Chapter 129: Fluffy “leaves”
Unlike the enthusiastic students from other classes and the “holier-than-thou” Class Eight classmates, Xiang Chuan regained her calm after the initial emotion upon seeing these familiar plants.
After all, it was because she had seen too many flowers, trees, and plants in the Nature Reserve. For locals from provinces in southern Huaxia, the plants solemnly planted by modern people on the other side of the glass enclosure were not as attractive as those in the Nature Reserve.
At the same time, Xiang Chuan also noticed a problem: In Earth’s climate, although wild vegetables and wild flowers grow wildly in spring, and the tender green new buds on the branches look very pleasing, this also means that the plants in this area are only in a spring state. She watched as fruit trees ignored by modern people were treated by her club members as ornamental trees, feeling quite helpless inside.
It was a miscalculation; she should have done some homework beforehand. Xiang Chuan rubbed her temples.
This botanical garden trip happened suddenly, and preparing the website had distracted her quite a bit, so only now did she realize that she seemed to have no place to shine here.
“Sigh…”
Xiang Chuan sighed and walked to a corner out of sight of the others, opening the Notebook in her Terminal.
This Notebook document recorded the “Ingredient List for Contemporary People” that she had summarized after carefully studying modern people’s diet structure and ingredients over the past month or so.
And ranking first was Soybean.
For her, a heavy-taste person from the southern mountainous areas, Soy Sauce was an indispensable seasoning in daily cooking. Modern people at least hadn’t thrown away salt and chili, so she could barely sustain herself with salty and spicy dishes, but after more than a month here, her patience was nearly at its limit.
Right now, she desperately needed Soy Sauce.
Xiang Chuan frowned at the top-ranked Soybean, feeling a headache coming on.
After all, it was because modern people didn’t know how to process Soy Products. Xiang Chuan once again deeply felt how painful it was to lose food culture.
“Don’t go any further!”
Accompanied by Ouyang Yating’s angry shout, Xiang Chuan felt her rear collar being yanked back hard. She fell backward unprepared, her unbalanced body directly pressing onto the person behind her.
“Huh? Huh?? Yating, why did you suddenly yank me?” Xiang Chuan, whose brain had somewhat glitched, turned her head in a daze and asked.
But Ouyang Yating, bearing Xiang Chuan’s full weight, was not at ease. After all, she wasn’t Nancy, who frequently ran to construction sites and was a physical powerhouse; right now, she was bending her knees and struggling to support Xiang Chuan’s weight.
“You… walk… without even… looking at the road…” Even in this situation, she didn’t forget to complain harshly about Xiang Chuan.
Xiang Chuan straightened her head and looked ahead: Ah, it was a display case that hadn’t been covered with glass yet, with the cabinet door wide open, and a not-shallow pit below.
If she had fallen straight down, she would have at least fractured something or been in pain for days. Xiang Chuan thought.
Fortunately, Ouyang Yating’s ordeal didn’t last long; Nancy and Ainuo hurriedly came to support them both, relieving Ouyang Yating’s knee crisis.
The cost was Xiang Chuan handing over her Meal Box with both hands.
—No way around it! The Water Bottle was already filled with Purified Water, so she could only offer this as compensation.
Ouyang Yating, whose knees and waist had been tormented for over a minute, naturally didn’t hold back and gladly accepted half of the Dim Sum from Xiang Chuan’s Meal Box.
“But the botanical garden staff are really careless; they didn’t even hang up a warning sign or anything.”
Xiang Chuan glared fiercely at the open display case, stuck her head in to look, and unexpectedly found little familiar grassy soil dampness; instead, there was a strange fresh fragrance.
“On non-weekend days, hardly anyone comes to the botanical garden anyway, so the Person in Charge here probably didn’t expect anyone to come over here.” Ainuo looked around; the plants in this area had neither tender green leaves nor pretty flowers, and many had fuzzy attachments on their stems or leaves. During the Class Competition before, he had disdainfully walked around them, and he was even less willing to get close here in the botanical garden.
