Chapter 1443: Fluffy Handbag

Hearing Xia Qing's car engine drawing closer and finally stopping in front of him, Tang Huai pulled his gaze back from the clouds, looked at Xia Qing for several seconds, then opened his mouth, "Xia Qing."

Seeing he had truly run into something, Xia Qing said, "Go ahead."

"If Tang Lu dies, can you merge Territory Two into Center Nine?"

"I can."

"Good."

Xia Qing waited two seconds, found Tang Huai had no intention of speaking further, so she pressed the accelerator and drove the car to the south gate of her own territory, jumped out, opened the gate, drove the car in and stopped, then jumped out again to lock the gate.

At that moment, Tang Huai, who had been leaning against the Territory Two road sign watching her, spoke again, "Sister Qing."

Xia Qing stopped and quietly waited for him to speak.

"Be nicer to Boss Yang from now on."

Xia Qing was silent for two seconds, nodded, and entered the territory. After distributing the gifts she had brought back to her companions, she took out her phone and quickly scrolled through the safe-zone updates Xu Juan had sent her over the past few days, among which there were items about the Tang family.

The Tang family restaurant had new dishes again, business was booming. After the Killing Snow period, Tang Zhengpo took a plane to Guiwu Base, the main purpose being to accompany his mother and wife on a trip to relax, the secondary purpose being to discuss the procurement of Green Lantern seafood. Yesterday, Tang Ning donated food and warm supplies worth two hundred thousand points to the Fuli Academy inside Hui Three Safe Zone...

After scrolling through once without finding any information related to Tang Lu, she simply dialed Tang Heng's number directly, "Your brother seems to be planning to kill Tang Lu."

Tang Heng's voice was urgent, "Sister Qing, what did my brother say to you? He's been off since last night, no matter what I ask he won't say."

Xia Qing replied, "He just asked me under the Territory Two road sign whether Territory Two could be merged into Center Nine if Tang Lu dies. The university's almost on winter break, right? Is Tang Lu coming back?"

Tang Heng wasn't sure either, "I haven't been following Tang Lu lately, I'll check right away. Sister Qing, did my brother say anything else?"

"... He said to be nicer to Boss Yang."

After hanging up the phone, Xia Qing patted Boss Yang, who was standing in the living room burying his head in a Green Lantern dragon fruit, only to be impatiently shaken off by the fellow.

Xia Qing smiled, rubbed Wolf Lao Er who was eating meat, then checked Does Ergua's plastered leg as he gnawed on dragon fruit, then left the room, went to the wolf den in the house ruins to visit the two old wolves, before returning to the room to eat.

Yang Jin had messaged her in the morning saying he would stay at Territory One to protect Brother Luo and wouldn't be back until tomorrow, so Xia Qing packed fragrant dishes directly from Territory Seven.

After eating, Xia Qing took Boss Yang and Wolf Lao Er, tucked Little Feimao into her clothes, and wandered a big circle inside the territory, finally stopping by the beekeeping greenhouse.

Judging from Wolf Lao Er's expression, the aphid-flies in the bee colony showed no aggressive tendencies, but Xia Qing still carefully disinfected her protective suit in the small room nearby, then put on shoe covers and entered the beekeeping greenhouse.

Xia Qing went in to work, while Boss Yang and the wolf-hound Wolf Lao Er waited for her on the cleared snowy ground outside the shed. Boss Yang lay on the ground chewing cud, while Wolf Lao Er caught snow-jumping bugs to feed his fish.

Xia Qing first took soil samples inside the greenhouse, then checked the growth of the nectar source plants. After taking the honey from the honey comb frames, she pulled out the frames one by one and carefully examined the condition of the aphid-flies mixed in among the bees.

Zhang Song's team, after more than a month of research, had confirmed the existence of evolved aphid-flies, and that their benefits to the bee colony outweighed their harms. At this stage, they were researching how to minimize the harms of the aphid-flies.

Until Zhang Song's team came up with a viable plan, Xia Qing could only use the most rudimentary method: have Wolf Lao Er watch the beehives every day, and if the aphid-flies showed aggressive tendencies, she or Beard Feng's squad would eliminate them as quickly as possible.

