After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar] – CH52

Chapter 52

Xie Xingchen only realized today that pearl oysters could apparently treat people differently, too!

Back then, when he was the one looking, he could pick up pearl oysters pretty easily. But once the “person who wanted them” became Randy, the pearl oysters basically vanished.

The three of them searched for hours. In the end, they found only one pearl oyster—about the size of a palm.

Feeling a little weak, Xie Xingchen suggested, “How about… we keep looking?”

Honestly, with results like this… if he hadn’t experienced it himself, he would’ve wanted to call it staged!

Ludwig shook his head calmly. “No need. Pearl oysters are rare to begin with. This is normal.”

That was true. Deep-sea pearl oysters only got washed ashore occasionally.

So the fact that Xie Xingchen had found so many that day really was just outrageous luck.

In fact, after people calmed down, a portion of netizens had already started suspecting his livestream had been fake.

Hearing that, Xie Xingchen hesitated, then nodded.

He lifted the oyster in his hand and gave it a little shake. “Really not searching anymore? If not… should we open it?”

Though this oyster wasn’t big compared to the ones he’d found before, it actually wasn’t small at all. By modern standards, it was pretty decent—more than enough to make a child happy.

At the side, little Randy heard “open it” and got so excited he started bouncing.

His eyes sparkled as he shot Xie Xingchen a beam of excitement. His mouth went bababa like he was saying something, but he looked so thrilled—and a bit silly.

Kids always did strange things adults couldn’t quite understand.

Neither Xie Xingchen nor Ludwig felt like analyzing it. Seeing Randy so happy, they didn’t interfere.

But the adults didn’t have to ask—Randy explained on his own.

Randy tilted up a smiling face. “Big brother… Xingchen big brother… I—I prayed just now!”

Talking too much made his mouth dry, so he split the short sentence into stuttering halves.

Noticing, Xie Xingchen carefully set the oyster down.

He pulled out a coconut from his storage button, poked in a straw, and handed it to Randy.

Randy beamed and accepted it cautiously, then said in a soft baby voice, “Thank you, Xingchen big brother.”

Xie Xingchen was hit by a wave of cuteness.

In a good mood, he ruffled the little dumpling’s head, scooped him up, and carried him back to camp.

Seeing Xie Xingchen carrying the child, Ludwig picked up the pearl oyster from the ground and followed behind in silence.

When they’d arrived earlier, it had only just started getting dark—now the night sky had fully settled in.

But maybe because there were so many people, what should’ve been a quiet night felt oddly “noisy.”

Xie Xingchen didn’t dislike it. Maybe because since coming to Earth, it had been a long time since he’d felt this kind of liveliness.

He set Randy down, and Ludwig silently passed him the pearl oyster.

With a bunch of mechanical lifeforms—those tech monsters—around, the camp felt like it had an “instant safety buff.” The moment you stepped in, you relaxed.

There weren’t many people in camp right now. The bold, highly skilled mechanical lifeforms were out having fun; if not for their occasional dramatic shouting in the distance, Xie Xingchen might’ve felt it was too quiet.

He lowered his head and asked, “Randy, do you want to open the pearl oyster now?”

Randy nodded, his little face full of excitement. “Yes!”

Since Randy said yes, Xie Xingchen skillfully pried it open and handed it to the child.

Randy was, after all, a kid who’d watched Xie Xingchen’s “opening oysters” livestream.

Holding the oyster, he stretched out his chubby hand, tilted his head, and looked at Xie Xingchen.

Randy: “Where’s the knifey?”

Xie Xingchen closed Randy’s hand gently, smiling. “No knifey. Use your little claws to dig.”

This wasn’t a giant, washbasin-sized oyster—just a small one. No way he was letting a kid play with a knife. Claws it was.

Randy puffed up his cheeks. He was clearly mad.

But the two adults ignored him. After sulking for a bit, Randy decided it was boring to be angry alone.

Even though he was small, the kid was strong. He didn’t ask for help—he tiptoed, lifted the oyster, set it on the ground, then squatted down too.

