Chapter 6 Suspected Abdominal Tumor
A small bowl of lemon juice certainly couldn't completely clean such a large lump of rusty metal, but it proved that it was lemon juice, which was enough to make Zuo Shan happy.
With the lemon juice still lingering in his palm, Zuo Shan was drawn in by its fruity aroma and couldn't resist sticking out his tongue to lick it.
Yes, it really does taste like lemon juice, but it's not as sour as she remembered. On the contrary, the taste stimulates her taste buds, making her feel happy both physically and mentally.
Zuo Shan felt that even if this lemon juice couldn't be eaten as a meal, its ability to enhance pleasure alone was enough to make her love it to the core.
That night, she slept exceptionally well. In her dream, there were so many lemons, bright yellow, hanging on the branches, each one as big as a soccer ball. Zuo Shan picked one and ate it, feeling an overwhelming sense of happiness.
So she chased after the tree full of huge lemons, eating them one by one, her arms overflowing with juice.
When she finally woke up from her dream, she realized that she had been drooling a lot.
The room still smelled of lemon juice, so she couldn't resist getting up and wandering around outside. Before anyone else woke up, she quietly picked all the lemons around her.
When I got home, I took them out of my backpack and counted them. Wow! There were 388 of them!
Zuo Shan stole lemons from the trees planted in front of her neighbor's house without any guilt, because those lemons were grown from seeds from her own trees.
Furthermore, once planted, this mutated lemon is unaffected by heat or cold; it withers in winter and grows back on its own in summer, requiring no human intervention whatsoever.
Most importantly, nobody in District 50 eats it; even those who starved to death never considered using it as food.
Zuo Shan merely picked fruit that others wouldn't eat; to everyone else, the fruit was just an ornamental plant, and the residents of District 50 almost completely ignored it.
Food is the most important thing for people. Here, everyone is only concerned about food. As for whether the small yellow fruit in front of someone's door has disappeared, no one cares at all.
Moreover, this mutated lemon will quickly flower and bear fruit again after one harvest, with the cycle from flowering to fruit ripening taking only half a month.
This is the magic of mutated plants, which makes Zuo Shan marvel whenever he thinks about it.
Because she planned to eat them, Zuo Shan painstakingly used a cutting knife to test each lemon. As a result, out of 388 lemons, 58 were found to be edible with moderate radiation, and 2 were found to have low radiation.
Zuo Shan suddenly felt like he had hit the jackpot. He went out to scavenge in the wild every day, but he never expected that edible lemons would grow in front of his house.
Thinking back on all the things I wasted yesterday, I instantly felt like I'd lost a fortune!
Sigh! When people are too poor, they become so petty and calculating!
Zuo Shan carefully wrapped the edible moderately irradiated lemons in a soft blade of grass and stuffed them into a tattered wicker basket in the corner. Lemons have an extremely long shelf life; they won't rot or spoil for at least a month, so they can be kept and eaten slowly.
As for the two low-radiation pills, she put them in her inner pocket, reluctant to eat them for the time being.
Then she used a stone mortar and pestle to grind the rest of the inedible parts into juice, and then smeared it little by little on the large lump of scrap metal, not even missing the pits and dents.
Her thinking was simple: as long as all the rust was removed, the price would at least double when she sold it.
Zuo Shan felt a great sense of accomplishment that the two silver coins she had originally expected could turn into four, since she had made good use of the lemon juice without spending a single cent.
After using the juice of 98 lemons, the huge lump of metal was finally completely cleaned up. Zuo Shan was overjoyed and decided to ask Qi Yang about the price next time he came over.
She was afraid of being ripped off by the people at the purchasing station if she took them to sell herself, as they always bought from people who didn't know anything about the business at the lowest possible price.
After finishing his rust removal project, Zuo Shan finally couldn't resist taking out a low-radiation lemon from his pocket and popping it into his mouth.
In the original owner's memory, she had never eaten food with low levels of radiation. Zuo Shan decided to be a pioneer and see what it was like to eat it.
Worried that the juice would drip and go to waste, she put the whole fruit in her mouth and began to chew it gently.
Sour! Extremely sour!
Zuo Shan almost cried from the sour taste, but then a sweet sensation began to spread in her mouth. This was completely different from any lemon she had ever eaten before, and it was also different from the taste she had experienced yesterday when she licked it with her tongue.
Zuo Shan doesn't know how to describe it, but it's just incredibly delicious! My taste buds were completely conquered, and I can't imagine any fruit in the world that tastes better than this lemon.
After a short while, my body felt warm and cozy, as if I were soaking in a hot spring.
Zuo Shan was immersed in this wonderful sense of comfort, like a drug addict who had just gotten a long-awaited drug, forgetting where he was and only wanting to stay in this moment of happiness forever.
Suddenly, she felt a strange ripple in her lower abdomen, as if an egg was rolling there. She instinctively reached out to touch it and found a small bulge!
Zuo Shan was terrified. Could it be that she had a tumor in her stomach?
Thinking about the exorbitant medical costs in the wasteland, she almost wished she could just commit suicide and die.
According to the original owner's memories, her mother was once bitten by a mutated beast. The wound was only three inches long and one inch deep. It cost 800 silver coins to clean and suture it at the clinic. The subsequent dressing change and oral anti-inflammatory medicine cost another 500 silver coins.
It cost 1,300 silver coins for a simple external injury. If she were to have surgery for an abdominal tumor, she wouldn't be able to afford it even if she sold everything she owned.
Moreover, she was penniless; where could she possibly sell any property?
Wait, no, she still has this 50-square-meter apartment, which should be worth at least 20,000 silver coins at market price. But if she sells this apartment, she'll just have to wait to die.
Although District 50 is a scavenging area, the rent here is at least 50 silver coins per month. Therefore, most of the scavengers here actually own property. It is too difficult for renters to survive here. They will be dragged down by the expensive rent within three years.
Zuo Shan couldn't bear to think about the consequences of having a tumor, and couldn't help but cry softly.
It's been three days since she transmigrated, and this is the first time she's been unable to hold back her tears. She feels that as a marathon runner, she possesses unwavering perseverance and doesn't cry easily.
But now, having just solved her short-term food problem, she is facing the threat of a serious illness, and unfortunately, she has no relatives or friends here and has no way to borrow money.
Unlike modern times, the wasteland doesn't have those shady online loans; there's no other option but to wait for death.
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