Bartering was the primary method of trade after currency became obsolete. This time, Tan Junjie didn’t refuse. "What do you want to trade for?"
Xiaqing asked tentatively, "Do you have any sweet potato starts?"
Tan Junjie nodded. "Hu Zi, tally it up."
"Yes, sir."
The young team member, Hu Zi, immediately pulled out a detector and a scale. After testing and weighing the captured animals, he efficiently tallied the score. "Five Red Light Snakes are 100 points; one evolved Red Light Snake is 120 points; one Yellow Light Snake is 75 points; two medicinal evolved poisonous centipedes are 300 points. That’s a total of 595 points."
The patrol team was using a High Level Detector, which was far superior to Xiaqing’s ordinary one. Though only palm-sized, the High Level Detector could not only distinguish between edible and inedible life-forms, but also display their Harmful Element content, using a Green Light for safe food and a Yellow Light for conditionally edible food.
Tan Chunjie looked at Xiaqing, who was staring at the detector, and asked, "The military’s sweet potatoes are safe to eat. With your points, you can get two sweet potatoes or six sweet potato seedlings. Which do you choose?"
’One hundred points for a single safe sweet potato seedling. It was expensive, but that’s what they were worth.’ Xiaqing had never tried to grow sweet potatoes from slips, so she chose the surer bet. "I’ll take the seedlings. Captain Tan, if I hunt more animals, can I trade them with you for more seedlings?"
Tan Junjie nodded, adding a warning, "Don’t go beyond the isolation belt."
"Yes, sir!" Xiaqing replied brightly, though it was obvious she didn’t mean it.
"Captain, the Lord of Territory Four has been notified. We have permission to enter," the team member who had run ahead reported upon his return to Tan Junjie.
After Tan Junjie led his team east into Buffer Forest Four, Xiaqing headed south, following the narrow valley that separated the two buffer forests and marked the border between the territories.
A moment later, she overheard Su Ming asking quietly, "Captain, it must be so hard for Xiaqing to farm all by herself. Shouldn’t we give her a few extra seedlings?"
Tan Junjie retorted, "Are you going to pay for them with your points?"
After that, there was silence.
Xiaqing smiled. Once she was out of the Buffer Forest, she took off her Protective Mask and headed straight for the four-mu plot she had just finished tilling.
’Six more sweet potato seedlings meant she needed to till another half-mu of land!’
Six seedlings wouldn’t take up much space on their own, but if she caught that sheep, she could trade for many more. And even if she couldn’t catch it, once these six seedlings took root and their vines grew, she could take cuttings and still cultivate an entire field of sweet potatoes.
The thought gave Xiaqing a surge of energy, and she tilled another full mu of land in one go before stopping to head home for a meal. While she was out in the field, she hadn’t heard any major commotion from Territory Four, which meant the patrol team hadn’t found the sheep in its Buffer Forest. There was still hope.
After a simple lunch at home, Xiaqing went back to work like a tireless spinning top, setting out to clear the two abandoned courtyards to the west.
She gathered the skeletal remains, dug a pit, and buried them. The weeds she burned for potash fertilizer. Anything still usable was moved to the eastern neighbor’s warehouse, and the remaining rubble was piled up.
Just like that, she had two new vegetable gardens very close to her home.
Once everything was tidy, Xiaqing returned home and treated herself to a luxurious bath with spring water. She then washed her clothes with filtered water and hung them to dry before changing into her Protective Suit to fetch more water from the mountain behind her house.
She didn’t want anyone to know about the unpolluted drinking spring within her territory, so she was always extremely cautious when fetching water, hiding the container in her backpack.
Once on the mountain, Xiaqing was disappointed to see the stone slab still covering the cave entrance. The sheep and the Weasel hadn’t returned for a drink. After filling her container and returning home, Xiaqing listened to the seven o’clock broadcast while she cooked dinner.
The broadcast began at seven o’clock sharp. As usual, it started with uplifting news from across Hua Country before moving on to news and announcements from Hui San Base, which Xiaqing listened to intently.
An announcement stated that the temperature would rise by eight degrees over the next three days, followed by the first heavy downpour of the year, a Harmful Rain with a high concentration of Harmful Elements. The announcement also advised that the period after the Harmful Rain would be ideal for sowing spring wheat, and urged everyone to seize the opportunity and not miss the planting season.
’She’d tilled her fields too early.’
