Chapter 131: How to Store Food

After the great microbial evolution on Blue Star, preserving food became far more difficult; humanity tried many methods to extend food's shelf life.

The method Xia Qing uses—first drying, then vacuum-sealing by removing the air—is a widely adopted low-cost way to store food.

This method only isolates food from the effects of "aerobic bacteria" and the unusually active bacterial strains in qiang elements, but cannot suppress the toxins produced by "anaerobic bacteria."

Even for hardy storage grains like unhusked wheat and corn, the longest shelf life using this method is only three months.

After three months, even if the food still looks intact, the toxins produced by evolved anaerobic bacteria have already spoiled it.

Evolved anaerobic bacteria produce many toxins, including one of the most lethal biotoxins after Blue Star's great microbial evolution—evolved Clostridium botulinum.

Evolved Clostridium botulinum won't die even after boiling in water for several hours, so unless someone is nearly starving, no one would risk their life gambling against evolved pathogens.

Besides this simple food storage method, there are several more expensive but effective approaches; the more commonly used one is the food storage warehouse.

The planting and breeding centers inside the safe zone all have storage warehouses for keeping food. These warehouses can extend food's shelf life—main grain crops can be kept for over a year, and easily stored vegetables like onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, eggplants, and Chinese cabbage can last over three months in them.

Achieving such storage durations after the great microbial evolution is already remarkable.

Xia Qing isn't a technical worker and doesn't qualify to help build storage warehouses, so she still hasn't figured out how they operate. She only knows they need to meet two basic conditions: filter out qiang elements from the air, and control temperature and humidity.

The destructive power of Blue Star's microbes is directly proportional to the qiang-element content in the atmosphere; once qiang elements reach a certain concentration, microbial destructive power even rises exponentially.

Controlling temperature and humidity is manageable, but filtering qiang elements from the air is extremely difficult, which is why food storage warehouses are so expensive to build and terrifyingly costly to maintain.

Before getting the yi-stone, Xia Qing never considered long-term food storage on her territory. First, she couldn't build a storage warehouse and didn't want to hire anyone to build one; second, the cost—building a storage warehouse just for the few melons and dates she grew or gathered wasn't worth it.

Another important point: at an agricultural trade fair, Xia Qing overheard Tang Zhengrong telling Hui City main base's territory management department head Huang Jie that the total planting area across all Hui-Three territories was 1,358.6 mu.

Where did such a precise figure come from?

Xia Qing has lived on her territory for half a year, and the territory management department never sent anyone to inspect or measure the planting area in Territory Three. She also hadn't heard of them measuring other territories' planting areas.

Without on-site surveying yet obtaining such detailed data, only one possibility remains: the data was obtained by the territory management department via satellite.

The gamma-ray burst in the first year of the natural disasters destroyed all of Blue Star's low- and medium-orbit satellites; only a few high-orbit satellites launched by Hua Nation survived. After the disasters, every country worked to restore communications—Xia Qing heard on the radio several times that Hua Nation had successfully launched satellites.

If the base can use satellites to measure territory planting areas, it can monitor every move within those territories. That's why Xia Qing, the only person on her territory, is so careful and secretive even when fetching spring water.

Although she's now just one unremarkable lord among the two hundred territories of Hui-Three base, if she suddenly added multiple solar panels or built a food storage warehouse on her territory, it would certainly attract the territory management department's attention.

Xia Qing only wants to live well and quietly; she doesn't want anyone paying attention to her, so she's unwilling to make any big moves.

Now, with the yi-stone, she's solved the biggest problem in food storage. All she needs is to dig a cool, dry mountain cave and handle moisture, insects, and bacteria, and she can store food.

Food stored this way lasts even longer than vacuum-packed food!

With so many mountains on her territory, digging a cave is a piece of cake.

Xia Qing happily ate ground-cherry fruit, spread out the detailed maps of Territory Three and Mountain 49 Zone Three, and began choosing a site.

These two maps were traded from Zhong Tao with vegetables—the Territory Three map she drew herself, and the Mountain 49 Zone Three map she asked Luo Pei to draw. The crops she planted and the native edible plants she discovered in the territory and Zone Three were all marked in pencil at their corresponding locations on the maps.

These two maps could be called her personal treasure maps.

Xia Qing first added the locations of the three ground-cherry fruit patches, then looked at the growing number of dots, circles, and squares on the map, brimming with a sense of accomplishment.

