After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar] – CH29

Chapter 29

In the scorching heat of summer, Human Civilization’s First Academy felt not even the slightest trace of warmth.

Unlike the holographic virtual landscapes that filled the streets outside, the plants here were real.

They were the accumulated effort and devotion of every cohort of students from the Planting Department since the academy’s founding—grown as part of their studies, and left behind as a legacy.

And yet, the vast garden that used to be one of the department’s proudest sights—something that always made botany students smile the moment they saw it—had, today, become nothing more than a luxurious backdrop for the graduation ceremony.

“Is Xie Xingchen coming?”

“Probably not. I didn’t see him in the dorm yesterday.”

“But Yu Cheng came. Can Xie Xingchen not come? No matter what, we’ve been classmates for years.”

A group of students in formal attire clustered in a corner while waiting for the graduation ceremony to begin, exchanging awkward looks as they talked about this year’s “big gossip” in the Planting Department.

Xie Xingchen was famous in the department—infamous, really. Famous for being “rich, naive, and easy.”

Even students who’d never taken advantage of him had heard his name.

A few months ago, after getting his diploma, he left the class group chat—and it caused a massive uproar across the entire academy. Now that the graduation ceremony had arrived, everyone couldn’t help but focus on him again.

Some believed Xie Xingchen was serious this time. Others thought he was just making a scene.

But no matter what, today, Xie Xingchen was the undisputed center of attention. Even the former “main character” of the year—Yu Cheng—couldn’t steal the topic away.

“You people are really reaching,” a plain-looking student said, nostrils tilted skyward as he spoke with disdain. “This is the graduation ceremony of Human Civilization’s First Academy. How could Xie Xingchen possibly not show up?”

From his attitude, it was obvious how little he thought of Xie Xingchen.

“After everything he did at the academy,” Nostrils Guy scoffed, rolling his eyes, “you actually think he can tough it out and not come? Wasn’t he always like a lapdog, clinging to everyone, trying to get people to work for him?”

Because First Academy’s graduation ceremony wasn’t just a graduation ceremony.

It was a massive recruitment event.

The only organizations allowed entry—besides official institutes and planting planets—were the Star Alliance’s most elite and famous enterprises.

In other words: Planting Department graduates were hot commodities.

No wonder Nostrils Guy was so proud he practically looked down his nose at the world.

A student who couldn’t stand him rolled their eyes and sneered, “So jealous you can’t breathe, huh? But what can you do—he’s a planet owner.”

A planet owner.

Not just students—even long-established senior planters would feel envy hearing that.

In the interstellar era, an ordinary planter’s salary was already very high. A high-level planter’s ability to accumulate wealth was downright terrifying.

But even so, they were still just highly paid employees working for others.

For them, saving enough to buy a habitable planet would take twenty or thirty years, at minimum. Add the cost of building a small starport, the annual “security fee” of one billion star coins, plus land-clearing machines, seeds, planting solution, growth solution, and other cultivation supplies…

Without fifty or sixty years of grinding, don’t even dream about it.

And of course, if becoming a planet owner were that easy, planet owners wouldn’t be so rare across the Star Alliance.

Having money wasn’t enough.

Buying a planet required qualification, and that qualification was—Contribution Points.

The minimum to buy a planet was 10,000 Contribution Points. If you relied purely on charity to gain them, that meant spending hundreds of billions of star coins and at least a decade.

Military merit didn’t cost money, but it cost your life. Kill more alien beasts, gain more merit—but realistically, most people still found it extremely hard to reach ten thousand points.

So the reality was this: if your family wasn’t insanely rich, even high-level planters might spend an entire lifetime without ever becoming a planet owner.

Mid- and low-level planters’ best outcome was buying an estate on a habitable planet—becoming an estate lord. Otherwise, they’d work for others forever.

And how many high-level planters existed across the entire Star Alliance?

Only a few hundred.

Split among civilizations, that was barely a dozen or so per civilization.

As for true grandmasters above that level? You could count them on two hands.

“Heh. Jealous?” Nostrils Guy—Laiya—snorted, going out of his way to belittle Xie Xingchen. “Why would I be jealous of someone who bought a remote wasteland planet? Who do you think is out of touch? With that kind of planet, forget development—the cost of building shipping routes alone will drag him to death. I’m more worried we’ll have to comfort him in a hundred years when his planet gets repossessed.”

His statement immediately won agreement from many classmates.

Because this wasn’t new.

Who didn’t want to take advantage of something?

