Chapter 103: The Little Egret Hatches

Ask Zhang San and Li Si?

No way. Xia Qing didn't want to expose any more native plants in her territory, so she grabbed with both hands — organic fertilizer and bugs together.

Xia Qing first carefully fertilized the peanut field, then irrigated it with a mix of filtered water and spring water, after which she went to her private evolution grove and caught several dozen evolution insects of various sizes and one snake, and returned to the terraced field to "feed" the peanuts.

The insects died one by one as they were fed, but the evolution snake she tossed over actually knew how to dodge, twisting its body in midair in an unbelievable way to avoid the green-light peanuts. Xia Qing pinned down the escaping snake and laid it on the peanut seedlings.

The snake, pierced through by the peanut's leaf veins, thrashed violently and escaped again.

Xia Qing simply killed the snake, tossed it over a third time, and the peanut leaf-vein needles immediately pierced the snake's body and sucked out its fluids.

As the evolution snake "grew thinner," the green-light peanut bloomed one golden little flower after another. When it reached the sixtieth flower, a white stem several times thicker than the leaf veins poked out from each flower and thrust downward into the soil.

Peanuts are called "falling peanuts" because this plant flowers above ground, then fruit needles extend from the flowers and grow downward, piercing into the soil to grow the fruit.

These white stems poking out from the flowers are the fruit needles of the green-light peanut.

Xia Qing carefully scraped open the soil with a wooden stick and saw that the tip of the first fruit needle to pierce into the ground had already begun to swell.

Xia Qing stood up, brushed the dirt off herself, took her homemade iron-ring fishing net from the cabin, and hauled up a dozen or so palm-length fierce evolution fish from the fish pond, all gnawing the net with clicks.

She tossed one to the waiting egret, "The first one's yours, congratulations. Let's make up, be good neighbors again, how about it?"

Such a brutally fierce plant couldn't be allowed to grow too big, otherwise not only Sheep Boss, but she herself might be drained to death by it.

Xia Qing leaned against Sheep Boss, "Boss, do Chinese toon trees bloom?"

After a while, Luo Pei sent another long message: I asked the members of the planting team. Green-light peanuts release fragrance when blooming to attract insects, and use leaf veins that have hardened into needles to paralyze animal nerves and absorb insect fluids to supply the plant's continued growth. You can feed insects to the peanuts until the plant stops growing taller. Once the peanut plant begins to wilt and loses its attacking ability, harvest it. You must be very careful of the attacks from the peanut roots and stems.

Qi Fu said these evolution fish have elongated bodies, and the black-backed, gold-bellied ones are local spring-water fish with very high nutritional value. Xia Qing had once caught a yellow-light one and roasted it to eat, and the flavor really was quite good.

Although the night heron and the egret were friendly, mutually helpful neighbors, the two brooding egrets never chatted to kill time — at least Xia Qing had never heard them do so.

Now even the cats are skipping stones, what's the point of keeping this whole pond of fish?

Sheep Boss simply turned its head away, attitude perfectly clear.

This is a happy occasion.

It's already the end of June now, and the pumpkin vines still haven't bloomed. Xia Qing not only hadn't brought herself to cut them down, but had even extended the insect-proof net shed by over twenty meters to give the pumpkin vines room to grow.

The pity was that the proportion of edible fish in the pond was too low — catching a hundred didn't guarantee a single edible one. So, to eat one fish, she had to catch a hundred to test. Xia Qing didn't mind the trouble, but she had to save the fish for the kitten.

"Today the egret family's added a chick, you all get a share." Xia Qing cheerfully pulled the biggest click-gnashing fish from the net, pinned it down, knocked it out, and tested its qiang element content.

Xia Qing sat up and looked toward the bird's nest on the dawn redwood tree.

If she fed a few more snakes, could she eat boiled peanuts today?

Before blooming, how did the peanut plant protect itself? Xia Qing continued her experiment.

Xia Qing kept feeding it bugs and found that the green-light peanut, after absorbing more "nutrients," had each fruit-needle tip swell to the size of a soybean, then stop swelling further, and instead begin growing branches, leaves, and roots.

The egret on the dawn redwood by the reservoir let out a low, joyful cry.

