Chapter 237 — Seeds
“If I had known, I would have brought more,” Wang Duo muttered under his breath, seeing people still coming over to ask after everything had sold out.
“Should we head back now and haul some more over?” Fearing they wouldn’t be able to handle having too many vegetables at home, Luo Xun and the others had intentionally controlled their vegetable yield earlier. Instead, they had planted a large number of crops that required long-term cultivation, which hadn’t matured yet.
Those long-term crops required more time to grow, but the resulting harvest often lasted longer in storage.
Standing to the side, Zhang Su threw cold water on their ideas. Slanting his eyes, he let out a cold snort. “Are you guys trying to find a faster way to get killed? Rushing back right now to grab supplies—aren’t you afraid a long string of tails will track you from behind? Even if you manage to haul it back to continue setting up a stall this time, a whole crowd of people will follow us the next time we leave.”
Granted, all kinds of people had gathered here to set up stalls, including those who had traveled great distances from alternative bases. However, those factions operated in columns of multiple vehicles; their numbers were vast, their fleets immense, and their presence thunderous. Even if someone harbored designs on their resources, they wouldn’t necessarily dare to make a move.
But the members of the Otaku Team were different. If someone discovered that their squad consisted of only these two vehicles, and that they could rush back to haul more cargo to replenish their stall after selling out—all while explicitly not residing inside the Southwest Base—forget about the independent squads from the local factions, even those far-traveled convoys would likely target them.
Hearing Zhang Su’s words, the group instantly deflated. And wasn’t that exactly the case? How could they focus purely on liquidating goods while completely ignoring their own safety parameters? If they truly dashed back right now to haul cargo back for sale, wouldn’t they be explicitly asking to get robbed?
Luo Xun didn’t participate in the group’s frantic gossiping and chatting. He was currently pumping information out of a local survivor who had just completed a transaction with him—someone they had worked with previously and who still resided inside the Southwest Base. Conversing amiably while picking up details regarding the current conditions inside the Southwest Base, he chatted for a brief moment before bidding them farewell, turning to wander the market to purchase supplies alongside Yan Fei.
The merchandise arrayed across the marketplace was a chaotic medley, vastly more complex and varied than what they had seen before moving out of the Southwest Base. Browsing through it now was truly dazzling, and attempting to meticulously inspect every single stall within a single day was virtually an impossibility. Aside from the vendors who explicitly put up massive signs to broadcast advertisements from afar, or those whose entire vehicle beds were packed with a single visible commodity, all the stalls required visiting one by one to conduct a meticulous inspection.
Luo Xun dragged Yan Fei along to wander for the entire morning, the woven straw basket slung over his back filling up with a massive medley of miscellaneous odds and ends, before finally returning to their own stall. The crew rotated inside the truck cab to casually grab a simple, convenient lunch. Only after wiping the stray crumbs clean from the corners of their mouths did they step down to continue managing the stall or browsing the market.
The members who had wandered the market in the morning stayed behind to watch the counter in the afternoon, leaving the remaining faction to circulate through the marketplace.
Luo Xun completed a rough tally of the remaining inventory, expressing his sentiment: “Our sales velocity is remarkably decent.” All the dried vegetables and fruits they had hauled out were completely cleared by now, and even the metal containers and woven straw crafts had liquidated substantially. If things progressed along this trajectory, they could pack up their gear and head home the absolute moment the market closed tonight.
“Brother Luo, what’s our move after this? Do we head straight home or continue browsing?” Squatting in the shadow flanking the truck bed to evade the blistering sun was He Qiankun. The weather today was intensely humid and sweltering, and what was even more terrifying—operating an open-air stall here meant there was no air conditioning!! Forget about air conditioning; even if they housed functional electric fans at their base, they didn’t dare bring them along inside the trucks to use right now.
Luo Xun scanned the immediate perimeter, a trace of melancholy reflecting in his chest as he let out a soft sigh. “Let’s evaluate the situation.” The volume of supplies they had hauled out this time was already quite substantial, but the vast majority had already been cleared. Honestly, keeping the remaining items on display for another full day wouldn’t quite cover the baseline effort. However, if they still wanted to browse the market, leaving the trucks and the cargo stored inside the parking lot tomorrow without their own people watching over them felt intensely unsettling.
