Chapter 120: Raising Chickens

Without Xia Qing needing to speak, Tang Zhengpo unhurriedly spoke up, "Tang Huai, come over for a moment."

"Okay, Dad, coming right now." Tang Huai hadn't expected his dad to be online, so he behaved.

After Tang Huai was called away by his old man, the channel went quiet. Xia Qing drove the rotary tiller, cut down a large patch of wild grass on the north side of her house, hitched a three-furrow plow to Old Goat, and began tilling the field.

Actually, using the rotary tiller to till directly would be easier, but after Xia Qing returned from the agricultural trade fair, Old Goat became especially clingy and eager. To show its worth, let alone the rotary tiller, even if Xia Qing scooped two shovelfuls of dirt with an iron spade, it would want to help.

Tilling and carrying heavy loads required Old Goat; she didn't even need to pour enchanted soup. She had no idea when this burst of enthusiasm would pass.

The moment the person and the goat started working, the birds of the territory flew in from all directions, searching for worms in the freshly turned soil.

After tilling a few mu, Xia Qing let Old Goat rest. She drove stakes along the edge of the tilled land to build a fence. Once the fence was done, Xia Qing carried insect netting from home and draped it overhead. The chicken coop for raising Green Lantern chickens was complete.

Tilling the soil was to make it easier for the chicks to scratch for worms in the loose earth; fencing the area and covering it with insect netting was to prevent evolved animals and raptors from stealing the chickens. All of this was mentioned in the materials Zhang San had sent Xia Qing.

The day after Xia Qing finished setting up the chicken shed, Ji Li delivered seventeen chickens.

The one-month-old evolved chickens had fully grown feathers; at a glance, she could tell there were ten hens and seven roosters.

Ji Li helped Xia Qing pour the chickens into the large bamboo basket she had brought, and asked, "Did you find that wolf?"

Xia Qing shook her head. "No, it probably went back to the Evolution Forest."

Ji Li advised, "The chickens' clucking will attract evolved lynxes, weasels, foxes, wolves, and other animals. You need to spray odor-removing agents around the coop and its surroundings every day. After the chickens go into the cage at dusk, it's best to bring the cage back inside the house and let them out again in the morning."

Xia Qing noted this, then grew curious whether the evolved cats in Territory Seven would catch and eat chickens. "Brother Ji, does Cat Princess eat chickens?"

"She does," Ji Li replied. At the mention of Cat Princess, his stern face radiated a glow called love. "But she doesn't eat the ones at home—she goes into the mountains to catch wild chickens herself. If the Princess or the two little ones come over to steal chickens, call me immediately, and Territory Seven will compensate you double for the losses. Still, you don't need to worry too much. Territory Three has the scent of wolves, and the Princess has kittens with her, so she probably won't come."

"..." Xia Qing, who hadn't even managed to raise a cat and now had to guard against cats, felt very complicated.

After seeing Ji Li off, Xia Qing carried the chicken cage down the mountain. As she released the chickens into the coop, she grabbed one pitch-black little rooster and couldn't bear to let go.

After evolving, the chickens had grown larger; one-month-old evolved chickens already weighed over three jin. Slaughtering one would yield at least two jin of meat.

Seven roosters was a bit many—how about... slaughtering one to try?

The black-feathered rooster sensed Xia Qing's malicious intent and pecked her hand hard. Xia Qing quickly let go. The black-feathered rooster immediately darted into the coop, turned back, and clucked at her furiously—its stance looked like it was cursing her out.

"The fiercer you curse, the sooner you die. I just had stewed chicken at the Safe Zone the day before yesterday, so I'll let you fatten up a few more days." Xia Qing muttered a line, walked a lap around the coop, confirmed there were no gaps in the fence or insect netting that a chicken could squeeze through, then mixed some chopped grass with wheat bran and cornmeal for the chicks and put it in the coop. After that, she clucked like a hen a few times.

Hearing the call, the chicks immediately ran over to eat. Seeing them eat so eagerly, Xia Qing felt reassured. The feed was mixed with spring water, and the chickens' drinker was also filled with spring water. Fed this way, they would surely make it through this year's third Calamity Rain and start laying eggs.

In at most another month, the second crop she had sown would face the most severe trial of its life—the Calamity Rain.

The reason Xia Qing hurried to sow was that she hoped when the third Calamity Rain came, the second crop in her territory would be bigger and more resistant. Another reason was that her Green Lantern and Yellow Lantern fish could hold off on spawning and hatching fry until after the third Calamity Rain. Otherwise, a large batch of the fry would surely undergo Calamity Evolution.

Xia Qing shouldered her hoe and went to weed the corn and mung beans. A fairly heavy normal rain had fallen a few days earlier, and another layer of weed shoots had poked through the soil, needing to be cleared as soon as possible.

