Chapter 195: With Grain in the House, the Heart Stays Calm

When Xia Qing asked, Daya answered honestly, "You haven't installed a Qiang-element filter. Even with temperature and humidity controlled, the shelf life of this grain is at most three months."

Xia Qing pressed on, "If I install a Qiang-element filter, how long can the grain in this cellar keep?"

Daya replied, "As long as no outside force damages it, the equipment doesn't malfunction, and the power doesn't cut, adding one Qiang-element filter, storing it for two years is definitely no problem. Still, installing a Qiang-element filter isn't worth it for you."

Xia Qing, who had the Yishi tucked on her, had never planned to install one. She smiled and replied, "I understand. For my little storage room, installing a filter is less worthwhile than just using those points to buy grain from the Safe Zone."

Daya went on, "Your walls here can't hold off evolved burrowing rodents. You could trade with Third Brother for the interior wall panels from his food storage room. The panels can block damage from Class 6 and below rodent-type evolved animals, and they also resist moisture and damp, and withstand Class 5 and below earthquake damage."

Territory Seven even had something this good? Xia Qing nodded at once. "Thanks, Brother Ya. I'll talk to Third Brother at first light."

Seeing that Xia Qing had no intention of letting him help install the second device, Daya tactfully took his leave. After returning to the surface, Xia Qing handed him a pack of Green Light jerky. "Sorry to trouble you, Brother Ya. This is jerky I made with a dehydrator. It probably doesn't taste as good as what your territory makes, but it's all good meat. Brother Ya, please make do."

Daya took it cheerfully and stuffed it into his protective suit pocket. "Green Light meat tastes good no matter how you make it."

After seeing Daya off, Xia Qing first put the Yishi back in the storage room beneath the tool room, then went to the kitchen to turn off the heat. She took down the cooked Green Light chicken, stripped the bones, and carried the meat and broth to the sheep pen. "The meat's stewed. I added two Green Light tomatoes and five spinach leaves inside, for energy. Let it cool before eating."

After setting out the food for her SSVIP client, Xia Qing took the other set of equipment to the warehouse cellar to install it.

Though Xia Qing felt that resource-rich Territory One and Territory Seven wouldn't care about the bit of food in her territory, she still didn't want to expose every food storage spot. So, after learning from Daya how to install the temperature and humidity control equipment, she sent him off and installed the second, more hidden cellar herself.

Ten minutes after the second set of equipment was hooked up to the battery and running, the temperature and humidity in the cellar storage room reached the values Xia Qing had set. After reinstalling the Yishi, Xia Qing sat in the storage room, breathing the fresh, cool, dry air, her face full of bliss.

With the two sets of equipment traded for with Green Light meat, the two large batteries from shooting down the scout bird, and the Yishi traded from the wolf pack—plus installing the interior wall panels—her storage room could extend the grain's shelf life to two years.

What does that mean?

It means as long as she grows enough grain to feed herself, Sheep Boss, and the poultry, even if Hui-Three Base suffers a large-scale beast tide or natural disaster, as long as the disaster lasts no more than two years, she can live full and well within her territory.

The saying "with grain in the house, the heart stays calm" really is… spot on.

From now on, her tasks were to raise her strength, stockpile more food, and take good care of the wolves.

Raising her strength was the only way to defend her territory and food; stockpiling more food meant she wouldn't go hungry; taking good care of the wolves meant she could trade for more Green Light meat and Yishi.

The Yishi and the temperature and humidity control equipment were the keys to her long-term food preservation.

After disinfecting the floor of the storage room, Xia Qing shut the heavy wooden door tight, returned to the garage through the winding passage, and covered it with the cement slab. Because the temperature and humidity control equipment would run once at 2 a. m. every day to ventilate the food storage room, the cement slab needed to be left with a gap to keep air flowing between underground and the surface.

Leaving a gap meant being careful not to be discovered or let evolved animals in. Xia Qing sprayed insecticide at the exit, then set the tiller's bulldozer blade on top to disguise it.

After making sure it would pass muster, Xia Qing stood in the garage and listened carefully for a while, then went out to the yard to listen again. Because the storage room's temperature and humidity had already reached the set standard, the equipment installed four meters underground was in standby mode. Xia Qing, a Class 7 hearing-evolved user, couldn't hear a single sound.

The people who could enter her territory—Luo Pei, a Class 6 hearing-evolved user; Dajiang, a Class 4; Liangzi, a Class 6—plus the patrol team member Cao Xianyun, a Class 4 who walked the isolation belt every day, and Tang Huai, a Class 5 squatting in Territory Two digging bugs—Xia Qing couldn't hear any of them standing in her yard, so those outside the yard certainly couldn't hear either.

This really felt so safe. Xia Qing happily hugged a bundle of dry hay from the warehouse and headed back to the yard.

By now it was already light. Outside the sheep pen, the food bowl didn't have a drop of soup or meat left. The sick wolf couldn't have eaten that much—it must have been that after it ate its fill, the alpha wolf finished off the rest.

Seeing Xia Qing spread the hay to dry under the eaves, Sheep Boss immediately trotted over from the pen to sniff it. Finding it wasn't grass it could eat, it turned to leave, but Xia Qing called it back.

"Boss, no more sleeping. I'm going to patrol the territory, you're going to catch bugs to feed the fish."

Sheep Boss, who hated catching bugs, squinted at Xia Qing until she stuffed a compressed ration into her satchel. Only then did it slowly pick up the little basket by the door and follow Xia Qing, who was carrying the chicken coop, outside.

Seeing Xia Qing and Sheep Boss go out, the sick wolf slowly followed too. The alpha wolf didn't move, still resting in the sheep pen.

The chicks, long used to wolves, showed no fear of the wolf trailing behind and chirped noisily in the coop. The Red Light gosling, however, seemed to sense the wolf's terror and huddled in the corner of the coop farthest from it.

Xia Qing checked the chicken run all around, confirmed there were no problems, then opened the coop to let the chickens out.

The black-feathered young rooster was the first to dash out of the coop, followed closely by the Red Light gosling, then the remaining ten chickens. Because Xia Qing fed them so carefully, the chicks and gosling had already recovered from the damage caused by the ultrasonic attack—each one had glossy feathers and bursting energy. The moment they were out, they began drinking water, eating feed, and digging bugs from the soil.

The two-month-old chickens and gosling had fully grown their feathers. The other chickens' plumage came in red, yellow, white, and brown—all perfectly normal. Only the black-feathered rooster, currently flapping its wings and showing off for the Red Light gosling, had grown into a look Xia Qing had never seen before.

Every part of it—comb, eyes, beak, feathers, claws—was a glossy black. Xia Qing really wanted to grab it and let a little blood, to see if its blood was black too.

The black-feathered rooster must have sensed Xia Qing's ill intent and ran off fast. The moment it ran, the ten chicks immediately followed, putting distance between themselves and Xia Qing.

The soil in the chicken run had been turned over by the chickens, so the bugs were probably nearly eaten up. Xia Qing decided to move the chicken pen to a new spot tomorrow morning and let them keep digging.

Sheep Boss and the sick wolf had already nearly wandered to the North Buffer Forest. Xia Qing turned west, heading first to patrol the South Wasteland Grass Wall and the West Buffer Forest.