Chapter 4: Arable Soil
Waking up early the next morning, Zhao Man washed down another quarter of a potato with water. Eating these tubers plain was truly an ordeal. Once he finished, he summoned his resolve and hauled every last bundle of kindling he had bound yesterday back into the yard, stacking them neatly.
Sitting on the ground to catch his breath, Zhao Man pulled out his terminal and continued browsing the forums on Dome 87. He was scheduled to head out scavenging tomorrow, so absorbing as many survival guides as possible now would certainly do no harm.
After skimming the forums for half an hour, there was still no sign of Tang Heng. Zhao Man glanced toward the bamboo grove, thought for a moment, and got to his feet. Grabbing his machete, dagger, bamboo probe, and a woven sack, he made his way outside.
Standing atop the boulders, he noticed an unmistakable hollow nestled in the center of the grove—undoubtedly the snake nest. The mere thought sent a shiver down his spine. Picking up a small stone, he hurled it straight into the hollow and pricked up his ears. Nothing. He threw another and listened closely. Still silence. Only after tossing stones seven or eight times without a peep did Zhao Man switch to holding his bamboo pole in one hand and his machete in the other. He swept through the bamboo grove one more time before switching to detection mode.
Radiation scanning was a standard feature on every base terminal, regardless of the model. All it took was a press of the small toggle on the right side of the device.
Beep-beep. High radiation. Ingestion not recommended.
Beep-beep. High radiation. Ingestion not recommended.
Beep-beep. Toxic plant with high radiation. Ingestion not recommended.
Toxic? Zhao Man pushed the unremarkable weed aside and continued scanning.
Beep-beep. Moderate radiation. Suitable for limited consumption.
A cause for celebration! After nearly an hour of tedious scanning, he had finally located edible vegetation around the periphery of the snake nest.
Another two hours slipped by. Zhao Man scanned every accessible patch in the grove, only to find edible greens exclusively around the nest. Most looked like wild fiddlehead ferns, chameleon plant, and purslane. He gathered them together with care, then tossed the toxic weeds far out of reach.
Heading home, he stashed the greens and slung his hoe over his shoulder. While testing the plants earlier, he had spotted several raised mounds in the earth, a few already cracked to reveal the tips of fresh bamboo shoots.
Back in the grove, he headed straight for the snake nest, digging into every mound he came across. After turning over the entire hollow, he uncovered only two winter shoots and ten tender rhizome tips. Fortunately, every single one tested edible.
Stashing the harvest away, he was just about to pack up and call it a day when the dark loam exposed by his digging caught his eye. Acting on a sudden whim, he smeared a pinch of the damp black dirt across his terminal’s sensor.
Beep-beep. Low-radiation soil. Suitable for cultivation.
Zhao Man burst into a grin.
Depositing the bamboo shoots and rhizomes back in his house, Zhao Man grabbed his woven sacks and returned to the grove. Starting from the center of the nest, he carefully mapped the radiation levels outward. The earth directly beneath the nest was low-radiation arable soil; a two-meter ring surrounding it tested at moderate radiation, while everything beyond that registered as dangerously high.
Thunk!
A strike of the hoe barely scratched the surface. Zhao Man gripped the handle with both hands and levered with all his might, but the loam was an impenetrable tangle of bamboo runners and tough grass roots. Chopping through them proved near impossible. He had to draw his machete to sever the roots on either side before digging further. Digging, chopping, digging, chopping—sweat poured down his face like rain as he gasped for air, eventually yielding barely half a sack of dirt.
Tossing the hoe aside, he collapsed onto the ground, panting heavily. Exhausting!
Just as he caught his breath and debated whether to keep going, his terminal vibrated with an incoming call.
“Hello—”
“You home? Your delivery’s here,” Tang Heng’s voice crackled through.
“I’m here!” Zhao Man answered eagerly. It was the perfect excuse to stop digging. Glancing at his chronometer, he saw it was already noon. Hoisting the sack, he hurried back into the courtyard. Less than ten minutes later, the low rumble of an engine drifted from beyond the gate, followed by Tang Heng’s voice: “Open up.”
A battered pickup truck was parked outside. Tang Heng and Sun Chao stood by the tailgate, hauling a large, square cardboard box between them.
After depositing the heater in the corner of the living space, they made several more trips to bring the rest of the cargo inside. Tang Heng turned to Zhao Man. “Your power line’s all set up. This unit can recharge via solar or plug directly into the wall. The solar cell is fully charged, but the storage battery isn’t topped off yet. You can charge it yourself to save on electricity points.”
Seeing Zhao Man nod, Tang Heng gestured to the remaining supplies on the floor. “Two sacks of potatoes, the heater, and two bags of processed cotton batting. I’ll only charge you ten points for the cotton.”
Zhao Man eyed him. “How many points did you have to cover out of pocket? I’ll pay you back.”
“Oho, look who’s trying to get cozy with the captain,” Sun Chao chimed in from the side.
Tang Heng shot Sun Chao a warning glare. “No need to top it off. If there’s nothing else, we’re taking off.”
Each bag of potatoes was as tall as a person. Zhao Man sized one up and figured a grown man would barely be able to get his arms around it. Grabbing a spare sack from inside, he split one bag into three manageable loads and hauled them into the kitchen.
The bags of cotton were just as massive, packed tight and firm. Luckily, the bedroom door was right beside the entryway, allowing Zhao Man to drag them inside at an angle.
Unboxing the heater, he found it looked much like a modern air conditioner, save for an external solar storage unit. Scanning it with his terminal, he followed the user manual: he placed the storage cell out in the open sun while leaving the main unit inside the bedroom.
