Chapter 12: Even with Space, Take Garbage Collection Seriously

After dinner, as usual, her younger siblings were doing their homework at the dining table while Ye Nai moved back and forth between the kitchen and the balcony, doing household chores. Her mother filled a basin with hot water in the bedroom to bathe her husband. Then, her mom took a shower and threw the couple's dirty clothes into the washing machine.

As Ye Nai cleaned up the kitchen waste, she swept the scraps from the dining table into the fermentation bin on the balcony and collected vegetable peelings and other trash by the sink into the Space, conducting another experiment.

She had previously thought that the vegetable leaf could still be eaten, and wondered if that was the reason it was preserved in the Space.

Now these were truly unwanted items, with no value other than being placed in the fermentation bin. If they disappeared in a little while, her experiment would be a success.

She wanted to see if she could control this space, composed of Fungal Mycelium, and prevent it from decomposing any useful organic matter.

Later on, Ye Nai hurried her siblings to wash up one by one after they finished their homework. She threw their dirty clothes into the washing machine and was the last one to take a shower, then stood in front of the washing machine to wash the family's clothes.

While waiting for the washing machine to work, Ye Nai checked the Space and was surprised to find that the vegetable trash she had put in was really gone, all decomposed.

With her spirits lifted, she then took a measuring tape from the sewing box into the Space to measure its volume. The tape measure, 1.5 meters long, roughly gauged the space.

Inside the Space, fluffy strands of mycelium, like small tentacles, precisely straightened the tape measure, moving it horizontally and vertically in segments as if showing it to Ye Nai, quickly producing results.

The rectangular Space was 3 meters long, 6 meters wide, and 3 meters high, totalling 54 cubic meters.

In one corner of the Space, her canvas bag still lay.

She took out her undergarments, hand-washed them briefly, and hung them on the clothes rack. A new toothbrush was placed on the toothbrush holder, and the worn-out old toothbrush was thrown away.

Then, she took out her phone to search online about how a wild Awakener should register.

Last week's group Awakening test proved that her superpower was undetectable, and she had no desire to perform a live demonstration of how to decompose and transform a leaf.

A superpower capable of decomposing any organic matter would likely make outsiders not admire its strength, but worry whether she had an anti-social personality.

Why invite trouble for herself?

But perhaps this small Space could earn her an Awakening Badge; being a Space Awakened wouldn't be so bad.

Otherwise, despite being an Awakener, being kept outside the door of Awakeners without even knowing the basics would be a loss.

She searched for this information, and there was plenty available online.

It was actually quite simple — just register at the local Awakener Center.

The national annual Awakening test for high school seniors was due to the peak rate of Awakening at this age, but individual differences are significant. There were early and delayed Awakenings, and the national policy was not to force anyone but to encourage voluntary registration, which instantly rewarded a registration fee.

However, the amount of this registration fee was determined by each city. Economically prosperous cities offered more money, whereas poorer ones offered less.

Ye Nai quickly accessed the official website of the Awakener Center, choosing East Ridge City, and found that the local registration fee was two thousand yuan. She smiled until her eyes vanished.

She exited the website and searched for local rental information, looking at the rent and deposit conditions.

After several comparisons, she found the places with the lowest rent and deposit were concentrated around the dangerous zones of 5, 6, and 7, near the Space Channel. A small single room of about ten square meters, fit only for a bed beside the bathroom, with water and electricity included, two thousand yuan was enough for three months' advance deposit.

Ye Nai immediately decided to prepare a backup plan.

In these two months, earn and save money well, then go to the Awakener Center. If she could register successfully, she would use the registration money to rent a house. If something unexpected happened again, the saved money would at least be enough for the deposit and one month's rent upfront.

It was not until the washing machine finished washing the clothes that Ye Nai charged her phone, turned around to hang the clothes, and from the moment she entered the house until now, she had never thought of telling her family that her Awakening had been delayed and turned into a Space Awakened.

The value of a Space Awakened lay in the size of the space. As a mobile storage, 54 cubic meters was a bit larger than a small shipping container but slightly smaller than a large one, which was not considered a large space. It might not even be competitive in logistics and delivery, so her greatest value was still just for bearing children, except now her partner options had upgraded to similarly low-level Awakeners.

Was that interesting?

Even more so, Ye Nai was sure that once her parents knew she truly had Awakened, it would not be good for her. Having lived half their lives without pride, they would definitely show her off as an Awakened, and in a few days, she would become a commodity waiting to be priced.

Ordinary families hoping to turn their fate around relied on mutations, and this mutation meant having an Awakener in the family.

As the eldest daughter, Ye Nai was tired of endless sacrifices and contributions since childhood.

She put away her phone, finished the last of the housework, turned off the light, and went to bed.

The next morning, she got up at her usual time, steamed the buns she had bought the day before, ate two herself, then woke up her family, and left the house.

She arrived at the bus station before seven o'clock. Today, there were significantly fewer students waiting for the bus than yesterday, with more than half of her classmates missing.

The station staff, unsurprised, still arranged a bus exclusively for students, avoiding the crowd of working adults.

Ye Nai boarded the bus quickly, and along with her classmates, grabbed several rows of seats on the back right side of the bus, chatting noisily along the way.

Upon arrival, the procedure was the same as the day before: show the pass, change into protective gear, and use the cart to transport trash bags to the garbage truck, trip by trip.

Ye Nai transported three bags per trip, working very efficiently. She made over twenty dollars by noon.

For lunch, she ate outside as usual, consuming five meat buns and a bottle of drink.

This time, she intentionally moved closer to a crowd, eavesdropping on their casual conversations and gossip.

Unsurprisingly, she overheard what had happened the previous afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, an Awakener was swept away by a mutant plant that emerged from underground. The individual wasn't killed but was severely injured before being thrown out. It seemed the mutant plant had been attacked by some unknown force, didn't have time to digest the prey, and this drew the attention of the Awakeners and warriors inside, resulting in everyone going home early.

The exact timing of the incident was unknown, but deducing from the time the staff told them to stop working, Ye Nai guessed it must have been close to the time when a tremendous surge of scalding energy spontaneously entered her body.

The unknown attack on the mutant plant might just have been by her fungus.

The released spores, or perhaps the Fungal Mycelium in the soil, grew toward the energy-rich area and discovered the predatory mutant plant. During the process of breaking down and absorbing energy, the Fungal Mycelium released a large number of spores that proliferated rapidly. The attacked mutant plant threw out its freshly caught prey to save itself, drawing human attention.

By the time the fight ended, the fungus had already acquired a substantial amount of energy for its own nourishment and incidentally provided Ye Nai with a small space.

Ye Nai went through her analysis several times and felt that the sequence of events was probably correct.

This pleased her a great deal; the fungus was truly nature's janitor. Before her superpower fungus, there was no trash that couldn't be decomposed, and the more energy-rich mutant plants and mutant beasts, the better.