"Can I buy seeds and grow them myself?"

As you can tell from his name, Chengzhu loves plants, so he gave himself a plant-themed name.

As mentioned before, Future Star differs from many other planets in that its landmass is larger than its oceans, and the landmass is entirely connected, leading to frequent wars. Chengzhu's homeland, Kyushu, was once a typical agricultural country. Later, as the world developed its industry, everyone became too close together, and everything they did was noticed by neighboring countries. As a result, Kyushu caught the wave of development, but also faced subsequent population explosion and war.

Despite its wars with foreign powers, Kyushu has done a remarkable job in preserving its own culture.

When Chengzhu was a child, the orphanage taught the children how to grow bean sprouts and potatoes. She also grew cherry tomatoes in flowerpots. They didn't taste as good as greenhouse tomatoes, but the fruits of her labor were especially fragrant.

Since buying vegetables was too expensive, Chengzhu's first thought was to grow his own.

Most plants do grow slowly, but herbaceous plants like bean sprouts can take root and sprout in less than a week.

Since it doesn't require the planting and transportation costs of a fresh food supermarket, it should be cheaper, right?

"Christine actually wants to grow her own vegetables?" Aya's expression was one of shock, probably never imagining that a suburban girl who had "never seen vegetables before" would want to grow her own. Then, her expression turned extremely serious: "Are you really sure about this?"

This time, Ya didn't even use "Christine" to address Cheng Zhu, but directly used "you".

Her seriousness only made Chengzhu uneasy, and he began to wonder if he had stepped on some hidden AI minefield again. He quickly changed his words: "I just want to understand how vegetables are grown, so I can appreciate the hard work of supermarket staff!"

Cheng Zhu modified the educational phrase "cherish the fruits of farmers' labor" from the Nine Provinces Kingdom and forced it onto the site.

Ya seemed convinced by Cheng Zhu's words and immediately presented several best-selling books: "Although learning to grow vegetables is basically something only nobles do, with Christine's eagerness to learn, she might one day become a noble who can afford seeds and open a fresh food supermarket! Take a look at this book, 'Cultivation and Pest Control,' written by the famous noblewoman Jenny Sue. It will enable Christine to cultivate and grow vegetables efficiently, and it also includes a color atlas of vegetable pest and disease diagnosis, as long as it's general! And this book, 'The Art of Soil'..."

Cheng Zhu simply shut his brain and filtered out all the subsequent sales pitches.

[Something only nobles would do].

[Able to afford seeds].

[The aristocracy who owns a fresh food supermarket].

The three keywords together form an absurd statement, but Cheng Zhu looked at it from left to right and felt that the words were densely packed with the message, "The seeds are ridiculously expensive, don't buy them!"

Ya's bright, watery eyes gazed at Cheng Zhu, seemingly waiting for her to buy a few books. Cheng Zhu listened patiently to Ya's explanation before slowly asking, "Could I see how much the seeds cost, and what procedures are required?"

Ya looked somewhat disappointed, but still brought up the page for Cheng Zhu: "Does Christine really want to buy seeds?"

Ignoring all of Ya's subsequent remarks, Cheng Zhu had already seen the information about the seeds.

In the "Normal Future" instance, vegetables are expensive, and seeds are even more expensive, with nobles monopolizing them all. Therefore, if someone wants to grow vegetables, they need to purchase them and sign an agreement.

There are two types of agreements, much like the fees for hiring an artist. One is a private agreement, guaranteeing that the seeds can only be consumed by the individual, their partner, and children, and cannot be given to friends or extended family. The entire consumption process is monitored by artificial intelligence. The taste of seeds purchased under this private agreement is unknown, and they can only be propagated for three generations, making repeated cultivation impossible.

In other words, you have to buy more after eating three meals.

According to this theory, these three generations will likely become progressively worse, increasingly unpalatable, and eventually unable to reproduce at all.

Another type is the public agreement, which offers better seed quality than the personal agreement. According to the crop seed purchasing platform in front of me, the seeds can achieve the taste and appearance of vegetables and fruits in fresh food supermarkets, and they can also bear fruit on their own without having to repeatedly buy seeds like with personal agreements.

How do those subsidiaries make money?

The answer is, patents.

After the public agreement is signed, the seed buyers not only bear their own profits and losses, but also need to pay patent fees to the seed company regularly, which is also a considerable expense.

If you don't hand them over, then you can expect law enforcement to come and confiscate your seeds and vegetables.

Clearly, the viewers in the Kyushu Kingdom's live stream also saw these unfair terms, and the chat was filled with angry comments, with many saying that the nobles of this world were really greedy and wanted to deprive the lower classes of their right to eat vegetables.

However, Cheng Zhu felt that the world was actually not bad, at least it was peaceful.

They can't afford vegetables, but they have starch sausages and several kinds of carbohydrates, and water and electricity resources are plentiful. It's better than the future where a group of countries are fighting each other all day long. After all, some unscrupulous nations even fill in the wells with cement and cut off the electricity when they invade other countries' land, leaving many children without food.

One should be content.

At least I can eat my fill in the world of weird and strange stories.

Cheng Zhu hypnotized himself in this way, trying his best to immerse himself in this dungeon world and take on the role of Christine.

The communal kitchen also offers free drinks, but the taste is probably just artificial coloring and flavoring. The bright red and green liquids are somewhere between "looking poisonous" and "looking delicious." The cloyingly sweet smell wafting from the cups convinced Cheng Zhu that this stuff was just sugar water with too many additives, so he drank it all in one gulp.

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