After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar] – CH57

Chapter 57

Xie Xingchen was momentarily speechless.

He patted Long-Life on the head, speaking earnestly. “Long-Life~”

That drawn-out ending made people’s eyebrows twitch—you could already tell what came next would be at least a little teasing.

Sure enough—

“You do know that this green-substance solution is made using my mental power, right?” Xie Xingchen said with a smile.

In other words, it would be strange if the green-substance solution could compare to his mental power!

So yeah—his robots were great in every way… except that every now and then, when they got stubborn, it was kind of hilarious.

Why obsess over things that didn’t need obsessing over?

He waved his hand to stop Long-Life from speaking, putting on a world-weary face. “Don’t say anything. I know. I’ll work hard. I won’t rest.”

Long-Life hesitated, wanting to speak: …It really doesn’t have to be like that.

But seeing that Xie Xingchen had already started working, Long-Life decided to keep quiet.

When Xie Xingchen came out of the seed-breeding room, his mental power was already drained.

He forced himself to finish dinner, then collapsed back into the treatment pod in the medical room.

Honestly, lately he’d been earning a lot—but spending just as much.

Mental-power recovery shots, energy stones, planting robots… food ingredients… all of it added up to at least several billion.

And he didn’t know what was going on recently, but the Star Alliance had been swept up in a food craze because of him. Lots of people started saving up to buy ingredients and cook, which made ingredients scarce. Many staples that were already expensive had crept up even more for no reason.

All of that filled Xie Xingchen with a sense of crisis.

To be honest, if it weren’t for the fact that the Plant Civilization produced more grain with better quality—and if he didn’t have that “humans stick together” mentality that interstellar humans had—his grain supply probably would’ve been locked down long ago by those people in the Plant Association who’d been eyeing him.

Even so, faced with constantly rising grain prices, all he wanted was to find grain seeds and start growing them on Earth as soon as possible.

Yet strangely—up to now, he still couldn’t find any grain seeds.

He’d gone looking again and again without results. And since the current multi-civilization balance and the popularity of nutrient solutions made it hard for him to actually starve, he hadn’t felt an urgent need to secure good grain varieties.

But honestly… if he could find even a single grain crop, he would drop everything and solve food security first.

Maybe that was every “Chinese farmer-at-heart” person’s obsession… your rice bowl must stay in your own hands.

As for why he didn’t just buy grain seeds from outside and plant them—

Ahem. Simply put: it hadn’t reached that point yet.

Back on Earth, invasive species were already a huge problem between countries. Now expand that to planets—how could invasions possibly be minor?

It was only because growing greenery wasn’t easy right now, and because there were corresponding defensive measures.

Still, those measures cost time and effort. Unless absolutely necessary, Xie Xingchen didn’t want to spend his time on that.

If he had that time and energy, he’d rather use it to unlock the encyclopedia entries!

Who knew—maybe the achievement cards marked “?” under each page were high-quality grain varieties the system would reward.

With his thoughts wandering, Xie Xingchen drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, he was jolted awake by the alarm.

He opened his eyes groggily and sat up, still dizzy.

Even though his mental power had been replenished, he still looked listless.

He splashed his face with cold water, then sluggishly ate breakfast. Once he stepped out of the starship, he finally woke up completely.

Staring at the endless flower fields before him, he didn’t feel any grand “this is the empire I built” pride. He only felt: this is so damn miserable.

Ever since graduating from college, he’d thought waking up early would never again be part of his life.

Who knew that after coming to the interstellar era—after inheriting a massive fortune and becoming “rich”—he’d ended up living like a senior-year high school student again: up earlier than a chicken, sleeping later than a dog.

“Why do I feel like a rich person’s life isn’t actually that great?” he muttered.

The gap between “rich people’s life” in fiction (rich and super free) and “rich people’s life” in reality (work, work, work) was enormous.

But just as he was sighing, he spotted robots in the flower fields picking blossoms, packing them, and sending them out for delivery.

Suddenly… he felt better.

Yep—comparison really was the thief of joy.

Seeing someone else even busier instantly made him feel like he could manage.

Of course, being so down bad that he had to compare his diligence with robots… if he told anyone, they probably wouldn’t believe him.

Today’s plan: plant the wild tea trees!

Tea trees usually took three years before you could harvest. To unlock the milk-tea machine sooner, he had no choice but to put tea trees at the top of today’s priorities—bold, underlined, starred.

Unlike flowers that grew on flat ground, tea trees would be planted on a barren hill.

“Barren hill” was what he called it, but strictly speaking, it was more like a large barren slope.

Why choose this place?

Because Xie Xingchen suddenly remembered the phrase “go up the mountain to pick tea.”

He’d heard it so many times it had to be true—tea trees grew on mountains.

