After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar] – CH61

Chapter 61

It turned out that brown sugar ciba (glutinous rice cakes) were addictive. In just one week, Xie Xingchen had burned through all ten jin of glutinous rice.

After that, his luck seemed to run out too. He never managed to squat the system for more glutinous rice again, and in the end he could only go to the StarNet marketplace and, at best, snag a slab of Hulu Beast pork belly.

Unfortunately, his ingredients weren’t complete. Even though he braised the pork belly into red-braised pork, it didn’t taste as good as properly made red-braised pork.

But… as he always said—better than nothing.

After working hard, you never want to move. That was Xie Xingchen right now. For an entire week, he either watched movies and played games, or hunted ingredients and cooked.

Then, once his “vacation” ended, he suddenly realized the tea mountain was ready to harvest—so he went back “to work.”

Three mu of tea bushes stretched out in a fresh green sea, and the tea leaves gave off a crisp scent that lifted the mood the moment you smelled it.

Facing the finally harvestable tea mountain, Xie Xingchen’s face was full of emotion—his hard work hadn’t been wasted. The tea trees had grown up at last!

Pointing at the tender leaves, he said earnestly to the three robots beside him, “Get-Rich, Prosperity, Long-Life—look. This is tea!”

He called all the robots over and demonstrated how to pick tea.

Using his thumb and index finger, he pinched and plucked cleanly, successfully picking a leaf cluster.

By traditional grading standards, the highest-grade tea typically used only a single bud; next came one bud with one leaf; and lower still, one bud with two leaves.

His goal here was mainly to supply ingredients for milk tea. So he didn’t need extremely high-end leaves—he picked mostly one bud with two leaves.

After explaining the key points to the robots, Xie Xingchen selected a portion of “premium” tea bushes from the three mu.

For those, he planned to pick single buds to produce high-end tea.

The warm autumn sunlight brought an unexpected lazy comfort. Though tea-picking was repetitive work, the beautiful scenery and pleasant temperature turned it into something leisurely.

In terms of speed, Xie Xingchen couldn’t compete with robots. But for some reason, the tea leaves he personally picked seemed especially full of life.

Because of that, he took on the harvesting of all the premium bushes himself.

Three mu sounded like a lot, but compared to a real tea plantation, it was very little.

He remembered a fun fact about famous teas: some “once-a-year” teas yielded only ten to twenty jin per mu per year.

Back then, he’d been incredulous.

In his mind, one mu of tea bushes was already a huge amount!
With that many bushes, surely there would be tons of tea—how could it be only ten or twenty jin per mu, even with just one harvest a year?

But… standing there now, seeing how quickly bushes ran out of suitable buds to pick, he suddenly believed the story.

There were plenty of leaves, yes—but truly pickable single buds weren’t many. If you only harvested once a year… then no wonder high-end tea was so expensive.

It was luxury goods.

The kind most people simply didn’t have the fortune to enjoy.

Because the output was fixed, sometimes even money wouldn’t help.

The premium bushes he picked out covered only about one-third of a mu.

And since he wasn’t skilled, even that tiny area still took him a full day—by the time he finished, it was nearly dark.

Xie Xingchen: 🙂

Luckily, he didn’t make a living this way. Skilled tea pickers could harvest eight mu a day; he managed… one-third of a mu.

And another complaint: his robots really were like their owner—also not great at tea picking. With all that labor, it still took half a day to finish the remaining two-plus mu.

After the fresh leaves were collected, Xie Xingchen had Prosperity drive them to Chang’an Workshop.

At the moment, Chang’an Workshop was the best place to get things done—lots of empty rooms, plenty of space for pan-frying and processing tea, and robots to guard inventory. It was the perfect place for storage and production.

Ever since development began, Xie Xingchen had gradually been using it as a warehouse: aside from essentials, he’d moved most items into various storerooms in Chang’an.

He also discovered that although it was called a “workshop,” it actually included a small residential section.

