Perhaps it was because he had absorbed too much information in a single day, exhausting his mind, or perhaps because the room was no longer so lonely, with a little more warmth and life in it.
That night, Cheng Ye slept more peacefully and soundly than usual.
For the first time since arriving in the Wasteland, he felt truly well-rested.
Only...
"Why is it only seven thirty?"
Cheng Ye sat up and took several deep breaths, quickly expelling the stuffiness from his chest.
When he had first arrived in the Wasteland, his original body had been frail.
He was far weaker than people his age in the Wasteland, and even compared poorly to modern people who ate takeout every day and got little exercise.
Now, two months later, he had slept only five hours the night before, yet he felt refreshed and full of energy.
The positive change filled him with joy.
"You're awake?"
When Cheng Ye got up and left the bedroom, Luo Xiaoxue was already up too. She was watering the plants with a kettle and looked up to greet him.
The units the Chemical Plant assigned to inspectors were mostly standard two-bedroom apartments, but people in the Wasteland no longer needed to cook, so most kitchens had been converted into multipurpose rooms.
Liu Bi's family, for instance, had turned their kitchen into a small vegetable garden.
"Brother Cheng Ye, you're up! Come on, come on!"
Hearing Cheng Ye get up, Liu Yi hurried over from the living room.
Though the Buffer Zone of Xingfu City was far more orderly than other parts of the Wasteland, it was still nowhere near wealthy enough to build schools.
Liu Bi and his wife were naturally unwilling to send their daughter, who had just turned five, to a private school just so she could get an education.
As a result, from the time she was born until now, the farthest Liu Yi had ever gone was the Chemical Plant Staff Dormitory. Most of the people she met were adults around Liu Bi's age.
Cheng Ye was the first young man she had gotten to know up close.
Children weren't very wary by nature, and Luo Xiaoxue hadn't stopped her from getting close to Cheng Ye.
After just one night, Liu Yi had already grown familiar with this "big brother" she'd only just met. Now she tipped up her rosy little face, tugged on Cheng Ye's sleeve, and dragged him toward the living room to show off her vegetable garden.
"This is Napa Cabbage, this is Bok Choy, this is round cabbage, and this is Fat Cabbage."
Several flowerpots sat in the living room, each containing a somewhat wilted cabbage.
Excitedly, Liu Yi sorted them into different varieties based on their size and shape.
Cheng Ye crouched down and prodded the leaves, curious. "Hey, Yiyi, don't you like growing other vegetables?"
"I do, but Daddy only brought home Cabbage Seeds!"
"Then next time I go on an assignment, I'll bring you some other seeds, okay?"
"Okay, okay! Thank you, Brother Cheng Ye!"
At the mention of other vegetables, Liu Yi's eyes lit up. She looked like a fluffy little animal that had caught the scent of prey.
Luo Xiaoxue, who was tending the vegetable patch, shook her head when she heard this and couldn't help calling out, "Cheng Ye, don't spoil her. You can't grow vegetables anywhere around Xingfu City."
"You can't?"
"Go wash up first. I've prepared water for you. You'll understand what I mean in a bit."
"Okay."
Cheng Ye agreed and turned toward the washroom.
Perhaps because the water pipes in the suburbs were newer, the water from the faucet looked faintly white and lacked the pungent chlorine smell of tap water in the city center.
By the time he finished washing his face and came out, Luo Xiaoxue had started heating water on a simple Induction Cooker in the corner of the living room. Three heads of round cabbage lay beside her.
"Sister Luo, I'm fine with Nutrient Paste. You don't have to cook vegetables for me."
How precious were vegetables in Xingfu City?
At least, Cheng Ye hadn't found anything about them in the original owner's memories. It seemed everyone had been drinking Nutrient Paste since birth.
That included the residents of the Inner City. No one had ever eaten vegetables. Even during festivals, people only celebrated with a few slices of Synthetic Meat or Farmed Chicken Meat tucked into bread.
"You've got it wrong. This stuff isn't actually worth much. It's just rare around here."
"Don't rush." As she spoke, Luo Xiaoxue tore the cabbage by hand and dropped it into the boiling water.
After blanching it for a little over ten seconds, she fished out the pieces one by one with chopsticks.
"Want to try some?"
