Xiaqing didn’t expect the Sheep Leader’s simple mind to remember how to open the door in one go, so she just propped it open. She sprayed a generous amount of Insect Repellent at the entrance, then put on her Protective Mask. "We’re out of water. I’m going to continue clearing the path. Are you coming with me or staying here?"
The Sheep Leader, naturally, made no sound. Xiaqing hadn’t expected it to talk anyway. She shouldered the Insect Repellent sprayer and set out again. As for the courtyard wall and sheep pen destroyed during her fight with the Sheep Leader, that was a problem for another day.
After leaving the village, Xiaqing was pleasantly surprised to find that Captain Tan and his team had entered the village through the North Hillside’s Buffer Forest, clearing a path over a meter wide with a handheld weed whacker. Xiaqing enviously eyed the military’s comprehensive gear for a moment. After spraying Insect Repellent along the path up the mountain, she finally pulled out her sickle to clear the way to the stone cave with the mountain spring.
Prying away the two large rocks blocking the stone cave, Xiaqing collected some spring water to test its quality. When she found it wasn’t contaminated by the Harmful Rain, she happily filled a canteen and hung it from her waist. She began clearing the path to where the Evolved Perilla grew. After confirming that neither the Perilla nor the toon trees had undergone Qiang Evolution, Xiaqing cheerfully cut some Perilla and snapped off some newly sprouted Asparagus Chrysanthemum before returning home, where she saw the Sheep Leader lying by the door, sunbathing.
Xiaqing placed the Perilla in front of it. "Eat up. You’re not the leader, you’re my ancestor."
The Sheep Leader showed no courtesy, standing up to continue chowing down.
Xiaqing put the sprayer tank in the tool shed, then shouldered four water barrels and carried a large water tank to go fetch water. During the three days of rain, she and the Sheep Leader hadn’t been stingy with their water use, and both the tank and barrels were nearly empty.
Unexpectedly, this time, the Sheep Leader actually followed her out.
Xiaqing shot it a sideways glance. "Thirsty?"
If you ignored its expression, the snow-white Sheep Leader, with a stalk of purple grass dangling from its mouth, was actually quite pleasant to look at. Xiaqing turned and continued walking out of the village.
She first went to the edge of the reservoir, whose water level and surface area had risen considerably. She took out a piece of Red Light snake meat from her leather pouch, hooked it, and dangled it over the water’s surface for a while. When no evolved aquatic creatures leaped out to eat the meat, she filled the large tank with water and left it by the reservoir’s edge, then shouldered the barrels and headed up the mountain for spring water.
The Sheep Leader was faster than her. It had already drunk its fill and was now eating grass next to the stone cave.
After placing the barrels in the cave to fill with water, Xiaqing pulled up a couple of the palm-high, leafy green plants the Sheep Leader was chewing on. A quick test confirmed they were indeed Green Light safe food.
’Getting bitten by a leech that big would be trouble.’ Xiaqing was just about to praise the Sheep Leader for knowing what to eat when she saw an evolved leech wriggling on a tree trunk above its head. However, Xiaqing didn’t move, wanting to see how the Sheep Leader would handle it.
The sheep’s body was covered in wool, making it hard for the leech to find a place to bite. It settled on the Sheep Leader’s head and launched itself forward. Just as the leech was about to land on the Sheep Leader’s head, the sheep shifted to the side, and then... sent the leech flying with a kick of its hoof.
It was an expected move. Having been on the receiving end of several of those kicks, Xiaqing was well aware of how powerful its hooves were. She stepped forward and killed the thirty-centimeter-long leech with one strike of her knife, then casually dug a hole and buried it.
Some evolved leeches were Green Light and edible, and even the non-Green Light ones could be used for medicine. But the things creeped Xiaqing out; she’d rather eat grass than this. She didn’t want to put it in her personal leather pouch, and besides, one leech wasn’t worth many points anyway.
Now that her ’estate’ had grown, Xiaqing didn’t want to stomach her disgust just to earn a few points.
Once all four water barrels were full, Xiaqing tightened the lids, stuffed them all into her large backpack, and called out a goodbye to the Sheep Leader before heading down the mountain. She picked up the large water tank from the reservoir’s edge, returned home to put it away, and then began to clean the yard.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to immediately clear her farmland to plant crops; the ground was simply too wet, and she wouldn’t be able to get into the fields for a few more days. So, Xiaqing decided to clean up her home first.
The courtyard wall had been knocked down by her and the Sheep Leader, so she decided to just clear the rubble and fence in a larger area, enclosing the eastern storage structure and the western vegetable garden. Xiaqing went to the west yard first. Fortunately, although the west yard had also been smashed to bits, the small rainproof greenhouse she had built was still standing, and the ginger and garlic seedlings inside were fine.
