Chapter 189: How Did You Get In?

While Territory Two and Territory One were cursing each other online and brawling offline over two domesticated beasts, Xia Qing stayed peacefully in her own territory, fixing up the cellar, tending to the sick wolf, and weeding her vegetable patch.

It took seven days, but Xia Qing finished the cellar beneath the warehouse as well. Although she hadn't yet traded for temperature- and humidity-control equipment, the cellar's temperature was better suited for food storage than the outside, so Xia Qing stored the wheat and mung beans in the cellar beneath the tool room, and the potatoes in the cellar beneath the warehouse.

Right in the center of both cellar storage rooms, Xia Qing hung a Yishi stone large enough to cover a thirty-cubic-meter space. The decoy cellar in the abandoned village to the southwest, of course, had no Yishi stone hung inside—only a small exhaust fan installed, with just a dozen or so small potatoes placed inside.

Yishi stones can shield against the vast majority of Qiang elements, which is equivalent to cutting off the active, violently evolving microorganisms affected by Qiang elements. Now Xia Qing's cellar storage rooms have reached the storage conditions of pre-catastrophe warehouses without temperature- and humidity-control equipment.

Xia Qing had heard Qi Fu and Shi Chong grumble that, before the catastrophe, farmers who grew crops would store dried grain in granaries inside or outside the house, and as long as it wasn't ruined by rats or soaked by rain, it wouldn't go moldy or spoil for a whole year.

So in principle, even if she couldn't control the temperature and humidity well, the duration her cellar could store food should reach about half a year. Once she traded for temperature- and humidity-control equipment, the storage time would definitely exceed a year.

In a catastrophe year where, apart from compressed rations, ordinary food couldn't even last three days, a year was a number most people didn't even dare imagine.

And she was about to achieve it!

Such a long food storage period could greatly enrich the dining table of her and Boss Sheep.

Xia Qing now had over 230 jin of wheat, over 70 jin of mung beans, over 440 jin of potatoes, as well as fifteen jin of sealed compressed rations, over forty jin of Green Light jerky, one bag of dried long beans, and one bag of dried eggplant.

The second planting included thirty-five Green Light eggplants, fifteen Green Light eggplants, and over thirty Yellow Light long beans—far more than Xia Qing alone could finish.

With the Yishi stone, the food Xia Qing obtained no longer had to be dried and sealed for storage. She set up a small insect-proof net shed in the yard, strung a few food-drying wires inside it, and hung a Yishi stone. Then, following the method described in the book, she blanched the long beans and hung them whole on the wires, sliced the eggplants directly and threaded them on the wires, drying them into vegetable jerky.

When the weather cooperated—no rain and plenty of sunshine—these two vegetables could be dried in five days. Dried vegetables didn't require very high humidity for storage, so Xia Qing bagged them and placed them in the grain storage room beneath the tool room.

With every type of food she put away, Xia Qing's heart settled a little more. Although the food she now possessed only occupied a small corner of the two cellars, after the autumn harvest she would have even more food to put in. Once the Sufeng Squad calmed down, she would enter the Evolution Forest to look for chestnuts and pine nuts, making her food even more varied.

This winter would definitely be the best one she'd had in the ten years since the catastrophe.

Xia Qing put away the food and walked into the living room, and seeing the fellow inside, she couldn't laugh anymore.

Hearing the movement, the sick wolf lying on Boss Sheep's exclusive tatami raised its head and looked toward Xia Qing. Its wolf eyes, having swollen down, had grown a little larger, and its vision was slowly recovering.

Unlike the head wolf's nouveau riche gold or the brain-domain-evolved wolf's amber, this sick wolf's eyes were rust-colored. The way it looked at Xia Qing held neither the head wolf's arrogance nor the brain-domain-evolved wolf's deliberation, nor the broken-legged wolf's ferocity—only calm.

Just… like a dog from before the catastrophe.

Man and wolf stared at each other for a moment, and Xia Qing spoke first, "How did you get in?"

Hearing Xia Qing's words, the sick wolf stood up from the tatami and walked outward. After nine days and nights of Xia Qing's care, the sick wolf finally no longer had diarrhea; although still weak, it no longer stumbled when walking. Unlike Boss Sheep's hooves, dog feet have pads, so it walked without sound.

It walked to the security door, slowly raised a paw and pulled the handle down, then pushed outward, and the entry door—modified by Xia Qing so it could be pushed open from either side—opened, and the sick wolf walked out.

Watching it walk out so readily, Xia Qing felt she hadn't been respectful enough toward this SSVIP honored guest. She felt in her pocket, looking for a piece of jerky to give it.

Before she could find one, the sick wolf pushed the door open from outside again and walked in, stood in front of Xia Qing, raised its head, and looked at her.

Xia Qing……

I was asking how you got in, not how you got in……

Forget it……

For it to grasp human language to this extent was already very impressive.

Xia Qing checked the time. "It's time for lunch, are you hungry? I'll go cook now."

This sick wolf, nearly tortured to death by parasites, hadn't recovered its stomach yet—eating raw meat made it vomit—so Xia Qing could only cook meat for it every day.

Fortunately, all this meat had been sent over by the head wolf, and one sick wolf couldn't eat much, otherwise Xia Qing would have been heartbroken to death.

With the meat for the wolf on to cook and her own steamed buns steaming, after making a stir-fried shredded pork with long beans, Xia Qing discussed with the sick wolf, "Go bring Boss Sheep back, it's time to eat. Boss Sheep, your friend, the one sleeping over there, the white sheep that eats grass, understand?"

The sick wolf crouched at the kitchen doorway watching Xia Qing, and after she finished speaking it slowly stood up and slowly walked out. The sick wolf moved slowly, and only brought Boss Sheep back after ten minutes.

One wolf and one sheep rinsed their hooves and paws in the water basin at the door, stepped over the dry grass Xia Qing had placed beside the basin, then opened the door and went inside, standing at the kitchen doorway watching Xia Qing.

Xia Qing, in the middle of mixing the concentrate feed for Boss Sheep, twitched the corner of her mouth, and immediately delivered praise: "Boss is awesome, hooves washed so clean; wolf is also awesome, paws washed so clean. The food's ready, we'll eat right away."

Since the sick wolf had followed Boss Sheep inside, Xia Qing didn't chase it out to eat, but placed both their food basins on Boss Sheep's table. The sick wolf got a basin of cooled shredded meat and offal, Boss Sheep got a basin of concentrate feed.

Watching one wolf and one sheep line up to chow down, Xia Qing once again sighed that the evolved Blue Star was truly fucking insane.

She washed her hands clean, opened the pot and took out the steaming hot buns, brought the dishes to her own dining table as well, and turned on the walkie-talkie to listen to the lords exchange information.

These past few days, what the lords' channel had been discussing was no longer how to store potatoes, but cotton.

The cotton planted at the end of March, after four months of growth, finally saw the cotton bolls on the lowest first batch of fruit branches of the plants crack open, producing cotton.

Xia Qing had already picked ten jin of cotton, drying it on the second-floor balcony. Every time she went upstairs and saw the cloud-like cotton, Xia Qing would show a genuine smile.

Thank heavens, thank the earth—although the leaves of the Yellow Light and Red Light cotton weren't the normal green, the cotton that grew was all snow-white.