After Waking Up I Inherited the Earth [Interstellar] – CH82

Chapter 82

To expand his planting area quickly, Xie Xingchen not only worked himself like a dog, he also handed all 118 bottles of green-substance solution he’d saved up over this period to Huo Guangguang. With a huge pile of energy stones and energy shields on top, it was basically money paving the road—so his skincare-ingredient planting plan went extremely smoothly.

That kind of high investment without counting costs let Xie Xingchen achieve results across four hundred mu in a very short time.

Yes—within less than a month, cucumbers, loofah, and aloe had each been planted across more than a hundred mu.

Now, harvest season had arrived.

The two vine crops, loofah and cucumber, were planted next to each other. At a glance, the vast, rolling sea of vibrant green fruit looked like a child’s whimsical green fantasy drawn in crayon.

Xie Xingchen personally loved the fresh scent of cucumbers, so his first stop was here—breathing in cucumber fragrance while harvesting loofah water.

Loofah water was actually a byproduct of loofah. It wasn’t extracted from the loofah fruit itself; instead, you had to cut open the mature loofah vines and collect the liquid from inside. After processing that loofah water, you could make the kinds of skincare products sold on the market—toners, lotions, sheet masks, creams, and so on.

But aside from collecting the loofah water, Xie Xingchen wasn’t exactly sure how to turn it into those products. Fortunately, he’d snagged a flash-sale bundle from the system shop that included tutorials.

Even better—yesterday, while camping the shop, he actually managed to catch a skincare-making machine!

Once unlimited purchasing unlocked, he immediately bought twelve.

Perfect: three series, four product types per series. Twelve machines meant one machine per product—no need to squeeze different products into timed production slots.

There was a reason he prioritized loofah first.

Because loofah required cutting vines to collect water, and that took time. So once the loofah was set up, he could use the waiting time to do other work.

Because he needed to save seeds and collect water, Xie Xingchen treated loofah with extra care. Same three crops, same growth period—but because of different amounts of mental power he invested, the cucumbers were still tender while the loofah had already become fully mature “old loofah.”

Which was exactly what he wanted.

Mutant loofah truly lived up to the word “mutant.” Its vines were visibly a full size thicker than ordinary loofah vines.

One look and Xie Xingchen knew there’d be plenty of loofah water inside.

Dozens—then hundreds—of robots moved out at once, dragging little carts into the loofah fields to pick loofah. Once a cart was full, they delivered it to the warehouse for storage.

After it was stored, they could ignore it for now. The temperature was low, so fruits and vegetables naturally kept longer. Leaving them alone for a few days was no issue.

As for the third crop—aloe?

Aloe was even easier: it didn’t really have a “ripening” stage. As long as it had water and soil, it would keep growing. So Xie Xingchen planned to finish loofah and cucumbers first, then free up time to deal with aloe.

With all robots mobilized, the harvest speed was ridiculous. In just a few hours, the entire hundred-plus mu of loofah fields had been harvested.

Now only thick, thriving old loofah vines remained in the field.

Since the vines needed to be cut to collect juice—and to avoid wasting anything during collection—Xie Xingchen had long prepared small jars for gathering.

Place a jar under a vine, slice it open. With one cut, abundant loofah water trickled down.

Countless vines were cut, loofah water flowing like streams. Thousands upon thousands of small jars rang with crisp, pearl-like drips hitting their bottoms.

The scene was spectacular.

So spectacular that Xie Xingchen couldn’t help relaxing his brows, smiling like the June sun.

Cutting vines was delicate work. Even with machine assistance, by the time they’d roughly completed the cutting stage, the sky was already filled with sunset clouds.

But that wasn’t a big problem for them.

This was their territory now. After operating here for so long, all dangers had already been cleared.

Working under stars and moonlight, that’s all.

As long as it doesn’t kill you, work like it’s trying to!

Workers—work spirit—move out!

After that rousing speech, Xie Xingchen handed out box after box of coconut-flavored energy fluid and mango-flavored energy fluid. The robots instantly got so hyped they looked ready to work three days and nights straight.