Xiaqing removed the rainproof cover, cleared away the small weeds that had sprouted beneath the ginger and garlic seedlings, and then pulled out all the wildly overgrown grass and small saplings in the east and west yards.
The five toon seedlings she had transplanted from the new territory? Whoops, they were all smashed. As the fight had gotten more desperate, Xiaqing couldn’t remember if she or the Sheep Leader had been the one to smash them.
’I forgot about those just now,’ she thought about the two toon seedlings transplanted next to the spring. ’I’ll go check on them this afternoon.’
After a flurry of work that lasted until past noon, Xiaqing had finally cleaned up her large courtyard, making it look bright and tidy. She even laid down a small path of red bricks. It was satisfying to look at from any angle. A perfect end to her morning’s work. Time for lunch.
Xiaqing rinsed the mud off her Protective Suit, then stripped off her soaked clothes and took a shower before heading to the kitchen to cook. A small pot of rice porridge, a side of Perilla leaf salad, and compressed rations for the main course. All set.
Xiaqing had just finished cooking and placed the food on her newly made dining table when the Sheep Leader trotted into the yard, right on her newly laid brick path.
"Stop!" Xiaqing blocked the Sheep Leader from entering the house, motioning for it to rinse its dirty hooves in the basin by the door. The Sheep Leader, its eyes fixed on the dining table, was surprisingly cooperative, letting Xiaqing wash its hooves before heading straight for the table once inside.
Xiaqing was already used to its ravenous attitude toward food. She placed a basin of Perilla mixed with a small piece of a compressed ration on the floor. "This is yours. Too much of the compressed ration will make you bloated, so just eat a little."
The Sheep Leader, whose belly was already round from eating outside, lowered its head and dug in. By the time Xiaqing finished her meal, the Sheep Leader had already licked its bowl clean and was lying on its tatami mat, resting with its eyes closed.
Xiaqing lay down on the new bamboo plank bed she’d placed opposite the fire. She was exhausted from the morning’s work.
「Meanwhile」
In a military barracks nestled in a mountain pass ten kilometers northwest of the Third Territory, Su Ming was lying on his bed, laughing so hard the whole frame shook as if he were having a seizure.
Hu Zi, on the bottom bunk, kicked the bed slats above him hard. "How long are you going to keep spazzing out?"
Su Ming bounced up with the bed slats and landed back down. He poked his head over the edge and snickered at Hu Zi. "Hehe, hehehe... I can’t help it every time I think about it. I haven’t seen anything this funny in ten years."
Hu Zi recalled the scene of Xiaqing and the sheep lying in the completely wrecked yard and had to struggle to suppress his own laughter. Still, he put on a serious face to lecture Su Ming. "The Captain said not to talk about this outside. Mingzi, you better keep your mouth shut. Xiaqing is a girl, she has her pride."
From a nearby bunk, Cao Xianyun narrowed his eyes. "Mingzi, did you get a clear look at Xiaqing’s face today? Her face is white, isn’t it?"
The Visual Evolver, Su Ming, recalled as he laughed, "It was white at first, but then the sheep kicked a face full of mud onto her Protective Mask, and she wiped it, so it became mud-colored... HAHAHA—"
Hu Zi heard that and sensed something was off. "White, not purplish-red?"
Ten years into the Natural Disaster, there were many people who had been disfigured by acid rain, poisoning, combat, and other reasons. So when he saw Xiaqing’s purplish-red skin, Cao Xianyun had also assumed it was a side effect of poisoning. But now it seemed, "She’s very smart."
Hu Zi, the Strength Evolver, agreed. "Strength Evolution is the least valuable of all evolutions. For her to have survived on her own without relying on a man until now, she must be very smart, and she must have endured a lot of hardship."
Cao Xianyun grunted in agreement. "I just remember Zhong Tao saying she worked on a construction team in the Safe Zone."
A female Evolver, yet doing the hardest, dirtiest manual labor. Su Ming stopped laughing. "For her to come out here to farm by herself, she must be the only one left in her family."
Cao Xianyun concluded, "She doesn’t want to attract attention. She just wants to live a quiet life on her own."
"Old Cao is right." Su Ming nodded immediately. "Don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone."
"She’s not alone now. She’s raising a very interesting Evolutionary Sheep. This morning, that sheep stood in front of Xiaqing to guard against us. It already sees her as one of its own." Hu Zi, who had spent the entire morning patrolling the Buffer Forest, let out a huge yawn and closed his eyes to sleep.