Chapter 66 The So-Called Feast (Bonus Chapter for 1314 Donations)

After getting off the bus, Zuo Shan had no time for sentimentality.

Before me stretched a vast sea of ​​flowers, each plant about two or three meters tall, with twelve or thirteen side branches growing from it.

Each side branch has about 5 or 6 golden, full-moon shaped flowers, and a small moonflower plant has about 70 flowers on its flower head.

At first glance, the small sunflower looks a lot like the sunflower in her memory, but its flower head is relatively smaller, about 20 centimeters in diameter.

The small moonflower has eight petals and a red crescent-shaped stamen; it looks really beautiful.

According to Jia Yiming, the flower field covers 50 hectares, while their Flying Tiger Mercenary Group was assigned 5 hectares today. There are a total of 220 people on this trip.

Zuo Shan noticed that the row spacing and spacing between each plant were about 3 meters, which means that they were assigned a total of more than 5,500 plants, and each person was assigned about 25 plants.

To pick all the flowers, there are approximately 1800 flowers.

If the plants were low-lying, picking these flowers wouldn't be too difficult. But these plants are so tall that you have to use a ladder to reach them. Climbing up and down and cutting them off one by one is quite a lot of work.

She really missed Xiaobao right now; if it could help, this task would be much easier.

The mercenary group offered 1 silver coin for 20 flower plates.

It's not that they're stingy; when they're picking in the wild, they often have to test a dozen or even dozens of leaves before they can find one that's edible. On the worst days, they might not find a single edible leaf in a whole day.

These small moonflowers don't need any testing at all; all the flower heads just need to be cut off and put into the plastic baskets provided by District 46.

Since he was already there, he decided to make the best of it and grit his teeth and get to work.

However, as a pregnant woman, climbing high and low was indeed a bit inconvenient for her, so she decided to cooperate with Pandora.

She was responsible for moving ladders, organizing and packing baskets, and cutting flower pots under 1.5 meters in height, while Pandole was responsible for cutting the larger ones.

Don't underestimate the importance of sorting. If one person picks the flowers and climbs to a high place, the cut flower heads can only be thrown into the basket at random, making a mess. The basket will be full after only a few flowers.

But if someone is in charge of sorting them, stacking them one on top of another and arranging them neatly, then the basket can hold a lot.

At first, Pandora didn't quite understand why she had to tidy up the flower pots, but she was happy to help Fan Sister climb higher.

Later, she discovered that their baskets could hold at least two planters, while others' baskets couldn't even hold one planter. The time it took them to drag their baskets to the inspection point was several times longer.

After working continuously for 9 hours, it was finally lunchtime. Pan Duole went to the inspection point to take a look and found that their duo had submitted the most.

In just one morning, they handed in a total of 35 plants and 2,500 flower pots, earning a net profit of 125 silver coins, which they split equally, giving each of them 62.5 silver coins.

Pan Duole was overjoyed. She had never earned so many silver coins in half a day before!

The fish she caught that day didn't count. Her mother said that the fish could only be eaten secretly and couldn't be sold, otherwise others would be watching, and then she wouldn't be able to catch fish in that ditch anymore.

Pan Duole inquired and found out that among all the people who collected the plants today, only Ding Yi and her uncle worked together to complete 30 plants and 2200 flower pots.

The rest of the people worked alone. The fastest among them only completed 13 plants and 1,080 flower pots. The two working alone were far from achieving the same results as the group working together.

Jia Yiming saw the smiles on their faces. He had found them—a pregnant woman and a child—and they had accomplished far more work than the seemingly efficient middle-aged women. Naturally, he felt proud.

The older women eventually realized that working together was faster than working alone. However, when it came to finding someone to work with, disputes arose about who should climb higher, as everyone felt that climbing was too tiring and there was a risk of falling. In the end, the idea of ​​working together fell through.

Lunch was a vegetable porridge. The vegetables were the radish greens left over after the people of District 46 harvested the radishes from their fields, along with a little bit of bran left over from grinding refined flour, all cooked together.

Left fan:......

It turns out that what she called a "full meal" was this kind of food that she used to feed pigs in the countryside, food that even pigs wouldn't eat. It was far inferior to her homemade yam and wild vegetable paste.

Although she felt disgusted, seeing everyone else wolfing down their food, she could only force herself to swallow the pain that stung her throat.

Children under the age of fourteen are allotted two-thirds of a basin, while those over the age of fourteen are allotted a whole basin.

The basins were all the same size, with a capacity of about 1 liter. Zuo Shan ate more than half of the basin, but couldn't swallow any more. Waves of nausea rose in her stomach, and the morning sickness she had never experienced before finally came.

But she dared not vomit.

If she really threw up, I wonder how many people here will call her dramatic.

Pandora watched her pale face and nausea, and was extremely worried.

"Sister Fan, are you sick?" she asked softly. Pregnant women in District 50 almost never experience morning sickness because they are mostly in a state of hunger and cannot experience it. Therefore, Pandora had never seen it before.

"My stomach feels terrible, I really can't eat anymore, I'll probably throw up if I eat any more," Zuo Shan said with a worried expression.

"Then I'll help you finish the rest. Don't worry, I definitely won't eat myself to death," Pan Duole said a little embarrassed.

In the wasteland, helping others eat their leftovers is not a kind of altruistic act. Unless there are special circumstances, it is tantamount to stealing someone else's food.

It's only because she's recently become quite close to Zuo Shan that she would never have dared to say something like that.

"Really? You can eat it for me? But I've already eaten it, won't you be disgusted?" Zuo Shan's eyes lit up.

Then she felt a little ashamed that she had made a child eat her leftovers, and such disgusting food at that. If this happened in modern times, she would be beaten to a pulp!

“No problem, no problem at all. This vegetable porridge is so thick, it’s much more filling than what I have at home. If I eat this, I won’t need to eat anything else until tomorrow afternoon, and then my mom can have a full meal too.” Pan Duole beamed with joy.

Watching her eat so heartily, Zuo Shan couldn't help but want to cry. What kind of sins had she committed to deserve this? Such a good child had to suffer like this from birth.

In order to prevent her unborn baby, Ah Chen, from suffering like this in the future, she must work hard, and work even harder!

Apart from a half-hour lunch break, there was no rest time arranged here. The collectors were initially somewhat dissatisfied, but when they saw people from District 46 wearing uniform work clothes and diligently weeding the furrows in another field, they were quite pleased.

Since the people in District 46 don't take a break, these scavengers from Districts 50 and 49 naturally feel embarrassed to ask for a rest.

With three and a half hours left before the end of the workday and their return journey, Zuo Shan and Pan Duole finally completed their share, harvesting a total of 50 plants and 3,800 flower pots.

Jia Yiming said that if the task is exceeded, there will be additional rewards in addition to what is due.

The specific reward is that the next time the mercenary group takes people out to gather resources, they will be given a free spot, and they will not have to pay for their own transportation.