So he had Long-Life find a nearby small barren hill, and Long-Life really did find him a “small barren hill.”

When Xie Xingchen saw the “small barren hill,” he felt something was off—it was a huge slope. But after hesitating for a long time, he still decided to plant tea trees here.

No reason other than distance.

It was close to the flower gardens, easier to manage, and the barren land in between could be reclaimed to plant mint, mugwort, wild chrysanthemum, and so on—linking all the crops into one manageable stretch.

He’d brought back quite a lot of tea seeds from the underground cavern, but filling this big slope still wouldn’t be easy.

And forcing growth wasn’t realistic. Trees weren’t like flowers or herbs—tall, sturdy, they needed far more energy to go from seed to tree.

In other words,  at his current level, he couldn’t force-grow a seed into a full tree in one go.

As for cuttings?

That was hard too.

Not to mention whether going back into the cavern to bring out tea branches was even feasible—he also didn’t want to take branches from that tea tree.

Look closely, and that wild tea tree was extraordinary.

Sure, with light it could photosynthesize.

But with only a few beams of light… how could it grow into something so lush and flourishing?

Xie Xingchen felt that cavern had “spiritual energy.” Otherwise, it wouldn’t produce miracles like that. It might even be one of those legendary blessed grotto-heavens—if so, the things inside shouldn’t be damaged.

So… he’d make do with tea seeds.

Trees needed wide spacing. After carefully selecting from that basket of seeds, he managed to plant about three mu of tea trees.

It didn’t sound like much, but in reality it was a lot—enough not just for one milk-tea shop, but ten.

“Long-Life, come here for a second,” Xie Xingchen called.

Long-Life came over and asked, “Boss, what is it?”

Xie Xingchen pointed to the barren land connecting to the tea slope and began assigning tasks. “Long-Life, in a bit you take the planting robots over there to reclaim land—from the tea hill all the way to the camellia field.”

The camellia field was currently the farthest edge of the flower area. Reclaiming from here to there would connect the barren land with the tea hill.

Hearing the task, Long-Life straightened, his expression serious. He followed Xie Xingchen’s pointing finger and committed the boundaries to memory.

After Long-Life left, Xie Xingchen called over Prosperity. “Prosperity, later you drive the machine to help Long-Life deep-plow. After deep-plowing, fertilize the soil. Once that’s done, go water the carrot fields.”

Prosperity’s workload was heavier than Long-Life’s, but he didn’t feel it was unfair at all. If anything, he felt the boss valued him more, and he left excitedly.

Finally, Xie Xingchen called Get-Rich over—and suddenly smiled.

He patted Get-Rich on the shoulder with great seriousness. “Get-Rich, your mission has arrived.”

Get-Rich froze, then said, “Please give your orders, Boss.”

Xie Xingchen wore a mysterious grin. “Ahem… you go on StarNet Mall and help me buy some vitality potions, plant disinfectant, plant growth solution… that kind of stuff. Oh, and remember to haggle.”

Get-Rich: ?

He didn’t really understand, but he still promised earnestly that he would complete the task.

Xie Xingchen could haggle, but he wasn’t good at cutting hard.

If something cost 170, he could negotiate it down to 150—no problem. But if he had to open with “100” and shout the price down to “70” right away… he just couldn’t. He was afraid of getting yelled at.

But a while ago, Get-Rich… did it.

It was a sunny day. Xie Xingchen had been busy, so he temporarily opened up his brain-interface permissions for Get-Rich.

He’d only wanted Get-Rich to handle chores and buy a few things.

He hadn’t expected Get-Rich to take the sentence “try to haggle with the shop owner” to heart—and execute it to the letter.

In the end, Get-Rich bought countless items at half the listed price.

When Xie Xingchen heard about it, he was stunned.

When he pulled up the chat logs between Get-Rich and the shop owners, he broke out in a cold sweat for Get-Rich.

Seriously… Get-Rich was lucky it hadn’t been beaten to death.

The most outrageous bargaining he’d ever seen was opening with half price, then both sides slowly conceding.

But Get-Rich?

It started at the last digits of the list price.

A price of 1920—Get-Rich opened with 920. The shop owner practically spat blood. Sure, both sides later compromised, but… it really felt like the shop owner wanted to eat Get-Rich alive.

From that incident, Xie Xingchen learned one thing: he wasn’t built for haggling. And since he needed a lot of supplies, if he wanted to save money, it was best to let Get-Rich handle it.

He wrote out a shopping list, sent Get-Rich the vendors he’d already picked out, opened shopping permissions for Get-Rich, and quietly slipped away.

With Get-Rich, Prosperity, and Long-Life all assigned, the other three system-produced robots stayed on Qiong Island to manage the tropical plantation. In the end, only Xie Xingchen and a small group of interstellar planting robots remained to work on the tea hill.

