Chapter 110: Incubating Eggs, Feeding Fish

“How about we meet at five in the afternoon? You can just come straight to my place—we won’t come over to get you,” Su Dai said, glancing awkwardly at the big iron gate of Jiang Yan’s house out of the corner of her eye and forcing a smile.

Honestly, they were all a bit afraid of coming to fetch Jiang Yan. The main worry was that one day they’d forget about the high-voltage wires on her gate and end up getting electrocuted into a charred corpse just by knocking.

Although the city’s power had been out for ages, and Jiang Yan’s backup generator was probably dead by now, it was always better to be safe than sorry.

Besides, with the heavy rain these days, it got dark much earlier.

Everyone tried to finish dinner and the dishes while it was still light out. Once night fell, unless absolutely necessary, people didn’t turn on any lights. Some families didn’t even have any lighting equipment at all and just lived in the dark.

Jiang Yan nodded. “Alright, I’ll come over directly in the evening.”

She hadn’t turned on the high-voltage electricity on her outer gate in a while. For one, things had been relatively safe in the neighborhood lately. For another, she’d been coming and going more often herself. She worried that one day she’d forget and either zap herself or get locked out.

That was something she hadn’t considered when she first installed it.

Even though the electricity wasn’t on, the deterrent effect was still there, and that was enough.

With that thought, Jiang Yan turned and went back inside.

It was almost two in the afternoon.

The fireplace in the living room had been burning since morning, making it noticeably warmer than outside.

Jiang Yan grabbed a small metal bucket and a little shovel, cleared out some of the ashes from the fireplace, added more firewood, and then stepped into her space.

“Jie jie jie!” Mama, you’re finally back!

From a distance, she saw Huabao excitedly hopping out of the apple pod and leaping onto her shoulder in a flash.

Jiang Yan glanced over and—wow! The upgrade progress bar above the little stream had finally reached 89%!

Not easy!

The space would be fully upgraded any day now!

She couldn’t help but feel delighted. “Huabao, we’re about to have a real stream!”

The three little leaves on Huabao’s head wiggled happily as it grinned, “Jie jie jie! Yes, yes! Once we have a stream, I can play in it all I want!”

It had gotten bored of flipping turtle shells and kicking turtles into the water. Its latest game was stretching its vines and leaves thin like fishing lines to tease the fish and shrimp in the pool.

To its surprise, some fish and shrimp actually fell for it. Though, getting pinched by the shrimp claws hurt quite a bit. Of course, it gave those shrimp a good thrashing in return—but it didn’t dare tell Mama about that.

Jiang Yan laughed. “Then you’d better keep eating and working hard—no slacking off!”

“Jie jie jie! Don’t worry, Mama, I’ll get the job done!”

Chatting as they went, Jiang Yan walked over to the pool.

Inside, the tilapia, crucian carp, loaches, and shrimp she’d caught were all lively and, in just a few days, had visibly grown bigger.

It seemed the tilapia had adapted to the water temperature.

The two turtles were, as usual, lazily sunbathing by the edge of the pool. When they saw her coming, they instantly pulled their heads back into their shells.

With a thought, Jiang Yan took some cornmeal from her [Inventory] and sprinkled it into the pool. She also grabbed a cabbage leaf and a bit of meat, put them on a plate, and set it near the turtles.

Right next to the turtles were a white lounge chair and a big sun umbrella. She placed the plate under the umbrella so the cabbage leaf wouldn’t dry out.

Jiang Yan had never planned on keeping pets, so she hadn’t prepared any fish food or dog food. Now that she had these animals, she just had to improvise.

She found that ever since she’d gotten these fish and turtles, her life in the space had started to resemble that of a retired old lady—studying, tending flowers and vegetables, and feeding the fish every day. All she was missing was a public square dance.

But she enjoyed it, especially feeding the fish, which felt relaxing and soothing.

When she was little, her parents used to take her to free parks to feed the goldfish. Spending a few yuan on a small bag of fish food and feeding them for a few minutes would make her happy for the whole day.

Later, when her family became wealthier, they bought a big house with a huge fish tank and beautiful landscaping, and even kept an expensive red arowana—supposedly worth over a million yuan.

Jiang Yan thought the fish was beautiful, but also lonely. Her parents were always busy with business, rushing about from dawn to dusk, with no time to stop and enjoy it. They said keeping the fish was more about good feng shui. The servants took care of it.

Back then, Jiang Yan was always chasing her dreams, rarely coming home.

By the time she realized how precious her parents’ love was, it was already too late.

Old memories surfaced, and Jiang Yan’s eyes grew misty.

Her parents were gone for good. The normal life she once had was gone for good. But she still had to do her best to survive in this hopeless, post-apocalyptic world.

Jiang Yan sniffled, went to the kitchen, and made herself a cup of motherwort tea. After a short rest, she remembered she hadn’t used her incubator yet, so she got up again.

When she’d ordered the apple pod, she’d asked for two shipping containers as well—originally for storing supplies in the wild if needed.

Now, she realized it wasn’t suitable to keep the incubator indoors, and it was too sunny outside. So she simply took out one of the containers and put the three incubators she’d found on her last outing inside.

There were no power strips or outlets, but that was fine—she brought in a portable power station and set it up in the container. She also found three hygrometers to monitor humidity.

Ordinary eggs can’t hatch chicks—only fertilized eggs, or “hatching eggs,” can.

She checked her offline encyclopedia and learned that if you shine a light through the shell and see two little cloudy spots like eyeballs inside, it’s a fertilized egg.

Jiang Yan grabbed a flashlight and a chicken egg, peering at it for ages until she was nearly cross-eyed, but still couldn’t tell.

Then she remembered she could control things in her space with her mind—so she should be able to select the fertilized eggs that way.

Sure enough, with a thought, piles of chicken, duck, goose, pigeon, and ostrich eggs appeared before her—these must be the fertilized ones.

There were offline tutorials on her computer, but Jiang Yan decided not to hatch too many at once. Different eggs required different temperatures and humidity levels.

So she picked one chicken egg, one duck egg, and one goose egg, put each in a separate incubator, and set the right temperature and humidity according to the instructions.

She took out a notebook and pen to keep records.

Since she was looking up information as she went, the whole process took about an hour."