Chapter 107: Boss, Your Friend Is Here

"Hello, I'm returning to the safe zone tomorrow to attend the agricultural trade fair. Do you need vegetables or grain? How much do you need?"

After sending this message, Xia Qing couldn't focus on anything she did. Although with her evolved hearing, she would absolutely not miss her phone's notification sound, she still couldn't help checking her phone every few minutes.

But after most of the day, when Xia Qing was lying in bed at eleven at night, the person who had sent her insider information about the territory before she left the safe zone still hadn't replied to her message.

In the Year of Natural Calamities, accidents could happen at any time—could this person already be gone?

Xia Qing stared wide-eyed at the ceiling, with not a trace of sleepiness.

"Ding—"

The sound of metal pipes clashing came from outside the window; the noise trap she had set up by the spring had been triggered.

The wolf has come?

Xia Qing immediately put on her night-vision goggles and got out of bed. Lifting a corner of the blackout curtain to check the back mountain slope, she saw a flashlight beam flickering at the spring.

Xia Qing's phone received a message. Looking down, she saw it was from Wei Chengdong. The message was just two words: There's an evolved animal. It got away.

It really came! Xia Qing went downstairs and told Sheep Boss to watch the house, then headed straight out the door toward the spring on the back mountain.

"Brother Dong?"

"It's me." After Wei Chengdong, who had come to fetch spring water, responded, Xia Qing revealed herself and walked over. "What was the situation just now?"

Wei Chengdong explained, "I had just arrived when I saw a black shadow burrow out of this vegetable shed. I tried to catch it and accidentally bumped into the trap you set."

Xia Qing tightened her grip on the gun. "Did Brother Dong get a clear look? What was it?"

Wei Chengdong answered, "Four legs, taller than Sheep Boss, extremely fast—leapt right over my head in a flash and headed for the northern isolation belt. Should we notify Hu Zifeng?"

Hearing Wei Chengdong's description, Xia Qing roughly guessed who had come. "Brother Dong still needs to bring water back. It's not good to alert too many people."

A large evolved animal had been discovered in the territory, yet the first thing Xia Qing thought of was how to safely deliver the spring water for treating Brother Luo's wounds. This moved Wei Chengdong deeply. He sincerely reminded her, "After this water run, I won't be coming again. The security measures in Territory Three need to be upgraded as soon as possible. You have too many good things here—you need to guard against both people and animals."

From mid-March to mid-July, when Luo Pei's synthetic poison treatment ended, the first transaction Xia Qing had arranged with Yang Jin would be complete. Afterward, Xia Qing would provide the Green Dragon Squad with a total of 300 liters of spring water each month, in two installments. This water would be brought by Xia Qing into Mountain 49 and handed over to Luo Pei or Wei Chengdong, which is why Wei Chengdong said today was his last time entering Territory Three to fetch water.

With Wei Chengdong no longer coming to fetch water, Xia Qing could arrange her own security squad to take night watch.

After seeing Wei Chengdong off, Xia Qing turned on her flashlight and carefully inspected the vegetable sheds in the low-slope planting zone. With her excellent eyesight, she spotted a few animal hairs on the shed door that hadn't been closed properly.

She put the hairs into a small sealed bag before entering the vegetable shed, where she found several clear, dog-like plum blossom-shaped paw prints in the soft soil of the terraced fields.

From the size, depth, and stride of the paw prints, Xia Qing was eighty percent certain that what Wei Chengdong had encountered was the very wolf she had waited half a month to guard the sheep for and never caught—the one that had cost her the chance to adopt a little Fifth!

Logically speaking, with that wolf's abilities, if it hid in the shadows, Wei Chengdong absolutely would not have detected its presence. What was its purpose in startling Wei Chengdong and leaving such obvious paw prints?

To show its presence, or to declare its sovereignty over this territory?

Xia Qing gripped her gun and followed the wolf's paw prints to the green-light cucumber trellis, where she discovered that one of the cucumbers she had saved for seed had been bitten through.

That wolf really had an eye—the cucumber it bit was the best-looking one on the entire green-light cucumber vine. Bitten like this, it couldn't be saved for seed anymore.

Xia Qing picked the half-cucumber and brought it out of the vegetable shed, placing it on the large stone blocking the spring's Shi Dong.

Although she could only hear the rustling of reptiles moving about, Xia Qing could sense a powerful evolved creature watching her. This was the intuition honed over ten years of natural calamities—or what you might call a sixth sense. If she didn't even have this much intuition, Xia Qing would have died countless times over.

"I know you haven't gone far."

Xia Qing leaned against the stone wall, appearing completely unguarded but in fact on high alert. Facing a wolf pack leader who had annihilated an entire squad, how could she possibly not be on guard.

"My name is Xia Qing. I'm the human lord of this territory, and also Sheep Boss's companion. If you're willing, you can be the wolf lord of this territory. If you want to drink water or eat melons, you can come anytime, but you can't wreck things, and you can't harm the humans in the surrounding territories."

After speaking, Xia Qing went down the mountain and headed home. Once inside and the door closed, her taut nerves finally relaxed. She walked over and sat on Sheep Boss's tatami, rubbing its head. "Boss, your friend is here."

With Sheep Boss's intelligence, it probably couldn't understand what "friend" meant. Because in this territory there was only her and Sheep Boss—there was no "friend."

Xia Qing touched Sheep Boss's left ear. "The wolf with a chunk missing from its ear here, the one that killed the wild boar and howled—it snuck into our territory to steal cucumbers."

Hearing the word "eat," Sheep Boss, who had been squinting, finally stirred. It turned its head to look at Xia Qing, its meaning crystal clear: Where's the food?

Hand it over.

Xia Qing rubbed its head again. "I'll pick some for you tomorrow morning. I'm going to sleep now—guard the yard well."

With a wolf in the territory whose abilities surpassed her own, Xia Qing slept very uneasily that night. The next day she got up early, and the first stop on her patrol was the back mountain slope.

Arriving at the spring cave, Xia Qing discovered that the large stone blocking the spring had been shifted open a crack. Dozens of ants were inside the cave, busily cutting apart the finger-length cucumber that remained, and ants carrying the cut green fragments passed right in front of Xia Qing. Beside the cucumber were two evolved crickets that hadn't quite died yet, their bodies also crawling with ants.

It seemed that, to fight over this piece of cucumber, fierce battles had broken out—cricket against cricket, and cricket against ant. The large stone blocking the cave couldn't have been moved by ants and crickets. Was that wolf using this act to demonstrate its strength and intelligence to her?

Xia Qing took out a small sealed bag, picked up the cucumber and shook off the ants on it, tossed it into the basket, and continued her patrol. Apart from inside the vegetable shed, that wolf had left no traces anywhere else in the territory. Only after searching carefully did Xia Qing discover that it had actually gotten here by leaping from tree to tree and rock to rock.

This wolf has practically become a spirit.

Xia Qing caught a bag of insects and fed the green-light peanuts, snakes, and fish.

After the insects were thrown in, only a small patch of water remained churning in the fish pond, but watching it put Xia Qing in a good mood. Because the fish churning up these two small patches of water were all edible spring-water fish.

After feeding the fish, Xia Qing went back home and, for the snakes in the wooden boxes, turned over the wheat straw, bean vines, and weeds in the wooden boxes inside the compost shed according to the composting process requirements, before returning home to eat breakfast.

At seven-thirty, Xia Qing sent a message to Hu Zifeng, who quickly arrived at Territory Three with Cheng Yao, the person with evolved smell.