He didn’t even need to motivate them further. Fully energized, they started assigning tasks themselves.

Only a small group stayed in the loofah field to monitor how much juice the cut vines were producing. The rest, led by Get-Rich, Prosperity, and Long-Life, marched boldly to the neighboring cucumber fields to handle cucumbers.

Same as before: pick cucumbers, send to storage. The robots were even more practiced now—within two hours, the field was left with only cucumber vines again.

To most people, cucumber vines were useless—something you throw away.

But in reality, cucumber vines could be stir-fried as food, and if you knew how to process them, they could even become a medicinal herb with “clearing heat and detoxifying” properties, and could be used to treat coughs.

Unfortunately, Xie Xingchen didn’t know how to prepare medicinal herbs, so in his hands, cucumber vines could only serve a limited purpose: animal feed.

He’d already planned it out. The best, tenderest vines would be delivered to the picky Bai Xi as food for the four system-gifted youngsters. The rest would go to the pasture as feed for the colorful sheep. If there were extras, he could even send some to the horse herd to improve their rations.

As for selling them?

Ha. Xie Xingchen never even considered selling!

His own animals weren’t even fully fed yet—sell what?

When it came to money-making little animals, Xie Xingchen’s attitude was extremely proper.

They were his “providers,” after all. So what if he gave them better food within his means?

He directed the robots to clear the cucumber vines. Once they finished, Xie Xingchen was pleased to see he didn’t need a Plan B.

Because these cucumber vines were all tender vines—just a bit of trimming and washing, and they could go straight to the breeding factory and pasture. There wasn’t a single tough old vine. Truly miraculous.

After the cucumber vines were handled, the sun rose again.

The instant he saw sunlight, exhaustion crashed over him.

Counting it up—good grief. He hadn’t closed his eyes for forty-eight hours.

Nope. He had to sleep.

To avoid dropping dead from overwork, Xie Xingchen handed the remaining tasks to Long-Life, then drifted back to his room like a ghost. He took a lightning-fast shower, and the second he hit the bed, he was out.

When he finally woke up fully, the moon was already outside the window.

Wait—wait—wait.

Seeing the moon, Xie Xingchen’s heart sank.

Oh no. His body clock was totally wrecked. Was he about to flip day and night from now on?

His movement paused as he got out of bed, hesitating.

Should he sleep a few more hours and work tomorrow morning instead?

Otherwise his schedule might not recover anytime soon.

But the problem was… he’d just woken up. He wasn’t sleepy at all.

On the bed. Off the bed. Back on. Back off.

In the end, all that up-and-down killed the last trace of drowsiness.

Rubbing his face gloomily, Xie Xingchen put on a cashmere sweater and a cashmere overcoat, then walked out of the starship under starlight.

The hardworking robots were still working tirelessly. Seeing their master, they greeted him without even lifting their heads.

Walking along the field ridge for a few steps, Xie Xingchen suddenly spotted Long-Life.

He was squatting by one of the small jars, staring blankly at an old loofah vine dripping steadily.

Xie Xingchen stopped, surprised. “Long-Life, what are you doing?”

At the sound of his master’s voice, Long-Life turned his head reflexively. When he saw Xie Xingchen, he obediently greeted, “Hello, boss,” then answered.

Long-Life squatted back down, sounding a little troubled. “I’m observing these loofah vines.”

Observing loofah vines?

Xie Xingchen’s eyes widened. “Did you observe anything?”

Long-Life pressed his lips together. After a long moment, he said oddly, “These old loofah vines have so much loofah water.”

Xie Xingchen snorted with laughter. “You watched for half a day just to reach that conclusion?”

That needed observation?

Anyone with eyes could see it.

Long-Life shook his head, looking confused. “Yes. There’s really a lot of water inside. This morning it already dripped dry, but if you cut again a little farther down, the vine starts producing loofah water again.”

Xie Xingchen was surprised. “A lot of loofah water? Or just a little?”

Long-Life answered, “A lot.”

Xie Xingchen looked at the vines, puzzled.