Because all of these are food—and in the natural disasters, nothing gives more安全感 than food and weapons.

The over 15,000 mu of mountain forest and farmland on the map are all hers; she can dig a cave wherever she wants, as long as it doesn't go deeper than thirty meters.

Going beyond thirty meters would damage the mountain's internal structure and might affect her most precious survival resource: unpolluted spring water.

Xia Qing hesitated between Zone Three and the buffer forest for a while, then decided to dig the cave in the west buffer forest.

Although Mountain 49 Zone Three belongs to her and is at a higher elevation than the buffer forest—making temperature control easier—Xia Qing doesn't feel safe leaving food somewhere she can't see or hear at any time.

With the site chosen, digging a cave is a trivial matter for Xia Qing, who has both tools and strength.

There's no rush. She began handling the most critical "technical means" of food preservation—making the yi-stone protective shell.

After carefully studying the materials Luo Pei sent, Xia Qing, with three months of blacksmithing experience, felt the difficulty wasn't great.

Making the yi-stone protective shell requires first high-temperature melting of the yi-stone's surface layer and the gravel sifted from the soil near the yi-stone, then adding a certain ratio of iron, carbon, silicon, manganese, nickel, and aluminum, and casting it into a shell of sufficient thickness.

Xia Qing took out her tool kit and looked over the supplies she'd accumulated over the years. She had iron, carbon, silicon, and aluminum, but needed to buy manganese and nickel.

Xia Qing took out her phone and sent a message to Zhong Tao.

Zhong Tao replied quickly: No problem. What do you need these for, sis?

Xia Qing replied: My machete broke. Taking it back to the safe zone to repair is too expensive, so I plan to reforge it. I worked at a blacksmith shop in the safe zone, so I know a bit about smithing.

Zhong Tao, who had just walked into the safe zone military canteen, froze for a few seconds before typing back: Sis, is there anything you can't do?

Xia Qing chuckled, put her phone back in her pocket.

"Not going to get food? Reporting your schedule to your wife?" A brother from the same camp came over with a tray, saw Zhong Tao standing there in a daze, and asked casually.

Zhong Tao ran to get his food, came back, and asked the comrades beside him, "Tell me, does a strength-evolved woman who can farm, build houses, and blacksmith still need a man?"

Zheng Kui knew immediately who Zhong Tao was talking about and didn't respond. The brother beside him snickered, "It's not whether she needs a man—it's whether any man dares to marry a woman like that? Would you?"

Zhong Tao shook his head like a rattle-drum, didn't dare think about it anymore, and buried himself in his food.

Back in Territory Three, Xia Qing first gave her two distinguished guests fresh drinking spring water, then listened to the radio while retrieving the chickens already in the coop, put them in the tool shed, and only then started making dinner for herself and Ram Boss.

She'd eaten greasy food at noon, so for dinner Xia Qing decided on something light. Mung bean and rice porridge, white flour flatbread, cold-dressed vegetables, chopped chili bird blood, and a few pieces of roasted egret meat—done.

Ram Boss's meal was tender Chinese toon leaves and forage mixed with compressed rations. Once the green-light alfalfa and perilla bloomed, they smelled shockingly bad—now neither Xia Qing nor Ram Boss could even walk past without wanting to take a detour, let alone eat them.

After cooking, Xia Qing stood in the house and called out loudly, "Boss, time to eat!"

Ram Boss, lying in the sheep pen chewing cud, completed the entire sequence—washing feet, rubbing against grass, opening the door to come inside, and jumping onto the table—in just seconds, then squinted at Xia Qing.

Where's the food?

Xia Qing brought out its food bowl, put on a disappointed face, and said, "Boss, since your friend arrived, you don't stick to me anymore. I'm so disappointed."

Disappointed? What's that thing, is it tasty? Ram Boss's eyes followed only the food bowl.

Xia Qing, who was "playing the lute to a sheep," was speechless. She put down the food bowl and roughly rubbed its horns. "You ungrateful thing!"

Light couldn't be allowed to leak out at night. Xia Qing shut the security door tight, drew the blackout curtains, then turned on the main light, washed her hands in the kitchen, brought her food to the dining table, and happily called out, "Let's eat!"

In the sheep pen, the brain-evolved wolf's amber eyes stared for a while in the direction of the now-closed security door, then slowly closed.