Chapter 1110: Gathering Chestnuts

"Captain Yang, awake?"

The next morning, when Xia Qing was patrolling her territory, she saw Yang Jin walk out of the small hut beside the farmland looking fresh and clean, and greeted him first.

Although Xia Qing's face was expressionless and her tone showed no obvious change, Yang Jin understood her meaning perfectly. "Awake. Sorry for disturbing you last night, Sister Qing. Tell me what I can do to cover last night's lodging fee?"

Xia Qing had hired people to help build the laboratory and paid them according to the public rates for Northern Zone One, meals and lodging not included. When Yang Jin came to help, Xia Qing paid him at the rate she paid members of Beard Feng's squad, also without meals and lodging.

The laboratory had been completed yesterday evening, so the employment relationship was over. Yang Jin had stayed overnight in Territory Three because he was "drunk," so naturally he had to pay for lodging.

His being so tactful saved Xia Qing the trouble. "There is indeed something. Captain Yang, come with me to the chestnut grove and help carry a bag of chestnuts?"

"Sure." Yang Jin agreed readily. "Want me to have Er Yong come over and watch the territory?"

"No need. The chestnut grove area has walkie-talkie coverage, and the round trip takes less than an hour. Lao Da and Wolf Lao Er can guard the territory."

Yang Jin glanced at the evolved wolf dog in the distance, carrying a small basket in its mouth as it caught bugs, and the little monkey behind it carrying a basket as well, and smiled and nodded.

Those who suspected that this territory contained an unpolluted spring or other high-value resources, upon seeing how thin Territory Three's defensive force was, once again began to doubt their own suspicions.

Xia Qing's approach was bold and risky enough, and it also protected the spring well. It also led Yang Jin to deduce that she had another high-quality water source in her hands—either in the hidden valley of Mountain Fifty, or in the core territory of the northern wolf pack.

Or both.

After entering Zone Three of Mountain Forty-Nine, Yang Jin told Xia Qing the latest news he had received the night before. "Hui One has confirmed that the spring on Liehuo Mountain is completely destroyed and cannot be repaired. The spring water's Yi element content has dropped to one point, and the Shang element has risen to sixteen points."

Shang element content 16‰, Yi element content 1? —this water quality is nearly the same as that of the hidden valley in Mountain Fifty. After filtration, this water is still high-quality drinking water, but due to the lack of Yi element, its value for medical and breeding purposes has dropped sharply, and it can no longer be called an unpolluted water source.

Xia Qing asked, "What are Liehuo's plans?"

Yang Jin naturally knew what Xia Qing was worried about. "Liehuo has put up a lot of high-quality supplies and patents and is negotiating with the Hui One authorities to buy the rights to one-third of the output from one of Hui One's springs. Liehuo's Liao Wendong and Qu Fangzhou are also reaching out to two bases in Orchid City, trying to purchase spring water from Orchid City to meet Liehuo's needs for producing potions and cultivating high-quality crops."

Orchid City has the most high-quality water sources in all of Hua Country, and is the most likely to sell large quantities of unpolluted spring water to Liehuo over the long term.

Hearing that Liehuo had no designs on her own territory, Xia Qing relaxed considerably.

After tossing a piece of jerky to the flat-headed bandit blocking the road and then sprinting all the way to the steep slope above the chestnut grove to evade its pursuit, Xia Qing continued her questioning. "Where was Qu Fangzhou hiding at the time?"

"She was inside Liehuo Mountain. Truly worthy of a professional intelligence operative—her concealment skills are top-tier." When Liehuo and Extinction Fire were clashing, the Azure Dragon who went to fish in troubled waters had set three target persons: Shan Ying, Zhou Jin, and Qu Fangzhou. The first two were successfully killed by Azure Dragon; the third was never found, which made Yang Jin suspect for a time that she wasn't inside the Hui One base.

Unexpectedly, she had been hiding inside Liehuo Mountain.