He stepped forward and cut open a few vines that had already stopped dripping. Sure enough, loofah water slowly seeped out again.

Letting go of that vine, he dug up another vine and cut an opening where there had been no wound. This newly exposed vine also started flowing loofah water, just like the previous one.

After waiting a while, both vines were still dripping. Xie Xingchen decided there was no need to stand around. He brushed dirt from his hands and told Long-Life, “Long-Life, let’s go process the aloe first. We’ll come back here afterward.”

Long-Life stood up smoothly, and obediently led a group of robots to harvest aloe.

Aloe wasn’t picky about soil. Compared to fertile earth, it preferred sandier ground.

And aloe was hardy. As long as you didn’t water it recklessly, it basically survived as soon as it was planted. So Xie Xingchen’s aloe fields were larger than both the loofah and cucumber fields.

Aloe leaves had sharp, serrated edges. One careless move and you could get cut, so Xie Xingchen had to wear protective gloves while working.

Aloe was a strange plant. It didn’t reproduce through seeds, and because it didn’t care about season or growth stage—as long as the plant was healthy—it could reproduce anytime. So Xie Xingchen planned to combine harvesting and propagation at the same time.

Generally speaking, plants that don’t reproduce by seed have two common methods.

The first was division—flexible and simple. You just broke off a section of rhizome from the mother plant and planted it in prepared soil.

The second was cutting, but that required a knife and you had to wait for the cut surface to heal before planting. Since it took more time and effort, Xie Xingchen basically didn’t use it.

They were using division only.

They selected suitable rhizomes from the enormous mother aloe plants for division and replanting. After replanting, they continued selecting thick, juicy aloe leaves from the mother plants and stored them.

Because he was afraid of damaging the aloe, whenever he did propagation and leaf harvesting together, Xie Xingchen limited how many leaves they took. Afterward, he watered the fields with nutrient solution and plant growth solution to ensure the aloe wouldn’t die.

The steps weren’t hard, just tedious. Even though the robots never slacked, Xie Xingchen still spent a full two days to finish the aloe work.

Meanwhile, the experiment results for the loofah vines were already in.

Seeing the results, Xie Xingchen couldn’t help marveling: what a magical plant.

When loofah vines were pulled out of the ground, the water inside was fixed and limited. But when the vines stayed rooted in the soil, after some time, they could produce loofah water again!

With that result, Xie Xingchen decided not to remove the vines. He’d just let this plot keep growing and pick another plot to plant new loofah.

Xie Xingchen: smile.jpg

If he wanted to sound like he was showing off… the whole planet belonged to him now. He didn’t have much of anything else—just land. A lot of land.

He’d harvested loofah too late; it was basically inedible and could only be used for seed saving. Once seeds were collected, the remaining loofah would be crushed into nutrients and spread back into the fields to enrich the soil.

As for cucumbers: making skincare didn’t require cucumber seeds, so after he removed the seeds for saving, the rest would be used as skincare ingredients.

Aloe was simplest: nothing special needed. Wash it clean, feed it into the skincare machines, and select the desired product output.

The simple, idiot-proof operation made Xie Xingchen love the system to death.

One-button liberation.

It was seriously incredible.

The system was the best.

If he had to invest and build factories himself, who knew how much time and energy it would take to reach this point.

But the system shop machines let him jump straight to the finish line.

As for how he should “transition” or what excuse he’d use to explain things once his business grew… Xie Xingchen decided he’d worry about that later. He refused to take out a loan on anxiety.

After washing the raw materials and feeding them into the machines, Xie Xingchen didn’t stand around waiting. He returned to the warehouse, loaded the cucumber vines onto a vehicle, and brought Prosperity back to the pasture.

After handing the massive pile of cucumber vines to Little A, who managed the pasture, Xie Xingchen took a few “small tools” and the Star Alliance’s most popular new candy to cozy up to the horse king.

After stuffing the horse king with countless snacks, it finally grudgingly allowed Xie Xingchen to put tack on it and ride for a while.

Galloping across the grassland felt unbelievably joyful and free.