Everyone knew how many benefits came with being a planet owner. So why didn’t people try to “take the indirect route” and attach themselves to one?

Because the Star Alliance had a hundred-year development rule: if you bought a planet and failed to meet the required development targets within a century, the planet would be reclaimed.

Not only that—your direct descendants wouldn’t be allowed to purchase a planet for a hundred years, either.

“Exactly. Even if you have money and contribution points, that’s not how you use them. Xie Xingchen must have something wrong with his brain to buy such a remote wasteland planet.”

“Just the interstellar route construction costs would be in the hundreds of billions, right? That dump doesn’t even have a wormhole receiver—you’d have to pay for everything yourself. I was shocked when I heard.”

“If I were Xie Xingchen, I’d stay somewhere with good benefits for a few years first, then wait for the right wasteland planet before buying. What he did is just wasting a priceless chance.”

They were jealous, resentful—and somehow even heartbroken on his behalf.

If they were the ones with the money and contribution points, they were sure they’d spend it “better” than Xie Xingchen ever could.

Buying a remote trash planet… if that wasn’t brain damage, what was?

As they criticized and criticized, they started drifting into fantasy.

“If I had the money and contribution points, I’d buy a wasteland planet closest to the capital star, hire people to clear land, then recruit my classmates and build a future together!”

“Exactly. With a school like First Academy backing you, some people can’t even secure classmates as contacts. That just shows how badly Xie Xingchen failed as a person. If I were him, I’d definitely bring classmates over to work.”

“Yeah! Then we’d sell what we grow. Even though green plant prices have dropped a lot, you can still make tons of money. Maybe we’d even make the wealth rankings!”

The more beautiful their daydreams became, the deeper their contempt for Xie Xingchen grew.

Especially the students who knew that Xie Xingchen was selling high-grade greenery at the price of ordinary plants—they ground their teeth in hatred, their words getting uglier and uglier.

But it was all just bitter talk.

If they ever became planet owners, forget “leading classmates to prosperity”—with their mindset, they’d probably be preaching about “blessings of being exploited” like capitalists.

They got carried away—so carried away they didn’t notice that nearby, a group of students who disagreed with them had arrived, escorting Yu Cheng like he was the moon and they were the stars.

Compared to these classmates who trashed people behind their backs, the upright Yu Cheng actually felt more goodwill toward the young man who used to glare at him the moment they met.

In the sudden silence, the bitter talkers finally realized something was wrong.

They turned—and saw a crowd of classmates staring at them with mocking expressions.

Their faces went pale in an instant, then shifted from white to green to black to red—like someone had spilled a paint palette.

Xie Xingchen might have been stubborn and unpopular, but people who slandered others behind their backs were even more disliked.

“Y-Yu Cheng…”

A few big guys looked so embarrassed their faces could fry eggs.

Yu Cheng gave them a cold look and said evenly, “If you have nothing better to do, don’t smear your classmates. It only proves your character is low.”

Then he turned and left. The students behind him let out mocking snickers, the sound making the group want to dig a hole and disappear.

After Yu Cheng’s group walked away, the humiliated guys’ faces twisted with anger, their tone turning even nastier.

“That Yu Cheng is way too nosy. Who we talk about is none of his damn business.”

“So what if he talks nicely? Everyone knows he stole Xie Xingchen’s ex-husband.”

“Heh. He just wants to cling to Xie Xingchen now that he’s a planet owner. That kind of guy only bullies the weak and fears the strong.”

At ten in the morning, the campus bells rang out—slow and elegant.

As the bells sounded, everyone moved quickly: standing, assembling, waiting.

They arranged themselves by class, in order.

In just a few breaths, the entire department had formed up neatly.

In the front, professors and school leaders sat stiffly upright. Behind them, students stood tall and energized.

By tradition, on graduation day, all professors had to “show up and perform” unless there was an emergency.

Even if they wanted to stay in their research buildings, they still had to come out and be photographed.

It was… a bit of a bizarre rule.

And judging from their expressions, no one loved being forced to “perform.”

Fortunately, the school leadership understood these old professors well. Every year, they waited until the students were fully arranged before calling the professors out—minimizing the professors’ “on-camera work time.” That was the only reason this strange tradition had survived so smoothly.

“The school really never changes,” Ni Kunqi murmured, lowering her eyes to hide the impatience in them. “After all these years, they still love this flashy nonsense.”

Her fingers idly toyed with the beautiful iris bouquet in her arms. Her elegant, charming face showed faint traces of time—subtle, but present.

