Picking Up Special Marine Creatures While Going to the Sea [Apocalypse] - Chapter 9 PT1

Chapter 9 PT1 – Xing Lin Passes Out

After the discussion, Su Ran felt much more at ease.

He planned to go to bed early tonight, but he didn’t expect that after dinner, when he was feeding Xue Tuan and the hens outside, he would hear a muffled thud coming from the kitchen.

He was startled and quickly got up and ran in to see. He was dumbfounded to find Xing Lin lying on the ground with his eyes closed and sleeping soundly.

This guy hadn’t even taken off his apron yet, and on the kitchen counter stood a row of bowls and basins that were already so clean they gleamed…

…It’s too early to rest!!

The mermaid was sleeping very soundly and wouldn’t wake up no matter how much he called him. Su Ran was puzzled.

Is the land air really no longer a threat to this guy…? …Could it be that the rapid poisoning has turned into a slow-acting one?

Helpless, he had to hold the guy’s arm and drag him little by little into another bedroom on the first floor – the room where his grandma used to sleep.

Then, he ran upstairs to find new sheets and quilts.

An hour later, he finished all the work.

Su Ran finally moved this guy onto the bed and covered him with a quilt.

The mermaid was sleeping defenselessly, with his head slightly tilted and his breathing even. If he looked closely, he could see a faint bluish-black color under his eyes.

It seemed as if he was very tired.

Su Ran squatted beside the bed, staring at him in a trance for a long time, then reached out and gently pulled off the hairband on the guy’s head.

His dark hair finally let down, and he looked like he could sleep more comfortably.

“…Good night.” He said softly.

Su Ran got up and turned off the lights.

•|•

On March 19th, it was still sunny.

When Xing Lin woke up, he was faced with a dark room.

For four or five seconds, his brain was unable to function and his deep blue eyes were unable to focus.

The feeling of fatigue still spread throughout his body, and his limbs felt as heavy as if they were filled with lead.

But maybe because he finally had a deep sleep, his body started up faster today than the previous two days.

He moved, propped himself up from the bed, and his black hair fell down.

He raised his hand and inserted his five fingers into his hair. He closed his eyes to relieve the splitting headache for a moment. When he opened his eyes again, he found that he was still wearing the black sweatshirt from last night. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of the red apron hanging on the vertical clothes hanger beside him.

… He finally remembered how he fainted last night.

He got out of bed, put on his slippers and went to open the door. He found a blue sticky note on the back of the door, which read: [I have brought your water cup, toothbrush and towel to the bathroom on the first floor. When you wake up, wash your face and brush your teeth first, then go to the kitchen to get breakfast (it’s in the steamer).]

Xing Lin peeled off the sticky note, looked at the beautiful handwriting for a while, folded it up and put it in his trouser pocket, then walked to the bathroom.

After washing up, he went to the kitchen to take a look. Breakfast was steamed frozen meat buns. The packaging bag was stuffed in the trash can, and three were left for him in the pot.

He picked one up and put it in his mouth, then walked to the yard. The young man was sitting on a small bench with his back to him, nailing wooden boards with a clang-clang sound.

Xue Tuan and the little hen were playing around him.

“What are you pecking at?”

Hearing the sound, Su Ran raised his head and saw the mermaid standing coolly beside him.

His black hair was tied into a ponytail again, neat and tidy. With one hand in his pocket and the other holding a meat bun, the man nibbled on it while talking with a bulging mouth.

“Are you awake? How did you sleep last night? Are you feeling better?”

“Much better,” Xing Lin squatted down with a meat bun in his mouth, “Are you building a coop for the hen?”

“Right.”

Su Ran was making a wooden coop for the hen.

Last night the little hen slept in his room, huddled together with Xue Tuan.

Although the little hen was very sensible, when Su Ran got up in the morning, he found that only the newspaper he had specially spread on the ground had chicken manure on it, and other places were clean, but spreading newspaper was not a solution after all.

Hens poop much more frequently than dogs, so Su Ran had to find a way to solve the poop and urine problem of the hen.