Like Xie Xingchen said, an oyster this size didn’t need a knife cut. You could just poke and dig with your little claws.

Randy first pressed here and there very seriously. When he felt a few bumps, his expression instantly turned solemn.

Open! Dig!

He pressed, squeezed, and dug in a messy, irregular way—and soon, he pulled out a pearl about the size of a small longan.

It was a pink pearl, about as big as Randy’s pinky nail. Soft, rosy, unbelievably cute—almost as pure and tender as Randy’s own skin.

Seeing the pink pearl, Randy’s eyes widened. He shouted so happily his voice cracked: “Wow! I found a pearl! A pink pearl!”

The shrill sound instantly reminded Ludwig of how the kid had rolled around crying yesterday, refusing to get up.

Ludwig reached out and covered the child’s mouth, warning softly, “Randy, don’t be loud.”

When the kid looked like he might cry, Ludwig stiffly changed the subject: “And… keep opening.”

The moment the child’s sticky little hand was about to grab at Ludwig, Ludwig acted faster—he let go and stepped aside, making Randy grab nothing but air.

Randy huffed in a baby voice to show he was angry, then lowered his head and continued digging into his oyster.

The oyster might’ve been “small,” but it had a lot of pearls inside.

Besides that longan-sized pink pearl, there were another seven or eight pale-pink pearls—each a bit bigger than a grain of rice.

Pink pearls were generally expensive. That longan-sized pink pearl alone was worth at least six figures.

The smaller pale-pink pearls looked tiny, but because the color was rare, selling each for a few thousand star-coins was no problem. If a buyer really liked them, one could even sell for tens of thousands.

Ludwig didn’t really understand jewelry pricing, but he never took advantage of anyone.

Since Xie Xingchen wasn’t charging, Ludwig waved his hand and directly waived the fee for the security weapons and the rental cost for the tasting-slot equipment.

Xie Xingchen: !

An eight-figure amount—almost nine figures—just… waived?

Xie Xingchen stared, dumbfounded.

Damn. The “God of Wealth aura” on this man was blinding!

For a moment, Xie Xingchen could practically see Ludwig wearing a bright red God of Wealth outfit, holding a massive gold ingot and smiling at him.

Xie Xingchen asked again, unable to believe it. “Ludwig, you’re really waiving it for me?”

Ludwig didn’t find it annoying at all. He answered seriously again: “Yes.”

Xie Xingchen: rabbit pounding the ground.jpg / honored-and-flustered.gif

Ludwig looked at Xie Xingchen’s shining eyes and, for some reason, said, “You can call me Lude.”

It was what close people called him. Very few did, but…

If he and Xie Xingchen were friends, then Xie Xingchen should call him that, right?

Ludwig wasn’t sure.

Raised in the Mechanical Civilization, he didn’t fully understand human social etiquette. He wasn’t sure whether asking this was reasonable.

But Xie Xingchen didn’t overthink at all. He not only found it reasonable—he looked honored!

A friend asking him to use a more intimate name—so what? That was a symbol of friendship!

Hahahaha—who would’ve thought he’d one day be friends with someone like this?

Ludwig Aelsop, a marshal of the Mechanical Civilization—one of the Star Alliance’s top ten marshals—was his friend.

This famously “cold” man had become his friend?

No one would believe it if he said it out loud!

Excited, Xie Xingchen pulled out the crystal case he’d kept in his storage button. He opened it and said generously, “Here. Since we’re friends, pick any two.”

Waiving a bill might be easy, but Xie Xingchen wasn’t someone who liked taking freebies.

His comm device had been buzzing nonstop these days—every day, jewelry stores, auction houses, collectors—rotating in shifts adding him. When he refused to accept, their notes got more detailed, and eventually they even started listing prices.

So Xie Xingchen knew these pearls were a big deal.

Even the cheapest one was worth seven figures!

And right now—

Friend gives him weapons; he gives friend pearls. Perfect match.

Ludwig didn’t expect a sudden gift.

He fell silent for a moment, lowered those eyes bright as stars, and said quietly, “No need.”