The tea seeds had been planted yesterday, and the green-substance solution had already been watered in once. Now the only thing left was for Xie Xingchen to infuse mental power into these three mu of tea garden.

Meanwhile, the planting robots needed to assist with watering, spraying plant nutrient solution, fertilizing, and so on.

These steps had to be completed before Xie Xingchen infused mental power—otherwise the forced-grown plants might end up malnourished.

To finish faster, Xie Xingchen split the robots into three teams, each with a task, and had them work on different sections of the three mu plot.

The planting robots moved according to his orders.

After several hours, the prep work was finally done.

Xie Xingchen squatted down, pressing both hands against the ground. He guided his mental tendrils deep into the soil to touch the seeds.

Not daring to be reckless, he planned to do it mu by mu.

But this time… he miscalculated.

Even just the seeds in one mu devoured more mental power than ten mu of flowers.

With the arrow already on the bowstring, he had no choice but to fire.

Gritting his teeth, he continued pouring mental power in.

The tea seeds cracked, sprouted, and grew…

When the seedlings reached about five centimeters, Xie Xingchen’s mental power ran dry.

Xie Xingchen: ?

He stared at those tiny seedlings in disbelief, feeling miserable.

What the hell—why was his mental power suddenly empty?

In a daze, he was carried back to the starship by several planting robots.

Even after being placed into the treatment pod, he still couldn’t swallow the lump of anger in his chest.

This was a slap in the face.

He’d been thinking he could sprout all three mu of tea in one day—and one mu alone had knocked him flat?

Were these tea seeds poisonous or something?!

Before he could think more, he fell asleep from exhaustion.

From that day on, Xie Xingchen became locked in a battle with the tea garden.

Every day before dawn, he’d go to the tea hill. After forcing growth on one mu of tea seeds, the robots would carry him back to the ship, where he’d lie in the treatment pod. After recovering his mental power, he’d get up and go back to fight the tea trees again—only to be drained and carried back for treatment again…

Over and over, in an endless loop.

A whole month passed before Xie Xingchen finally realized, hazily, that he’d been acting like an idiot.

The tea trees weren’t done—now they were only about one year old.

The flowers were a mess. Without his mental power and the green-substance solution, part of the camellia field got hit by pests. If Long-Life hadn’t spotted it early and decisively used pesticide, he would’ve lost at least five mu of camellias, and it would’ve spread to the neighboring roses.

Shocked by the horrifying camellia damage rate, Xie Xingchen finally snapped out of his tunnel-vision.

Before, his daily routine had been nothing but the tea garden. Now he changed: each day, he would first make one bottle of green-substance solution, then go to the tea garden.

That approach was fine—only the tea trees’ growth slowed again.

In the end, by the time roses, lilies, and camellias had expanded enough for stable listings, the tea trees were still only two-year-old trees—still one year away from being harvestable.

Xie Xingchen: “…I have nothing to say.”

In three months, roses, lilies, and camellias had expanded to thirty mu. The mint, mugwort, and wild chrysanthemum he’d discovered alongside the wild tea tree had also spread everywhere.

Especially mugwort and mint—those two were basically the embodiment of “vigorous life.”

After planting them, he hadn’t even used the green-substance solution, and they started exploding in growth. With just a bit of nutrient water, they grew far better than his carefully tended tea garden.

One more thing worth mentioning: since mugwort acted as a natural pesticide, he planted it next to the comparatively finicky camellias.

That sudden move actually reduced camellia pests and disease, making Xie Xingchen grin from ear to ear.

“Faster, faster! The sale is about to start!”

On a spaceship headed to a remote resort planet sat people from different civilizations. But at this moment, civilization didn’t matter—their anxious mood was the same. Faces tense, mouths swearing, they were furious.

Because the time was already 23:35:09, yet the ship that should’ve reached Shepherd Star was still cruising through space.

It was obvious: something had delayed them, and not by a little. Otherwise, a ship that was supposed to arrive at the starport at 21:00 would still be nowhere near landing at 23:00.

“God, why is this ship so slow? It’s not that far—does it really take this long?”

“I swear I want to storm the captain’s room and seize the controls. Is the captain even a man? Why is he dragging his feet like this?!”

“Exactly! If we’re any slower, it’ll be past midnight. Is the captain okay in the head or what?”

Swearing filled the cabin, and some even threatened to “take out” the captain if they didn’t speed up.

“…Captain, hurry up, or we’ll take you out—we can take down space pirates, we can take down you!”

As time ticked on, the noise didn’t lessen—it grew.

Before long, children started crying too, and complaints surged everywhere.

With so many angry passengers, even the flight attendants didn’t dare go in to calm them.

After hovering helplessly for a long time, they finally turned around and went to advise the captain.

“Captain, should we… accelerate?” one pretty attendant asked with a troubled face, remembering what the passengers had said and feeling deeply uneasy.

