Chapter 1883

Bamboo belongs to the Gramineae family. One of the differences between it and woody plants is that it does not grow thicker after reaching the maximum diameter, and the thickness of the bamboo wall does not increase, it can only grow taller.

This hardness-evolved red-leaf bamboo discovered by Xia Qing on Mountain No. 52 still belongs to the Gramineae family. When the growing season ends, its diameter is 20 cm and the bamboo wall thickness is 2.5-3 cm. With the blessing of the hardness evolution characteristic, this red-leaf bamboo piece has become a high-quality building material for building large sheds.

During the Qi rain period, the concentration of Qi elements in the atmosphere and soil increases by more than 10%, and hardness-evolved bamboo grows rapidly like other types of Qi grass. In a relatively fertile soil environment, its growing season is 7-8 hours.

That is to say, it only takes 7-8 hours for this bamboo to grow from a bamboo shoot to a height of about 18 meters and a diameter of about 20 cm. Afterwards, the hardness-evolved bamboo does not become thicker, and the bamboo wall thickness does not increase, it only grows upward or drills out more branches and leaves.

Growing to about 20 meters, the total height of the bamboo no longer increases.

This is why Xia Qing planted hardness-evolved bamboo in the territory last year and harvested it every 7-8 hours.

Rapid bamboo growth requires not only Qi elements as nutrients but also nutritional elements from the soil. If the soil fertility is insufficient, harvesting more than three times during the Qi rain period, the bamboo shoots drilled out from the soil cannot obtain sufficient nutrients from the soil, and under the action of excess Qi elements, they will undergo secondary evolution—when animals enter their root growth area and step on the bamboo roots, the touched roots will drill out of the soil and wave around like whips.

During the natural disaster years, only organic fertilizer can be used. The income obtained by using the accumulated and purchased fertilizer to urge the growth of hardness-evolved bamboo is lower than that used in farmland, so the territory owners reduced the number of times they cut red-leaf bamboo.

At 3:30 pm, the Qi rain had been falling for 13 hours, and the people in territories 1-26 and the Ninth Center in Northern District 1 took knives, axes, saws, and tools specially designed by Jiang Ying for cutting red-leaf bamboo, and came to the red-leaf bamboo forest in their respective territories to start cutting the first batch of red-leaf bamboo.

In the 11 speakers of the 12 signal towers in Northern District 1 that were not smashed by the hail, and the intercoms worn by the territory owners, Tan Tan Junjie's reminder sounded at the same time: "When territory owners enter the bamboo forest to cut red-leaf bamboo, they must pad thick wooden boards or stone slabs to avoid being injured by the roots of the red-leaf bamboo. The cut bamboo wood and branches and leaves must be placed on the rack and cannot directly touch the soil, otherwise the bamboo wood and branches and leaves may grow roots and grow again, triggering uncontrollable risks......"

In areas not covered by the large speakers, the territory owners used the high-pitched speakers they bought to play Tan Tan Junjie's reminder to ensure that everyone in the territory could hear the precautions.

Then, everyone stepped on stone slabs or wooden boards and started *ding-ding-dang-dang* cutting bamboo.

The hardness and toughness of this red-leaf bamboo are very high, and the difficulty of cutting is very great. Electric saws cannot be used during the Qi rain period. Relying solely on manual cutting, three ordinary strong laborers take turns, and it takes more than 20 minutes to put down a bamboo.

Therefore, many territories exchanged for tools specially designed by Jiang Ying for cutting red-leaf bamboo. This tool is very simple—it is to heat steel scissors with burning charcoal, and then two people work together to use the steel scissors to cut the bamboo wood. Although this hardness-evolved bamboo cannot be cut off at once by the red-hot steel scissors, it can effectively shorten the time for cutting bamboo wood by scalding it a few more times.

In addition, this method of burning steel scissors with fire can only be used when the Qi element concentration is lower than 28%. Once the Qi element concentration is higher than 28%, high temperature may trigger a Qi explosion.

Therefore, each territory must reasonably allocate human resources—the strong ones cut bamboo and cut trees; the elderly and children watch the fire and burn the steel scissors. Only in this way can they cut the red-leaf bamboo during the Qi rain interval when the Qi element concentration is slightly lower.

Because if this batch of bamboo is not cut, the bamboo roots will not drill out bamboo shoots and grow the second batch of bamboo.

