After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar] – CH28

Chapter 28

Time flew by in the blink of an eye. Before anyone knew it, a whole month had passed.

After developing two special group-buy channels, Xie Xingchen’s life had been extremely comfortable—his revenue climbing higher and higher by the day.

This month, four entries in the illustrated handbook had been lit up: jasmine, carnation, osmanthus, and lavender.

Every time he lit up a card, the system rewarded him with 500 EXP.

Just from unlocking those four cards, he gained 2,000 EXP. On top of that, when he sold 10,000 scallion pancakes for the first time, the system awarded another 500 EXP. With that, Xie Xingchen easily collected 2,500 EXP, pushing his level up to LV2—but… upgrading from LV2 to LV3 in the short term would be hard.

LV1 and LV2 both required 1,000 EXP, but once you hit LV2, the EXP needed for LV3 tripled!

[Player Info Panel]

Name: Xie Xingchen
Race: Human
Territory: Earth
Level: LV2
EXP: 1800/3000
Plant Affinity: ?
Mental Power Rank: B (?)

Game Progress: 0%
Illustrated Handbook Progress: 0%
Infrastructure Progress: 0%

Right now, he still needed 1,200 EXP to reach LV3. Even though he really wanted to level up, the system simply wasn’t issuing tasks.

But thinking about it another way… the system not giving tasks wasn’t so bad. A new shop had just opened, and it gave him the perfect excuse to focus entirely on running his business.

Earlier, to buy ingredients for scallion pancakes, he withdrew revenue and bought the Star Alliance’s widely recognized top-quality cooking oil and flour.

The ingredients were expensive, but they weren’t rare—so after spending two or three hundred thousand star coins, he’d stocked an entire room full of oil and flour.

But that was a tiny expense, honestly. Compared to how much money scallion pancakes were bringing in, it was nothing.

And with the additional revenue from selling flowers and flower tea to the group-buy teams, Xie Xingchen had made an absolute killing this month.

A scallion pancake sold for 100 star coins. The scallion pancake machine produced 1,000 pancakes a day—which meant 100,000 star coins per day, and 3,000,000 star coins in 30 days.

And judging by his remaining stock, the ingredients he’d bought would last more than a year.

So yeah, a few hundred thousand star coins sounded pricey, but compared to the profits? It was pocket change.

On top of that, Earth Trading Company listed 5,000 fresh flowers per day. Over 30 days, that brought him 41,850,000 star coins.

Add in the weekly professor group-buy from two departments at First Academy—20 professors total—and Xie Xingchen could only describe it as: he’d gotten rich.

The professors weren’t many, but they were consistent. Even excluding scallion pancakes, each professor bought one bouquet (10,000) and one small jar of flower tea (30,000) every week. That’s 40,000 star coins per person per week.

Twenty people meant 800,000 star coins per week. Over four weeks, that was 3,200,000 star coins in revenue from the professors alone.

So the total monthly revenue was:

3,000,000 + 41,850,000 + 3,200,000 = 48,050,000 star coins

A full 48 million!

If he could buy two more scallion pancake machines, he’d place the order without hesitation.

Because from what he’d seen, those food machines were the definition of insanely profitable.

He’d once thought selling a food machine for ten million revenue was basically daylight robbery… but now his mindset had completely flipped.

Robbery? Please. This was practically charity!

After all, scallion pancakes weren’t in the handbook, but because the machine was bought from the game shop, the pancake income also counted as revenue. He was basically throwing in some scallions he’d otherwise have discarded, plus a tiny bit of oil, flour, and salt… and turning it into a mountain of revenue.

In one month, he could earn back a third of a machine. That meant in three months, he could “free farm” a system machine.

Even robbing a bank wouldn’t be that fast—and he didn’t need to risk his life for it.

But unfortunately, food machines were rare. From the day he bought the scallion pancake machine until now, he hadn’t seen another one refresh even once. In fact, he barely even saw other items he could afford.

His revenue was high enough now… but his level was too low.

Back when he was level one, the system shop—well, he now affectionately called it the “game shop,” because honestly… only a game could have this much black-tech nonsense. In his opinion, the word “system” no longer deserved it.

At LV1, the game shop was basically pitch-black. After he reached LV2, it wasn’t completely black anymore—but most of it still was. Even so, the small portion that had unlocked was enough to make him drool.