Then, realizing his words sounded too cold, he added: “Thank you.”

But the more he thought about it, the more it sounded less like thanks and more like a threat.

Ludwig promptly shut up.

Fortunately, Xie Xingchen didn’t care.

Seeing Ludwig go abruptly withdrawn, Xie Xingchen stepped forward, grabbed his hand, and shoved it toward the crystal case.

Xie Xingchen said enthusiastically, “Just pick any two! Anything except the little deer pearl—those are all fair game.”

He didn’t want to give away the deer pearl because he loved it too much—nature’s incredible craftsmanship.

He was even thinking of finding a top-tier jeweler someday to turn it into a necklace he could wear and pass down as an art piece.

Xie Xingchen’s bold, straightforward attitude made Ludwig look oddly shy.

Realizing that, Ludwig felt inexplicably embarrassed.

In the end, he followed Xie Xingchen’s wishes and took two pearls from the crystal case—one silver pearl and one black pearl.

One black, one silver—resting on Ludwig’s long, pale palm, they looked like they were lying on the finest jewelry display stand, gleaming brilliantly.

But if you asked Xie Xingchen, in Ludwig’s hand the pearls became mere accents—accenting just how beautiful that hand was.

Seeing his brother’s pearls, little Randy—who’d been squatting nearby trying to “loot” more pearls—immediately teared up.

He looked at Xie Xingchen, aggrieved. “Xingchen big brother gives brother pearls but not little Randy!”

The child accused him of only giving pearls to big brother and not to him.

Xie Xingchen immediately surrendered.

Just as Xie Xingchen was about to let Randy pick from the crystal case, Ludwig—who’d already hidden the pearls away—didn’t mind the kid being sticky and fishy anymore. He simply picked Randy up and calmly praised Randy’s pearls as pretty.

Randy: starry eyes.jpg

Kids had short memories—and apparently even mechanical kids were no exception.

The moment his brother praised his pearl, Randy forgot what he’d been fussing about. He lifted his chin smugly and accepted the compliment.

After that round of praise, Randy got sleepy.

When Randy raised his hand to rub his eyes, Xie Xingchen caught the little chubby claw instantly and signaled Ludwig to squat down.

He squeezed out enough hand sanitizer to make foam, then washed Randy’s hands carefully and wiped them dry. After that, he sniffed the child’s clothes.

No fishy smell—only then did Xie Xingchen say, “Lude, take him to sleep. Tomorrow I’ll make something fun for you guys.”

Ludwig looked at Xie Xingchen quietly for a moment, then nodded without speaking and carried his sleeping little brother back to the tent.

The night was deep. The sounds of cicadas and insects grew clearer.

With the waves—sometimes soft, sometimes heavy—the camp gradually fell quiet.

The next day.

Xie Xingchen got up early and called Ludwig out to watch the sunrise.

Before they left, little Randy woke up, so the sunrise group went from two people to three.

Ludwig had seen countless grand, spectacular scenes, but a sunrise over the ocean was still breathtaking.

If even Ludwig felt that way, then Randy—who’d been dragged up halfway through sleep—was obviously even more excited!

So excited that after the sunrise, he still chirped nonstop, pointing at the sea and jumping around.

When he spotted a pod of dolphins playing on the water in the distance, his laughing and squealing got even louder.

Xie Xingchen said helplessly, “Alright, Randy. Don’t forget—we still have work today, and we’re making something delicious!”

Delicious!

The moment the food radar was triggered, Randy immediately stood still obediently. His round, cat-like eyes widened, excited and curious. “What yummy thing?”

Xie Xingchen pointed at the coconut trees nearby. “Coconut treasures.”

Randy tilted his head, confused.

Xie Xingchen patted his little curls and smiled. “Don’t think too hard with that little head of yours. Just remember this—stick with Xingchen big brother, and there’ll be yummy food!”

He poked the kid’s soft cheek and signaled Ludwig to pick him up and follow.

Back at camp, after eating the seafood porridge Get-Rich made, Xie Xingchen directed Ludwig’s guard unit to find old coconuts.

