Chapter 174 - 141: Intercepting the Cowpeas

Chapter 174: Chapter 141: Intercepting the Cowpeas

But at this moment, Huai Yu could only bite the bullet and head toward the trading market.

The testing station was still manned by the four familiar older staff members. As soon as Huai Yu approached, they stared at the massive crowd swarming behind her, completely dumbfounded.

They couldn’t exactly bend the rules for her with all these people watching!

Three of them quickly divided up the workload, while the other hurried over to where Huai Yu was queuing.

"What’s going on? Why are there so many people? Are you in trouble?"

Huai Yu thought for a moment. "Not exactly. I just brought some cowpeas to sell at the market. They saw them on the bus and insisted on buying them..."

"Cowpeas? Fresh cowpeas?"

The staff member covertly peeked into her bamboo basket, his eyes filling with anticipation. "Are you really selling these?"

"I suppose so," Huai Yu replied.

Hearing this, the people queuing in front of her turned around to stare at her basket. After a while, one of them suddenly spoke up.

"How about you take my spot in line? After it’s tested, if the Mutant Value is really low, could you sell me a handful?"

Before Huai Yu could agree, the person in front of that man refused to be left out.

"Why should she? I’ll give my spot directly to this young lady. Just sell me a handful first later, yeah?"

When Huai Yu had first arrived carrying the basket of cowpeas, it had felt incredibly heavy—after all, it weighed dozens of pounds! But now, standing amidst this crowd, it was clearly a drop in the bucket! Everyone wished she had brought a whole mountain of them.

She looked blankly at the staff member beside her, only to find him looking just as eager to buy!

Catching her gaze, the staff member paused and suggested, "How about this: I’ll take the young lady to the VIP room to get tested first, and everyone can wait outside.

"Once she sets a price, whoever wants to buy can do so. Is that okay?

"What if the Mutant Value is high? Then wouldn’t all this arguing be for nothing?"

Given the number of people, it was obvious that one basket of cowpeas wouldn’t be enough to go around. The middle-aged women who had followed her all the way here were displeased.

"We followed this young lady all the way here to buy her cowpeas. We can’t just leave empty-handed, right?"

Amidst the chatter, Huai Yu heard someone boasting smugly.

"Let me tell you, no matter what the Mutant Value is, we can’t go wrong buying it first! I saw this girl on the bus. Her two older brothers are highly capable—they’re in the Defense Army! It’s just that her brother’s new wife is mean and kicked her out right after getting married...

"But think about it! She lives alone yet still manages to keep herself looking so fair and clean. Could she be living a hard life?

"Could she possibly be eating bad food?"

A flurry of question marks popped up in Huai Yu’s head. She wondered why these complete strangers could talk about her fabricated gossip with such absolute conviction. Then she suddenly remembered. When she had first taken the bus, in order to create a fake front to protect herself, she had vaguely mentioned a backstory about her older brother having just gotten married and her living near the Defense Army base...

Huai Yu was speechless. What a long-delayed boomerang, and it had actually swung back to hit her!

During this back-and-forth, the two sides started arguing again.

Caught in the middle, Huai Yu felt utterly numb. Fortunately, the staff member directly pulled her into the VIP room. With the door shut, she finally gained a sliver of peace and quiet.

However, by this point, no one outside cared about getting their own items tested anymore. Whether they were buying or selling, doing it a bit earlier or later made no difference.

When it came to these cowpeas, everyone shared a single thought: with so many people swarming around them, they had to be good stuff, right? Therefore, even though the vegetables hadn’t been tested yet, the crowd patiently waited outside.

The staff member familiarly switched on the machine and placed the entire basket of cowpeas inside. Before long, the machine HUMMED and spat out a card.

[Mutant Value: 9]

A single-digit Mutant Value! This was a premium good they could never normally buy at the market!

Although items with a Mutant Value of eleven or twelve were occasionally sold at the market, anyone who had tasted them knew that anything under 10 was a world apart in flavor. Anything above 15 simply wouldn’t kill you, 10 to 15 tasted awful, but anything under 10 was genuinely delicious.

The staff member stared at the card in Huai Yu’s hand, his eyes burning with intensity.

Huai Yu was also filled with pleasant surprise. After picking these cowpeas, she hadn’t purified them again. This meant that everything growing on that cowpea vine naturally maintained this stable number!

Hearing the clamor outside, she didn’t hesitate. She grabbed four pre-portioned bundles of cowpeas from her basket. "Fifteen points a pound. Do you want them?"

Thinking for a moment, she placed them on a digital scale nearby.

"I just found a digital scale at home—"

She had actually dug it out from a pile of junk.

"—so I don’t know if it’s accurate..."

Regardless, she had tied them bundle by bundle according to the weight shown on that scale. Now, upon testing them here, they turned out to be surprisingly accurate.

Meanwhile, the staff member eagerly extended his wristband. "I’ll pay for the other three as well!"

With a BEEP, the points were transferred to her account. The man immediately packed the cowpeas into a cardboard box and efficiently locked them inside a cabinet.

But now, Huai Yu’s real dilemma had just begun. With only eighty-three bundles of cowpeas left in her basket, who exactly should she sell them to?

She made a prompt decision. "The people who followed me from the bus get to buy first. Limit one pound per person, eighteen points a pound."

The crowd from the bus looked large, but at most, there were only about twenty people. As for the rest...

Huai Yu gritted her teeth. "Everyone else will have to line up again. It’s first come, first served."

The staff member gave her a thumbs-up and reassured her, "Don’t worry. I’ll open up the queuing barrier in a moment. Once they finish buying, they can exit directly through the back door and circle around to the front street."

Boss Tang was leisurely crossing his legs in his shop, flipping through an old magazine. Since his store only dealt in big business, this was his usual daily state anyway.

But for a perfectly good morning to pass without a single customer walking in—wasn’t that a bit too much? Were the items displayed in his glass counters too expensive?

He uncrossed his legs, tossed the magazine aside, and took two laps around his shop. There was nothing wrong!

Looking at the shops across the street, they were similarly quiet and deserted. A few perplexed owners stood at their doors, exchanging puzzled glances before finally asking around.

"Did another trading market open today?"

"Haven’t heard anything about that..."

"I heard Dada Mall was going to start doing business. Is something happening over there?"

"They’ll never get that off the ground! Dada Mall is entirely indoors. It’s pitch black without any natural light. Imagine how much electricity it would cost to keep the lights on!"

"Exactly, and it’s six stories high! Who wants to climb all those stairs just to buy things?"

Then this was truly bizarre. The entire market looked completely empty. Boss Tang felt a strange emptiness in his heart, as if some precious treasure had just slipped right through his fingers.

Just as he was pondering this, he finally saw two people walking down the street. The joy on their faces was palpable, and their voices were brimming with delight.

"Thank goodness I followed her all the way from the bus station! Fresh cowpeas at eighteen points a pound! My daughter can finally have a good meal!"

"Exactly! And a Mutant Value of 9! I haven’t tasted anything like that in six years..."