Xia Qing didn’t expect Yang Lao Da’s simple sheep brain to remember how to open the door in one go. She simply left the door propped open, sprayed a generous amount of insect repellent at the entrance, and 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 are you staying home?”
Yang Lao Da naturally remained silent, and Xia Qing didn’t expect it to speak anyway. She slung the insect repellent sprayer onto her back and set off once more. As for the courtyard wall and the sheep pen that had been destroyed during her fight with Yang Lao Da, she would deal with them when she had time.
After leaving the village, Xia Qing was pleasantly surprised to find that Captain Tan and his team had entered the village from the northern buffer forest, clearing a path over a meter wide with a handheld lawnmower. After coveting the military’s complete set of equipment for a moment, she sprayed insect repellent along the path as she headed up the mountain. Only then did she pull out her sickle to clear the path leading to the spring cave.
Pushing aside the two large boulders blocking the cave, Xia Qing collected some spring water to test its quality. Finding that it had not been polluted by the Qiang Rain, she happily filled a flask, hung it at her waist, and began clearing the path to where the evolved perilla grew. After confirming that neither the perilla nor the toon trees had undergone Qiang evolution, she happily harvested the perilla, snapped off some freshly grown toon sprouts, and returned home. There, she found Yang Lao Da lying by the door, basking in the sun.
Xia Qing placed the perilla in front of it. “Eat up. You’re not the boss; you’re my ancestor.”
Yang Lao Da was not polite at all, standing up to continue devouring its meal.
Xia Qing put the sprayer tank into the tool room, then slung four drinking water buckets over her back and picked up a large water tank to fetch water. During the three-day rain period, neither she nor Yang Lao Da had spared the water, so both the tank and the buckets were nearly empty.
To her surprise, Yang Lao Da actually followed her out this time.
Xia Qing glanced askance at it. “Thirsty?”
If one ignored its gaze, the snow-white Yang Lao Da, with purple grass still dangling from its mouth, actually looked quite pleasing to the eye. Xia Qing turned and continued walking out of the village.
She first went to the reservoir, whose water level and area had risen significantly. She took a segment of red-light snake meat out of her leather pouch, hooked it, and dangled it over the water’s surface for a while. Seeing that no evolved aquatic creatures jumped out to eat the meat, she filled the large water tank, left it by the reservoir, and then headed up the mountain with her water buckets to fetch spring water.
Yang Lao Da was faster than her; it had already drunk its fill and was now grazing near the stone cave.
After placing her water buckets inside the cave to fill, Xia Qing plucked two palm-high green-leafed weeds that Yang Lao Da was munching on. Upon testing them, they indeed turned out to be green-light safe food.
Just as Xia Qing was about to praise Yang Lao Da for knowing what to eat, she spotted an evolved leech wriggling on a tree trunk right above its head. Getting latched onto by a leech of that size would be trouble, but Xia Qing didn’t move, wanting to see how Yang Lao Da would handle it.
Since a sheep’s body was covered in wool, making it hard to find a place to bite, the leech targeted Yang Lao Da’s head and launched itself. Just as the leech was about to land on Yang Lao Da’s head, the sheep sidestepped, and then… with a single hoof, kicked the leech flying.
It was an expected move. Having been kicked several times herself, Xia Qing knew exactly how powerful those sheep hooves were. She stepped forward, killed the thirty-centimeter-long leech with her knife, and dug a hole to bury it.
Some evolved leeches were green-light and edible, and even if they weren’t, they could be used in medicine. However, Xia Qing found them disgusting. She would rather eat grass than touch them, let alone put one in her leather pouch. Besides, a single leech wasn’t worth many points.
With her current substantial assets, Xia Qing had no desire to endure such disgust just to earn a few measly points.
Once the four drinking water buckets were completely filled, Xia Qing screwed the caps tight and stuffed them all into her large backpack. She called out to Yang Lao Da before heading down the mountain. Picking up the large water tank she had left by the reservoir, she returned home, set it down, and began cleaning the courtyard.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to clear the cultivated land to plant crops immediately, but the soil was simply too wet to enter for the next few days. Thus, Xia Qing focused on cleaning her home first.
Since the courtyard walls had been smashed down by her and Yang Lao Da, she decided to clear them away and build an even larger enclosure, incorporating the shelf building to the east and the vegetable garden to the west. Xia Qing went to the west courtyard first. Fortunately, although the west yard was also a chaotic mess, the small rainproof greenhouse she had built was still intact, and the ginger and garlic sprouts inside were perfectly fine.