Perfume factory. Pharmaceutical factory. Daily necessities factory. Livestock factory… Planting robots. Breeding robots!

The game shop was full of things he desperately needed—yet couldn’t buy.

He wanted those auto-producing treasures so badly he could taste it.

But—

Robots were “easy”: 100 million revenue each. Factories were “just a bit more expensive”—probably tens of billions.

A tear of envy slid out from the corner of his mouth.

At his current net worth, he couldn’t even afford a single robot.

And that wasn’t even the worst part.

The worst part was—

The construction team from the Planetary Trade Center had arrived to build the starport.

Until they left, Xie Xingchen didn’t dare do anything suspicious.

Xie Xingchen: cat-headache.jpg

Right now, aside from behaving like a “normal” explorer + planter should, he didn’t dare do anything at all. He didn’t even dare make mental-power potions anymore, terrified someone might notice something off.

During this period, he’d realized his mental power rank was… wrong.

Just like the (?) on his character panel, his mental power rank was questionable.

Because whether it was him or the original owner of this body, their tests had always shown B-rank.

But was he really B?

After so many days of actually using his power, even if he were clueless, he’d still know this wasn’t B. At minimum, he was A-rank.

But he didn’t dare say anything. He wasn’t the original “Xie Xingchen,” and he also carried some mysterious infrastructure-maniac system from who-knows-where.

Afraid of being captured and studied, he struggled with it for a bit… then accepted it and quietly ignored the “unreasonable” part about himself.

Anyway, the test result didn’t matter. Getting real benefits mattered more.

The starport team that came to Earth originally had ten squads, but after they adapted the plan to local conditions and finalized the designs, they left behind only three young engineers—plus countless heavy machines and robots.

Xie Xingchen had only ever exchanged polite nods with them. He still didn’t want to get close.

The three engineers sensed his avoidance, and aside from design discussions and progress reports, they never tried to approach him.

But even without trying to chat, they worked seriously. Their construction quality was meticulous.

Xie Xingchen didn’t know how other planet owners felt about their work, but he was genuinely satisfied—so satisfied he even had his robot deliver meals to them.

Of course, it wasn’t that he specifically cooked for the engineers—he just made extra whenever he cooked, then sent it over.

Even so, the three engineers felt unbelievably honored.

In their eyes, Xie Xingchen was the type of planet owner with severe social anxiety. And now this “severely socially anxious” planet owner was sending them breakfast?

If that wasn’t praise for their work, what was?

Motivated, they doubled down—pursuing perfection and building Earth’s small starport as flawlessly as possible.

Since he couldn’t go exploring outside, Xie Xingchen stayed in the flower fields and farmed.

So far, he’d planted five mu each of osmanthus and jasmine; ten mu each of roses and pink-diamond carnations; twenty mu of lavender—the largest by far—and even three mu of eucalyptus leaves.

But eucalyptus leaves were filler greenery. He didn’t have time to design mixed bouquets every day, so aside from the early days, Earth Trading Company mostly listed single-variety flowers and flower baskets (one variety or mixed varieties), totaling 5,000 stems per day.

Staring at the endless fields—especially the three mu of eucalyptus—Xie Xingchen couldn’t help sighing.

“What a waste…”

So much filler greenery, and because he had no time to arrange bouquets, aside from picking some every week for the First Academy professors, the rest just sat there. It was genuinely wasteful.

But he couldn’t think of a solution.

Hiring people was impossible, and buying robots didn’t really solve it either.

A non-awakened robot had no artistic sense. Even a robot like Fortune—who had a little bit of aesthetic ability and creativity—still couldn’t do the work of a floral designer.

And bouquets weren’t fun if they were copy-paste.

Besides, if it was just copy-paste, then a factory from the game shop would obviously be better.

Because that factory didn’t just copy-paste—it even came with system florists.

Thinking of that, Xie Xingchen couldn’t resist trying to negotiate again:

“Hey, Xiao Mo… can the game shop offer loans? I want to take out a loan to buy a factory!”

A flower bouquet processing factory!

The kind that could arrange beautiful bouquets and apply buffs!

[System Prompt: Dear player, after detection, this system has not generated a loan service.]

