Chapter 1459: Saying Goodbye Means We'll Meet Again

The next morning, at more than twenty below zero, Qiang Zai — with a few strips of fur shaved and antibacterial patches stuck on, missing a chunk of one ear — was perched on the tree branch outside Xia Qing's window, a large snow-hopping bug clamped in his mouth, shivering as he waited beside his mother for breakfast.

After feeding the two red squirrels, Xia Qing tucked Little Feimao into her pocket and went patrolling the territory with Wolf Lao Er when she received a group message.

The Hui-Three delegation had rushed to the Bai Yi base yesterday and gone early this morning to set up the venue. After Kuang Qingwei led his people to finish arranging the Hui-Three Territory Alliance's exhibition booth, he took photos and posted them in the alliance group, asking everyone to check if anything needed improvement.

The second photo was a group shot of the four alliance members participating in the trade fair.

All wearing glasses and suits, Kuang Qingwei looked like a successful businessman, Di Ming like a refined scoundrel, Tang Huai like a young rich master, and Huo Zhun like a bodyguard hired for a million points.

Luo Pei and Yue Haiying didn't join the group photo. Wen Nengjie? Of course he was the one holding up his phone taking pictures for everyone.

After liking the posts along with everyone else, Xia Qing put away her phone, finished patrolling the territory, fed the two old wolves and the companions at home, and arrived at the meeting room for breakfast. She asked Captain Yang sitting across from her, "I heard on the news last night that millions of Destroyers are gathering in the waters near our base. This mission to defend the mangroves — you're leading the team, right?"

Under the combined effects of the excessive nuclear-contaminated water discharged by humans and the Qianger Yi element, the marine life of Blue Star has undergone extraordinarily complex evolution.

Crustaceans like evolved crabs that have developed hard heads or pincer limbs in the ocean will swarm onto land in groups to seek food and living space, and the land's flora and fauna are visibly being consumed by them.

So humans gave this type of marine animal a unified name: Destroyers.

Every coastal base tries every means to guard the coastline, preventing the Destroyers from damaging and devouring the land humans depend on for survival.

Of Hui City's ten bases, only Hui-Three and Hui-Five are on the coast, so the two bases set up a joint research group. After two years of effort, they finally used tree species introduced from Guicheng to cultivate a mangrove protection belt suited to the local ecological environment, one that can block Destroyer invasions.

This mangrove protection belt, ranging from tens to thousands of meters in width and winding along the land-sea boundary, is the ecological barrier built by the humans of the two bases.

The reason it's called an "ecological barrier" is not only because the hard, tangled root systems of the mangrove plants can effectively hold back the destruction of the land by amphibious evolved animals, but also because the plants and evolved microorganisms in the mangroves can efficiently absorb, degrade, and even solidify radioactive particles and toxic substances in the water, effectively protecting terrestrial life.

This protective forest belt, cultivated at enormous cost in manpower and resources, has, after years of maintenance, formed an ecosystem with a certain capacity for self-repair, and under normal circumstances does not require excessive human intervention.

Large numbers of Destroyers surging toward the mangrove belt constitutes an emergency, requiring the military and combat teams to go intercept the Destroyers, preventing them from charging into the mangroves in large groups and battering or shearing through the trees' prop roots and trunks.

The mangrove defense mission is rated B-level, and the top ten combat teams must send out the required number of their main forces to participate.

Last winter, when a massive number of Destroyers invaded the Hui-Three mangrove belt, it was Tang Zhengsu, captain of the Sufeng Combat Team — then ranked first — who led the team, guarding the most dangerous stretch of coastline alongside the military's elite forces. This year, it's the turn of Yang Jin, captain of the Qinglong Combat Team.

Confirming that Yang Jin would set out tomorrow and not knowing when he'd be able to return, Xia Qing saw no need to bring up her own dietary taboos with him, and only earnestly urged, "Stay safe. Come back in one piece."

Xia Qing had never participated in a mangrove defense mission, but she had watched videos online and knew just how dangerous it was.

In the videos, she saw evolved crabs called Ice-Digging Crabs, with shells bigger than a washbasin, instantly smash through the ice and snip a human's ankle clean off with one claw; saw mangrove vines whipping wildly in the bitter cold, attacking humans and Destroyers indiscriminately, the humans struck sent flying several meters to crash onto the hard ice; and saw humans falling into the icy sea, surrounded by countless sea creatures, reduced to bare white bones within minutes.