But if they parked the vehicles outside the marketplace and left a fraction of the crew behind to guard them, in the event of a sudden emergency, the remaining members might not be able to deploy assistance in time.
Yet, upon alternative reflection, while the marketplace housed an immense variety of supplies, the items truly worth purchasing required meticulous screening. Under these dynamics, even if they lingered for another two days, they might not necessarily complete a thorough circuit…
With the blistering sun baking from above, Luo Xun’s thoughts grew increasingly jumbled. He felt as though the moisture inside his skull was about to be completely evaporated by the sun, his brain matter thickening to a point where it could barely function.
Yan Fei found his appearance highly amusing, reaching out to rub his head with a smile. “Go inside the cab to cool off for a bit.” In reality, the truck interior still housed cooling apparatuses. When they were out sweeping various locations for merchandise previously, they had unearthed a few handheld electronic fans from a convenience kiosk. Regrettably, the absolute majority of those items relied on standard batteries, and post-apocalyptic batteries were exceptionally difficult to unearth and preserve. The small fans brought along inside the truck right now were USB-powered fans they had unexpectedly harvested from the computer city.
Hearing his words, He Qiankun’s eyes immediately flashed with vibrant excitement as he looked at Luo Xun, also recalling those miniature fans.
Consequently, Luo Xun and He Qiankun scrambled up into the cargo bed, hiding behind the large crates packing the coal. Each held a small fan linked to an external power supply to cool themselves off, leaning against the coal crates to restore their focus. And then—Luo Xun stared speechlessly at the chubby young man a short distance away, feeling that the thermal output radiating from that coordinate rivaled a miniature sun. The breeze whipped over by the tiny fan felt entirely warm, delivering absolutely zero cooling effect.
The water-type and wind-type users—the two individuals in the squad capable of lowering the ambient temperature—were both away at the moment, forcing Luo Xun to rely purely on his own efforts to ply the broken little fan. Waiting for a brief moment, cradled against a mountain of dark coal amidst the high temperature, he unexpectedly fell fast asleep.
By the time Yan Fei climbed up to look for him, he found Luo Xun snoring softly, and he suppressed a chuckle as he shook him awake.
“What’s wrong?” Luo Xun rubbed his eyes, feeling his clothes clinging to his skin from the sweat. The little fan beside his hand had tipped over onto the floorboards, blasting air straight toward the ceiling.
“They’re back. They said they spotted a stall liquidating seeds, and want you to take a look.” Although they had been cultivating vegetables for a significant duration—allowing them to discern which seeds in a handful were relatively healthy and which ones wouldn’t necessarily sprout if planted—when it came to highly professional parameters, they had to rely on Luo Xun to step up and conduct a proper evaluation.
For instance, identifying the exact strain and absolute quality.
“Seeds for what?” Luo Xun instantly sparked into focus, rubbing his eyes and slapping his cheeks once more to wake up completely.
“Reportedly brought in by a base operating in the south. It seems they have cotton seeds.” Yan Fei’s words successfully left Luo Xun completely alert. Cotton seeds… talk about an absolute treasure! If they were authentic, it would be phenomenal.
Harboring a trace of minor excitement inside his chest, Luo Xun hurriedly scrambled down from the truck to locate Xu Mei and the others who had just returned.
Xu Mei pointed toward a specific coordinate. “Right over at stall 107. They have several alternative seed varieties as well. None of us have seen them before and we didn’t dare purchase blindly; the vendor is liquidating them at an exceptionally premium price.” Seeds were unlike alternative commodities; even the standard pricing for seeds inside the major bases wasn’t cheap, let alone at this marketplace.
Gathering a reserve of raw crystals, Luo Xun and Yan Fei headed straight toward that specific lane. After searching for a brief moment, they located their objective—the perimeter of that stall was currently encircled by a few survivors, who were standing in hesitant uncertainty as they evaluated the merchandise on display.
After all, unless someone attempted to cultivate a small batch to test them, there was absolutely no method to verify what exactly could grow from seeds—especially after the onset of the apocalypse.
Furthermore, among the surviving populace currently alive, how many had authentic experience working open fields? Even if they had cultivated some crops, they wouldn’t necessarily recognize every single plant variety and its corresponding seeds.
Drawing near the stall, Luo Xun smoothly approached the front of the counter without much physical effort, bending down to meticulously inspect the small pouches holding various colors of seeds.
