Chapter 593: Chapter 19: Growing Melons to Eat
The spring breeze greens the banks of the south once more, but on North Campus’s Section C, this saying transforms into the sand winds yellowing the dorm buildings.
Before entering the door, the first thing Xiao Xian does is shake her clothes clean of the sand stuck on her body and hair.
Standing outside the door, she hears a humming tune from inside the room. A basin of brightly washed snake fruit sits in the most eye-catching spot.
Zhang Yiyi is frying eggs, the kitchen resounding with the stir of a spatula. Their diet has slightly improved, but eggs are still the main dish, given that Section C doesn’t produce any vegetables at all.
"Where are the apples from?" Xiao Xian walks into the kitchen area. Their dorm is a large flat space, with no dividing walls except for the bathroom. Hence, according to different functions, Xiao Xian and Yiyi have designated them as the kitchen area, study area, and activity area.
The kitchen area has a foldable low table bought from the supply center, some bowls and basins, a rice washing basket for their daily use, and that’s about it. Items like the cooking stove, gas, and hygiene facilities come with the dorm.
Today, there’s a big bag of snake fruit in the kitchen.
"I picked them. Wash one and snack on it to fill your belly. I got back late today and dinner isn’t ready yet," Zhang Yiyi seems in good spirits. Xiao Xian spots a few scrapes on her cheek.
"What happened to your face?" After Zhang Yiyi’s constitution changed, minor bumps and scrapes barely affected her. Even half a month earlier, when she was stung in the desert, she only got a bit tanned, with no real harm done to her body.
"I got these when picking apples. You go set the table, and I’ll tell you about today later." This was Zhang Yiyi’s first apple picking attempt, and those good-looking snake fruits weren’t easy to harvest.
Those cultivated with Spiritual Energy required great effort to pick. Zhang Yiyi couldn’t reach them from the ground and had to climb the tree, which resulted in scratches from branches infused with Spiritual Energy.
"I checked that area, and there are not just snake fruits but also kiwifruits, jujubes, and pears – every kind tastes great. We’ve now got a lead on our future fruit supply," Zhang Yiyi plans, once proficient at picking snake fruits, to go to Section B and see if other students could help with the harvesting. "I also sold a few packs of peanuts today. I made over three hundred Heaven-defying Value and got a big bag of snake fruits. So, when you weave in the evenings, you won’t complain about not having snacks."
These considerate words, coming from the always reliable Yiyi, left Xiao Xian at a loss for words. All said, Yiyi is still a somewhat grown child. It must be said, Zhang Yiyi is also quite adaptable, a trait Xiao Xian and Xuerou never noticed before.
"There’s no need to overexert yourself. Just picking snake fruits is enough. We can pretty much cover our living expenses now. We need to focus more on advancing," Xiao Xian expresses a conservative stance on Zhang Yiyi’s decision, neither endorsing nor dissenting.
Zhang Yiyi takes Xiao Xian’s advice into partial consideration and sticks to helping with the respective fruit trees in Section B daily. Having eaten snake fruit for successive days, both of them started to feel weary of it. So, Zhang Yiyi sneaked off to Spiritual Fruit Garden in Section B, bringing back a variety of other fruits.
One day, while they were having their after-dinner fruit, Xiao Zhang Yiyi swallowed a strawberry and said, "Don’t you think the fruits we pick from Section B, although gorgeous, seem to lack something?"
"They lack the authentic fruit flavor. Take strawberries, they’re supposed to be sweet and tangy, but the strawberries from Section B are big and juicy yet only sweet." Xiao Xian points out a common problem of all fruits in the Intermediate Class’s Spiritual Fruit Garden in Section B. The students, mostly at the Silver Grade of Spiritual Control, strive for perfection in everything, including fruit cultivation. The exaggerated efforts end up making the fruits no different from sweetness-enhanced greenhouse fruits.
"Moreover, they’re all temperate fruits. Can’t even get a watermelon to cool off," Zhang Yiyi puckers up, the residents of Section B might not feel it, growing fruits according to climate, but for the students of Section C, mostly tropical desert territory, apples and jujubes can hardly be refreshing.
"You craving some melons? I can’t do anything about watermelons. They’d just dry out in this soil. But there’s a compromise; we could plant Hami melons," says Xiao Xian, finishing her fruit and getting up to rummage through her luggage to retrieve several small paper packets wrapped in medicinal paper.