If Shan Ying was the scalpel in Fire Phoenix's hand, then Qu Fangzhou was Fire Phoenix's eyes and ears. Replacing a scalpel is easy; replacing eyes and ears is hard. Failing to take the opportunity to kill Qu Fangzhou meant, in Yang Jin's view, that he had only achieved half of his goals in this scheme and strike.

"She might have some special methods or evolutionary abilities." Xia Qing pointed downward and told Yang Jin his task for this trip. "After I pull up the two bags of chestnuts I've tethered, you grab the bag of chestnuts that rolled over to the thorn fence and pull it up. Evolution giant bees have appeared in the chestnut grove, and their attack power is very strong. If you're not fast enough and your protective suit gets contaminated with their pheromones, the swarm will chase you all the way back to Territory Three."

That fallen black bag had rolled out of the mechanical arm's coverage range, so it couldn't be grabbed by the mechanical arm and hung on the rope—it could only be carried up by someone going down. This job was best suited for a top-tier speed evolver.

Yang Jin asked, "Can't we kill the giant bees?"

With Xia Qing's marksmanship, shooting down giant bees would be a piece of cake.

Of course not—those were Third Brother's treasures. "This swarm of hornets has a symbiotic relationship with the chestnut grove. Killing the giant bees would disrupt the chestnut grove's ecology."

"Got it." After spraying on the insect-repellent potion Zhang San had prepared, Yang Jin entered the valley and lurked at the safe distance Xia Qing had told him, watching as Xia Qing slowly hauled the two large bags of chestnuts up the slope.

The evolved hornets in the chestnut grove aren't very intelligent; they mainly rely on highly acute smell to identify foreign creatures entering their territory.

The mechanical arms, which carry no biological scent, picking up chestnut burrs without alerting or provoking the swarm—that really was a good idea. Still, those three mechanical arms clearly looked like precision instruments. Zhang San had traded such expensive machinery to Xia Qing for her to use picking chestnuts—was it simply because he was greedy for food, or because this swarm of evolved giant bees and the chestnut grove held enormous research value?

Also, who was operating the mechanical arms to harvest the chestnuts?

These matters Xia Qing didn't bring up, and Yang Jin tactfully didn't ask.

After Xia Qing slowly hauled the two bags of chestnuts up and carried them out of the danger zone, Yang Jin sprinted over at top speed, grabbed the target bag, and escaped the chestnut grove before the hornet swarm was stirred up. By the time the giant hornets were alarmed and burst out of their nest, the swarm had already lost its target and circled the chestnut grove in fury.

When Yang Jin caught up carrying the chestnuts, Xia Qing, with one bag on her back and one in her hand, was about to reach out and take them when she heard him say, "We made some unexpected discoveries on this trip to Liehuo."

Pretending not to notice Xia Qing's intention, Yang Jin carried the bag back to Territory Three with her before continuing. "In Qu Fangzhou's bedroom, we found a photo of her with a little girl around four years old. Xie Yu saw that little girl in the underground lab—she was one of the experimental subjects and died from experimental failure before the underground lab was exposed."

So Qu Fangzhou and Liao Wendong had joined Liehuo Mountain for the same reason—they both had relatives who died in the underground experiments, and shared a common enemy with Fire Phoenix.

Xia Qing analyzed calmly, "Could this photo have been left by Qu Fangzhou on purpose?"

As an intelligence gathering and analysis specialist, Qu Fangzhou shouldn't have left such important information in her room.

"Very likely. We still can't determine her purpose in leaving this photo." Yang Jin set the bag down and handed Xia Qing a USB drive. "I found illustrated reference material on post-catastrophe new minerals. If you plan to sell ore, contact me anytime—I'll only charge ten percent commission."

Does Daigua had先后 brought back two packs of ore to Xia Qing from the monk-faced monkey's territory. Apart from rhodonite, Xia Qing didn't know the types or value of the other ores, so she had asked Yang Jin to help her search for information on them.

Last year, Xia Qing had made a deal with Yang Jin: seventy jin of Green Lantern Mountain walnuts in exchange for shareable information in his possession. This mineral information was beyond what Xia Qing could access, but for Yang Jin it posed no difficulty. Xia Qing asking him to gather information didn't require any additional payment.