Too timid to placate the passenger cabin, she could only plead here—because this batch of passengers was a bit… feral.

Once someone spoke up, the others rushed to agree.

“Yes, Captain! There are only twenty-something minutes left until midnight. If we don’t speed up, these passengers are really going to riot!”

When they said the word “riot,” everyone shivered.

Passengers these days were truly terrifying.

Not long ago, they’d had the misfortune of encountering space pirates trying to rob them.

Before the crew could even decide whether to resist or stall for time, these passengers—rushing to Shepherd Star—stood up and beat the arrogant pirates half to death, then casually handed the notorious pirates over to a passing patrol force.

After that, the crew had ten thousand reasons not to offend these passengers.

In the end, it was just “pushing speed.”

This distance to Shepherd Star wasn’t far—flooring it would absolutely get them there before midnight.

The only problem was that “flooring it” might get them reprimanded or punished by the company.

But then again—if they didn’t floor it, anyone could tell these pirate-beating passengers would definitely leave terrible reviews… or worse, beat them too.

Between two evils, pick the lesser!

The company might not scold them for speeding, but if they didn’t speed up, forget safety—just getting their wages docked because of bad reviews was suffocating enough.

So no matter how you looked at it, it was better to follow “the will of the people.” If they hit the time window, good reviews were basically guaranteed—and good reviews meant better pay.

Seeing the staff’s tense faces, the captain sighed and ran a speed simulation. Once he confirmed that flying at the maximum safe speed would get them to Shepherd Star before midnight, he agreed.

When he nodded, the attendants happily relayed the news: barring accidents, they would reach Shepherd Star before 24:00!

Hearing that, the passengers cheered and, after some coaxing, returned to their seats and rooms.

23:58:49

“Lucky No. 1” arrived at Shepherd Star.

After arrival, those “feral” passengers didn’t move right away.

Instead, all of them—like they’d lost their minds—opened their brain terminals.

Those who’d already set their address quickly connected to Shepherd Star’s network. Those who hadn’t scrambled into the backend to set their address first, then connected to the network.

And those who truly didn’t have time just connected first and set their address to the default location: Shepherd Star Starport.

Yeah—who cared where the delivery address was? As long as it was Shepherd Star, it counted!

The countdown ended.

Hands moved so fast they left afterimages.

One second later, someone whooped.

The next second, more people whooped.

The next next second—still more people whooped!

Soon, the entire ship became an ocean of cheering.

“Hahahahaha—remote planets really are so easy to buy on!”

“Damn, I finally got it! I’ve been waiting forever! Thanks to whoever posted that guide—now I can travel and shop!”

Watching people disembark while laughing like maniacs, Shepherd Star locals felt numb.

They didn’t even know when it started, but tourists had become more numerous—and also… weird.

At first, because of these strange tourists, Shepherd Star even issued a Level-2 security alert, afraid a bunch of lunatics had come to start killing indiscriminately.

They sent people to follow the group. It turned out: weird behavior upon arrival aside, they were normal tourists.

It reassured the planet lord… and annoyed him.

So he ordered further investigation, and eventually discovered the cause was a guide written by some unknown little gremlin.

The guide was titled:

“On Exploiting a Purchasing Bug — A Shepherd Star Guide to Traveling to a Remote Planet While Snapping Up Best-Selling Earth Commerce Goods.”

Because of that guide, Shepherd Star—thanks to relatively good network infrastructure and not being too remote—became the internet’s chosen land.

To that, Shepherd Star residents only wanted to say: listen, I’m thanking you so much.

Sure, it was annoying that people from developed planets came here to compete with them, but money was too tempting. The tourism boom boosted Shepherd Star’s GDP by quite a lot.

The situation made the planet’s governor so happy that when buying ads, he even subtly included hints of the “everyone knows it but no one says it out loud” variety.

“Hahaha, this place is really blessed! I bought the new product the moment I arrived. I’m coming again!”

“Hehehe, I got one too! That plant called ‘rose’ is so pretty—when it arrives, I’m going to take photos just to make people jealous!”

“I think camellias are even prettier. White ones are so pure. I fell in love at first sight.”

“…”

Today was the day Earth Commerce released new products. The people who’d booked a trip to Shepherd Star specifically for the sale felt unbelievably lucky.

Even luckier: though they’d hit a bit of trouble on the way, they’d banded together, taken down the trouble, and arrived right on time—most of them managing to snag what they wanted!

They felt their luck was exploding, and at the same time, a few bizarre trending topics on StarNet began to ferment:

#UnluckySpacePiratesBeatenByPassengers
#AnyoneBlockingMeFromGoingToARemotePlanetDies
#HahahaNoOneCanMakeMyShipLate
#ToAllSpacePiratesConsiderChangingCareers

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