The harvest + the husbands meet

She turned to look into the forest, her gaze sharp and dangerous.

Before long, the prying gaze disappeared. Whoever was watching was clearly afraid of her.

Green Python let it go. Thinking of the little snake at home, she quickened her pace.

Chapter 29: The harvest + the husbands meet

The day was clear, with a pleasantly warm breeze, perfect for harvesting.

The little birds had been beside themselves with excitement since learning the day before that they would be picking fruit. Tao Qiu had had to tell them several bedtime stories to get them to sleep. The next morning, the little bird alarm clock went off before Tao Qiu was even awake.

Second Cub was the loudest. "Chirp, chirp! Chirp, chirp, chirp!"

"Dad, get up! The early bird gets the fruit!"

Tao Qiu tucked himself into his wings. His eyes were still closed, and his voice was muffled. "Five minutes. Let me sleep for five more minutes."

Second Cub grumbled, "Chirp."

"All right."

After what she guessed was five minutes, Second Cub began urgently calling for him to get up again, three times in a row.

"Chirp, chirp! Chirp, chirp! Chirp, chirp!"

"Get up! Time to eat! Time to work!"

Tao Qiu lay flat, staring blankly at the cave ceiling with the look of someone who had given up on life.

After dawdling for a few minutes, Tao Qiu finally dragged himself up.

While Second Cub was waking Tao Qiu, Eldest Cub brought him water to wash with, and Third Cub tossed fruit into a bamboo bucket to wash.

The three cubs had clearly divided up the work, making Tao Qiu look like a good-for-nothing dad living off his kids.

Tao Qiu patted his cheeks to wake himself up, shook off his laziness, and quickly cut up some meat. Then he ate breakfast with the cubs.

After breakfast, Tao Qiu took two vine baskets he had woven and carried the cubs in them to the bottom of the valley. The baskets would be used to transport vegetables and fruit later.

They first came to the pear trees.

The pear trees Tao Qiu had grown bore far more fruit than the parent tree. He could see at least a dozen pears at a glance, all large and plump. They were still pitch-black, though, which made them a little less appetizing.

The fresh fragrance of ripe pears filled the air, and the little birds couldn't help swallowing at the smell.

Tao Qiu had picked a pear to try the previous day. When he bit into it, the flesh was snowy white and crisp, with plenty of light, sweet juice. One bite left him wanting more.

The earlier pears had made them drunk, but the ones grown after purification with Tao Qiu's ability had a much lower "alcohol content." They were more like a flavored drink with a hint of wine: delicious, but not intoxicating.

Even the little birds hadn't gotten the slightest bit tipsy after eating them, let alone an adult like Tao Qiu. They were just a little addictive to the birds.

But that minor flaw hardly mattered.

Second Cub sucked in her drool and said to Tao Qiu expectantly, "Chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp, chirp!"

"We agreed last night that we'd pick them up there and Dad would catch them down here. Let's get started!"

The cubs were so eager they looked as though they wished they could learn to fly on the spot and pick the pears themselves. Tao Qiu delayed no longer and placed them on branches in different parts of the tree.

The cubs' beaks were sharp, and they had pointed, toothlike spikes in their mouths, enough to bite through the stems atop the pears.

As soon as they had found their footing, they set to work.

"Chirp!"

"Dad, catch!"

Second Cub bit through a stem and tossed the pear outward to keep it from hitting a branch on the way down and getting damaged, which would make it rot faster.

To anyone else, the fruit was falling at great speed, but to Tao Qiu, it seemed several times slower. He was also fast enough to keep up with what he saw. As soon as Second Cub called out, he had already judged where the pear would fall and reached out.

With a soft smack, the pear landed safely in Tao Qiu's hand.

"Chirp!" Third Cub cheered.

"Way to go, Dad!"

"Of course," Tao Qiu said, looking thoroughly smug.

"Chirp!"

"Here comes a pear!"

Eldest Cub interrupted his father's self-admiration at just the right moment.

Tao Qiu caught the pear Eldest Cub dropped with ease and placed it alongside Second Cub's in a vine basket lined with dry grass.

Seeing this, Third Cub stopped watching and joined in picking pears.

At first, the cubs took turns. Only after Tao Qiu caught one pear would the next cub drop another.

Later, they realized this was too slow and wasted both their time and their dad's, so they gradually sped up. By the end, they were dropping pears almost simultaneously.

Even so, Tao Qiu caught every single one and still had time to gently place them in the basket.

A strange "contest" unfolded between father and children. The cubs all wanted to see whether Tao Qiu would miss a pear or get flustered, so all three worked away, huffing and puffing, wishing they could bite through three pear stems at once.

Tao Qiu saw how hard they were trying and used thirty percent of his strength to compete with them, taking his responsibility as their father seriously.

