Chapter 124 Pandora Obtains the Wood Spirit Core (Fourth Update)

There weren't many people at the collection point No. 53, and relatively speaking, there weren't many edible wild vegetables either. The reason why no one picked this mutated beet was mainly because all the large leaves growing on the ground were highly radioactive, and none of them were edible.

Before the cataclysm on Green Algae Star, sugar beets were always wild and no one had discovered that they could be used to make sugar. At that time, Green Algae Star mainly relied on sugarcane for its sugar.

After the cataclysm, beets also mutated, but once their leaves sprouted, they easily became highly radioactive and inedible.

Someone had dug up its roots, but the giant radish had a thick layer of wood on its outside, so no one knew that there was edible, high-sugar flesh hidden inside.

This is the fundamental reason why Zuo Shan was able to find this leak at the collection point. Agricultural experts had no idea that it could be used to make sugar; otherwise, they would have taken it back to cultivate seeds and promoted its planting long ago.

Zuo Shan felt she should report this matter. It wasn't that she was selfless; on the contrary, she had her own selfish motives. If sugar beets could be widely cultivated in the world, sugar production would be much higher in the future, and she would be able to afford to eat sugar whenever she wanted.

But she wasn't sure who to report this to or what procedures to follow. Then she thought of someone—agricultural expert Chu Heng.

Without thinking, she sent Chu Heng a message, briefly mentioning that beetroot could be used to make sugar, but Chu Heng was probably busy and didn't reply.

She's busy too, so she won't wait for his reply; she needs to continue collecting data.

All morning, apart from that beet plant, there was almost no harvest; only a few leaves of purslane the size of a fan were collected.

Donkey hoof vegetable is also one of the wild vegetables that local scavengers do not like. It has a certain degree of poisoning and is quite bitter when eaten raw. Most scavengers are used to eating the vegetable leaves raw because they believe that cooking will destroy the nutrients in the vegetable leaves and waste firewood.

Despite not reaping much, Zuo Shan was not discouraged and strolled around unhurriedly.

As she walked, she discovered a low-lying area where groundwater seemed to be seeping out. Many fallen, half-green and half-yellow leaves covered the area, and water would gush out from under her feet when she stepped on them.

Zuo Shan suddenly got playful, picked up a stick, and started poking around.

With each poke, water would gush out from under the leaves, and sometimes a small stream of water would spurt out, splashing onto her face and hands.

While playing, she suddenly noticed a rather thick piece of rotten wood lying not far away. She couldn't tell what kind of tree it was, but she saw something about the size of a bowl, half yellow and half white, stuck to the rotten wood. It seemed to have been gnawed on by something, leaving obvious bite marks.

Her heart skipped a beat; could this be a mushroom?

She rushed over quickly, took a closer look, and sure enough, they were half-dried mushrooms.

She first made a small incision with the detection knife, and then the announcement came through: "Beep! Moderately radiation-contaminated wild mushroom detected, edible!"

Zuo Shan was immediately excited. He took out his dagger and carefully scraped off the gnawed mushroom from the tree stump and put it away.

Then she forcefully flipped the tree stump over, and on the side that was touching the ground, she found two more black fungus about the size of a palm. One of them was half rotten, but the other one and a half was still intact.

This time, Zuo Shan stopped picking and directly put the entire piece of rotten wood into the space button.

During the long, extremely cold weather, she thought she had some time to slowly figure out how to grow mushrooms and wood ear fungus.

Things grown in a room away from sunlight might have low radiation levels, right?

The mere thought of it excited her immensely.

If she can grow low-radiation mushrooms and wood ear fungus, will baby Achen's health be better than other children's?

Even if we can't win at the starting line, we can't lose at the starting line, right?

Perhaps she was too emotional, because the baby in her belly started to respond to her by rolling around. She could feel the emotions it was conveying to her, and it was very happy.

Lunch break time arrived, and Pandole and Xiaobao both ran back. Mao Li also marked more than a dozen edible leaves and sent the location to Pandole.

The little girl couldn't wait until the afternoon to harvest, so she ran off in a flash and brought all the leaves back half an hour later.

During lunch, the little girl complained, "Sister, this place is no good. There are too few edible wild vegetables. We won't come here again."

"Okay, then I won't come back. I'll go find some bargains elsewhere." Zuo Shan agreed with a smile, and handed her a cassava cake.

Although the cooled cassava cakes weren't as soft and chewy as the freshly made ones, they were still quite delicious and sweet, and Pandora ate them with great satisfaction.

She kept exclaiming, "Sister, our lives are almost as good as those noblemen now, aren't they? We can eat our fill every day and we no longer wake up hungry in the middle of the night."

If I could live like this forever, I'd be willing to endure any hardship or toil.

If it weren't for the limited capacity of the space button, which she would have to return to that little white creature in the future, Pandora would never have been able to afford to eat her fill. She wanted to store up lots and lots of food so she would never have to go hungry again.

"Don't worry, as long as we work hard, we won't go hungry anymore." Zuo Shan smiled and patted her head.

Pan Duole took out a fist-sized, dark green bead and handed it to her: "Sister, I wonder if this can be sold for money?"

Upon seeing the bead, Mao Li immediately became excited: "This is a wood spirit core condensed from a third-tier mutated plant! Where did you get it? Are you injured?"

"I wasn't injured. When I was collecting today, I passed by a patch of strange rocks. That place didn't look like a place where I could collect edible leaves. I was about to take a detour when the two guys inside me got in the way."

They kept sending me messages, directing me to go in a certain direction.

Then I saw a huge vine with dense leaves, some green, some red, and some yellow; it looked quite beautiful.

They completely covered a small hill from top to bottom.

The vines sensed that I had entered their territory and immediately launched an attack on me. Then, the two guys inside my body joined forces and used all their energy to attack them.

Normally, those two are never on good terms; they're always fighting and bickering, which drives me crazy. But this time, they're acting like they're having a meltdown, behaving like a family, united against a common enemy, and holding nothing back.

After being attacked by their energy, the vines withered in large patches, and then I saw a large, tumor-like knot at the base of the roots close to the ground.

I used a knife and struggled for a long time to cut the knot, then pulled the bead out. I didn't know what it was for, so I just threw it into the sack and brought it back.” Pandora looked at the bead with obvious disgust on his face.

She was actually afraid of these kinds of beads. When she first encountered the resurrection grass, she was lured by its beads and almost lost her life.

The reason she was willing to bring the bead back this time was because those two guys had gone to great lengths to defeat the vines, and it would seem a bit of a loss not to bring back this trophy.