Old coconuts—also called “coconut kings”—had hard shells and bland water, but the flesh was fragrant.

To make desiccated coconut, coconut milk, and coconut oil, he needed old coconuts.

And since he wanted Ludwig to take some home, they had to make plenty.

He encouraged everyone to find as many old coconuts as possible. If they couldn’t finish them this time, they could always do more later.

Most people were sent out to search for old coconuts, while Ludwig was kept behind to make… a blender.

Yes. In this ridiculous interstellar era, they didn’t even have a proper blender!

The only thing they had was a metal shredder—and it was way too intense. Xie Xingchen was afraid it would grind coconut flesh into dust and turn the whole thing into a wasted effort.

He explained what he needed in a modern blender to Ludwig. Ludwig wore a deeply complicated expression as Xie Xingchen stared at him with wide eyes.

Luckily, Ludwig didn’t complain. He grabbed a shredder and started modifying it.

In just a few minutes, after shifting a handful of parts, a brand-new blender appeared!

Xie Xingchen knew Ludwig was capable—but he hadn’t expected this capable.

Finishing a machine in minutes was honestly beyond what he imagined.

He tested it excitedly. Once he confirmed it worked exactly as required, Xie Xingchen dragged Ludwig—and little Randy, who was watching—out to be “free labor.”

In Xie Xingchen’s mind, there was no such thing as “leaders must rest.” If you were free, you worked.

Since nobody ate them, there were tons of old coconuts here. More than twenty people worked for an hour, and the coconuts they brought back were piled like a mountain.

When everyone wanted to keep hunting, Xie Xingchen hurriedly stopped them.

“Everyone, stop! This is enough. Don’t go looking anymore. Let’s start working!”

Seeing how reluctant they were—like you work, I’ll keep hunting—Xie Xingchen quickly assigned tasks.

“First, let’s open these coconuts.” He handed out machetes for splitting them open.

No joke—opening a coconut mountain was hard work.

Even though they still wanted to hunt, the guards diligently chopped coconuts on the beach.

They were all elite soldiers who’d been on real battlefields—opening coconuts was nothing.

The hard part was what came after: removing the flesh from the shell.

To make desiccated coconut, coconut milk, and coconut oil, they only needed the flesh.

But coconut flesh was tricky. Too much force didn’t work; too little force didn’t work either. You had to hit it just right.

Normally, you found the coconut’s “midline,” tapped around it with the back of a knife in a circle, and if the force was correct, the shell would crack and loosen naturally, exposing the snowy white flesh. Then you used a peeler to remove the thin gray-brown skin outside the flesh, and you were done.

But for this group, controlling the tapping force was harder than going all-out in battle.

Every time they thought, Okay, this should be perfect—one hit, and the whole coconut shattered.

Worse: even after it shattered, the flesh still stuck stubbornly to the shell. Scraping with a knife didn’t help much.

That ignited everyone’s competitive spirit.

One after another, they wasted who knew how many old coconuts before they finally got the technique right.

By then, the coconut “mountain” had been absolutely annihilated.

Xie Xingchen could only allow them to go find more, then start extracting flesh again.

With the earlier failures as a lesson, the second round went far better. After all the flesh was finally extracted, bright smiles returned to everyone’s faces.

“Now split into two teams,” Xie Xingchen said. “One team peels the skin, the other slices the coconut flesh.”

The extracted flesh smelled amazing. Once the brown skin was peeled off, it smelled even better—like the entire air around them turned into coconut fragrance.

There were a lot of old coconuts—at least two or three hundred.

Thankfully, there were also plenty of workers. And honestly, Ludwig alone was ridiculously efficient.

Others sliced coconut; Ludwig sliced coconut too. But once he got used to it, it was chop-chop-chop for one, then chop-chop-chop for another.

The speed was so fast it didn’t look human—yet it also didn’t look like a machine.

Just watching Ludwig slice coconut made Xie Xingchen completely confident: on the battlefield, Ludwig probably chopped alien beasts like chopping vegetables.

In the end, Xie Xingchen backed away and let that cutting board become Ludwig’s knife-skills stage.

