After Encountering My Deceased Wife, I Became the Male Lead's Love Rival - Chapter 51

Chapter 51: Planting Vegetables

“As recorded in ancient texts, there are Merfolk in Nanxing, known as Quanxian. Living in the waters, their songs can heal a hundred ailments.” Amidst the haze, the memories of the original owner were transmitted into Fang Ziyue’s mind.

“Regrettably, merfolk have long been extinct. Now, apart from research into mental energy soothing drugs, there is no way left to save your life.” The elderly voice in the memory belonged to the original owner’s teacher.

In this interstellar era, there are no edible plants. To delay the catastrophic mental energy riots, humans can only rely on weird-tasting nutrient solutions. The original owner’s teacher was a researcher of these solutions; he had improved them three times, increasing the efficacy by three percentage points. Relying on the reputation of her late teacher, the talentless original owner earned a fortune by selling counterfeit nutrient solutions.

However, this ill-gotten wealth was not easily spent. After a young man from a wealthy family suffered an accelerated mental riot because of her solution, that family beat the original owner severely and threw her onto a Desolate Planet.

The Desolate Planet was a humid, black planet with fertile black soil, ample sunlight, and a suitable climate. Unfortunately, interstellar plants were not suited to grow here, and ancient plants had long since gone extinct; this planet became an existence abandoned by the Interstellar Alliance.

Fang Ziyue was woken up by hunger. Clutching her stomach and relying on the original owner’s memory, she stumbled to the bedside and fumbled out a tube of nutrient solution from under the bed. The green solution looked quite beautiful, the flowing liquid interspersed with bright gold powder, appearing as if it might taste good.

Fang Ziyue unscrewed the cap and, starved, gulped down more than half the tube in one go.

“Ugh…” It felt like the slime left behind by a crawling slug and tasted like vomit.

“BLEGH!!”

Fang Ziyue rushed into the bathroom and vomited until the world turned dark. She knew nutrient solutions tasted bad, but she hadn’t expected them to be this bad! A taste made of ten-year-old vomit collected from a sewer mixed with fresh carrion—were these things truly meant for human consumption?

“Host, do you require the system’s services?” The elusive system suddenly popped up.

Fang Ziyue, disgusted and incessantly rinsing the taste from her mouth with water, frowned. This fellow never visited without a reason; it was impossible for it to help her for nothing.

“What is the price?”

The system responded decisively: “One: Revive ancient plants. Two: Awaken an ancient biological species.”

The little silver orb transformed into the shape of a mermaid, flicking its tail as it said, “In exchange, the system can provide you with ancient plant seeds and shorten the growth and maturation time of the plants.”

Fang Ziyue, whose appetite had been killed by that tube of solution, wiped the water from her chin, tilted her head, and asked the system, “Why are you suddenly assigning me other tasks?” The system hadn’t issued any tasks in the previous two worlds; Fang Ziyue had to be wary.

“It is like this: the Main Space recently introduced a system where the system can be upgraded by paying points,” the system’s electronic voice actually carried a hint of bashfulness. “And points can only be earned by the Host and then transferred to or used for trading with the system.”

Of course, the tasks dispatched by the system were not mandatory; the Host had the right to refuse. But the system beside her was very crafty; it chose the moment Fang Ziyue was at her most desperate to offer the most tempting conditions.

Fang Ziyue shook her head and said decisively, “Deal.”

She closed her eyes to check the data transmitted by the system. But this time, she couldn’t find any information about her wife in the data. Even half of the original plot was shielded. She could only know that in the original plot, Ling Qiu was rescued from the mouth of a sea monster by the male lead’s father, who lost his life in the process.

Before he died, the male lead’s father made a contract with Ling Qiu, requiring that she not leave the male lead, Liang Xiuyue, until she cured his mental energy riot.

Fang Ziyue rubbed her chin, lost in thought. Her wife can treat mental riots? So she is also a nutritionist?

In this era, nutritionists are ranked. The higher the rank, the better the effect of the nutrient solution in treating mental riots. But so far, there is only one S-rank nutritionist in the entire galaxy, residing on the Imperial Planet. But even the nutrient solutions he formulates cannot completely cure a mental riot. Thus, the father’s contract was to forcibly bind her wife to the male lead’s side.

Fang Ziyue narrowed her eyes and weighed the seeds in her hand. It seemed she had to find a way to research better nutrient solutions. After all, this body’s mental energy was unstable; the original owner had died during a mental riot.

The population on the Desolate Planet was small. It was a place of exile, where some of the most heinous criminals and those with severe mental riots gathered. The original owner’s house was built on a patch of fertile, flat land, and she had fenced off a large area. But what satisfied Fang Ziyue most was that there were few people around her home.

After the wealthy family threw the original owner onto the Desolate Planet, they widely publicized her “glorious deeds,” making her an outcast. If it weren’t for the fact that the people on the outskirts of the safe zone were too busy struggling with their own mental energy, the original owner would have been beaten to death long ago.

