Chapter 1751: Breaking New Ground and Planting Vegetables

After nuzzling the fur, Xia Qing felt Yang Jin's arm tighten again. Afraid that if he pressed any harder the wounds on her body would split open, she patted his head and began arranging the afternoon's work. "Brother Jin, take your medicine and rest in the inner room for a while. I'll go break new ground with Boss Sheep."

Before the Calamity Rain ends, not only does the Ninth Center need to build several hundred greenhouses, Xia Qing's own territory needs four as well.

This afternoon, she and Boss Sheep would break open the wasteland, then clear out the grass roots, tree roots, and stones, mark the plots, and tomorrow she'd call over the two least beaten-up members of Beard Feng's squad to put up the greenhouses and fasten on the insect netting and rainproof cloth.

Once the greenhouses were up, she could start improving the soil, leveling the fields, and dividing the ridges.

Besides that, the weeds growing in the overwintering wheat greenhouse needed clearing as soon as possible; the non-greenhouse areas where grass would be planted this year also needed clearing; the chicken coop at home needed to be cleaned and disinfected once before dark, then the chickens from the warm shed moved back in; and there was the fish pond…

In short, the whole year's work depends on a good spring. Xia Qing was very busy.

No matter how reluctant Yang Jin was, he could only loosen his hold. "After I wake up I'll go to the Ninth Center to find Mo Huaxi, then head to Territory Seven to report the situation to Third Brother, and stay at Territory Seven overnight for treatment."

The radiation in his body had to be cleared out as soon as possible.

Xia Qing answered, "I'll grab dinner at the Territory Seven cafeteria tonight and bring it over to you. Can Xiu-jie and Wang Liang eat?"

"Wang Liang can. Zhaoxiu can only have liquid food for a short while."

Azure Dragon Squad's number-one combatant Yang Jin, number-four combatant Sun Zhaoxiu, and number-five combatant Wang Liang had returned from the Ruins Continent, and their limbs were intact. Under Zhang San's treatment they would surely return to the peak of their fighting ability. In this battle, Azure Dragon Squad had hurt its sinews but not its bones.

Yang Jin watched Xia Qing lead Boss Sheep back to the abandoned village. A few minutes later, he saw her drive out on the micro-tiller.

Boss Sheep was lying on the cushion on the left side inside the micro-tiller's protective cover, and on the right-side cushion sat one—no, two white-faced langur monkeys. A yellow ox was also tied to the rear bucket of the micro-tiller.

After the micro-tiller slowly rolled over, the person and beasts inside the cover all spotted Yang Jin.

Boss Sheep squinted at him, and the two monkeys, terrified, climbed onto Xia Qing, clinging to her neck one on each side. Xia Qing waved, signaling Yang Jin to hurry up and go to sleep.

Yang Jin smiled and waved once, watching the micro-tiller pass by the meeting room. Only after the yellow ox tied behind the cart, still chewing grass, had also walked past did Yang Jin stand up, lean on his crutches, and head into the inner room to catch up on sleep.

Both Luo Pei and Xie Yu had gone to the Ruins Continent. Yang Jin had to recover his fighting ability as soon as possible to deal with the coming Calamity Rain and the human calamities that could appear at any moment.

The Ninth Center's investigation team?

These people cared about face, stuck to principles, observed the law, and feared trouble. For Yang Jin, dealing with them was a piece of cake.

Xia Qing parked the micro-tiller beside Greenhouse Five, opened the door and got out with one sheep and two monkeys. She told Boss Sheep to take the little yellow ox to eat the tender grass that had just sprouted on the adjacent wasteland, while she led the two temporary workers into Greenhouse Six and assigned them their work tasks for the afternoon.

"Daigua, Ergua, apart from the wheat seedlings, every other plant in this greenhouse counts as a weed and needs to be cleared. For ones far from the wheat seedlings, use the small hoe; for ones very close, pull them out with your claws, like this…"

After demonstrating for the two gua how to clear weeds from the wheat field, Xia Qing had them show her once. Then, promising each monkey a Green Lantern hickory nut that evening if they worked well, she headed off with Boss Sheep to till new farmland.

Standing on the northern high slope, Zhang Jingwu heard movement inside the territory and glanced down.