Xie Xingchen refused to give up. “Then generate it now! Loans are great—everyone wins! You can charge interest, and I get to enjoy the factory early. Xiao Mo, you’re a mature system now. You should learn to adapt and create better working conditions for your players.”

[System Prompt: After detection, this system has no loan service. Please explore other services yourself.]

Xie Xingchen: ?
Xie Xingchen: furious.

But he couldn’t really get mad at the system.

He tried one last time. “Seriously, there’s no way? Not even a little flexibility?”

The system didn’t reply for a long time. He understood: no flexibility.

He closed the game shop—out of sight, out of mind—then sighed in frustration, and walked all the way to the center of the lavender fields.

Lavender was currently Earth Trading Company’s best-selling flower.

For some reason, a lot of people in the Star Alliance suffered from poor sleep.

So once everyone discovered lavender helped with sleep—and the effect was strong—his lavender instantly exploded in popularity.

Even though each flower had 1,000 stems listed, lavender was always the first to sell out.

And the buyers came from everywhere. From what he could tell, every Star Alliance civilization had customers.

What surprised him most was that there were even buyers from the Mechanical Civilization—which made zero sense.

Mechanical lifeforms didn’t need sleep. They could literally hit “hibernate mode” and fall asleep instantly.

So logically, lavender should be the most useless thing to them… yet the number of mechanical customers kept increasing.

It got so strange that Xie Xingchen couldn’t help wondering if Ludwig had been promoting his shop.

He wasn’t wrong.

Ludwig really had promoted it.

Every day, Ludwig distributed 800 scallion pancakes to his subordinates. After a month, they were eating like kings—and eventually they couldn’t stop investigating from every possible angle who the supplier was.

After being harassed for a full month, Ludwig surrendered and gave them the store link to Xie Xingchen’s StarNet shop.

And that was that.

Once they had the shop, they flooded in like lunatics.

They originally assumed it was a food store, and they even planned to buy the “tasting mode” for a more authentic experience.

But the moment they stepped into the shop’s range and saw the storefront, Ludwig’s guards went blank.

What appeared before them wasn’t a food store—

It was a fairy-like, ethereal flower shop.

They entered with disbelief… and confirmed it was indeed a flower shop.

The guards: !

It wasn’t what they expected, but remembering the taste of the scallion pancakes, they decided to support the seller anyway.

Then they opened StarNet to place an order—and saw zero inventory.

Not only could they not order, even the order button was greyed out.

That sparked their curiosity.

After reading the notice—each flower only had 1,000 stems per day—their buying desire shot through the roof.

They set alarms, ready to log in and fight for it tomorrow.

And you had to understand: the Mechanical Civilization was basically the synonym for “tech.”

Their devices were insanely fast—so at least half the guards managed to snatch some flowers.

Those who got them were thrilled. Those who didn’t were furious.

Then the deliveries arrived, and the ones who failed got even more furious.

And in this weird chase-and-compete spiral, it eventually evolved into this:

Getting Earth Trading Company flowers became a badge of honor for the entire guard unit.

Xie Xingchen: Uh… I really don’t understand you weird space people.

But regardless, the consequence was obvious: flowers that were already hard to get became even harder.

“Selling out in one second” became a dream. If your hand speed wasn’t down to 0.1 seconds, don’t even bother joining the crowd.

So lately, StarNet was full of daily wailing.

People @EarthTradingCompany nonstop demanding more inventory—so much that it could push the shop back onto trending topics at any time.

Xie Xingchen felt enormous pressure, but for the sake of expanding his fields faster, he stubbornly kept the listing quantity the same.

Any extra flower heads got cut off and turned into flower tea.

The stems got used for cuttings.

Seeds got used for propagation.

With a large base of fields, propagation naturally sped up.

Once these new fields bloomed, he could finally loosen the supply a bit—and even sell limited flower tea.

But right now, the flowers still weren’t fully blooming, so he simply couldn’t increase inventory no matter how much people begged.

He didn’t have enough mental power to force dozens of mu of flowers to bloom at once—and with outsiders around, he chose to lie flat.

These days, he focused only on inspecting the fields.

Don’t ask why.

Treasure hunting.

After his fields expanded, more birds came around.

And maybe because of the birds, he started seeing a lot of unfamiliar “weeds” appear.

Since birds were also one of the ways plants spread, Xie Xingchen wanted to take advantage and score some freebies.