After downing another vial of nutrient solution, Zhao Man headed toward the market.
At a small storefront operated by a private hunting party, Zhao Man spotted someone selling meat. Over the past two days of browsing the forums in his spare time, he had picked up quite a bit of common knowledge. This settlement was known as Southwest Base No. 6. Traveling to other bases required venturing beyond the energy shield; without specialized protective gear, the intense solar radiation would kill an unprotected human in short order.
The base was home to numerous hunting squads, both official and freelance. The most renowned outfits—Flying Tiger, Nether Wolf, and Steel Fang—were made up entirely of Alphas.
An Alpha’s mental strength could suppress the psychic backlash of mutated beasts, and paired with specialized radiation suits, it allowed them to hunt in high-radiation zones.
The meat on display wasn’t prime cuts either—just scraps and trimmings. Yet even these odd ends went for two points per half-jin.
Zhao Man couldn’t bring himself to splurge on such a luxury. He turned on his heel and headed toward the roadside stalls. The vendors were uniformly elderly, selling either mutated potatoes or assorted handmade wooden goods. He spent forty cents on two wooden tubs.
The market wasn’t particularly large, tucked away underground. Potatoes were cheap enough: two points for a sack of thirty-odd tubers, each about the size of two adult fists. A fifty-jin sack was generally enough to keep a Beta from starving for a month.
Noticing that every single stall sold potatoes, Zhao Man found a quiet corner and opened Dome 87 to search the term. After filtering out heaps of irrelevant chatter, he turned up official bulletins covering the successful cultivation and promotion of improved potato strains, government initiatives incentivizing potato farming, cultivation guides, planting recruitment drives, and countless recipe collections.
Base-wide farming! No wonder such filling food was so cheap.
Zhao Man stopped by a base-run supply store and found a small amount of planting soil for sale. It was outrageously expensive—a pouch barely sufficient for a single flowerpot cost a steep five points. Remembering the dirt behind his house, he pulled up an agricultural guide. Rule Number One: To farm the land, first disinfect and condition the soil.
Browsing the chemical section, he found disinfectants ranging from dirt-cheap to exorbitantly priced. The cheapest was fifty cents, packaged in a vial no larger than medicinal tonic; once diluted with water, it could sterilize one cubic meter of earth. Zhao Man opted for a ten-point bottle roughly the size of a mineral water container. Spotting bolts of fabric, he spent another eighty cents on a five-by-five-meter sheet. To the touch, it was dense and soft, yet carried the distinct coarse texture of natural plant fibers. He also picked up a long-sleeved work suit and a pair of leather boots for one point.
Loading everything into his wooden tubs, Zhao Man headed home. He changed into the oversized work clothes and boots, tucked his trouser legs securely into the leather shafts, and sheared off a strip of fabric to wrap tightly around his neck. Fully geared up, he grabbed his sacks, hoe, and machete, and marched back into the bamboo grove to resume digging.
The earth was choked with bamboo runners, tree roots, and wild grass. Every few strikes of the hoe forced him to draw his machete to sever the thicker tangles. Digging, chopping, resting, and testing by turns, by the time the ambient chatter from the outer perimeter drifted into the grove, Zhao Man had not only mapped the exact boundary of the arable soil, but had also excavated a sizable mound of dirt.
The truly usable soil extended only about half a meter out from the snake nest. Another half-meter band was moderately irradiated, while everything beyond that was dangerously hot.
Grabbing his sacks, he shoveled the clods inside, setting each bag aside once it was half full. After filling two, he slid a bamboo pole through the handles, hoisted the load across his shoulders, and carried them back to dump in the courtyard.
He made four trips in total, having to dig a little extra on the final run to top off the last two sacks.
Tossing the carrying pole to the ground, Zhao Man collapsed onto his backside, staring blankly up at the sky with nothing but his own ragged gasps ringing in his ears.
Once he caught his breath, he picked up the hoe again. The soil came up in dense clods riddled with root fibers. He broke them apart stroke by stroke, picking out the stray roots and tossing them aside. Beads of sweat rolled down his cheeks and struck the paved yard, forming dark circles that vanished within seconds.
Zhao Man hitched up his sleeve to wipe his face. Once the soil was finely broken down and spread across the courtyard, he fetched a basin of water, mixed in half a cap of disinfectant, and stirred it with a stick before splashing it over the dirt. Shoveling the mixture until it was thoroughly blended, he scooped it into woven sacks and stacked them neatly against the wall.
Having packed away four sacks of soil, he took a sip of water and sat down on a bamboo log, resting for half an hour before turning his attention to the wild greens.
Filling the pot with water, he tossed in a washed potato. Once the water came to a rolling boil, he dropped in the leafy greens, watched for them to change color, and fished them out immediately with his chopsticks. Then, he tossed in the peeled bamboo shoots and rhizomes.
Drawing his kitchen knife, he sliced the shoots into thin strips and laid them out alongside the rhizomes and blanched greens atop the bamboo logs to dry in the courtyard.
By the time the vegetables were prepped, the potato still wasn’t cooked through. Zhao Man washed up, laundered his clothes, and retrieved the leftover quarter-potato from breakfast. Enduring that familiar chalky astringency, Zhao Man chewed on a stalk of raw chameleon plant he’d gathered from the grove. Without any seasoning, the flavor was an absolute trial.
Retreating indoors, Zhao Man spread the complimentary woven mat over his wooden plank bed, lay down, and fired up Dome 87 to look for work.
