Chapter 1367: The Double Life of Top Sniper Xia Qing

Like the planting centers inside the safe zone, the Ninth Center is a planting area funded and built by Hui-Three Base. The materials for the greenhouses, the materials for the center's infrastructure, and the employees' wages are all allocated by the base. Therefore, the grain and vegetables produced by the Ninth Center belong to the base and are arranged by the base.

Unlike the planting centers inside the safe zone, the planting centers within the territories have to provide their employees with food and lodging.

During the Calamity years, the food the base issued was, of course, compressed rations, and it was distributed at the standard of one block per employee per day.

Eating one block of compressed rations a day can only meet an adult's basic metabolic needs for the day—in other words, it keeps a person from starving to death. For farmworkers engaged in physical labor, this amount of calories is far from enough.

What to do about the shortfall?

"The food gap should be solved by the employees themselves, because the base pays them wages." These were the original words of the Planting Department Head, Zhao Baolin.

To boost the work enthusiasm and basic security of the Ninth Center's employees, Xia Qing applied upward, obtained her superiors' consent, and used timber to build vegetable greenhouses within the center that met the employees' food needs, and allocated a certain amount of grain output to make up for the grain shortfall.

What this "amount" is has no fixed number or ratio yet, and this is the issue the four newly built planting centers care about most.

Because the Ninth Center, which was built first, decided how much grain the center could keep through a "wager" with its superior department. Simply put, Xia Qing, as the director, had a prior agreement with Planting Management Department Head Zhao Baolin on the farmland's output: any excess over the target belonged to the Ninth Center.

The nine thousand jin of rice and eighteen thousand jin of corn harvested in autumn were all kept this way; whenever Zhao Baolin thought of this grain, he ached all over with regret.

The reason so much of this potato harvest could be kept was also because Xia Qing had applied for it in advance.

Because this batch of seed potatoes was cultivated by Xia Qing within her own territory and then brought to the Ninth Center for planting. Her purpose in bringing out this batch of seed potatoes was to fill the Ninth Center's grain shortfall. Therefore, the superior department agreed that one-third of the potatoes the Ninth Center harvested could be transported back to the safe zone, processed into compressed rations, and sold to the grassroots public to improve everyone's diet. The remaining two-thirds were at the Ninth Center's free disposal.

Why is the retention ratio so high this time? Because by the time Xia Qing planted the potatoes, the Ninth Planting Center had already been spun off from the Planting Management Department and become a department on the same level as the latter. This ratio was applied for by Xia Qing to her current superior—Director of the Agriculture Department, Yang Benming. Zhao Baolin can be jealous all he wants, it won't help.

So, even if someone now dares to step forward and question Xia Qing to her face why the Ninth Center can keep so many potatoes, they would be shot down by Agriculture Department Director Yang Benming:

If any of you can obtain quality seeds through personal channels, then the grain grown by your department can also be kept at a two-thirds ratio like the Ninth Center's, to be used to meet that department's employees' food needs!

The more Yang Benming sees of Xia Qing's working attitude—seeking no private gain and wholeheartedly working for the collective's interests—the more he likes her.

If Xia Qing hadn't refused, Yang Benming would have wanted to promote her on the spot and hand her management of all five planting centers in the territories outside the safe zone.

That way, Yang Benming could halve his worries.

After seeing off the kindly, almost crumbling Yang Benming and his inspection team, Xia Qing convened the Ninth Center's management for a meeting and decided to put out twenty thousand jin of potatoes to exchange for twenty-five thousand jin of the Tang family's Yellow-Lamp wheat and Yellow-Lamp corn combined.

Because the Ninth Center's grain reserves still cannot meet the employees' food needs, they need more grain.

At the current official pricing, twenty thousand jin of Yellow-Lamp potatoes can be exchanged for twenty-two thousand seven hundred jin of Yellow-Lamp grain. The Tang family's willingness to pay over two thousand jin extra in grain is because they need the potatoes to enrich the Tang family restaurant's menu.

Within Hui-Three Base, only the Ninth Center can put out this many Yellow-Lamp potatoes of decent quality. If the Tang family doesn't trade with the Ninth Center, they would have to purchase the small amounts of potatoes grown by the lords, which adds time costs and makes quality hard to control.

So, both sides are very satisfied with this deal. The more than four thousand jin of potatoes the Ninth Center kept are all seed potatoes to be sown next spring.

Next year, they plan to plant potatoes in at least ten greenhouses!

After the trade volume was set, Xia Qing called Tang Huai directly. That afternoon, the Tang family sent a vehicle to deliver the grain and haul away the potatoes.

After the exchange, the Ninth Center's warehouse had twenty-five thousand jin more grain. Combined with the corn and rice the Ninth Center had previously harvested and kept, plus the rations issued by the base and the vegetables the Ninth Center grew itself, it was enough to feed over seven hundred employees and their families until the summer grain harvest next June.

Having enough grain stored to last half a year during the Calamity years made the Ninth Center's employees feel immensely secure; every face wore a smile.

Xia Qing was also very happy, because the twenty-six hundred jin of seed potatoes she had sold on credit to the Ninth Center had finally been converted into sixty-five thousand credits and pocketed.

The lords were also happy, because they too had successively harvested the potatoes planted in September and sold them to the safe zone at twenty-five credits per jin, trading them in for quite a few credits. With these credits, the lords can buy more fertilizer and supplies, and can also upgrade their equipment quality, giving them confidence to overcome the next Calamity.

After harvesting the Ninth Center's potatoes and inspecting the construction speed of the Ninth Center's food storage warehouse—confirming it could be finished by tomorrow and the food moved into the storage warehouse before the Killing Snow—Xia Qing handed the center's specific affairs over to Deputy Director Yue Haiying. Xia Qing directly took fifty employees from the Ninth Center's Construction Department and hurried to Peak Three of Mountain Fifty.

Because Zhao Ze had contacted her, saying the construction difficulty was greater than expected and additional hands were needed to rush the work, otherwise it couldn't be completed before the Killing Snow.

When the Ninth Center's veterans arrived at the construction site, they discovered that within the Evolution Forest less than five kilometers from human territory, there actually existed a hot-spring valley that could be called a paradise on earth.

Veterans who had once been stationed nearby worked while discussing when this mountain crevice had appeared; Xia Qing worked while pricking up her ears to listen.

"The water quality in this area was already premium-grade before the Calamity. I remember a big water-production company took a fancy to the water source here and wanted to build a water plant, but then…"

"Sister Qing!" Tang Huai ran up to Xia Qing with his hand raised.

Xia Qing, who had been listening at a crucial moment, looked at this brat who deserved a beating with an expressionless face.

Tang Huai grinned, shoved his phone right in front of Xia Qing, and said, "Sister Qing, look quick, you're famous again!"

Xia Qing pushed his phone away, focused her eyes on the news headline and image on the screen, and couldn't help the corner of her mouth twitch.

Tang Huai was in high spirits. "'Battlefield Grim Reaper · Pastoral Poet: The "Double Life" of Top Sniper Xia Qing'—this reporter doesn't just have literary talent, the photography skills are top-notch too. Sister Qing, look how well this photo was taken!"