Barter was the primary way goods circulated after currency became obsolete. Tan Junjie did not refuse this time. “What do you want to exchange for?”
Xia Qing asked tentatively, “Do you have any sweet potato seeds?”
Tan Junjie nodded. “Hu Zi, calculate it.”
“Yes, sir.”
The young team member named Hu Zi immediately pulled out a detector and a scale. After scanning and weighing the captured animals, he quickly calculated the points. “Five red-light snakes weighing five jin, 100 points; one evolved red-light snake weighing four jin, 120 points; one yellow-light snake weighing one and a half jin, 75 points; two medicinal evolved venomous centipedes weighing six jin, 300 points. That’s a total of 595 points.”
The Investigation Team used advanced detectors, which were much better than Xia Qing’s ordinary detector. The advanced detector was also only palm-sized, but it could do more than just distinguish between edible and inedible organisms; it could also display the content of harmful substances, showing safe food with a green light and acceptable food with a yellow light.
Tan Junjie asked Xia Qing, who was staring at the detector, “The military’s sweet potatoes are safe food. These points can be exchanged for two sweet potatoes or six sweet potato seedlings. Which one do you choose?”
One hundred points for a safe sweet potato seedling was expensive, but they were worth the price. Xia Qing had never grown sweet potato seedlings from tubers before, so she chose the safer option. “I’ll take the sweet potato seedlings. Captain Tan, if I hunt more animals, can I still exchange them with you for more seedlings?”
Tan Junjie nodded and warned her, “Do not go beyond the isolation belt.”
“Yes, sir!” Xia Qing replied loudly, though it was clear she didn’t take it to heart.
“Captain, the lord of Territory No. 4 has been notified. We can enter,” reported the team member who had run off to notify the lord of Territory No. 4 as he returned.
After Tan Junjie led his team east into the Territory No. 4 buffer forest, Xia Qing walked south along the narrow valley that separated the two buffer forests, which also served as the dividing line between the two territories.
Before long, she heard Su Ming ask in a low voice, “Captain, it’s not easy for Xia Qing to farm all by herself. Why don’t we give her a few extra sweet potato seedlings?”
Tan Junjie retorted, “Exchange them with your own points?”
After that, there was only silence.
Xia Qing smiled. Once she walked out of the buffer forest along the valley, she took off her protective mask and headed straight for the four mu of land she had just tilled.
With six more sweet potato seedlings, she needed to till another half mu of land!
Six sweet potato seedlings wouldn’t take up much space, but once she caught that sheep, she would be able to exchange it for many more seedlings. Even if she couldn’t catch the sheep, once these six seedlings took root and grew vines, she could propagate them by cutting the red potato vines to plant a whole field of sweet potatoes.
The more Xia Qing thought about it, the more energized she felt. She tilled an entire mu of land in one go before stopping to head home for lunch. While in the field, she hadn’t heard any loud noises coming from Territory No. 4, which meant the Investigation Team hadn’t found the sheep in the Territory No. 4 buffer forest. She still had a chance.
After a quick lunch at home, Xia Qing, like an untiring spinning top, went to clear the two abandoned courtyards to the west.
She gathered the skeletal remains into one place, dug a pit, and buried them. She burned the wild weeds to make potassium fertilizer, stored whatever useful items she found in the warehouse of her eastern neighbor, and piled up the construction debris.
This way, she had two vegetable gardens very close to home.
After tidying everything up, she returned home and luxuriously took a bath in spring water. She then washed her clothes clean with filtered water and hung them out to dry before changing into her protective suit to fetch water from the back mountain.
She didn’t want anyone to know about the drinking spring inside her territory, so she was extremely careful every time she went to fetch water, hiding the water bucket inside her backpack.
Upon reaching the mountain, Xia Qing was disappointed to find that the stone slab was still blocking the cave entrance. Neither the sheep nor the weasel had returned to drink water. After filling her bucket and returning home, Xia Qing cooked dinner while listening to the 7:00 PM radio broadcast.
As usual, the seven o’clock broadcast began by relaying inspiring news from various parts of Hua Guo, followed by news and announcements from the Hui San Base. Xia Qing listened intently.
The announcement mentioned that the temperature would rise by eight degrees over the next three days, after which they would welcome the year’s first heavy rainfall with high Qiang element content—the Qiang Rain. After the Qiang Rain, it would be suitable to sow spring wheat, so everyone was urged to make haste and not miss the planting season.