That area sat in the center of the square complex, arranged around an enormous ginkgo tree.

Grand gates, mansions, pavilions and towers—several mu of refined courtyards as exquisite as the classical garden architecture he’d once seen while working part-time as a tour guide.

The house compound was divided into a front and back courtyard, separated by a beautiful garden—clearly meant for the male head of household to work in front, while women and children lived in the back.

Xie Xingchen took the largest courtyard and rearranged its layout.

Since there was a winding-stream garden in the middle, he turned the front into an office and the back into bedrooms, studios, and leisure rooms.

That night, if they didn’t return to the starship, they would stay in the side rooms behind the main courtyard. The harvested tea leaves were packed and moved into the empty room next door, to be pan-fried the next day.

Pan-frying tea was a technical craft. Xie Xingchen had only watched videos—he had no idea what would happen in practice.

But he was clever: when leaving the tea garden, he had robots pick extra tender leaves to use as practice.

With it on his mind, he even practiced pan-frying in his dreams.

But after waking up, he forgot everything from the dream. Facing the practice batch, he was still all thumbs.

The first batch was ruined, the second was better, the third better still…

By the time he used up all the practice leaves, his technique was barely presentable.

He exhaled and said seriously to Get-Rich, “Get-Rich, bring over the one-bud-two-leaf leaves we picked yesterday.”

Get-Rich nodded and handed him the tea leaves by his feet.

Xie Xingchen took them, but only placed a small portion into the wok.

First, high heat and constant tossing to “kill the green,” then take them out and roll/knead to release juices. After kneading, return them to the wok and stir-fry again. Once the leaves shrank, take them out to cool and rest, then stir-fry once more, then dry them, and finally return for one last brief fry.

Because drying is involved, tea processing usually can’t be finished in one day—it takes at least two.

But now they had machines helping. Drying was a small problem—and even pan-frying could become a small problem.

Still, there was one issue: hand-fried tea always tasted better than machine-fried tea. With many robots and not much tea, Xie Xingchen thought it over and decided to do it manually.

Pan-frying tea wasn’t hard—frying good tea was.

After a few tries, he realized he was actually doing pretty well.

So as he worked, he explained the method to Get-Rich, Prosperity, and Long-Life, inviting them to join in.

Robots’ hands-on ability was truly strong.

After watching him do the first round, the three robots didn’t even practice—they jumped straight in. And because they couldn’t feel heat, they weren’t timid like beginners often were. When it was time to fry, they went hands-on into the wok without hesitation.

Xie Xingchen: “…So strong.”

He quietly stepped aside and, with admirable self-awareness, assigned himself the role of “consultant,” achieving the “command-by-mouth” milestone!

Xie Xingchen: Not bad.

Since this was the first harvest season for these tea bushes, yield wasn’t high: they picked only about three hundred jin of fresh leaves.

With the usual conversion of 4–5 jin fresh leaves ? 1 jin finished tea, this batch would produce around 80 jin of tea at most.

That was the ideal scenario. If their technique was sloppy and wasteful, they might end up with only 50 jin.

As for the high-end single buds Xie Xingchen picked himself?

Heh. Getting three to five jin would already be good.

He didn’t realize until he calculated it: he’d overestimated the output. Eighty-some jin of tea… might not be enough?

Great. The tea garden would have to expand again.

Xie Xingchen, who absolutely did not want to move: 0.0
Maybe later~

Tea trees were too hard to grow. In the short term, he figured it might be better to sell less milk tea than to expand planting right away.

After two days of nonstop work, he ended up with 82 jin of first-grade tea and 3 jin of high-grade tea.

Once he had it in hand, he had to admit the difference between first-grade and high-grade tea was significant.

Just the aroma when steeped—high-grade tea crushed first-grade.

And the taste was even more impressive.

Even Xie Xingchen, who wasn’t much of a tea connoisseur, thought it was amazingly fragrant.