In the Alliance, everyone loathes counterfeit nutrient solutions. Effective solutions are expensive; some people save for a lifetime just to buy one tube. If they encounter a black-hearted piece of work like the original owner, it’s hard to imagine how devastated they would be.

A heavy rain had fallen two days ago, and the black soil in the yard was perfect for planting. Fang Ziyue simply rummaged through the junk room for some old metal and made her own set of gardening tools.

Ploughing the land and opening ridges, Fang Ziyue didn’t plant too many vegetables at first; she planted many varieties but in small quantities. Although the system told her the seed stock was sufficient, it didn’t mean she could get seeds for free.

Under the system’s acceleration, tender sprouts broke through the soil one by one, their emerald leaves shivering in the sunlight, revealing a vibrant vitality. Succulent Chinese cabbages stretched their bodies, looking for all the world like they were labeled “I am delicious.” Pink radishes poked their cute tops out of the mud, tempting the grower to pluck them.

Crunchy cucumbers, sweet and sour persimmons… these vegetables that should have ripened at different times of the year all matured together under the system’s blessing.

Fang Ziyue crouched by the ridge, her eyes welling with tears. Heavens, she can finally escape those strange nutrient solutions.

Dazed with hunger, the woman tenderly plucked a cucumber, washed it with the water in the yard, and took a bite; it was crisp. Sweet and refreshing, wu…

The woman, who was truly about to cry now, nimbly began harvesting her vegetables, but she stopped when she reached the first cabbage. Fang Ziyue straightened up; why did she feel that her jumbled mental energy had improved a bit? Uncertain, she simply snapped off a leaf, washed it, and bit into the white, tender stem. It was slightly sweet and crisp.

Mhm… Her restless mental energy indeed showed a tendency to quiet down.

This was a useful discovery. Fang Ziyue put away part of the harvest and let the system push the rest to ripen until they seeded. With the system, she would soon harvest a large batch of seeds.

Clutching her vegetable basket and salivating with greed, the woman prepared to cook herself a sumptuous dinner to console her aching, hungry stomach and her taste buds that had been revolted by the nutrient solution. Of course, before that, she didn’t forget to have the system monitor the surroundings; she didn’t want to be discovered halfway through cooking and invite big trouble.

The system monitored the vicinity as requested, and until Fang Ziyue began eating, it found no abnormalities. However, the only abnormality was in a place it couldn’t detect, deep in an ocean thousands of miles away.

A deep blue fish tail swayed in the water, reflecting bright light in the rays filtering through the surface. Fins, like thin, transparent gauze, floated submissively in the flowing water.

The mermaid, whose face was pale and whose body exuded an aura of death, swam upward sluggishly. She had been in a forced slumber to recover her nearly exhausted mental energy, but she was suddenly awakened from her sleep by a surge of energy. To the east, a force was calling to her.

When the deep blue-tailed mermaid reached the coast, that beautiful tail transformed into fair, slender legs. Dressed in rough, tattered clothes, her long black hair hung wet, veiling her face. She was like a walking corpse, slowly passing through the flow of people who avoided her.

This was the safe zone on the Desolate Planet, where many people with mild mental riots gathered.

“Heavens, it’s that lunatic again. Why do the Liangs let her out?!”

“A debt-collecting ghost clinging to the Liang family; I don’t know how she has the nerve to stick to that boy Liang Xiuyue.”

“Isn’t that the truth? I heard Little Liang found a girlfriend, but because of this crazy woman, the girl’s parents flatly refused the marriage.”

“If it were me, I wouldn’t agree either. Should one’s precious daughter marry into that family to wait on a lunatic?”

People on the road covered their noses and mouths, their eyes full of disdain, gathered in twos and threes gossiping. Someone even maliciously stuck out a leg to trip her, but the woman, who smelled of sea brine, dodged it. Her agile movements at this moment were a matter of instinct—avoiding risk, tearing apart enemies. Her nails, hidden beneath long sleeves, grew long but were suppressed in an instant.

This is not her planet; she must endure.

Seeing that he failed to trip her, the man who stuck out his leg spat in disgust: “Disgusting crazy old woman! You’re literally polluting the environment of the safe zone by being alive!”

The people in the safe zone had long been fed up with this lunatic. Every day she was soaking wet and smelling of the sea, her hair covering her face so no one could see her features; she was as terrifying as a water ghost.

“Liang Xiuyue is so piteous, how did he get stuck with such a lunatic?”

“Hah, that goes back to his father’s time…”

The sounds of gossip rose again, while the protagonist cursed by everyone swayed as she walked toward the east. Along the muddy path, all the way east, past the gate of the safe zone. Amidst the remarks of onlookers “Heavens, she actually left the safe zone?! She’s crazy!” “That lunatic is finally gone!” and “She’s completely lost it” she walked further and further away.

Meanwhile, Fang Ziyue had just finished planting a new batch of seeds. Dark clouds gathered on the horizon, and the faint sound of thunder echoed.

Fang Ziyue, having finished washing up, curled up under the covers, thinking dizzily that this rain would probably fall for a day and a night.

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