She had tilled her land too early.
Already lying in bed, Xia Qing smiled dismissively. She decided to till another plot of land to plant wheat after the rain. The land she had already tilled wouldn’t go to waste; it would be planted sooner or later anyway.
Xia Qing planned to use the three days before the Qiang Rain to explore the Evolution Forest north of Territory No. 3.
Last winter, the Hui San Base had pushed the isolation belt outside the safety zone outward by seventy kilometers. No one had entered the Evolution Forest beyond this boundary since the cataclysm.
An Evolution Forest untouched by humans was full of danger, but also full of temptation. Xia Qing was currently short on food, and temptation was the last thing she could resist.
The buffer forest and village within her territory had already been thoroughly searched by humans; all animals had been exterminated, and the plants had been screened and tested. There was no chance of finding any more pleasant surprises there.
No sooner said than done.
Waking up early the next morning, Xia Qing packed all her gear, crossed the buffer forest and the isolation belt, and entered the lush, dense Evolution Forest.
After the cataclysm, the temperature difference between the four seasons on Blue Star had widened by at least fifteen degrees, but the cold resistance of evolved plants had also improved, leaving everything lush and green by mid-February. However, most animals still maintained their original habits, remaining dormant during the winter to conserve energy. They would only emerge to forage and breed once the temperature rose and rainfall became abundant.
These three days would be much safer than the days to follow.
Even so, Xia Qing kept her vision and hearing fully alert, holding her machete as she cautiously explored deeper.
She discovered that before the cataclysm, this part of the Evolution Forest had also been an area of human activity. There were terraces lining the hillsides, and collapsed houses sat upon the flat, open mountaintop.
In such areas, the probability of finding edible plants was much higher than in wild forests that humans had never cultivated. Eighty percent of the safe food found by exploration teams was discovered in places like this.
An hour and a half later, Xia Qing made a discovery.
She spotted a few finger-high green sprouts that registered a green light on her detector. As she carefully brushed away the soil around the sprouts, her eyes lit up.
Ginger!
A sprouted piece of ginger!
Harvest it!
Since evolved plants could undergo mutations when removed from their original environment, Xia Qing dug up the ginger along with the soil it was growing in, wrapped it up, and placed it in her backpack, doing her best to preserve its growing conditions.
After climbing three more terraces, catching two snakes, scaring off a pack of rats and squirrels, and crushing several insects that tried to bite her, Xia Qing finally made her second discovery.
A clump of garlic sprouts displaying a green light.
Scallions, ginger, and garlic were the essential trio for cooking, and now she was only missing one. However, over the next hour, as Xia Qing searched from the terraces to the collapsed courtyards, she didn’t find a single scallion sprout.
Could it be that the scallions hadn’t sprouted yet?
Xia Qing continued her search and discovered a tall Chinese toon tree outside a collapsed courtyard wall, which she tentatively identified as an edible plant.
This was because the buds on the young toon saplings growing around the tree had been nibbled away by some unknown animal.
After carefully checking the tree to make sure no snakes or insects were hiding in it, Xia Qing climbed up and plucked a cluster of deep red toon sprouts. She squeezed the juice onto the detector’s port, and after a dozen seconds, it indeed lit up green.
Such a massive, edible Chinese toon tree!
The surprises just kept coming. Xia Qing smiled radiantly. In the mere five days since entering her territory, she had smiled more times than she had in the entire past half-year.
She had just plucked a few more toon sprouts when she heard the sound of a large animal moving about thirty meters away.
There was no time to run. Xia Qing pressed her back against the tree trunk, holding her breath as she observed.
The sound drew closer and closer until a filthy, fat, white-haired sheep emerged from the green grass.
This sheep was massive; it had to be an evolved sheep. Xia Qing looked at its hooves and was eighty percent sure this was the very same fellow that had pried open the stones in her territory to drink spring water.
So, the sheep she had failed to wait for at the cave had come to find her under this tree instead?
Xia Qing gripped her machete tightly, preparing to launch a sneak attack.
The sheep walked out, raised its head, and looked directly at Xia Qing hiding in the tree, its eyes narrowing slightly.
Xia Qing actually saw a clear, blatant look of disdain in the eyes of a sheep.
What the hell!
Could this sheep be a brain-evolved creature, the rarest kind among evolved organisms?