With the appearance of the two Killing Yi elements and the great evolution of Blue Star, the growth forms of many creatures differed vastly from before the catastrophe, and the difficulty of planting and raising livestock had both increased. Lords needed to put in more effort and cost to gain anything.

Beekeeping was like this, and so was planting hardness-evolved bamboo.

Zhang Tao's team discovered that over-harvesting the rapidly growing hardness-evolved bamboo during Killing Rain would cause the Killing elements inside the bamboo roots to increase rapidly, and the trace element content of the root soil would also undergo obvious changes, ultimately causing some bamboo rhizomes to break free from the soil's restraint and undergo a secondary Killing evolution with animal-like characteristics.

After the third Killing Rain, Xia Qing uprooted the hardness-evolved bamboo planted in the west buffer forest, and would need to nurture that patch of soil for a full year before she could continue planting there.

After the ground thawed next spring, she would reclaim a new patch of land, then dig up some hardness-evolved bamboo roots from the bamboo forest of Mountain Fifty-Two to plant. In future Killing Rains, she would only harvest three crops of bamboo—this was the "measure" Zhang Tao's team had given after multiple field studies.

Moderate harvesting allows for sustainable development.

While Xia Qing was working and idly mulling things over, the walkie-talkie blared with Wen Nengjie's loud shouting, "Brother Huai, your sister's here, come out and greet her! Good lord, her car ran over two hundred li through the snow, it's turned into a solid ice lump!"

Tang Huai, who seemed to want to be online twenty-four hours a day, didn't respond. The lords all sensed Tang Huai's abnormality and their nerves tightened. But everyone was tactful, no one spoke up to ask what had happened with the Tang family.

"Hiss—"

The car's brake pads and brake disc produced stable friction, and the car stopped inside Territory Two. Tang Ning, wearing a Level Four field protective suit, forcefully pushed open the car door covered in a layer of ice and snow, got out, and walked toward the dog kennel where Tang Huai lived.

Tang Huai went to meet her, "Sister, why are you here?"

Tang Ning went inside, took off her protective mask, sat down behind the desk, and only then spoke, "Stop pretending, your smile looks worse than crying. Did Tang Lu contact you?"

Tang Huai suppressed his smile and lowered his head, "No."

Tang Ning frowned, "Get it all out in one breath!"

"Tang Lu posted a photo online yesterday... the handbag she was holding..."

Tang Huai stared down at his protective suit, his voice hoarse, "It's made from chest fur."

Tang Ning was stunned, opened her phone, scrolled to Tang Lu's update, and tapped open the food photo she had posted.

One glance told anyone this was taken by Tang Lu herself, style consistent as always. The food wasn't the focus—the focus was the hand in the corner of the photo, holding a snow-white fluffy handbag, wearing a delicate bracelet, with freshly done nail art.

Tang Ning enlarged the handbag and looked carefully.

The year Tang Huai turned eighteen, she gave her brother two puppies, named Mantou. During the years of catastrophe, no matter how tight things were at home, they could always squeeze out a few bites of food for these little fellows that warmed the heart just to look at.

In the winter of the fifth year of the catastrophe, grandmother fell ill and father went missing, the household was in chaos. Tang Rui took advantage of the confusion to steal the two dogs. By the time Tang Huai brought people to confront him, it was already too late.

Because of this, Tang Ning took her two brothers to cause a huge scene in the safe zone, finally forcing the face-conscious "good mayor" Tang Zhengrong to relent and approve the special-effect medicine that saved grandmother's life. Then, overnight, Tang Huai grew up and joined the Sufeng Squad, and could smile and call out "Young Lady" when he saw Tang Lu...

Tang Ning examined Tang Lu's handbag carefully. She couldn't recognize it as chest fur, but she trusted her brother wouldn't be wrong.

From Tang Ning's understanding of Tang Lu, she must have already forgotten that this handbag was made from fur, otherwise at this point in time she would absolutely never have taken this bag out to show off.

However, whether she had forgotten or not didn't matter. Tang Ning placed her phone on the desk, looked up, and asked, "What do you want to do?"