It tasted sweet and refreshing in the aftertaste. With just one sip, it felt like his whole mouth had been cleansed.

Even talking after a sip left lingering tea notes—enough to delight anyone.

He split the three jin of high-grade tea into five portions: four small portions of 2.5 liang each, and one portion of two jin.

The two-jin pack he sealed and stored. Of the three small packs left, he kept one for himself and planned to gift the other three to the old butler, Professor Ni, and Ludwig.

After deciding to give away high-grade tea, he stared at the tiny quantity and hesitated for a rare moment… then sighed, waved his hand, and decided to add one jin of first-grade tea for each person as well, leaving himself 79 jin of first-grade tea for milk tea.

Making that decision hurt.

He’d worked so long for so little tea, and giving gifts alone cost him several jin—tea really became “not enough” the further you went.

He originally wanted to slack off, but now… he decided he’d expand the tea garden tomorrow.

Carrying the tea out, he passed beneath the enormous ginkgo tree in the center of Chang’an Workshop, its leaves drifting down in the wind.

Golden leaves blanketed the street. Under the last glow of sunset, the road looked as if it were forged from gold.

His courtyard sat near the center and close to the ginkgo—so close it felt like he could reach out and touch it.

The food workshop was farther away, but taking side paths could cut the distance in half.

Xie Xingchen couldn’t remember routes, but he had the system.

With the system’s guiding arrow back in action, he zigzagged for thirteen minutes and finally arrived at the food workshop.

The food workshop was also a multi-courtyard compound, made up of many independent factory rooms and warehouses.

At the moment, Xie Xingchen’s three food machines and raw materials occupied just one room. There were still so many empty rooms that he kept having the illusion the system might refresh countless machines and fill the place up overnight.

Considering how popular milk tea was in modern times, he never planned to place the milk tea machine with the other machines. He found a huge empty room for it alone.

And that room was actually a suite: on the right was a small lockable storeroom. After converting it into a cold room, it was perfect for milk, fruit, and other ingredients.

To make stocking, packing, and shipping easier, he added shelves, cabinets, packaging cups, and more.

Now, some shelves were already filled, while others sat empty, waiting to be stocked.

He placed the sealed tea on a small shelf, then took out his precious high-grade tea and pinched a little into the milk tea machine’s tea inlet.

In an instant, the machine started humming.

[Ding-dong. Congratulations, player: “Milk Tea Machine” unlocked. Starting up…]
[Ding-dong. Startup complete. Testing…]
[Ding-dong. Test complete. Current status: Normal.]
[Friendly reminder: Milk Tea Machine is currently Level 1. Player may upgrade it immediately to max level.]

A string of system notifications sounded.

Knowing the system never talked nonsense, Xie Xingchen listened carefully and checked the notifications again to confirm.

Then he pressed the upgrade button.

He pressed it nine times, until it wouldn’t go any further.

The moment he stopped, a ten-second countdown appeared above the machine.

When it ended, a thick mist of unknown origin suddenly shrouded the milk tea machine.

He reached out to touch it, and the system chimed:

[System Notification: Time remaining until upgrade completes: 29:02:01]

Upgrading from Level 1 to Level 10 in one go took half an hour?

Xie Xingchen raised a brow. Another useless piece of knowledge acquired.

Like other system machines, once the milk tea machine reached max level, its daily output cap was 90,000 servings.

But if he actually shipped that much, his tea wouldn’t even last two months.

Unfortunately, he couldn’t calculate exact tea usage until the machine was fully operational. For now, all he could do was wait, then decide daily stock based on real consumption.

He opened the door to the small cold room next door and checked the fresh milk and fruit inside.

For milk, he’d carefully chosen a type from the animal civilization: milk produced by the Mee-mee Beast. It was rich and fragrant, with very little “milky” smell and a natural aroma—rare quality stuff.