Since slicing was handled, Xie Xingchen quietly brought out the blender Ludwig had modified for him.

He washed the sliced coconut flesh, poured it in, added a bit of water, and blended it on the lowest power into coconut milk that still had some pulp.

Blend the coconut milk, pour it out, then have the guards—who were otherwise idle because their boss was too competent—filter the coconut milk by hand through cheesecloth.

After filtering, the pulp went in one pile, the coconut milk in another.

The division of labor was insanely efficient.

In just three hours, the coconut mountain had been completely processed into pulp and coconut milk.

From the rich, fragrant buckets of coconut milk, Xie Xingchen casually picked one and ladled out a small bucket, then covered it and set it aside.

Then he took out an energy stove, tables, and huge pots from storage, and had Get-Rich, Prosperity, and Long-Life help the guards set everything up.

The coconut pulp had been squeezed quite dry by the “strongman sailors,” which made it easier to toast desiccated coconut.

Two big iron woks—one handled by Xie Xingchen, the other by Get-Rich.

They poured in heaps of pulp, then used low heat to toast it gradually until dry.

As the coconut fragrance in the air grew stronger and stronger, the pulp turned snowy white and fluffy—the desiccated coconut was done.

It needed to cool before being jarred.

Pretending not to see Randy sneaking bites, Xie Xingchen toasted two batches before his arms got tired and he switched out.

He called Get-Rich back too, putting Prosperity and Long-Life on the woks.

They rotated—one man and three robots—through several batches. The final two woks of desiccated coconut were even cooked personally by Ludwig and his guard captain.

It took them a bit longer, but the quality was still excellent.

After sealing all the desiccated coconut into airtight boxes, Xie Xingchen started making coconut oil.

This time, he didn’t need to do it slowly in small batches.

Besides filling the two large woks with coconut milk, he poured all the remaining coconut milk into a huge iron tank.

Then he had someone build a big stand to hold the tank, and they started simmering it over low heat.

After about half an hour, a clear layer of oil began appearing on the surface of the coconut milk in the two woks and the tank.

Twenty minutes later, flocculent bits started forming at the bottom.

As the simmering continued, the flocculent bits clumped together into tofu-dregs-sized chunks.

At that stage, it actually took more time.

Worried everyone would get bored, Xie Xingchen suggested, “How about we go forage along the shore?”

But the whole group—caught up in the excitement—shook their heads in unison. Even soft, baby-voiced Randy insisted on staying and waiting for the coconut oil.

Xie Xingchen had no choice but to wait with them.

An hour passed. The bottom “tofu dregs” clumps grew larger and even started turning a faint golden-brown.

Twenty minutes later, Xie Xingchen heard a clear sizzle-sizzle-sizzle. He knew the oil was basically done—time to filter out the solids.

He picked three eager guards and explained the filtering technique, laughing as he watched them work like they were facing an enemy.

But while he was laughing, he realized that even the people who weren’t working were holding their breath.

Xie Xingchen: “…” Utterly speechless.

After the three finally finished filtering, Xie Xingchen let out a breath. For the next steps, he refused to let them handle it again.

Something so simple didn’t need to feel like going to war. He and Get-Rich, Prosperity, and Long-Life would finish it.

Even after filtering, coconut oil still contained a bit of water.

To extract proper coconut oil, they had to keep heating it to evaporate the remaining water.

Xie Xingchen increased the heat on all three stoves and boiled it another ten minutes.

When he felt the temperature rising sharply, he nodded in satisfaction and turned off the fire.

They let the oil cool, filtered it again through cloth, and finally poured the clear coconut oil into sealed jars.

Looking at several huge jars of coconut oil, Xie Xingchen felt his whole morning and afternoon hadn’t been wasted.

Once everything was finished and laid out, Xie Xingchen picked out one bottle of coconut oil, one-third of a bucket of coconut milk, and one box of desiccated coconut. Then he pushed the rest toward Ludwig and said generously: “Here. All of this is yours.”

Click here to download the full novel. (EPUB & PDF)