Even though his thighs trembled with pain when he got off, Xie Xingchen still stared at the horse king with shining eyes, clearly wanting another round.

But the horse king refused!

It lifted its head and let out a long neigh, twisting and fidgeting—it clearly hated the restraints.

Seeing that, Xie Xingchen quickly removed the tack and sighed. “Alright, alright. Once is enough. If you don’t like it, I definitely won’t force you.”

He said that, but his tone was full of regret.

Honestly, what man didn’t love horses?

That lightning-fast, wind-slicing thrill was addictive after just one taste.

But it really was only once.

Xie Xingchen wanted to switch to another horse and go again, but his wish fell flat.

The horses were smart like they’d become spirits—before he even reached them, they trotted away. Only two goofy little ponies walked up affectionately and rubbed against him, clearly not minding giving this familiar two-legged creature a spontaneous “let’s go” trip.

But they didn’t mind—Xie Xingchen did!

Those two were shorter than him.

They were still little kids, not fully grown!

If he climbed on, he might not get a proper ride, but he might crush the poor horses.

He vigorously ruffled both ponies, then, moved by their affection, pulled out a crisp cucumber from his storage button, snapped it in half, and gave each pony a piece.

When the horse king came over, he pulled out another cucumber, snapped it in half, gave half to the horse king, and kept half for himself.

As for the other horses, they weren’t so lucky. The moment they realized the horse king and the two ponies were getting special treatment, Xie Xingchen had already driven off in his hovercar.

Sniffing the fresh scent lingering in the air, the horses stamped their hooves in anger.

Riding was amazing… but sadly, it couldn’t be amazing forever.

With a regretful sigh, Xie Xingchen got into the hovercar and spent over an hour returning to Chang’an Workshop.

First thing upon arrival—back to his residence, pants off, medicine on!

It hadn’t felt like much while riding, but now it burned. His thighs hurt like hell.

Luckily no one was around. Otherwise, even the way he’d hobbled from the hovercar—limping and wobbling—would’ve made him want to die of embarrassment.

He was an A-grade mental-power user!

And he couldn’t handle a short ride?

After doing farm work all day, his physique still hadn’t improved at all.

With skin too delicate, Xie Xingchen sprawled in his ancient-style bedroom wearing loose, short silk pants, legs spread, cooling himself with the breeze.

He’d just sprayed medicine and applied ointment. The pain wasn’t too bad, but the ointment instructions said he had to wait twenty minutes for full absorption.

Lying on the bed with nothing to do, Xie Xingchen suddenly remembered something.

Eyes shining, he opened the video Get-Rich had sent. After a long, silent stare, a question mark popped up in his head.

Wait—who was that hunched-over, sneaky-looking creep in the video?

Oh my god!

So much for his heroic, handsome, martial-arts-master galloping pose.

So this was what he looked like to others?

Damn—no wonder Get-Rich kept looking like he wanted to say something when Xie Xingchen fantasized about riding a second time!

Xie Xingchen had thought Get-Rich also wanted to ride. Turns out… Get-Rich just didn’t want to watch him keep riding in that humiliating posture.

Xie Xingchen became emotionally shut down.

He closed the video and mournfully shut his eyes.

But the moment he closed them, the video replayed in his mind.

“It should be twenty minutes already, right?” Xie Xingchen muttered as he pulled his pants back on.

In reality, he knew it had only been a few minutes. But because he couldn’t stand staying in that suffocatingly awkward place, he forcibly labeled a few minutes as twenty.

Like he was being chased by ghosts, he hurried—fast and furtive—to the Beauty Workshop. Outside, he peeked and lurked for a while.

When he confirmed Get-Rich, the one who’d captured his cringe moment, wasn’t inside, he finally walked in with both hands behind his back, chin raised, putting on the leisurely “landlord” act.

The passing robots looked like they had no reaction, but once they left the Beauty Workshop, they couldn’t help chattering about the possibility that their master had been attacked by some unknown mental entity—also known as “possession.”

Inside the Beauty Workshop, machines rumbled. A few robots moved in and out, busy operating equipment for filling and packing.

