Chapter 21: Was Her Face White or Purplish-Red?

Xia Qing didn't expect Boss Sheep's straight-brained head to remember how to open the door in one go, so she simply propped the door open, sprayed a lot of insect repellent at the entrance, then put on her protective mask. "We're out of water. I'm going to keep clearing the path. Are you coming with me or staying home?"

Boss Sheep naturally stayed silent, and Xia Qing didn't expect it to speak. She shouldered the insect-repellent sprayer and set off again. As for the courtyard wall and sheep pen wrecked by her and Boss Sheep's fight, she'd deal with them when she had time.

After leaving the village, Xia Qing was pleasantly surprised to find that Captain Tan and his team had entered the village from the buffer forest on the north slope, and had used a handheld brush cutter to clear a path over a meter wide. Xia Qing envied the army's full equipment for a while, sprayed insect repellent along the way up the mountain, then finally drew her sickle to clear the path to the mountain spring stone cave.

After prying open the two large stones blocking Shi Dong, Xia Qing collected spring water and tested its quality, finding it hadn't been polluted by the Calamity Rain. She happily filled a pot and hung it at her waist, then began clearing the path to where the evolved perilla grew. After testing that the perilla and Chinese toon tree hadn't undergone Calamity-evolution, Xia Qing joyfully harvested the perilla, broke off the freshly sprouted Chinese toon shoots, and headed home, where she saw Boss Sheep lying by the door sunbathing.

Xia Qing put the perilla in front of it. "Eat up. You're not the boss, you're my ancestor."

Boss Sheep didn't stand on ceremony, stood up, and kept eating.

Xia Qing put the spray tank in the tool room, shouldered four water buckets, and carried a large water tank to fetch water. During the three-day rain period, she and Boss Sheep hadn't held back on water use, so the tank and buckets were nearly empty.

She hadn't expected that this time, Boss Sheep actually followed her out.

Xia Qing glanced at it sideways. "Thirsty?"

If you didn't look at its eyes, the snow-white Boss Sheep with a purple weed dangling from its mouth was actually quite pleasant to look at. Xia Qing turned and continued walking out of the village.

She first went to the reservoir, whose water level and surface area had both risen considerably, took out a section of red lantern snake meat from her leather pouch, hooked it with a hook and dangled it over the water surface for a while. Seeing no evolved aquatic creatures leap out for the meat, she filled a large tank of water and set it by the reservoir, then shouldered the water buckets and went up the mountain to fetch spring water.

Boss Sheep was faster than her, and by now had drunk its fill and was eating grass beside Shi Dong.

After Xia Qing put the water buckets inside the cave to fill, she pulled up two green-leaf grasses about a palm's height tall that Boss Sheep was gnawing on and tested them—they were indeed green-light safe food.

Xia Qing was just about to praise Boss Sheep's taste when she saw an evolved leech wriggling on the tree trunk above Boss Sheep's head. Getting sucked on by a leech this size would be trouble, but Xia Qing didn't move, wanting to see how Boss Sheep would handle it.

Sheep are covered in wool, making it hard to find a spot to bite, so the leech picked Boss Sheep's head and launched itself over. Just as the leech was about to land on Boss Sheep's head, it sidestepped, and then... kicked the leech flying with one hoof.

An expected move—Xia Qing, having taken several such kicks herself, knew full well the power of those hooves. She stepped forward, killed the thirty-plus-centimeter leech with one slash, and dug a hole to bury it on the spot.

Evolved leeches also have green-light edible parts, and even if not green-light they can be used medicinally, but Xia Qing found the things disgusting—she'd rather eat grass than this, and didn't want to stuff one into her随身 leather pouch. Besides, a single one wasn't worth many points.

Now that she had a sizable household, Xia Qing didn't want to stomach the disgust for a few points.

After all four water buckets were filled, Xia Qing screwed the caps tight and stuffed them all into her large backpack. She called out to Boss Sheep before heading down the mountain, picked up the large water tank by the reservoir, carried it home and put it away, then began clearing the courtyard.

It wasn't that she didn't want to immediately go clear the fields and plant crops—the ground was simply too wet, and she couldn't get in for the past few days. So Xia Qing started by clearing the house.

The courtyard walls had all been smashed down by her and Boss Sheep, so she simply cleared the debris and fenced in a larger area, bringing the rack building on the east and the vegetable garden on the west inside the fence. Xia Qing went to the west courtyard first. Fortunately, although the west courtyard had also been smashed into a mess, the small rainproof greenhouse she'd built was still standing, and the ginger and garlic sprouts inside were all fine.