But even when the cubs were panting and so tired they nearly fell out of the tree, Tao Qiu still looked perfectly at ease, without a single bead of sweat.

Sure enough, experience won out.

The cubs could only admit defeat.

By the time they finished picking one pear tree, the vine basket, as wide as Tao Qiu's embrace, was almost full.

The pears were large. Even if there weren't as many as on the pear trees before the Great Catastrophe, one was worth more than three of those. Strictly speaking, the difference in yield wasn't that great.

Tao Qiu hurried to take the children down to rest, then washed and cut up a pear for them to share.

The crisp, sweet pear flesh immediately swept away their fatigue from working. The little birds pecked away, their eyes growing brighter.

Tao Qiu gnawed on a pear beside them and said, "You can take it slower with the next tree. It's still early, so there's no need to rush."

The little birds thought Tao Qiu hadn't noticed their desire to compete with him earlier, and having lost, they were even more embarrassed to tell him.

So they could only chuckle sheepishly and chirp that they'd listen to Dad!

Seeing their silly expressions, Tao Qiu quietly turned his head away several times to stifle a laugh.

After resting, they got back to work.

With Tao Qiu's instructions, and having used up quite a bit of energy earlier, the cubs behaved much better while picking pears this time and barely spoke.

Picking more slowly naturally took longer, but Tao Qiu had said they had plenty of time, so none of them minded much.

The cubs were small enough to weave among the branches, making sure not a single pear escaped their beaks.

By the time they were done, they had picked two large baskets of pears.

The cubs weren't very strong and couldn't fly yet, so Tao Qiu let them play below while he carried the pears back to the cave in batches.

A corner of the cave was covered with stones, with a layer of dry firewood on top.

The mutated trees in the forest were all thick, tall, and hard. The tools Tao Qiu currently had made them difficult to fell and cut up, so he could only gather firewood to use in place of boards.

On top of the boards stood a vine basket even larger than the one in Tao Qiu's hands.

This basket, however, was crudely woven. It was practical, but had no aesthetic appeal whatsoever.

Tao Qiu only used it to store things and wasn't going to sell it, so he naturally hadn't bothered about its looks when weaving it.

The two baskets of pears formed a mound when transferred into the large vine basket, but they all fit.

Carrying the vine baskets and a small basket back, the family of four continued picking.

The second round of harvesting was for tomatoes and wild berries.

Ever since Tao Qiu had gotten radishes and pears, he had reduced his planting of wild berries and tomatoes.

The tomatoes were fine; he had kept the original number, but he had reduced the wild berries by half.

The wild berries were small, so it was more convenient for the cubs to continue picking them with their pointed beaks. Tao Qiu gave them the small basket and went to pick tomatoes himself.

Once he had more crops he could grow, Tao Qiu noticed that his ability purified each crop in ways that were sometimes similar and sometimes different.

For example, his ability made wild berries and tomatoes taste better, but did little to improve their size or yield. At most, they grew a tiny bit plumper and produced two or three more fruits, practically no change at all.

The pears hadn't changed in size, but their number and taste had both changed.

The radishes had changed the most. Not only had they gone from barely edible to delicious and grown thicker and longer, but they also no longer exploded when they became overripe and rotten.

Some of these changes were what Tao Qiu had wanted, while others were beyond his control.

He didn't know whether, as his ability improved, he would eventually be able to fully control the direction of purification. Even if he could, though, there was no telling how long that would take.

Ever since discovering this special ability, he had used it almost every day, but several months had passed and, overall, it still hadn't improved much.

It had probably gone from about one to ten.

But just how strong could this ability become? A hundred, a thousand, ten thousand, a hundred million, or even higher? To him, it was a complete unknown.

There weren't many berries, and the cubs only just managed to fill the small basket after picking them all.

They had already picked a lot of tomatoes before, so there weren't many left either, only about half a basket.

This time, when Tao Qiu carried the tomatoes and wild berries back to the cave, he took the cubs with him.

They had been busy all morning, and it was time for lunch.

After all the physical work, the little birds ate more than usual. Tao Qiu didn't restrict them, letting them eat until their bellies were round, then rubbing each of their bellies to help them digest.

With their stomachs full, they grew drowsy and soon fell asleep lying in Tao Qiu's arms.

Before going to sleep, they had specifically reminded Tao Qiu that he had to wake them later and wasn't allowed to sneak off and work alone.

Tao Qiu agreed with a smile. After they drifted off, he also took a nap for half an hour.

Pulling radishes that afternoon would be almost entirely Tao Qiu's job. The radishes were too big and long, and half buried in the ground. The cubs simply couldn't pull them out.

They knew that too, which was why they had agreed with Tao Qiu the day before that they would do most of the work picking pears.