The important part, though, was that its production volume was huge and price cheap. Even though he still had to use green-matter potion to drive out a trace of dark matter, it was extremely cost-effective.

The cold room was packed with tropical fruit: lemons, passion fruit, bananas, mangoes, lychees, pineapples, and more.

Among them, bananas, lychees, and pineapples were new varieties found recently. Since they grew wild, the quantity was low—maybe enough for only a few dozen cups.

In the corner sat an ice machine, meant to make ice for milk tea.

It looked pitifully squeezed into the corner. Once the milk tea business started, it would probably take up most of the cold room.

Don’t ask why. With so many milk teas sold daily, they’d need a lot of ice.

He and the robots moved fruit out of the cold room, then carried in large boxes intended for ice storage.

Before he even finished arranging the boxes, another system notification rang out:

[System Notification: Congratulations, player. The Milk Tea Machine upgrade is complete.]

Xie Xingchen’s eyes lit up. He set the box down next to the ice machine and marched proudly to the milk tea machine.

Name: Milk Tea Maker
Level: 10
Outputs: Milk Tea (Superior), Fruit Tea (Superior)
Effect: Weight Loss (Weak)
Efficiency: 90,000 servings / 24 hours

Wait.

Xie Xingchen rubbed his eyes. Then rubbed them again.

Milk tea’s effect… was weight loss?

Wasn’t that a bit too magical?

Even if it was only “weak,” shouldn’t milk tea make you gain weight?

Here it made you lose weight?

Damn—this system was cheating.

It had straight-up turned milk tea into diet pills!

He said with difficulty, “Xiao Mo… did you mess up the effect?”

[System: Please rest assured. The system is not in error.]

Still unconvinced, he asked, “Then why is milk tea’s effect weight loss?”

He’d never heard anything so ridiculous.

[System: Because tea leaves contain certain substances. It’s difficult to explain precisely, but in your modern era, you must have heard the saying that tea ‘scrapes oil,’ right?]

At that moment, all of Xie Xingchen’s resentment about planting tea trees vanished.

As expected of the system—System Dad is the best!

He really had been a bit ungrateful. How could anything the system guided him to do be wrong or pointless?

Look at this—this was a huge win!

He sighed emotionally, “Xiao Mo, thank you! Looks like I misunderstood you before. You’ve really been thinking things through.”

From the rabbit’s “late” postcard, he should’ve realized it.

This must’ve been Xiao Mo deliberately sending a late postcard to make him go find the rabbit, so the rabbit would lead him to the underground cavern, and then he’d get the quest, the milk tea machine, and the tea tree and other plants—perfectly arranged!

System: “…” This player sure can imagine.

In an excellent mood, Xie Xingchen opened the milk tea machine’s control panel.

There were two major options: [Milk Tea] and [Fruit Tea].

But according to the settings, no matter what you chose, you needed tea-extract components.

So the machine’s first and most basic function was extracting tea essence.

Following the instructions, he installed the water supply and drainage system, started the machine, and pressed [Extract].

The pipes and filters began vibrating. Soon there was the sound of water boiling, then the sound grew louder and tea fragrance filled the air.

In just a few minutes, extraction finished. Now he could choose which drink to make.

There were many milk tea types, but every option was still gray.

Per system prompt, he poured fresh milk, fruit, tapioca starch, sago, syrup, coconut milk, flavor boosters, salt, and more into the ingredient inlet, then selected a basic milk tea.

One minute later, it was done.

The strong tea aroma blended with sweet milky fragrance into that unmistakable milk tea smell—just smelling it made his mouth water.

The tapioca pearls, stir-fried with brown sugar, had deep layers of flavor—chewy, fragrant, sweet. A sip of milk tea, a bite of pearls, plus icy cold refreshment…

Xie Xingchen let out a satisfied sigh.

And when he remembered it also helped with weight loss, his mood soared even higher!

What made him even happier was that the system’s milk tea machine was insane.

It had [Cold] and [Hot] modes built in!