The mangrove defense mission is extremely brutal; those who participate aren't guaranteed to return alive to the territory. But Xia Qing believed Yang Jin would definitely come back, because he was a top-tier speed evolver and Hui-Three's top combat power.

Being friends with a top combat power during the Calamity Years gave Xia Qing a sense of solidity — the kind of feeling where, when you say "goodbye" to someone, deep down you truly believe you'll see them again.

This feeling was wonderful; when Xia Qing said her farewell, she felt no sadness, only a hint of anticipation.

"…Mm. I'll definitely come back."

Yang Jin picked up his bowl and drank the green-light millet porridge, using the bowl to hide his face.

Before setting out on high-danger missions in the past, Yang Jin would always go to where Xia Qing worked and watch her from afar, silently saying goodbye in his heart. Then, dragging himself back to the safe zone with wounds or exhaustion, he'd go look at her once more and silently report his safe return.

At the end of the eleventh year of the Calamity, Xia Qing sat across from him, ate breakfast with him, urged him to be careful, and told him she'd wait for him in the territory.

She possessed enough strength and willpower that, no matter how great the disaster or misfortune, she would tenaciously stay alive and wait for him to come back.

The feeling of having someone here waiting for him to return was so beautiful, so precious, that Yang Jin felt like crying.

If only Xia Qing would hug him when he left and when he came back, it would be perfect.

Happy now, Yang Jin started mulling over how to help Xia Qing earn more points. Setting down his empty bowl, he said with a smile, "The mangrove ecosystem is completely different from our evolved forest. On the winter ice you can even see polar bears and seals — I'll shoot videos and photos and send them to you. When I come back, I'll bring you a few bags of pretty pearls; Sis Qing can make more accessories to trade to Broken-Waist."

Xia Qing nodded. "I'll trade you supplies for them."

Trade?

Yang Jin teased, "Would one seed of that X-3 in the lab do?"

Xia Qing, who had just picked up a piece of sauced beef, shot a look at the grinning, clearly over-excited guy across from her. "Four thousand freshly harvested pearls, round, one centimeter or more in diameter, pink or gold — for one seed."

It was the cold of winter now; the evolved pearl oysters had already retreated to deeper water layers to overwinter. Going down to the sea to get four thousand pink and gold large pearls was nearly impossible.

The trade condition Xia Qing proposed basically meant: no deal!

"Sis Qing wants pink and gold pearls to trade to the Broken-Waist wolf, right?"

Yang Jin leaned forward, eyes shining, and suggested, "Actually they don't need to be that big, or even uniform in size. As long as there are enough of them to string into a pearl sleeping mat. Next summer, when you lay this pearl sleeping mat in front of Broken-Waist, it absolutely won't be able to refuse the trade."

Xia Qing sincerely wanted to give the Iron Rooster a thumbs-up — you really do know your so-called brother-from-another-father.

A smooth, cool, and sparkly sleeping mat would be the perfect match for that crystal pillow in the wolf den.

When the time came, she'd name her price at two Qi stones, and Broken-Waist would definitely agree to the trade!

"Before next summer, get me enough pearls of roughly similar size to string a 2-by-1.8-meter sleeping mat, and I'll give you eight X-3 seeds."

By then, spinach seeds with a Qi-element content of 8.1 would no longer be rare for Xia Qing; she could easily take them out to trade with Yang Jin for points, then use those points to exchange for building materials.

Yang Jin broke into a brilliant smile. "To string a sleeping mat that size, you'd need 36,000 pearls at one centimeter in diameter, or 56,000 at eight millimeters. Isn't eight seeds a bit too few, Sis Qing?"

Xia Qing's smile was even more brilliant than Yang Jin's. "Captain Yang, after marine animals evolved, no humans are harvesting them. Finding a pearl oyster's nest and getting hundreds or thousands of pearls isn't that hard. But X-3 — there's only one source in all of Blue Star, no branches."

So what if your evolved brain can quickly convert a sleeping mat into tens of thousands of small pearls?

If you want to trade for my plant seeds, no matter how clever your brain, you have to pay my price!