Already lying in bed, Xiaqing just smiled nonchalantly. She decided she would till another plot for wheat after the rain. The land she’d already prepared wouldn’t go to waste; it would get planted eventually.
Xiaqing began to plan. She would use the three days before the Harmful Rain to explore the Evolution Forest north of Territory Three.
Last winter, Hui San Base had expanded the Safe Zone’s isolation belt outward by seventy kilometers. The Evolution Forest beyond this new boundary hadn’t been entered by anyone since the Natural Disasters.
An Evolution Forest untouched by humans was filled with both danger and temptation. And with her food supplies dwindling, Xiaqing was particularly susceptible to temptation.
The Buffer Forest and village within her own territory had already been thoroughly scouted by humans. The animals had all been exterminated and the plants had been screened. There were no more surprising discoveries to be made there.
No sooner said than done.
The next morning, Xiaqing gathered her gear, passed through the Buffer Forest and the isolation belt, and entered the dense woods of the Evolution Forest.
After the Natural Disasters, the seasonal temperature variation on Blue Star had increased by at least fifteen degrees. However, Evolved Plants had also improved their cold tolerance, and it was already lush and green everywhere by mid-February. Most animals, however, retained their old habits, hibernating through the winter. They would only emerge to become active and reproduce once the temperatures rose and the rains came.
This meant these three days would be much safer than the time that followed.
Still, Xiaqing kept her senses of sight and hearing on high alert, advancing cautiously deeper into the forest with her machete in hand.
She soon discovered that this Evolution Forest had been inhabited by humans before the Natural Disasters. There were terraced fields carved into the hillsides and collapsed houses on the flat, open summit.
The chances of finding edible plants in an area like this were much higher than in a truly wild forest that had never been cultivated. Most of the safe food sources located by exploration teams were likely found in similar areas.
An hour and a half later, Xiaqing made a discovery.
She found a few finger-high green sprouts that registered as Green Light on her detector. After carefully clearing away the soil around one of them, her eyes lit up.
Ginger!
It was a piece of sprouted ginger!
’I’ll take it!’
Because Evolved Plants could mutate if removed from their native soil, Xiaqing dug up the entire clump of earth the ginger was growing in. She carefully wrapped it and placed it in her basket, doing her best to preserve its original growing environment.
After climbing three more terraces, catching two snakes, scaring away a pack of rats and squirrels, and crushing several insects that tried to bite her, Xiaqing finally made her second discovery.
It was a clump of garlic shoots, which also registered as Green Light.
’Scallions, ginger, and garlic are the holy trinity of cooking. Now I’m just missing one.’ But despite searching for another hour, from the terraces to a collapsed courtyard, Xiaqing couldn’t find a single scallion sprout.
’Maybe the scallions haven’t sprouted yet?’
Xiaqing continued her search and, just outside a collapsed courtyard wall, found a tall Asparagus Tree, which she preliminarily judged to be edible.
Her reasoning was that the buds on the young shoots sprouting around the base of the Asparagus Tree had been gnawed off by some animal.
After carefully checking the tree for any hidden snakes or insects, she climbed up and picked a cluster of deep-red Asparagus Chrysanthemum sprouts. She squeezed the sap into her detector’s port, and sure enough, after about ten seconds, it showed a Green Light.
’Such a huge, edible Asparagus Tree!’
It was one wonderful surprise after another. A brilliant smile bloomed on Xiaqing’s face, as bright as a spring day. She had smiled more in the five days since claiming her territory than she had in the entire previous six months.
She had just picked a few more clusters of Asparagus Chrysanthemum sprouts when she heard a large animal moving about thirty meters away.
It was too late to run. Xiaqing pressed her back against the tree trunk, held her breath, and watched.
The sounds grew closer, and a fat, filthy, white-wooled sheep emerged from the tall grass.
The sheep was huge; it had to be an Evolutionary Sheep. Xiaqing glanced at its hooves and was almost certain this was the same one that had pushed aside the rock in her territory to drink from her spring.
’So, the sheep she’d been waiting for at the cave had come to find her under this tree instead?’
Xiaqing tightened her grip on her machete, preparing to attack (with a sneak attack).
The sheep raised its head and looked directly at Xiaqing hiding in the tree, its eyes narrowing slightly.
And in that sheep’s eyes, Xiaqing saw blatant, undeniable contempt.
’What the hell!’
’Could this sheep be one of the rarest of all Evolved Creatures—a Brain Domain Evolver?’