Chapter 106: Harvesting Wheat

While drying the pond mud of the first fish pond, most of the pods on the mung bean seedlings in Territory Three had turned black. Xia Qing first picked all the mung bean pods and brought them home, then pulled up the mung bean seedlings — keeping a small portion for sheep feed, and splitting the rest evenly: half chopped up and fermented into organic fertilizer, half burned into plant ash.

After Xia Qing leveled and irrigated her two mu of mung bean field, the wheat was also ripe. The evolved wheat took only thirteen or fourteen days from flowering to maturity — according to expert Li Si, this was the result of artificial accelerated cultivation, specifically to prevent the wheat at this stage from being pecked at by evolved insects and birds.

When the wind blew, the wheat turned into a rustling sea of grain. The sound, mingled with birdsong, frogs, and flowing water, was absolutely wonderful. Xia Qing recorded a video on her phone — though the audio was nowhere near as lovely as the real thing, listening and watching still filled her with a deep sense of happiness and accomplishment.

Xia Qing only had two fen of wheat field, which converted to square meters was just over one hundred fifty. Harvesting this little bit of wheat was a piece of cake for a strength evolver. In just over an hour, Xia Qing had pulled up all the wheat plants and carried them to the tamped wheat-drying ground, chopped off the root-bearing lower halves, spread the upper halves with the wheat ears flat across the drying ground, and let Sheep Boss pull a stone roller back and forth to thresh the grain.

This was the craziest time for evolved birds — they swept in like dark clouds in flocks to snatch the grain, only to be shot down by Xia Qing with bullets and steel pellets. Not a single bird succeeded in stealing food.

Tang Huai, who was on monitoring duty, heard gunshots inside Territory Three and immediately asked in the group chat, "Territory Three, Xia Qing, what's the situation? Is a dangerous evolved animal breaking in?"

Xia Qing put the birds into sealed bags and replied calmly, "No, I'm dealing with birds pecking at the wheat kernels."

Tang Huai was puzzled. "Didn't you cover the wheat field with insect netting? How could birds get in?"

"The insect netting keeps out insects." Xia Qing certainly wasn't going to tell him she'd hauled the wheat outside the insect netting.

Tang Huai was about to curse, but remembering his father was also in the group, he forced himself to hold it back. "You're right."

Zhao Ze chimed in with a complaint. "My insect netting got pecked through by birds too. I barely had any wheat plants left, and now it's even cleaner."

Qi Fu shared his experience. "Right now you should cover it with a rainproof tarp and rush the harvest. If the birds can't see what's under the shelter, the danger drops by more than half."

After Sheep Boss pulled the stone roller and pressed all the kernels off the wheat ears, Xia Qing slipped it a piece of new-flavor compressed rations she'd just traded from Zhong Tao, and told it to rest on the side.

Then Xia Qing quickly used a three-pronged iron fork to toss aside the wheat straw, swept the kernels into a pile with a big broom, and winnowed out the chaff using the wind. By the time Xia Qing had bagged the harvested wheat, the evolved bird flock had finally dispersed.

Threshing took over half an hour. Xia Qing had shot down two big baskets of evolved birds and harvested three bags of wheat, weighing in at over three hundred jin. This yield exceeded Xia Qing's expectations. Grinning, she loaded all three bags of wheat onto Sheep Boss, hauled them home and put them away, then came back to deal with the wheat straw and the evolved birds' carcasses.

Sheep Boss didn't like eating wheat chaff or straw, so they were all made into organic fertilizer — still half burned, half fermented.

The two bags of high-efficiency compost bacterial powder Xia Qing had traded from Li Si were used up. The bacterial powder she was using now had been traded from Li Si in exchange for one yellow-light fish and four jin of pickled bamboo shoots. To GET the same item as her idol, Li Si was very generous.

Of course, the pickled bamboo shoots Xia Qing traded to Li Si and Zhang San had all been fished out of the spring water soup and then soaked in distilled water for a period of time. The biggest secret within the territory, Xia Qing guarded it with her life.

After tidying up the wheat chaff and straw, Xia Qing leveled and irrigated the wheat field. Just as she was about to head home, she suddenly noticed a red squirrel on the drying ground not far away, picking up the wheat kernels she'd dropped.

Xia Qing had cleared the evolved forest quite a bit during this period and had seen plenty of squirrels, but one this red was a first.

Both have "squirrel" in their names, but when a rat appears, people can't wait to eliminate it on sight; a squirrel with a fluffy big tail, on the other hand, looks adorable and you can't bear to lay a hand on it.

Xia Qing, who couldn't keep a cat, got the idea of raising a squirrel as a pet. But before she'd taken a few steps closer, the squirrel stuffed its cheeks full of wheat kernels, sensed her approach, and bolted like a streak of fire.

