Chapter 1136: The Number One Person of Hui-3 Base

Braised rabbit meat, salt-and-pepper snake meat, garlic greens, hot-and-sour egg soup, paired with steamed buns traded from Territory Seven — after a whole morning of hard labor, this meal nearly sent Xia Qing straight to the afterlife on the spot.

She really needed a trustworthy cook. If Yang Jin weren't the captain of the Azure Dragon Squad, even if he entered Territory Three just to cook, Xia Qing would still be willing to hire him at a high price.

What a pity…

Seeing Xia Qing's satisfied expression, Yang Jin, brimming with a sense of accomplishment, asked, "There's still half a bowl of hot-and-sour soup left — can you still drink it? You didn't slack on effort this morning, did you?"

Even though Blue Star has evolved, some basic rules remain unchanged. For example, the law of conservation of energy.

If an Evolver uses their evolutionary abilities for high-intensity exercise or combat, they need to take in a massive amount of energy to keep their bodily functions running normally.

Take Xia Qing as an example. Zhang San gave her a detailed examination of her body's evolutionary state. As a four-system Evolver, if Xia Qing does high-intensity labor for more than six hours a day, then within that day she needs to consume at least fifty thousand calories of energy to maintain a balance between intake and expenditure.

How much is fifty thousand calories? It's equivalent to the energy contained in thirty-six jin of beef before the evolution!

If the human body remains in a prolonged state of negative energy balance — using more than it takes in — the body, in self-rescue, will burn its fat reserves, and then the proteins including muscle tissue. This is the main reason why Xia Qing, despite being a strength-type Evolver, is as thin as a bean sprout.

Under such conditions, she is unable to bring her full evolutionary abilities to bear.

However, even now in Year Eleven of the Calamity, the digestive and metabolic functions of evolved humans still cannot digest and absorb thirty-six jin of beef in a single day.

In Zhang San's words: this evolution of Blue Star was abrupt, frenzied, and perfect.

This evolution erupted in the short span during which Blue Star was struck by cosmic rays, instantly flooding the entire planet with the two elements, Qi and Shang. The human body evolution completed across one to two years on Blue Star reached a level of advancement that, by pre-Calamity human mutation rates, would have required three million years of directed selection to achieve.

Therefore, this evolution was abrupt and frenzied. Had it not occurred, every living creature on Blue Star at that time would have died from being unable to withstand the impact of the cosmic rays and radiation.

The Qi and Shang elements are the perfect embodiment of this — the two elements, opposing yet unified, maintain Blue Star's current ecological balance.

Both elements contain vast amounts of energy, but humans, as Qi-evolved beings, can only draw energy from the Qi element; ingesting Shang element only harms the body.

Foods with Qi element content above 5% and Shang element content below 5‰ — that is, high-energy, easily absorbed high-Qi green-light foods — are the best foods for humans at this stage, ordinary people and Evolvers alike, to take in the energy their bodies need.

Because compared to before the Calamity, even ordinary people have now evolved at least twofold.

But in this age of food scarcity, 99.99% of humanity can't obtain sufficient high-Qi green-light foods — they can't even get ordinary green-light or yellow-light foods. Take Hui-3 for example: even now, 90% of the people in the safe zone still survive on compressed rations made from grass mixed with small amounts of grain and meat.

The Calamity combined with extreme food shortages caused the collapse of human social order and a sharp drop in population.

That's why Hui-3 Base's promotion of the high-Qi green-light spinach X-2 this spring caused such a huge sensation. That's why Zhang San attaches so much importance to the giant bee in the chestnut grove of Area 3, Mountain Forty-Nine, and the Qi-snake in the northern lake of Mountain Sixty.

They are both premium high-Qi green-light foods. If they could be raised artificially, it would greatly alleviate humanity's current desperate situation without disrupting the existing ecological balance.

Right now, among every single person in Hui-3 Base, no one holds more varieties or larger quantities of high-Qi green-light foods than Xia Qing does.

X-2? Heh — in her buffer grove greenhouse she has two beds of X-3 native strain growing, enough to pinch off a big handful every day.

Besides X-3, she also has Qi-snakes and high-Qi-element evolved giant bees!

Xia Qing held the last half bowl of delicious hot-and-sour soup, now enriched with X-3 spinach leaves, her face calm, her heart bubbling with joy.

Yang Jin waited until she finished drinking, then asked, "This white snake really tastes great — has Third Brother given it a name yet?"

Humans were too busy surviving to name the wildly diverse evolved creatures of Blue Star. Every newly discovered species was first sorted into a rough category based on its characteristics, then given a numerical code based on the area where it was found.

"Qi-snake."

The name wasn't her idol's idea — she proposed it, and her idol thought it was good, so they adopted it. It wouldn't be released publicly until breeding succeeded. But there was no need to broadcast that — the tall poppy gets cut down, a person should keep a low profile. "Because the Qi-element synthetic compound contained in this snake's body is Qi-7, which corresponds to the Shang-7 contained in the Shang-snake."

With that, Xia Qing began briskly clearing the bowls and chopsticks from the table.

"That's a very fitting name." Yang Jin didn't fight Xia Qing over the cleanup. Skillfully, he wiped down the table and started boiling water for tea. When Xia Qing came back out after washing the dishes, Yang Jin poured her the first cup.

The curled tea leaves awakened and unfurled in the boiling water — a sight pleasing to the eye, the fragrance of tea filling the air — signaling that the negotiations between the two of them were about to begin.

Xia Qing leaned back relaxed in her chair and asked, "What tea is this?"

Yang Jin smiled. "Premium green-light Maojian from Hui-7, six hundred points per liang. I just got my hands on it. Want half a jin, Sister Qing?"

Half a jin of tea costs 3,000 points — Xia Qing couldn't bear to part with that. "Plain boiled water is fine for me."

Yang Jin laughed out loud. "A very wise choice. But if Sister Qing is willing to sell me the meat from those three yellow-light pythons, I can give you half a jin."

Is that a gift? Just as expected of an iron rooster.

Xia Qing's face remained calm. "That ordinary yellow-light giant python can be eaten directly. I can sell you the meat at the market price of fifty points per jin; I'm keeping the skin. Same goes for those three red-light pythons — if you want the meat, you can take it at market price too, but I won't be paying the storage fees for the past few days."

These snakes were brought back by Xia Qing from Python Snake Lake. If she turned them over to Zheng Kui or had Kuang Qingwei step in, the target would be too conspicuous. When Xia Qing put the snakes into Territory One's food storage warehouse, she had already planned that, aside from the ones traded to allies and the ones sent to Center Nine, the rest would be traded to the Azure Dragon Squad.

Xia Qing planned to keep the snake skins — to see which ally needed to trade for snake skin to make protective gear. Although these were ordinary snake skins, the quality was quite good.

"Of course. Thank you, Sister Qing, for looking after our squad's business. After I skin those four pythons, I'll pay you the points according to weight." Having closed his first deal, Yang Jin asked, "What about that high-grade hardness-evolved yellow-light python — how many points per jin are you planning to let it go for, Sister Qing?"

Last year, that high-grade hardness-evolved green-light python — after I skinned and boned it, I sold the meat at 500 points per jin. This year's is yellow-light, but it's also a high-grade evolved one that can be eaten directly. If sold, 100 points per jin would be no problem at all — but Xia Qing had no intention of selling it.