"Jing Shu, the dicine you gave last ti was truly outstanding, even better than expected. The patient has fully recovered. I was wondering if you have any other dicinal herbs? Also, where do you get these dicines from?"
dicines nourished by the Spiritual Spring were bound to be Spiritual dicines; 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 dicine you gave ?"
"It’s because she never ddled in my affairs."
Su Malie said, "I see. My grandma lived to ninety and was still sharp because she worried about every single day."
Jing Shu was speechless. There’s no talking to her.
"So, where did your dicine co from? I’m just asking for soone 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 dicines 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.
「anwhile, in a sanatorium in Wu City」
A middle-aged man, looking quite scholarly with gold-rimd glasses, stared at a ssage 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 dicinal plants that turn out to be all crooked and split is the norm."
A middle-aged man with a grim face and stern deanor scoffed in disdain. He had checked the transaction records of recent years; indeed, there were no records of dicinal 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 tily offered him a cup of milk coffee.
Another man, bald and one-eyed, flexed his muscular body. He was looking at the ssage on the gold-rimd-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 so Seeds, watered them, and they grew."
Then, a voice ca 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-rimd glasses gently pushed them back up. "Oh? But Old Su ntioned that her dicine 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 redy, while a little bit of that young girl’s dicine solved it."
The elderly man in the video blushed and said furiously, "I don’t believe she can grow such high-quality dicinal herbs in that kind of ho environnt unless she sends a photo!"
The middle-aged man with gold-rimd glasses chuckled and conveyed the ssage.
anwhile, 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...
anwhile, Jing Shu frowned as she looked at the ssage 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 ti 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 mont’s thought, she also transplanted the astragalus and took a photo to send over.
The man with the gold-rimd 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 imdiately! 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 soone 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 ssaged, "Soone 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 thods to grow even better dicinal herbs, the more she would appear to be a true expert who had cultivated them herself but was unwilling to publicize her thods. Everyone would assu she was deliberately hiding her skills and being enigmatic. This was the strategy of ’acting in a diatrically opposite way’ from the Thirty-Six Stratagems.
Su Malie sent no further ssages, and Jing Shu wasn’t in a rush. She had to be cautious with dicinal 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 sothing 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 ti, 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 quickli 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 basent. The crayfish were also overflowing, so Jing Shu cooked up a full cubic ter of spicy crayfish, perfect for late-night snacks.
The chickens, ducks, rabbits, and pigs in her dinsional space were also multiplying rapidly. Jing Shu slaughtered a batch, processing them into various dried and cured ats. 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 Dostic 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 ti. After it had aired out, she mixed it with other ingredients to make feed for the black pigs, ensuring her Dostic Poultry wouldn’t lack food for a long ti to co.
The fish feed was even simpler. Leftover bones and the intestines from slaughtered Dostic 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 extre 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.
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