Apocalypse: After Being Reborn, I Stocked Up on All Supplies

Chapter 70: Chapter 70 Mutton Hot Pot

“When Su Dai said this,” her initial joy and excitement at seeing Jiang Yan had vanished, replaced by slightly reddened eyes.

The children’s room had been prepared in advance when she was pregnant.

Although they didn’t know whether the baby would be a boy or a girl at that time, she decorated it according to her own preferences.

The atmosphere had a girlish style, soft and tender, filled with many Barbie dolls.

Unexpectedly, an accident happened, and they lost the child.

The room had been left unused ever since.

Sun Jingtao knew what his wife was grieving about, squeezed her palm as a gesture of comfort, and earnestly looked at Ye Qing, saying,

“Xiao Ye, the situation now is not like before, and we don’t know when this heavy rain will stop. Moreover, today we made enemies with those people on the 17th floor, and it’s uncertain if they harbor resentment and might secretly come to cause trouble again. If we live together, it would be easier to look after each other in the future.”

Hearing their persuasive words, Ye Qing did not reply immediately.

He glanced at the tightly closed door of apartment 3201, pondered for a second, and then said,

“Alright, I will then impose on Brother Tao and Sister Dai for a while.”

Sun Jingtao and Su Dai, hearing his agreement to move in, felt their heavy hearts instantly lighten with joy.

*

On the other side, Jiang Yan stored the pile of supplies that Sun Jingtao and the others had brought into the Space.

The safehouse was damp and chilly. She didn’t bother turning on the air conditioner and simply entered the Space.

Looking at the lush green vegetables growing in the black soil, she, who hadn’t eaten all day, suddenly felt an appetite.

She knew what she would eat today.

Old Beijing Lamb Hotpot!

The previously planted cabbage and lettuce had grown about the length of a palm.

At this moment, they were perfect for the hot pot – tender, crispy, and sweet.

There were also a lot of fresh vegetable seedlings in the [Inventory Area].

But those that she had planted herself and just pulled from the ground surely had a unique flavor.

Besides, such vegetables, they say, are grounded, and eating them benefits the body’s magnetic field.

No sooner said than done.

She took a colorful plastic basin from the kitchen, put on rain boots, and went into the field.

Fortunately, in this Space, she saw no trace of insects among the vegetables and flowers. @@novelbin@@

What she feared most since childhood were, besides snakes, hairy caterpillars, cabbage worms, earthworms, and other soft-bodied creatures.

If she was unlucky enough to accidentally touch one with her fingers, it might just send her heart racing.

Speaking of insects, Jiang Yan remembered the fruit seedlings she hadn’t yet planted.

From agriculture tutorial videos she had learned that 90% of the world’s fruits and vegetables, like apples, strawberries, pumpkins, tomatoes, etc., required bee pollination to bear fruit,

Whereas wheat, rice, oats, and such were pollinated by the wind, so their fruition was not bee-dependent.

If she planted these fruits but lacked bees, would they still bear fruit?

Or, could they produce delicious fruits?

Alternatively, she could pollinate them manually.

That meant using a cotton swab or small brush to work within the flower pistils, but the workload…

Suddenly, she felt she lacked nothing at that moment except for a buzzing swarm of bees.

This somewhat seemed like “shirking one’s duties.”

If word got out, those starving and struggling outside could hardly imagine.

She wouldn’t be ridiculed, or even receive scores of disdainful glances.

However, speaking of bees, she remembered Anming had a bee research institute and a base.

She had seen it while driving past before, located on the western side of the city near the foothills, and the two facilities were less than a kilometer apart.

The reason she remembered it vividly was that she had been surprised that there was a place dedicated to studying bees.

That area was relatively elevated, so it might not have been completely submerged by now.

But considering the possibility of flash floods and mudslides there, and given the prior high temperatures, it was uncertain whether the institute, the base, or any bees had survived.

Jiang Yan thought for a moment, her gaze drifting over the pile of emerald greens still with dirt on her hands, and decided that eating was a priority.

After all, she hadn’t eaten anything all day.

She stood up, went to the kitchen to wash the freshly picked cabbage and lettuce seedlings, then with a thought, she took out a set of Old Beijing Lamb Hotpot from the[Inventory Area].

Fatty lamb rolls, fatty beef rolls, hand-sliced lamb and beef, beef tendon, lamb tripe, fresh shrimp paste, frozen tofu, lotus root slices, potato slices, bamboo shoot strips, enoki mushrooms… it had it all.

Additionally, there were several of her favorite Old Beijing snacks, Donkey Kick, Sweet glutinous rice cake, jujube flower cake, and others.

Both the variety and quantity were meticulously arranged.

Besides, for this Old Beijing Lamb Hotpot set she bought, other than the ingredients, it traditionally included the original pot equipment and dipping sauces.

The pot was a traditional type, a copper stew pot, with charcoal in the center and the pot on the side for the hotpot.

It was said that when camping in the wild, the smokeless coal could even be substituted with dried cow dung picked up by hand.

As for the pot base, she did not use the restaurant’s.

Instead, she laid a layer of ice at the bottom of the pot, added a few slices of fresh ginger, a few red dates, two segments of green onions, a few drops of red wine, and poured in a bottle of natural mineral water before covering the pot.

This eating method, she had come across many years ago in a private small shop hidden in a residential area in the north.

The typical mountain spring water base retained the original flavors and freshness of the ingredients to the maximum.

She used a kitchen lighter to ignite the smokeless coal, and while waiting for the water in the pot to boil, she prepared two kinds of dipping sauces for herself.

One was the standard sesame sauce dish for Old Beijing Lamb Hotpot, to which she added a bit of Chinese leek flower.

Although she wasn’t quite used to the taste of Chinese leek flower, she mixed it mainly for tasting.

Thus, she prepared another bowl of local classic dipping sauce:

Small Rice chili, fermented bean curd, sesame oil, oyster sauce, crushed sesame, crushed peanuts, cilantro, garlic paste, a touch of soy sauce, and aromatic vinegar, plus a hefty spoonful of local dipping sauce essence: Fishwort herb, perfectly mixed.

This dipping sauce maximally enhanced and released the flavor of the ingredients, creating an unmatched delicacy.

After eating, Jiang Yan went outside the Apple Cabin to take a stroll and admire the flowers and plants she had planted, before going back to the second floor multifunctional audio-visual hall to continue her studies.

By around ten o’clock at night, she went to bed.

Listening to light music and reading for a while, she then closed the blackout curtains and lay down to sleep.

Such moments were leisurely, lazy, and pleasant.

Still, Jiang Yan always felt something was missing.

Was it because she had been home alone for too long?

However, before she could delve into her thoughts, having experienced the “battle mode” in the morning and soaked in a red wine bath, she quickly drifted into a deep sleep.

In the middle of the night, all was silent.

Suddenly, a faint rustling noise echoed in the room.

In the Space, where she always felt particularly relaxed, Jiang Yan hummed a few times, turned over, and continued to sleep deeply.

“Rustle~”

The sound came again.

Two seconds later.

A long leaf with a serrated outline, as large as a palm, gently lifted the blanket and slowly peeked out.