Seeing that Xia Qing remained silent, Feng Wen got out of bed and wandered over to the door. She reached out, intending to rummage through the grain bag Xia Qing had brought back, but Xia Qing pressed her hand down on it.
Feng Wen tugged at the bag, refusing to let go. Holding her breath, she said with a grin, “There are no facilities to preserve grain in the territories. If you can’t finish all of this, it’ll just go bad. What a waste! Give me half. Of course, I won’t take it for free. I’ll have my brother do the legwork for you—he can take the vegetables and grain you grow back to the safety zone to exchange for supplies, and he’ll only charge you a twenty percent errand fee. How about it?”
Feng Wen gripped the grain bag tightly, boasting proudly, “My brother is a Level 3 Speed Evolver.”
The combat power of a Level 3 Speed Evolver was even higher than that of a Level 4 Strength Evolver. Xia Qing remained expressionless. “Can’t afford it. Let go.”
An Olfactory Evolver’s combat power naturally couldn’t compare to a Strength Evolver’s. After Feng Wen let go, she stared greedily at the grain bag and threatened Xia Qing, “Don’t be ungrateful. Do you really think being a Level 4 Strength Evolver makes you a big deal? My brother is part of the Su Feng Team. Once you leave the safety zone, there are plenty of ways to get someone killed.”
Holding the grain bag and the canvas bag, Xia Qing looked back. On her dirt-streaked face, her clear, dark eyes shone exceptionally bright. “If Tang Lu finds out that you also want to get your hands on Yang Jin, and if Tang Zhengsu finds out that your brother is secretly selling the Su Feng Team’s internal information to outsiders, how many days do you think you two siblings have left to live?”
With that, Xia Qing didn’t even spare a glance at the pale, terrified Feng Wen. She slung her backpack on and walked out of the dormitory building. Before she had gone very far, she heard some acquaintances at a nearby street corner planning to rob her.
“Robbing her this once will be enough to feed us for two months. Be careful not to kill or cripple her. The four of us still have to rely on her to keep us fed.”
Hearing their disgusting, leering laughter, Xia Qing took a few steps forward with a bag in each hand and stopped at the street corner, directly facing the four ordinary civilians who intended to rob her.
Was this… the fat sheep delivering itself to their doorstep?
Zhao Jie froze for a moment, then excitedly yelled, “Go!” before leading the charge toward the bags in Xia Qing’s hands.
Although the strength of a Level 4 Strength Evolver woman was equivalent to four young, healthy ordinary men, women were supposedly weak-minded and couldn’t exert their full power when facing danger. Forget four men, she wouldn’t even be able to beat three. They had done this dozens of times over the past five years, and it was always as easy as pie…
*Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!*
Before Zhao Jie’s trembling, excited hands could even touch the grain bag, he was sent flying by Xia Qing’s kick, crashing into the wall before landing on top of his buddies.
No…
Zhao Jie stared in terror at the thin, flushed woman before him. Impossible. How was this possible?!
The other groups lying in ambush on both sides of the road, all emaciated to the bone, were utterly stunned by the ruthless force with which Xia Qing had effortlessly kicked down four grown men. None of them dared to make a move.
Standing by the third-floor window of the evolver dormitory, Feng Wen watched, dumbfounded, as Xia Qing easily walked through the dangerous area carrying her things.
“Sister Xia Qing, here, let me carry that for you!” Zhong Tao, who had been crane-necking at the gate of the safety zone for ages, saw the person wearing the green tag with “Xia Qing” on her chest finally arrive. He jogged forward to take the half-person-high canvas bag she was carrying, but the sheer weight of it almost dragged him to the ground.
How is it this heavy?!
Xia Qing steadied the canvas bag in her right hand and handed the grain bag in her left hand to the overly familiar Zhong Tao. “What are you doing here, Tao Ge?”
Zhong Tao carried the sixty-plus jin grain bag with ease. “Our team took on a mission to escort the lords. Which plot did you get, sister? I’ll take you there.”
With people constantly passing by the safety zone gate, Xia Qing didn’t want to expose her exact location, so she replied vaguely, “To the north of the city.”
“Got it!” Zhong Tao led Xia Qing to a light truck, opened the door, and greeted the guy in the driver’s seat before telling Xia Qing to get in. “This one is heading north. Go on up and chat with Kui Ge first, sister. We’ll head out once it’s full.”