In the interstellar era, medical advances and the existence of mental power greatly increased average lifespan.

In the Star Alliance, even ordinary citizens lived around 150 years. Adulthood still began at 18, but the prime of life lasted far longer. Most people didn’t start showing visible aging until after 100.

Long-lived races like plant-life Treants or turtle-kin didn’t show aging until three or four hundred.

Ni Kunqi was seventy-eight. By normal standards, she shouldn’t have shown any signs of age.

Yet she still had faint crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes.

“It’s fine,” Allison said brightly, hugging a bouquet of roses and smiling like sunshine. “It’s only once a year. Let’s just treat it as giving the school face.”

Unlike Ni Kunqi, who got tired of things quickly, Allison loved only one flower: red roses.

To her, passionate, fragrant red roses were the most beautiful plant in the world—no exceptions.

“All right,” Allison continued, “stop looking so stiff. If your student doesn’t come, he doesn’t come. If I have time, I’ll go with you to Earth and visit him.”

Ni Kunqi glanced sideways at her and exposed the truth. “You want to see the rose fields.”

Allison shrugged, shamelessly honest. “Of course I want to see the rose fields! I don’t even know your student. I have no relationship with him.”

She’d been in “closed-door research” for years, trying to develop a new plant nutrient solution.

Back then, when Xie Xingchen entered school, she wasn’t teaching—so naturally she never met him.

And now she regretted it. If she’d known a student this likable would appear in these years, she wouldn’t have gone into seclusion.

But life didn’t come with a rewind button.

Seeing Allison’s regret, Ni Kunqi knew exactly what she was thinking—and precisely because she knew, Ni Kunqi felt even more satisfied.

See? Her judgment really was good.

Out of so many students, she’d singled out the most impressive one.

Chatting happily about Xie Xingchen for a while, the two of them finally decided they didn’t want to return to the research building—and also didn’t want to be stopped by students or certain people—so they carried their bouquets down a quiet, shaded path.

But as soon as they reached the deeper part of the tree-lined walkway, they heard vicious, grating curses.

“Young people love attention! He’s using us as publicity! Only those brainless netizens online fall for it. If he’s really that capable, why doesn’t he list one thousand flowers a day? Why not list ten million?”

“No wonder nobody likes him. Who would want to associate with someone who hoards profits and smashes everyone else’s rice bowl? Back then, when his parents got killed by alien beasts, why didn’t they take him with them—leaving this disaster behind.”

“The Fu family is ridiculous too. If you’re going to seize someone’s inheritance, then seize it—why not just kill him afterward? But no, they left him an empty shell to build himself up again. Sick.”

“…”

Ni Kunqi and Allison’s expressions changed instantly.

Especially Ni Kunqi—her arms tightened around the bouquet, hands shaking.

She had seen plenty of hypocrites, but people who spoke this viciously behind backs were still rare.

Who was talking?

The very planet-owner heirs who had flattered her this morning, praising her for having an excellent student—just because they wanted to buy her plant nutrient formula.

And now they were slandering him?

Did they realize they were still on her turf?

The voices continued.

“If you ask me, you two are too impatient. That kid only just bought a planet—how much output can he have? He thinks low prices and followers are impressive, but later when he wants to make money, he won’t be able to. The moment he raises prices, netizens will tear him apart.”

“Hah. I’ve seen stupid, but never this stupid. Selling high-grade greenery at low-grade prices—if he doesn’t make money, how is he going to build his planet? With Earth’s location, just building the routes will cost who knows how many star coins. Just wait—he’ll raise prices eventually. When he does, we’ll have a show to watch.”

“And, Aqi—have the Planters’ Association block him. Don’t let him in. And contact the other planet owners too—don’t just pull any random nobody into the group.”

At that, Ni Kunqi’s anger sharpened into icy clarity.

But Allison—hot-tempered as always—grabbed Ni Kunqi’s arm and pulled her forward.

“Looks like you gentlemen are having a great time,” Allison said, voice bright and dangerous.

All four men were people Allison recognized as well. She simply hadn’t expected that these so-called refined, scholarly types were actually rotten inside.

In terms of force, the two women couldn’t beat them.

But this was First Academy. No matter how bold they were, they wouldn’t dare attack professors here.

“Who’s there?” the men snapped, spinning around with instinctive alertness.

And the moment they saw Ni Kunqi and Allison—both visibly displeased—the four men’s faces changed dramatically.

Advance Chapters on PDF and EPUB Click Here~