Xia Qing pulled off the rain cover, cleared the small weeds that had sprouted under the ginger and garlic sprouts, then pulled up all the wildly overgrown grass and saplings in both the east and west courtyards.

The five Chinese toon saplings transplanted back from the new territory? Sorry, all smashed to nothing. In the heat of the moment later, Xia Qing couldn't remember whether she or Boss Sheep had done it.

The two Chinese toon saplings transplanted beside the spring? She'd forgotten about them just now—would go check in the afternoon.

After working straight through to just past noon, Xia Qing finally had her big courtyard cleaned up bright and spacious, and even laid a red brick path. It looked comfortable no matter how she looked at it. A perfect morning's work—she could eat lunch now.

Xia Qing rinsed the mud off her protective suit, stripped off all her soaked clothes and took a shower, then went to the kitchen to cook. A small pot of rice porridge, a dish of dressed perilla leaves, compressed rations as the staple—done.

No sooner had Xia Qing finished cooking and set the food on her newly made dining table than Boss Sheep came into the courtyard, stepping on her newly laid brick path.

"Stop right there!" Xia Qing blocked Boss Sheep from going inside, signaling it to rinse its dirty hooves in the basin by the door. Boss Sheep stared at the dining table and very cooperatively let Xia Qing scrub its hooves, then went straight for the table once inside.

Xia Qing had long gotten used to its eating posture. She set a basin of perilla grass mixed with a small piece of compressed ration on the ground. "This is yours. Eating too much compressed ration bloats you, so eat less."

Boss Sheep, whose belly was already round from eating outside, buried its head and ate. By the time Xia Qing finished her meal, Boss Sheep had already licked the dish clean and was lying on its tatami with eyes closed, resting.

Xia Qing now lay on her newly made bamboo plank bed across from the fire. She was exhausted from the whole morning.

At the same time, in the military camp dormitory in a mountain hollow ten kilometers northwest of Territory Three, Su Ming, lying on his bed, was laughing like he was having a sheep-horn-fever seizure, the bed shaking along with him.

Hu Zi on the lower bunk kicked the bed board up high. "How long are you going to keep having your fit, kid?"

Su Ming bounced up and down with the bed board, then poked his head out to grin at Hu Zi. "Hehe, hehehe... I can't help it whenever I think about it. I haven't run into anything this funny in ten years."

Hu Zi thought of the scene of Xia Qing and the sheep lying in the thoroughly wrecked courtyard, and was also struggling to hold back his laughter, yet still had to put on a solemn face to lecture Su Ming. "The captain said we're not to spread it around. Mingzi, keep your mouth shut. Xia Qing is a Miss, she has her pride."

Cao Xianyun on the neighboring bunk narrowed his eyes. "Mingzi, did you get a good look at Xia Qing's face today? Her face was white, right?"

Su Ming, a vision-evolver, recalled between laughs, "At first it was white, then the sheep kicked a faceful of mud onto her goggles, and she wiped it with her hand, so it turned mud-colored... hahahaha—"

Hu Zi caught something off. "White, not purplish-red?"

In ten years of calamity, with acid rain, poisoning, and combat causing disability and disfigurement in countless people, Cao Xianyun had assumed when he saw Xia Qing's purplish-red skin that she too suffered after-effects of poisoning. But now it seemed, "She's very smart."

Hu Zi, a strength-evolver, agreed. "Strength evolution is the cheapest of all evolutions. The fact that she could survive safely until now without relying on men means she must be very smart, and must have endured a lot of hardship."

Cao Xianyun responded, "I just remember Zhong Tao saying she worked on the construction crew in the safe zone."

An evolver, a woman, yet doing the hardest, dirtiest manual labor. Su Ming stopped laughing too. "Her coming out to farm alone means her whole family is probably down to just her."

Cao Xianyun summed up at last, "She doesn't want to draw attention, just wants to live well on her own."

"Old Cao's right." Su Ming nodded immediately. "Don't worry, I won't tell a soul."

"She's not alone now—she's raised a pretty interesting evolved sheep. This morning that sheep stood in front of Xia Qing, guarding against us, treating Xia Qing as one of its own." Hu Zi, who had spent the morning clearing the buffer forest, let out a huge yawn, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.