Sheep Boss of course ignored Xia Qing and continued chewing cud with eyes closed.

Xia Qing used her dagger to cut a peanut leaf and found that the leaf's hardness and toughness had indeed increased compared to before blooming.

So it wasn't that the peanut-growing terrace was too steep for Sheep Boss to climb up — it simply didn't eat peanut leaves.

Then what abilities did the green-light perilla and Chinese toon, so beloved by Sheep Boss, rely on to survive until the tenth year of the catastrophe?

Wait until they bloom and bear fruit, and we'll know.

The two night herons had become neighbors with the egret, the two nests close together. These days the night herons also always left one perched in the nest, and Xia Qing guessed the night-heron couple was also brooding eggs.

After Xia Qing hauled the net ashore, not only the egret but night herons, magpies, crows, and other larger evolution birds all came running over, lining up to wait for fish.

Xia Qing, who was about to have green-light chickens, no longer wanted to eat other birds' eggs, but she still observed both pairs of herons every day.

Don't ask her how she could tell a happy mood from bird calls. The answer is she heard enough of them, and naturally picked it up. Those two's calls right now were even more delighted than when they came and smeared bird droppings on her window.

Xia Qing cheerfully tossed another one, "Raise your kids well from now on, and stop wreaking havoc on my window."

No wonder the Safe Zone Planting Center clearly grew peanuts but didn't distribute peanut seeds to the lords. This thing was already this terrifying in its normal state — if it got qiang-ified it would probably become a demon, definitely fiercer than the dancing potato vines, and certainly not comparable to those two thorny jujube trees growing on top of Gao Po.

"Coo, coo…"

What she was hoping for was that the pumpkins would, just as Qi Fu and Shi Zhong kept muttering, fill the vines with melons the moment they bloomed.

A palm-sized fish — the egret picked it up and swallowed it down in about a second.

Luo Pei replied: Not yet, thanks.

Displayed red light.

Xia Qing replied to Luo Pei: There are some. Have the peanuts in Brother Luo's territory bloomed? I discovered that green-light peanuts become aggressive when they bloom — you must be very careful.

Xia Qing, who had survived ten years in the catastrophe, had already seen many plants' methods of hunting animals, but she was still thoroughly shaken by the green-light peanut's ability.

Xia Qing sighed, "How amazing — the green-light peanut surviving until now relies not on luck, but on strength."

It turned out the green-light peanut relied on roots that remained alive after the plant wilted to protect the peanut seeds. When the peanut roots completely died the following spring, the peanuts sprouted and grew leaves with insect-repelling properties.

Today the egret couple was this happy, and both stood together at the edge of the nest. No need to ask — the little egret must be hatching, or had already hatched.

Xia Qing sniffed the smell of the peanut sap, sat down beside Sheep Boss, took out her phone, and sent Luo Pei a message: Brother Luo, does the insecticide we use have peanut sap added to it?

Luo Pei answered after a few minutes: Only the sap of edible peanuts has insect-repelling effects. Are there edible peanuts in your territory?

As the security team for Territory Three, the Beard Feng squad was by regulation not allowed to reveal conditions inside Territory Three to outsiders, so it was perfectly normal that Luo Pei didn't know there were peanuts inside Territory Three.

The egret ignored Xia Qing, picked up the fish in its beak, elegantly flapped its wings and flew back up the tree, fed the fish to its mate guarding the nest (husband or wife), then flew back again.

She pinched off a small section from a green-light peanut seedling that hadn't bloomed and fed it to Sheep Boss lying in the shade, "Boss worked hard today, here's a reward of a few green-light peanut leaves."

Thinking of blooming, Xia Qing's gaze turned to the pumpkin vines growing ever more wildly. The only crop in her territory that should have bloomed but still hadn't was it.

Back in May, Xia Qing had posted that if the pumpkin vines didn't bloom in June, she would cut them down to feed the sheep.

Xia Qing knocked out another red-light fish and gave it to the night heron with two long white plumes on its head, "Your mate sitting on the nest has worked hard too — take one over to it."

The night heron quickly picked up the fish and swallowed it down itself.

Xia Qing tossed it another one, and it tilted its head back and swallowed that down too. Xia Qing angrily swung her machete, "Get lost."