Day one: only a few strange weeds. No real harvest.
Day two: still nothing.
On the morning of day three, after another round of inspection, Xie Xingchen asked Fortune, who he’d dragged out to help.

“Fortune, have you seen any other plants in the fields?”

Compared to his own eyes, he trusted Fortune’s vision more.

Fortune shook his head.

Xie Xingchen checked the time and gave up. “Alright. Let’s go back and eat.”

Another fruitless morning.

But he wasn’t in a rush.

He and the robot returned to the starship to cook.

Today he wanted buns. Perfect timing—earlier, Fortune had gone exploring and brought back a wild boar.

Fine. Big pork buns it is.

He sterilized the pork, chopped it into mince, added salt and soy sauce, mixed it well, covered it, and set it aside—then started kneading dough.

The flour was the highest-rated flour on StarNet.

It had no green-matter content, but the texture was excellent—almost identical to the flour he remembered from before.

He added water, kneaded it into a dough ball, then mixed in a Star-Alliance-specific yeast powder. With that, he didn’t even need to wait for it to proof—he immediately had dough suitable for buns.

He rolled it into a long strip, cut it into small portions, used a rolling pin to flatten bun wrappers, and began wrapping buns.

His technique was pretty good—each bun looked like a little flower, with a dozen pleats, neat and pretty.

After wrapping, he steamed them for 15 minutes. When they were done, he didn’t remove them immediately—he let them sit covered for a few more minutes, then opened the lid.

He made 30 buns.

He ate 3 himself.

He had Fortune deliver 10 to the starship engineering team.

Of the remaining 17, he shipped 10 to his big client, Ludwig.

The last 7 went into the fridge for dinner.

After lunch, Xie Xingchen took a walk near the starship.

The fields had already been reclaimed all the way to the ship.

Looking out from the cargo hatch, endless lavender swayed in the wind—fresh, clean fragrance drifting over, soothing the mind.

Xie Xingchen took out a lounge chair from his storage button and lay down facing the lavender.

But the moment he lay down, he noticed something different in the purple lavender field under the sunlight.

Xie Xingchen immediately jumped up.

He ran over without a second thought.

And when he saw those two pale-white splashes of color, his eyes lit up like stars.

Orange blossom. And lily of the valley.

One looked elegant and fresh—the kind you’d instantly like.

The other looked like a string of tiny wind chimes—lively and adorable.

He crouched down and gently touched them, and at long last, the familiar system notifications returned.

[Ding-dong, congratulations! Player has discovered “Orange Blossom.” Orange Blossom unlocked.]
[Ding-dong, congratulations! Player has discovered “Lily of the Valley.” Lily of the Valley unlocked.]
[Ding-dong, congratulations! Player has discovered “Iris.” Iris unlocked.]
[Ding-dong, congratulations! Player has completed hidden quest “Add 3 New Flowers.” Reward: 500 EXP.]
[Ding-dong, congratulations! Player has completed side quest “I’m a Flower-Finding Pro.” Reward: 1000 EXP.]
[Ding-dong, congratulations! Player has completed hidden quest “Three Birds with One Stone.” Reward: 300 EXP.]
[System Prompt: Congratulations! Level +1. Current level: LV3. Next level requirement: 600/5000 EXP.]

Xie Xingchen was completely stunned by the barrage of notifications.

Orange blossom and lily of the valley—those made sense.

But… where was the iris?

He looked left and right and couldn’t see it. Then as he shifted his body, a strange texture under his foot made his whole body freeze.

A terrible premonition surged up.

He stiffly lowered his head… and finally saw what he had accidentally stepped on.

Xie Xingchen: QAQ

It really was an iris.

He hopped away in panic, his face cycling through emotions, then crouched down with pure heartbreak.

Carefully touching the half-ruined iris, he desperately poured mental power into it, trying to save it.

He said in collapse, “You’ve got to be kidding me… why were you hiding here?!”

Purple iris had a nickname: “Purple Butterfly.”

A Purple Butterfly hiding inside a sea of purple lavender?

Yeah. Who on earth would spot that?

Dozens of mu of lavender—who would ever guess there was a same-color iris hidden inside?

Staring at the iris that had finally regained a little life, Xie Xingchen couldn’t decide whether to be grateful for his luck… or mourn how unlucky he’d been.

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