“Why does no one like coming here?” Xiang Chuan went around to the other side of the display case wanting to check the explanation on the Terminal, but found that the Terminal was temporarily shut off because the display case was under maintenance. “Does it need to be hidden so securely?”
[Beep—Display case maintenance upcoming. Irrelevant personnel, please stay away from the Control Panel.]
A familiar inorganic AI voice came from behind. Everyone turned around to see a spherical AI Robot extending a Mechanical Arm pulling an anti-gravity cart appearing behind them. The floating Robot and cart made no sound while moving, as they were equipped with custom silent devices made by the botanical garden to avoid disturbing guests immersed in the plant surroundings.
It nearly scared Xiang Chuan into slipping and falling again, but Ainuo, standing nearby, was prepared this time and directly yanked her back by the collar. However, this person seemed completely unwilling to have a shoujo manga-style heroic rescue close contact; Xiang Chuan was sent crashing directly into Chou Manman.
I finally get why this person, who looks somewhat human-like, doesn’t attract many other girls from the same grade.
After being helped upright by Chou Manman, Xiang Chuan looked speechlessly at Ainuo, who had already turned his attention to the AI Robot and cart, sighing inwardly like this.
One could only say that modern girls still had some eye for people.
She shook her head and followed the Girls’ Group to the side, watching the AI Robot perform the plant replacement work on the display case.
The newly replaced plants were about as tall as them, with fine fuzz on the stems and leaves, and tiny spots of color in the crevices between leaves and stems, though it was a bit far to see clearly.
Ouyang Yating and the others lost interest immediately upon seeing that the replacements were again the long-haired plants unique to this area. Xiang Chuan looked at the stems and leaves, feeling they were somewhat familiar but couldn’t recall.
No helping it; after being a corporate slave for over ten years in a concrete jungle, she could barely remember what trees in the wild looked like.
But out of curiosity, she stayed put waiting for the AI Robot to finish its work. Seeing Xiang Chuan standing motionless, the others worried she might do something amazingly startling again and sat on the nearby benches to keep her company.
“What plant is this?” As soon as the AI Robot closed the display case door, Xiang Chuan rushed up to ask. A vague childhood memory told her this was something delicious.
[Beep—This is a plant recorded in the Common Era, in the plant kingdom as vascular plant, angiosperm, eudicot, and Rose Plants…]
Rose Plants? Xiang Chuan frowned; she didn’t recall eating Rose Plants. Usually, aside from pretending to beautify by brewing rose petal tea, she rarely contacted such flowers.
[Belonging to Fabaceae family, Glycine genus, scientific name Soybean, also known as Soybean, green bean, Black Bean…]
“Soybean?”
Ouyang Yating and the others exchanged glances: What was this again?
This was no surprise; since the Dark Virus Crisis, Soybean had been excluded from ingredient classifications by efficiency-focused modern people due to its annual herb nature and single annual crop, and its fuzzy branches and leaves kept modern people at bay. However, due to its rich protein, the botanical garden annually donated the Soybeans produced here to the Nature Reserve to feed the herbivorous animals there.
Basically, no normal modern person would fixate on this thing.
“Excuse me!”
Before Ouyang Yating and Ainuo could react to stop her, Xiang Chuan had rushed up and grabbed the spherical AI’s still-extended Mechanical Arm. That fervent gaze gave even big-hearted Nancy chills: This kid wouldn’t have some weird fetish, like robot romance or something?
[Beep—Dear guest, I am the botanical garden A1 area management AI Robot 003, not a service worker…] Perhaps startled by Xiang Chuan’s momentum, the AI Robot’s inorganic voice sounded shaky to everyone.
“Then 003!” Xiang Chuan gripped tighter, afraid it would slip away. “Do you have Soybean? I’ll take it all!”
Soybean! Tofu! Soy Sauce!
Thinking of these delicacies, Xiang Chuan’s gaze burned hotter, giving goosebumps to everyone around.
Is this kid really okay…?