The colors and contours appeared to have zero discrepancies. After all, when he was hoarding reference data before the apocalypse, he had explicitly unearned corresponding image files and memorized them with absolute discipline. But as for whether these items were authentic…
Mulling it over, Luo Xun evaluated the price tags arrayed behind every single small pouch, turning to look at the merchant managing the counter. “Can your seeds be tested?”
“Tested? How exactly do you expect to test them?” The man froze for a split second, his expression turning somewhat ugly immediately after. “Buy them or leave them, and if you aren’t buying, clear the lane immediately! Do you expect me to sit around waiting for you to grow them before I can sell?!” Seeds were structurally unique compared to alternative goods. Alternative merchandise could mostly be verified as authentic or counterfeit on the spot by the public, and even food items could be sampled or arrayed as rehydrated specimens for people to inspect like Luo Xun’s team had displayed. The absolute difficulty of verifying the authenticity of seeds on the spot was far too extreme, which was why this stall had managed to liquidate only a tiny fraction of its stock since the market opened, its business parameters tragic to the absolute extreme.
Luo Xun wasn’t provoked either, offering a smile as he pointed toward the small pouches arrayed before him. “I’ll offer a single crystal to select a few seed varieties. Just give me a single grain of each.”
The man froze once more, staring suspiciously at Luo Xun to evaluate him from head to toe. Could this individual possess a method to verify the authenticity of seeds on the fly… could a wood-type superpower user truly exist on this earth? Thinking up to this point, he asked once more with deep suspicion, “If I hand them to you, how exactly are you going to verify them?”
“Taste them, of course.” Whether seeds had been tampered with or compromised couldn’t be discerned purely by sight. Luo Xun’s primitive method could at least verify whether these seeds had been boiled or cooked; if they had been frozen past redemption, there was truly no way to tell. But unexpectedly, the absolute moment the words left his lips, the vendor’s face darkened completely, and he immediately waved his hands to drive him off. “Get lost, get lost! Stop causing a disruption here! If you want to buy, you buy them by the ounce; if not, beat it!”
Catching his defensive stance, Luo Xun didn’t even need to ask further, letting out a cold snort. “No wonder. Figures.” He knew there couldn’t be an asset that convenient floating around. To think someone would be liquidating crop seeds of this caliber that had clearly never dropped in value? Furthermore, the seed varieties arrayed across his counter were completely comprehensive, even encompassing wheat and paddy rice; almost every core crop required for basic livelihood was wrapped into the inventory.
One had to realize that the seeds for numerous core crops were immensely precious; the vast majority of factions would rather preserve them for their own cultivation fields than ever bring them out for liquidation—this was especially true for seeds harvested from standard and premium mutated crops.
Seeing Luo Xun mock him, the vendor’s expression shifted violently. He rose to his feet alongside the few companions flanking him, and the arms of the two men leading the group let out a sharp crack-snap cadence, ballooning in muscle density at a velocity visible to the naked eye—strength-type superpower users, level four minimum.
However, before they could even find the time to execute a physical maneuver or utter a threat, a succession of razor-sharp metal daggers materialized, their tips pointed straight at the pupils of every single individual. The absolute clearance separating the steel from their eyes did not exceed five centimeters; if they failed to perceive the threat and lunged forward, their eyes would be completely ruined right then and there…
A synchronized break of cold sweat erupted from the foreheads of those men. The elemental reaction velocity of this superpower user was far too extreme! Before they had even executed an action, these lethal weapons had seamlessly flown right in front of their eyes!
Luo Xun cast a sideways glance at those men, pocketing his deep disappointment as he turned to look at Yan Fei beside him. “Let’s head back. If I had known, I wouldn’t have made this trip.”
As the two turned to walk away, those metal daggers vanished as if they had never existed, completely disappearing from sight within the blink of an eye.
“…Second Brother, what element was that superpower?”
“…No idea.” No idea, completely unable to deduce the parameter. They hadn’t even caught where those daggers had materialized from or how they had vanished. Exactly like a water-type or fire-type user, those blades appeared to have manifested out of thin air. How was that structurally possible? They hadn’t even heard rumors of an application of this tier…
Thank you for reading 🙂 I hope you all liked my translations. If you enjoyed my work, please consider buying me a Ko-Fi 😉