He had long heard that the hot-tempered evolved sheep in Territory Three could plow fields, but he hadn't expected its work efficiency to be this high. In just this short while, the sheep had already pulled the plow across more than a mu of land.

Zhang Jingwu asked quietly, "Sister He, do you think Sister Qing will let that grass-eating ox pull the plow later?"

Zhang He shook her head. "That's a Green Lantern non-evolved ox. Its core value is producing milk. Heavy physical labor would lower its quality."

Just as Zhang He had predicted, the two strength-evolved lords of Territory Three soon broke open four mu of land.

Then the evolved sheep unhitched the plow and lay down to rest under a big tree at the field's edge. Xia Qing, who had been holding the plow, drank a few mouthfuls of water, then picked up a basket and began picking up tree roots, grass roots, and stones.

Once the sheep had rested enough, the human and the sheep plowed an even larger patch of land!

Looking at that sheep, then looking up at the rotary tiller belching black smoke as it turned the soil inside the Ninth Center, Zhang Jingwu finally understood why this evolved sheep was respectfully addressed as "Boss" by Xia Qing, and why she kept it so well fed and pampered.

Was the large rotary tiller the Ninth Center had brought from the Safe Zone good? Yes, it was. But machines needed fuel, and every now and then they'd have some minor breakdown.

Territory Three's evolved sheep didn't need fuel. Hitch up a plow, hang a bundle of green grass in front, and in half a day it could till dozens of mu. Even better!

Such an outstanding sheep… huh?!

Zhang Jingwu, who had been watching the sheep, suddenly saw a golden-yellow figure flash across the rooftop of Xia Qing's two-story building.

That was… the golden snub-nosed monkey Xia Qing had caught on Mountain Sixty-Seven last month? It had actually been staying in Xia Qing's territory all along? No wonder Hui-7 Base had sent people to invade the northern Evolution Forest of Hui-3 Base several times and still hadn't been able to find this little monkey.

"Brother Qi, Sister Yan, you there? How much alfalfa are you planning to plant, and besides alfalfa, what other grain-substitute vegetables are you planning to grow?"

Zhao Ze of Territory Four came online, asking about planting grain-substitute vegetables.

In the first few years of the Calamity, the Calamity Rain or Calamity Snow disasters that struck on average every three months caused crops with growing periods over ninety days to rapidly deteriorate in quality during the Calamity Rain, most becoming inedible. So humans began planting crops with growing periods under ninety days on a large scale.

Because the edible parts of these crops were mostly their stems and leaves, they were called grain-substitute vegetables. After harvest, the grain-substitute vegetables were mixed with powder ground from a small amount of grain and made into compressed-biscuit-type food called rations. In those years, planting grain-substitute vegetables was the main duty of the planting centers inside the Safe Zone.

After weathering the panic of the first few years of the Calamity, humans finally cultivated high-quality crops with a certain resistance to Calamity elements. Only then did the planting centers of the various bases gradually expand the planting area for grain crops. After harvest, the seeds, stems, leaves, and even roots of the grain crops would all be ground into powder, mixed with grain-substitute vegetables, and processed into rations.

Rations at one credit per block were the lifeline food of the survivors at the bottom.

Hui-3 Base's largest planting area—the tens of thousands of mu of fertile fields at the Safe Zone Planting Center—had suffered a pest disaster and needed soil improvement; it couldn't be farmed for half a year. So the base could only assign the tasks of planting grain and grass to the various planting centers and territories outside the Safe Zone.

Northern Zone One, which had suffered the lightest pest damage, was assigned the most tasks. Apart from the Ninth Center, every territory from No. 1 to No. 26 had to plant no less than two mu of grain-substitute vegetables; the building rubble in Territories 201 to 207 hadn't been cleared yet, so they weren't assigned planting tasks.

Because it was a task the base had forcibly imposed, the base issued the grass and vegetable seeds and allocated a planting subsidy of 200 credits per mu. Before June, as long as the weight of edible grass handed over from each mu exceeded 300 jin, the base would purchase the grain-substitute vegetables the lords grew at a price of 0.2 to 5 credits per jin, based on quality.

So, which grass or vegetable seeds to choose to maximize planting profits became a hot topic of discussion among the lords.