"Then I really will."
He was already staying at her place. What was one meal?
Besides, after drinking Nutrient Paste every day for over two months, his palate had been desperate for a change. Just thinking about the sweet, fresh taste of cabbage made Cheng Ye's Adam's apple bob. He picked up a bite with his chopsticks and put it in his mouth.
But after only a couple of chews, his expression changed.
First he looked surprised, then he frowned, and finally he fell into thought.
"Why doesn't it taste like anything?"
Calling it like chewing wood might have been an exaggeration, but the real texture was probably even worse than wood.
It was like a mouthful of wood shavings rolling around in his mouth. Forget the taste of cabbage—his tongue couldn't detect even the slightest hint of flavor.
"Looks like you've eaten normal vegetables in the Inner City. Cheng Long must have spent a lot on you, kid. This stuff is precious when it's brought to Xingfu City. You need Contribution Points to redeem it, and there's a limit on how much you can get."
Turning off the Induction Cooker, Luo Xiaoxue smiled and said, "That's what I meant when I said you can't grow vegetables here. Cabbage, celery, lettuce—anything that grows in soil comes out tasting like this."
"What?"
Cheng Ye put down his bowl and chopsticks, his brows furrowing into a deep crease.
Before, he'd been too focused on surviving to pay attention to things like this. As long as he had something to eat and could stay alive, that was enough.
He hadn't even started learning about the Infected until he was transferred to the North South Stations.
How could he have found the time to figure out why nobody ate vegetables and everyone drank Nutrient Paste instead?
"Could it be because of the Transcendents?"
"You guessed right." Luo Xiaoxue's expression turned somber. "It's not just Chuan City, where we live. Three-quarters of all the land in Shi Province has been polluted by a powerful Transcendent. All plants constantly lose their properties as they grow. Maybe today it's their texture, tomorrow it'll be their flavor, and the day after that, they might even lose their nutritional value. In short, the longer they grow, the more they lose."
"What if we brought in fresh soil from somewhere that hadn't been polluted?"
Cheng Ye blurted out the question.
If it was only the flavor, that wouldn't matter. There were plenty of ways to season food.
Add a spoonful of Three Flower Evaporated Milk, and you could bet anything you cooked would have a rich, sweet flavor.
But if the food lost its nutritional value, seasoning it would be pointless. Eating it might even harm the body, and people would be better off drinking cheaper Nutrient Paste.
"It wouldn't work." Luo Xiaoxue shook her head. "That Transcendent died a long time ago, but the Infection Source left behind by his remains stayed somewhere in Shi Province, and it's still eating away at the land. Any soil brought in from elsewhere gets assimilated within a few days. It's not just soil—even rocks can 'get sick.'"
"But the stuff you just ate has only lost its flavor. It's still useful to the body."
"Really?"
Cheng Ye asked, and even after leaving the Chemical Plant Residential Area, his mind was still turning over this "explosive" news.
If anything planted in the soil was affected, then wouldn't that mean crops were affected too, not just vegetables?
"I'd been thinking that once things settled down, I'd go outside the city and carve out a small plot to grow vegetables. Now that possibility's been cut off at the source."
"Wait. If Xingfu City's trade routes run into trouble and we can't bring in the raw materials for Nutrient Paste from elsewhere, won't the city be hit by famine?"
Apart from natural disasters, it seemed there were even more threats looming over every resident of Xingfu City.
All it might take was one trigger to set them off, turning them into a butcher's blade in an instant.
But many people were just like his predecessor. They didn't want to learn about these things—or, even if they did, there was nothing they could do.
"There's definitely a lot more to this world that I still don't know."
"Interesting."
Cheng Ye hurried toward the bus stop.
To ordinary people, the contaminated soil meant losing their most important means of production and having to rely on Nutrient Paste provided by Sanctuary City to survive.
But he was different. After learning about Transcendent Pollution, his first thought wasn't despair. It was opportunity.
If he could overcome the pollution, wouldn't the vegetables and crops he grew sell for sky-high prices?
And wouldn't that give him the means to leave Xingfu City for good when the time came?
"There's no need to look into this right away. I don't have much time. Today, I have to settle on a weapon, and then I'll stop by the library and finish all the books on the first bookshelf."
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