So convenient!

Even though the ice machine was now unnecessary, the milk tea machine’s convenience made him practically bloom with joy.

After drinking half a cup, he reopened the panel. When he saw that the extracted tea essence could still make more than ten cups, he coughed from shock.

“Cough—cough cough…”

It took a while to stop.

“Xiao Mo… is this milk tea machine really this cracked?” He’d used only a tiny pinch of leaves—just a few pieces—and it could make over ten cups?

[System Notification: System products are guaranteed premium.]

The system’s reply was cocky, but Xie Xingchen loved that confidence.

As the system’s only customer, he completely believed it.

Up to now, everything he’d bought from the system had been top-tier.

Reassured, he poured an entire one-jin tin of tea into the tea inlet, loaded paper cups for packaging, then selected each of the machine’s 28 milk tea options one by one—choosing packaging without sealing.

After 28 cups were made, he poured out about 10 ml from each to taste-test. Then he repackaged the remaining drinks and sent them to the old butler to distribute among the manor workers.

After testing, he and the robots loaded all milk tea ingredients in the room into the giant ingredient inlet.

Staring at the ingredient storage that refused to fill no matter how much they put in, Xie Xingchen suspected there was some kind of spatial inventory inside.

Once everything was loaded, he checked the ingredient quantities on the control panel.

At max output, the machine could produce 90,000 cups per day. He didn’t know exactly how much tea that consumed yet, but he’d poured in one jin and planned to use leftovers tomorrow.

Fresh milk wasn’t abundant, but it wasn’t a big deal—fruit could make up the difference. They’d just produce more fruit tea.

When everything was ready, he confirmed the cup stock and packaging, then pressed [Produce], selected [Random based on ingredients], and chose [Cold].

That meant the output would be random cold milk tea and fruit tea.

If he chose [Hot], it would output hot milk tea and fruit tea.

Generally, few people wanted hot milk tea, so he didn’t bother. When it got cold and he wanted it himself, he’d make a separate link.

Yes—exactly.

He didn’t want to list tons of different milk tea links. He wanted one link, sold as a blind box—whatever you received depended on luck.

Milk tea was so good that, for Star Alliance people, any kind should be fine!

And if there were types you didn’t want? Then don’t buy.

If you got one that looked extra expensive? He didn’t care—call it a hidden rare pull!

The more he thought about it, the more excited he got. He rushed to StarNet Mall and expanded with a dedicated milk tea shop.

The storefront was cute and pastel, matching the other shops.

Mint-green walls, white gauze decor, soft sofa chairs, adorable pillows…

Not huge, but 100 square meters was enough for lots of tables.

And for friend gatherings, he used plants to divide several semi-private spaces. He even made a reading corner with wooden bookshelves, stocked with the most popular novels and magazines for customers.

After finishing the décor, he admired it for a long time.

Finally, he filled the space with bright flowers, nodded in satisfaction, and confirmed the final look.

Then he created the milk tea blind box listing.

He requested a set of promotional photos for all 28 milk teas from the system, along with a menu list. He inserted the photos into a paid store template, adjusted filters and angles, and matched the shop theme—then gave it the blunt name:

“Milk Tea Blind Box.”

He wrote the blind box rules into the product details, listed the ingredients for all 28 milk teas, fixed typos and awkward sentences, and hit publish.

After publishing, he took a screenshot and posted the link to his StarBlog:

[Xie Xingchen V: Tomorrow we’ll launch “Milk Tea Blind Box.” Blind box rules: Place an order for 100 Star Coins and the shop will randomly deliver a milk tea. [Image 1][Image 2][Image 3]; Blind box contents: one of 28 milk teas. Link: xxxxxx]

[Xie Xingchen V: Everyone’s welcome to try the Milk Tea Blind Box! Trusssst me—milk tea is seriously delicious, and most importantly, it helps with weight loss. No more worrying about getting fat from drinking milk tea~]

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