Nowadays, more sophisticated families would lay a fermentation bed in the chicken coop. The fermentation bed is a bedding material made of a mixture of sawdust, rice husks, grain husks and fermentation bacteria.

When chicken manure falls on the fermentation bed, the bacteria will naturally decompose and ferment the chicken manure, making the odor lighter. This is actually a disguised form of composting. After fermentation, it can be used as fertilizer after a little processing.

Su Ran didn’t plan to keep the hen locked up. In the end, it all depended on its own will as to where it would poop. At worst, he would just clean the house more diligently… But he felt that if the hen could poop on the newspaper at a fixed place, then maybe it could also poop in the chicken coop at a fixed place!

As for the fermented mattress material, he could have prepared it himself.

Sawdust and rice husks could be replaced with similar dry materials. He also had fermentation bacteria at home, which his father bought online to speed up composting. He can use them by mixing a few things together.

Unfortunately, they used up all the fermentation bacteria at home before the New Year.

So Su Ran thought about it and decided to find time to go to Sister Zhao’s house again. They should have ready-made bedding materials at home.

He also thought about moving the chicken coop from Sister Zhao’s house here, but that chicken coop was used by several chickens and was very large, so moving it over would take up too much space.

Xing Lin stuffed the rest of the bun into his mouth. Seeing that Su Ran had already made a frame for the cabin, he asked, “What time did you wake up?”

“Me?” Su Ran said, “I woke up at half past six.”

“So early.”

“Because I go to bed early at night.”

“It’s like the lifestyle of an elderly person.” Xing Lin held his chin with one hand and stared at Su Ran.

Su Ran choked and turned his head away, feeling a burning sensation on his cheek. “Then, aren’t you the same? Do you know where you passed out yesterday? In the kitchen. It was only seven o’clock then.”

“That’s because my body hasn’t recovered yet. Normally, I wouldn’t go to bed so early.” As he said that, Xing Lin yawned again.

Su Ran glanced at him secretly.

“Does the Inner Earth have nightlife?”

“Of course,” Xing Lin said lazily, “Nightclubs and night markets are full of people, but I don’t like those kinds of places. They’re too noisy.”

“So what do you do at night?”

“Watch TV, read books, play games.”

“…”

“What’s that expression?”

“No expression at all.”

After Su Ran finished making the frame of the cabin, he put the work aside and took Xing Lin to visit their seedling shed.

He instructed Xing Lin to move the lettuce and celery seedlings to the edge of the field, and then personally demonstrated to him the transplanting method.

The base fertilizer in the field had been buried long ago and the soil had been loosened.

Su Ran carefully dug the seedling out of the pot with the soil, put it in the ground, filled it with soil, pressed it gently, and then watered it thoroughly to ensure that the water could penetrate to the roots.

The seedlings should be kept at an appropriate distance from each other. Of course, the two plots of land in their family are not large, and in order to make effective use of the space, they cannot leave too much space for a single seedling.

Afterwards, he and Xing Lin each took charge of one side of the seedlings and transplanted them simultaneously.

•|•

By the time Su Ran finished planting the last lettuce seedling, the sun had risen to the zenith.

He looked at the vibrant seedlings on the ground and thought about a question in his mind.

The bagged fertilizer at home has been used up, and the one he bought online is forever stuck on the way.

Three months ago, his Dad buried some kitchen waste in the corner of this field. Last night, before going to bed, he dug it up and took a look. It had all been decomposed and turned into beautiful, nutritious black gold soil.

But this amount is totally insufficient, as a lot of fertilizer will be needed for subsequent vegetable planting.

Su Ran needed materials to make compost.

The manure from the hen’s fermentation bed is certainly a material, but when a large amount of fertilizer is needed, that amount of material is completely insufficient.

Kitchen waste could be composted, but the amount of kitchen waste in a household every day is very limited.

There aren’t that many rotten vegetable leaves in the field.

It would be fine if there were fallen leaves, but the navel orange tree in the yard has just grown new leaves, so why would there be many fallen leaves?

Therefore, materials become a very important issue.

They have to find a way to solve it.