This little guy was actually a speed evolver. Xia Qing shook her head, went home, took a shower, and used a hand-held steelyard scale to weigh her harvest.

After a busy day, she had harvested three hundred thirty jin of yellow-light wheat and three and a half jin of green-light wheat. The green-light wheat was all kept for seed; she also needed to keep fifty jin of the yellow-light wheat as seed, bring forty jin to the agricultural products trade fair, and the rest was all her food rations.

The agricultural products trade fair would begin the day after tomorrow and last two days.

In the evening, after listening to the weather forecast and Hui Three Base's broadcaster's warmly enthusiastic special broadcast on the agricultural products trade fair — "Welcome lords back home for a visit" — the lords' discussion group was also talking about the agricultural products trade fair.

Zhao Ze spoke up first. "Are you all planning to trade for a flour-grinding machine? My wheat and mung beans combined aren't enough to trade for one. If you trade one back, can I borrow it? Four alfalfa seeds for one day of use."

The household small flour-grinding machine was one of the supplies the Safe Zone offered to lords attending the agricultural products trade fair, available at a twenty-percent discount.

The others stayed silent. Kuang Qingwei spoke up. "One flour-grinding machine is eight hundred credits, and the blades wear down during use. You only give four alfalfa seeds for a day — who could bear that? You should just trade alfalfa seeds with Brother Tao for one."

Zhao Ze sighed. "My alfalfa just flowered and hasn't set seed yet. The flour-grinding machine is only on special at the trade fair — I can't afford it."

After the great biological evolution of Blue Star, compared to processed flour, hulled seeds could be stored much longer. Having endured ten years of natural disasters, who wouldn't want to hold onto their grain tightly once they had it?

But turning grain into edible flour required tools.

So for the past half month, the base broadcast had been promoting, in every creative way, the household flour-grinding machine that could only be exchanged at twenty percent off during the trade fair, with a limit of one per lord. By the time Zhao Ze's alfalfa seeds were ripe, the discount period would long be over.

Kuang Qingwei was indeed a businessman. After a round of haggling with Zhao Ze, they settled on a price of two credits per jin of grain ground, and Zhao Ze would bring his grain to Territory Six to have it milled.

Then Kuang Qingwei continued drumming up business. "There's really no need for one flour-grinding machine per territory — what's the point of spending eight hundred credits? Besides Little Zhao, everyone else can come to my place to grind flour."

Xia Qing, who was doing push-ups, laughed. Why did the lords buy flour-grinding machines? Because they didn't want others to know how much grain they had on hand. Only a fool would pass up the cheap flour-grinding machine and go to someone else's territory to spend credits grinding flour.

Seeing no one was paying him attention, Kuang Qingwei moved on to the next topic. "It's pretty chaotic out there. It's safest if we go together and come back together. What do you all say?"

"Brother Qing's right — more people means safety." Zhao Ze was the first to agree.

Qi Fu chimed in. "We're all riding in Brother Tao's truck there and back. Even when we're there, we're in the same trade hall — it's not easy to split up."

Kuang Qingwei was still uneasy. "Brother Tao's hauling lords from all fifty territories in the North District tomorrow. With that many people in the truck, someone might try to rob us. If we stick together, we can look out for each other."

Of course, this "we" referred to the six lords who actually farmed — from Territories Three, Four, Five, Six, Seven, and Ten. The lords of Territories One, Two, Nine, and Twelve had no interest in the agricultural products trade fair, never participated in discussions, and no one knew whether they were going.

The lord of Territory Eight? No matter how much they called, that one never showed up — everyone had long stopped paying attention.

The next day, Xia Qing began preparing the supplies to bring to the trade fair. To qualify, one had to bring at least three types of vegetables totaling no less than five jin, and grain no less than forty jin.

For grain, Xia Qing planned to bring forty jin each of mung beans and wheat; for vegetables, she'd bring eggplant, cucumber, and long beans, plus a small packet of scallion seeds — all yellow-light, of course.

After trading crops for the flour-grinding machine, Xia Qing also wanted to buy every kind of seed available from the Safe Zone. She wanted the good stuff the other lords were bringing too.

Besides that, she needed to repair her machete, and buy carpentry and electrical tools, daily necessities, and undergarments — all told, it added up to quite a few credits.

During this period, Xia Qing had hauled plenty of flora and fauna out of her private training ground, trading them with Zhong Tao for over three thousand credits. But even those credits plus the supplies she was bringing still weren't enough. However, Xia Qing had already thought of a way to earn credits fast.

After taking stock of her supplies, Xia Qing took out her phone and, with a solemn expression, sent a text to a strange number engraved in her heart — one that looked casual but had actually been rehearsed countless times in her head.