Xia Qing lifted the rain cover, weeded out the small grass sprouting beneath the ginger and garlic, and then pulled up all the wildly growing weeds and saplings in both the east and west courtyards.
As for the five toon seedlings she had transplanted from her new territory? Unfortunately, they had been completely destroyed. During the heat of their frantic fight, Xia Qing couldn’t even remember whether she or Yang Lao Da had smashed them.
What about the two toon seedlings transplanted next to the spring eye? She had forgotten to check just now; she would have to look this afternoon.
After busying herself until past noon, Xia Qing finally managed to clear her large courtyard, making it look bright and neat. She even laid a small red-brick path, which looked incredibly comfortable. With her morning’s work perfectly wrapped up, it was time for lunch.
Xia Qing washed the mud off her protective suit, stripped off all her soaked clothes to take a shower, and then went to the kitchen to cook. A small pot of rice porridge, a side of cold-tossed perilla leaves, and compressed rations as the staple—everything was ready.
Just as Xia Qing finished cooking and set the food on her newly made dining table, Yang Lao Da stepped onto her newly laid brick path and entered the courtyard.
“Stop right there!” Xia Qing blocked Yang Lao Da from entering the house, gesturing for it to rinse its dirty hooves in the water basin by the door. Staring intently at the dining table, Yang Lao Da was highly cooperative as Xia Qing scrubbed its hooves, after which it marched straight into the house toward the table.
Xia Qing had long since grown accustomed to its eager eating posture. She placed a basin of perilla mixed with a small piece of compressed rations on the floor. “This is yours. Eating too many compressed rations will bloat your stomach, so eat less.”
Yang Lao Da, whose belly was already round from eating outside, buried its head and devoured the food. By the time Xia Qing finished her meal, the sheep had already licked the plate clean and was lying on its tatami mat with its eyes closed, resting.
Xia Qing lay down on her newly made bamboo bed opposite the fireplace, utterly exhausted from the morning’s labor.
Meanwhile, in a military camp dormitory in a mountain valley ten kilometers northwest of Territory No. 3, Su Ming was lying on his bed, laughing so hard he looked like he was having an epileptic fit, making the entire bed shake.
Hu Zi, who was on the bottom bunk, kicked the bed frame hard. “How long are you going to keep twitching, kid?”
Su Ming bounced up and down with the bed frame, then poked his head out to grin at Hu Zi. “Heh, hehehe… I just can’t help it whenever I think about it. I haven’t encountered anything this funny in ten years.”
Remembering the scene of Xia Qing and the sheep lying in the utterly destroyed courtyard, Hu Zi also struggled to hold back his laughter. Yet, he still tried to maintain a serious front to lecture Su Ming. “The captain said we aren’t allowed to talk about it outside. Keep your mouth shut, Mingzi. Xia Qing is a girl; she has a reputation to uphold.”
Cao Xianyun, who was on the adjacent bed, squinted. “Mingzi, did you get a clear look at Xia Qing’s face today? Her face was white, wasn’t it?”
Su Ming, a visual evolver, recalled while laughing, “It was white at first, but then the sheep kicked a bunch of mud onto her protective goggles. She wiped it off, and her face turned completely mud-colored… Hahaha!”
Hu Zi caught on to something unusual. “White? Not purple-red?”
In the ten years since the cataclysm, many people had been maimed or disfigured due to acid rain, poisoning, and combat. Thus, when Cao Xianyun saw Xia Qing’s purple-red skin, he had assumed it was a lingering effect of poisoning. But looking at it now, “She is very smart.”
Hu Zi, a strength evolver, agreed. “Strength evolution is the least valuable of all evolutions. For her to survive safely until now without relying on a man, she must be very smart, and she must have suffered a lot.”
Cao Xianyun gave an acknowledging grunt. “I remember Zhong Tao mentioning she used to work in the safe zone’s construction team.”
An evolver and a woman, yet she had been doing the hardest and dirtiest manual labor. Su Ming stopped laughing. “She came out to farm all by herself. There’s a good chance she’s the only one left in her family.”
Cao Xianyun concluded, “She doesn’t want to draw attention to herself; 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 rather interesting evolved sheep. This morning, that sheep stood in front of Xia Qing to guard against us, treating her as one of its own.” Having spent the entire morning sweeping the buffer forest, Hu Zi let out a massive yawn and closed his eyes to sleep.
Banxia Novel, so much more joy.