Old Goat, who had been standing beside the chicken coop chewing on a blade of grass and watching the fun, saw Xia Qing leave and followed her toward the fields. Xia Qing entered the corn shed to weed, while Old Goat lay down in the shade of a nearby tree, chewing its cud.

After determining the germination rate of Yellow Lantern seeds, Xia Qing sowed them more densely when planting. Take corn, for example: the row spacing was forty centimeters, and the plant spacing should be thirty to forty centimeters, but Xia Qing sowed at a spacing of twenty centimeters per plant. Sixty percent of the seeds she sowed would germinate, which ensured an average plant spacing of thirty to forty centimeters.

Of course, there were also cases where two or three seeds in a row either all germinated or none germinated. In such cases, she just needed to use a transplanting trowel to move the seedlings from the continuously sprouted section to the spots where nothing had come up.

So now the corn and mung bean seedlings in the field were very neat and even, a pleasing sight to behold.

Xia Qing was strong, and the hoe she used for weeding was one she had modified herself—the blade was wide enough and the head heavy enough that it felt very comfortable in her hands. She finished the weeding in half a day. She picked the larger uprooted weeds into a bamboo basket, then shouldered the hoe and carried the basket out of the shed, calling to Old Goat, "Boss, time for lunch. I'm going to pick vegetables; you go catch bugs for the fish."

Old Goat squinted at Xia Qing and didn't move.

Catching bugs wasn't hard labor, and Old Goat didn't like it. Xia Qing didn't like it either.

She walked over and stuffed a compressed ration into the satchel Old Goat was wearing. "Go on. Once you've fed the fish, come home, and I'll make you something good. Boss is the best. Without you feeding them, all the fish in our territory would starve to death."

Old Goat listened to enough of Xia Qing's soft, flattering words before finally standing up, shaking the fur Xia Qing had sheared into a mess, and trotting off to work with a small basket in its mouth.

Xia Qing set the hoe and basket under a tree and strolled over to look at her fields.

The rice seedlings bought from the Safe Zone had all taken root, but they were shorter than the Green Lantern rice seedlings traded from Zhang San, and the leaves weren't a vivid green. Yellow Lantern plants contained more Calamity Elements than Green Lantern ones, so it was normal for the leaf color to differ.

After passing the rice paddy, Xia Qing reached the edge of the potato field and noticed the potato leaves looked a bit off. She pressed the walkie-talkie. "Brother Qi, are you there?"

Qi Fu quickly replied, "I'm here. What's up?"

Xia Qing generally didn't speak during the day; when she did speak, it meant something was up. Everyone was already used to this.

Xia Qing asked, "The potato seedlings in my field are a bit wilted, and the leaves have dried up. Have yours changed too, Brother Qi?"

Qi Fu said cheerfully, "Yes, we were just talking about this this morning. Once the potato leaves wilt a bit more, we can dig up the potatoes."

That's wonderful! Xia Qing beamed with delight and continued walking forward.

Kuang Qingwei asked, "Xia Qing, I haven't heard a peep out of you all morning. What are you busy with?"

Xia Qing replied, "Weeding the corn and mung beans. If I don't deal with the weeds soon, they'll be taller than the corn seedlings."

Kuang Qingwei chimed in with a complaint of his own, "We're busy with the same thing. We can't use herbicides now, so farming is way more exhausting than before the catastrophe."

Herbicides from before the catastrophe, if used now, would also raise the Calamity Evolution probability of crops. Using plastic mulch for weed control couldn't be used either, because the mulch would block the volatilization of Calamity Elements from the soil after Calamity Rain, increasing the crops' Calamity Evolution probability.

Zhao Ze also complained about how hard it was to deal with weeds, then asked Xia Qing, "You still have quite a few potatoes in your territory, right? Once you harvest them, can you trade me ten jin?"

You open your mouth and ask for ten jin— you've got some nerve. Xia Qing replied coolly, "I don't have many plants left either."

While Shi Chong and Qi Fu discussed how to weed, Assistant Xiao Liu from Territory Nine came online. "Our Lord has just developed a plant-source biological enzyme herbicide. It's made from enzymes produced by the plants themselves—non-toxic, pollution-free, safe, and eco-friendly. It's currently in the trial stage. Any Lord interested can apply for a free trial."

No need to ask—if something goes wrong during the trial, you bear it yourself; Territory Nine takes no responsibility. No Lord wants to gamble with the seedlings they've worked so hard to grow.

Although weeding was hard work, using Fourth Sister's medicine might wipe out even the seedlings. Who could they cry to?

No one in the Lord channel spoke up, and Xia Qing wasn't interested either. She walked past the sweet potato field, where the tubers were already beginning to bulge, stopped at the edge of the pumpkin field, and her eyes suddenly widened. "Everyone, my pumpkins finally have flower buds!"