Especially the territory owners who are not core members of the Northern District 1 Territory Alliance all swung their arms and worked hard. They must harvest enough hardness-evolved bamboo to rebuild the large sheds completely smashed by the hail in the territory after the Qi rain period ends.

Different territories have different personnel and comprehensive strength, and the area of planted red-leaf bamboo is also different. The largest planting area is Territory No. 1, followed by Territory No. 12, Territory No. 8, Territory No. 15, Territory No. 17, Territory No. 11, and Territory No. 3.

There are the fewest people in Xia Qing's territory, but she is a high-level strength evolver, and she can hire the main battle team ranked ninth in the Qinglong Battle Team—Hu Hu Zifeng's team—to help during the Qi rain period, so the speed of cutting red-leaf bamboo in Territory No. 3 is quite fast.

Level 7 strength evolver Xia Qing, sheep leader equivalent to human level 6 strength evolver, level 5 strength evolver Guan Tong, level 4 endurance evolver Little Jiang, level 5 speed evolver Eryong and Jing Kuan all went into battle, and it took less than an hour to harvest all 66 hardness-evolved bamboos near the south wild grass wall of Territory No. 3.

The sheep leader is also very effortless in carrying bamboo, because this batch of bamboo was smashed into bare poles by the hail.

After cutting the bamboo and dragging away the bamboo poles, everyone raked away the bamboo leaves in the bamboo forest, and then sprinkled five bags of fertilizer, and the harvest of this batch was completed.

Unlike other territories, Xia Qing, who can go to the evolution forest to carry manure and tree leaves to compost, is not short of red-light fertilizer!

After Territory No. 2 merged into the Ninth Center, a four-meter-high surrounding wall was built, on which people could walk. There are explicit regulations on the construction specifications of the surrounding wall, even if Xia Qing is the director of the Ninth Center, she has no way to lower the height of the surrounding wall.

The four-meter-high surrounding wall is higher than the wild grass wall, so when the Ninth Center security team patrols back and forth on the surrounding wall, if they look north, they can see the situation in Xia Qing's territory.

Although blocked by big trees, they can't see the key areas, but Xia Qing still feels that the safety is insufficient. So she wants to replace the south wild grass wall and east wild grass wall of the territory with more than ten-meter-high red-leaf bamboo forest walls this year to improve the concealment of the territory and let her animal companions move freely in the territory.

Besides concealment, red-leaf bamboo has another benefit—improving territory safety.

One is that the hardness of red-leaf bamboo is very high, and the height of the main stem is about 18 meters. After building the bamboo forest wall, even a high-level elasticity evolver, even if they climbed over the iron mesh surrounding wall more than 4 meters high, don't even think about climbing over the bamboo forest wall and entering the interior of her territory.

Second, animals larger than bamboo rats entering the bamboo forest can trigger the attack of red-leaf bamboo with their own weight, and the roots on the bamboo roots will stand out of the ground like steel needles.

Red-leaf bamboo belongs to aggressive Qi-evolved plants. When planting in the territory, you must control the bamboo roots and not let them spread at will, otherwise it may trigger uncontrollable danger.

Xia Qing dared to use red-leaf bamboo as a wall this year because she discovered an evolved grass by the bamboo forest on Mountain No. 52. The root system of this grass is very developed and can prevent the roots of red-leaf bamboo from spreading. So Xia Qing gave this grass a very vivid name—Bamboo-blocking Grass.

So this year, Xia Qing planted red-leaf bamboo in the territory without digging trenches or burying medicine, just planting a circle of Bamboo-blocking Grass by the red-leaf bamboo, which could prevent the red-leaf bamboo from spreading to other areas in the territory.

Not only Xia Qing, but other territories also did the same.

After cutting the first batch of bamboo, when Xia Qing checked the growth of the Bamboo-blocking Grass, her mood became heavier and heavier as she looked at it. After checking a circle, her footsteps became heavy.

Heavy, not because the Bamboo-blocking Grass grew poorly, but because it grew very well and successfully completed the task Xia Qing gave it.

This also means that Xia Qing has to start writing the second paper assigned to her by her mentor.

Even the name of the paper was specified by her mentor—"Research on the Ecological Relationship and Utilization of Red-leaf Bamboo and Bamboo-blocking Grass"!