“Thanks.” Not having to sit in the truck bed, bumping around and eating dust, Xia Qing naturally wouldn’t refuse. She greeted the driver, Zheng Kui, effortlessly hoisted her canvas bag into the truck to stuff it in front of the seat, and then sat in the passenger seat clutching her grain bag, waiting for the truck to start.
Once she was settled, Zheng Kui pulled out a small tin of tobacco, rolled a cigarette with a piece of paper cut from an old book, and offered it to Xia Qing. “Have one, sister. This is evolved tobacco—really wakes you up.”
After the natural disaster, surviving humans never knew whether tomorrow or another catastrophe would arrive first. Most chose to indulge in pleasure while they still had their lives, leading to a rampant prevalence of smoking, drinking, and sex.
Xia Qing didn’t mention that she didn’t smoke, simply waving her hand in refusal. “That kind of tobacco is too strong for me. I’m not used to it. You go ahead, Kui Ge.”
Women usually preferred tobacco that had evolved to have a pleasant fragrance. Zheng Kui pulled out a match, lit his cigarette, and took a deep drag. “Which plot did you claim?”
“Territory No. 3.” It had been a very, very long time since Xia Qing had chatted with anyone. Seeing that Zheng Kui didn’t reply, she voluntarily added, “It’s about a hundred and twenty kilometers north of the city, near the Longpan Reservoir. It’s a pretty small reservoir, so you might not have heard of it, Kui Ge.”
Zheng Kui blew a puff of smoke out the window. “That’s a decent place. It’s not far from the Regiment Headquarters.”
“Yeah.” Xia Qing’s voice carried a hint of satisfaction she couldn’t hide. Part of the reason she chose Territory No. 3 was indeed its proximity to the military camp; if she encountered any danger, she could easily call for backup nearby.
After finishing the slender hand-rolled cigarette, Zheng Kui asked, “Just you by yourself?”
Xia Qing nodded. “Yeah, it’s quieter alone.”
Having squeezed into a tiny safety zone with two million people for nearly ten years, Xia Qing would have gone mad long ago if she hadn’t been able to use missions as an excuse to get outside and breathe some fresh air.
“Out of 1.8 billion people, barely over a hundred million survived. Outside the safety zone, there’s no one around, and there are man-eating things everywhere.” Zheng Kui’s voice was heavy as he casually rolled another cigarette and popped it into his mouth.
Hua Guo, with only one-eighteenth of its population remaining, was already the nation on Blue Star with the highest survival rate during the natural disasters. Many small countries had been completely wiped out, and some had even sunk underground due to crustal movements, ceasing to exist entirely.
Xia Qing silently gazed at the ten-meter-high reinforced concrete walls of the safety zone. Large patches of dried, dark red bloodstains, along with scorch marks and cracks left from countless battles between humans and beasts, covered the surface. She did not speak again.
“Young lady, I finally found you!” The man who had stood behind Xia Qing while claiming territories ran over to the side of the truck, greeting her warmly. “My name is Zhao Ze. I claimed Territory No. 4. We’ll be neighbors from now on.”
Territory No. 4 was to the east of Territory No. 3, and it was Xia Qing’s second choice. She glanced at the dozen or so men and women behind Zhao Ze and gave a slight nod. “Xia Qing.”
Although Xia Qing’s attitude was cold, the fact that she was willing to acknowledge an ordinary civilian like him was already considered quite good among evolvers.
Just as Zhao Ze leaned against the window to try and curry more favor, Zhong Tao walked over with a large crowd carrying battered luggage, urging Zhao Ze’s group to get on. “Everyone get in. If you keep dawdling, we won’t even make it there before dark.”
Zhao Ze led the crowd as they scrambled into the truck bed. Zhong Tao got in and sat between Xia Qing and Zheng Kui. Zheng Kui stepped on the gas, and the truck lunged forward.
The highways that used to stretch in all directions before the natural disaster had long been completely destroyed by acid rain and evolved plants. The road the truck was traveling on now was a dirt path that had been cleared section by section over the past few years. Because the truck bed was carrying quite a few people, the vehicle’s speed dropped once they left the flat areas near the safety zone. They had departed from the safety zone at ten in the morning, making frequent stops along the way, and it wasn’t until after five in the afternoon that they finally pulled up beneath the road sign at the edge of Territory No. 3.
As the final passenger, Xia Qing got off. Watching the light truck turn around to head back, she picked up her bags and ran wildly across her fields. Tripping over a tree root, she tumbled onto her back and lay there, staring up at the sky with a silly grin for a while before scrambling back up and rushing toward her new home.
Banxia Novel, so much joy.