipping that stuff into our Happiness City is extraordinarily expensive; it takes contribution points to redeem, and there's a quota limit."
Turning off the induction cooker, Luo Xiaoxue smiled. "That's why I said vegetables can't be grown around here. Whether it's cabbage, celery, lettuce... as long as it grows in the soil, everything harvested tastes like this."
"How can that be?"
Cheng Ye put down his bowl and chopsticks, his brows knitting tightly.
Previously, all his attention had been focused on surviving; as long as he had something to eat to stay alive, he had no mind to care about such details. Even learning about infected entities had only begun after his transfer to the North and South Stations. Where would he have found the spare time to look into why no one ate vegetables and drank nutrient paste instead?
"Could it be because of a transcendent?"
"You guessed right," Luo Xiaoxue answered, her tone tinged with sorrow. "Not just our Chuan City, but three-quarters of the land across all of Shi Province was contaminated by a powerful transcendent. When any plant grows, it continuously sheds its natural traits. Today it might lose its texture, tomorrow its flavor, and the day after perhaps even its nutritional value. In short, the longer it takes to grow, the more traits it loses."
"What about shipping in fresh soil from uncontaminated areas?" Cheng Ye blurted out.
If it were merely a matter of taste, that would not matter much; there were plenty of ways to season food. Adding a spoonful of evaporated milk would practically guarantee a savory sweetness to anything boiled. But if nutritional value was lost, seasoning lost all purpose, because eating it might actually harm the human body, making it worse than cheaper nutrient paste.
"It's useless," Luo Xiaoxue said, shaking her head. "Although that transcendent fell long ago, the infection source left behind remains permanently somewhere in Shi Province, continuing to corrode the land to this day. Newly transported soil gets assimilated within a few days. Forget the soil—even the rocks 'fall sick.'
"Still, what you just ate has only lost its flavor; it still has value for the human body."
"Is that so?"
Cheng Ye murmured a reply. Even after leaving the Chemical Plant Staff Housing District, his mind was still turning over this explosive revelation.
If anything planted in the soil was affected, did that not mean grain crops suffered the same fate, not just vegetables?
*Before, I was planning to carve out a small patch outside the city to grow vegetables once things settled down. Now, that possibility has been nipped right in the bud.*
*Wait, if Happiness City's trade channels ever run into trouble and the raw ingredients for nutrient paste can't be imported from outside, won't a famine break out inside the city?*
Beyond natural disasters, there seemed to be far more threats looming over the heads of all Happiness City residents. Any single trigger could detonate these dangers, instantly turning them into a reaping blade.
Yet many people, just like the original host, were unwilling to learn about them—or rather, even if they did know, there was nothing they could do.
*There are definitely far more things hidden in this world that I haven't uncovered yet.*
*Interesting.*
Cheng Ye quickened his pace toward the bus stop.
To ordinary people, soil contamination meant losing their most vital productive capability, forcing them to rely on shelter-city-supplied nutrient paste to survive. But he was different. Upon learning about transcendent contamination, his first thought was not despair, but opportunity.
If he could break through the contamination, wouldn't the vegetables and grains he grew fetch astronomical prices? Furthermore, wouldn't that give him the ultimate confidence to cut ties and break away from Happiness City when the critical moment arrived?
*No rush to study this right now. My time is limited. Today, I have to finalize my weapon and stop by the library to read through all the books on the first shelf.*
Chapter 18