The empty factory space in the Beauty Workshop was large and plentiful.

But no matter how big it was, it still couldn’t fit twelve large machines plus the matching packaging assembly lines all in one place.

So Xie Xingchen split the machines into three workshops based on the primary raw material.

The one he entered now was the aloe workshop.

The aloe workshop had four huge, identical skincare-making machines, plus one smaller but extremely cool, high-tech-looking packaging machine.

Right now, the aloe workshop mainly produced aloe gel. A smaller portion of aloe was made into aloe toner, aloe moisturizing emulsion, and the most hydrating product—aloe hydrating sheet masks.

Like the cucumber and loofah lines, these aloe skincare products (except masks) were all in 100 ml sizes.

Cucumber and loofah didn’t make “gel,” but Xie Xingchen added an extra face cream option so customers with stronger hydration needs—or those who disliked emulsions—had a better choice.

Currently, the twelve skincare products in production were:

• Aloe toner
• Aloe moisturizing emulsion
• Aloe gel
• Aloe hydrating sheet mask
• Cucumber toner
• Cucumber moisturizing emulsion
• Cucumber intensive moisturizing cream
• Cucumber hydrating sheet mask
• Loofah toner
• Loofah moisturizing emulsion
• Loofah intensive moisturizing cream
• Loofah hydrating sheet mask

Twelve products needed over twenty kinds of packaging, including inner packaging (bottles) and outer packaging (boxes).

But since there were only three series, they only needed three packaging styles. The rest could be variations within those three.

For this, Xie Xingchen contacted the designer who had previously designed his essential oil and hydrosol bottles.

To keep these products clearly cheaper than the expensive hydrosols and essential oils, Xie Xingchen only asked for packaging that was fresh, clean, elegant, and tasteful—comfortable to look at. Not like before, when he practically wanted carved patterns on the essential oil bottles.

Simple client requirements made the design team happy.

Plus, “Earth Shop” was a golden brand name. Knowing that countless people would see their design, the designer got fired up with inspiration.

Not only did they finish a large batch of drafts a day early, they also achieved a never-before-seen “first draft approved,” leaving the designer both thrilled and dazed.

Even more exciting: because the design was a clean, elegant style, the sample bottles could be scaled down proportionally—and they looked even better after shrinking, with an indescribable refined charm.

Xie Xingchen waved a hand and added a 20% bonus to the design fee.

That made the designer so happy they almost wanted to apply on the spot to become Earth Shop’s exclusive designer.

At the time, Xie Xingchen paused, then rubbed his chin and said, “That’s not impossible.”

The designer: ?

The designer, ecstatic: “Really, Boss Xie? If it’s possible, I’ll resign right now and come work for you!”

Xie Xingchen shook his head. “No need to come work here. You can work from home. If I need anything, I’ll contact you directly.”

The designer’s eyes went wide in shock.

Wait—there was a job this good?

Wasn’t this the dream life they imagined after becoming a top-tier designer?

And now they could live it early?

The designer had no objections, except…

They shamelessly asked, “So… how does the pay work?”

Xie Xingchen thought for a bit. “Base salary plus bonus. Base salary is 50,000 starcoins per month. Bonus won’t be lower than what you got at your previous company.”

The designer: !!

The designer smiled. “Got it, boss. Thank you, boss. I’ll go resign right now.”

What more could anyone want?

A 50,000 base salary, bonuses not lower than the previous job, work-from-home, and not even heavy workload—wasn’t that basically paid vacation?

Afraid someone would steal the role, the designer went to resign immediately after confirming.

Their bonus had already arrived, and they didn’t even want this month’s salary—just wanted the work-from-home dream to start tomorrow.

And afterward, reality proved that working from home was unbelievably sweet.

No coworkers plotting against each other, no boss making trouble, and the boss didn’t even care if they were slacking off. The former designer who once worked overtime until losing hair couldn’t help “grinding” again.

In just one day, they delivered even prettier packaging drafts—and even proactively considered packaging costs, using materials that looked more premium but were actually cheaper.

That insanely strong ability made Xie Xingchen declare he’d scored big.

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