Chapter 212: New Ability Evolution?

During the Calamity Era, any abnormality must be watched closely, or it could cause a great crisis and even cost lives.

Xia Qing moved this odd sunflower out of the vegetable greenhouse and planted it in a small shed far from the greenhouse. That small shed had originally held a yellow-light ground cherry, but it had been struck by hail last month, its main stem broken, and died.

Five days after the sunflower was moved out of the greenhouse, the sunflowers around it grew so fast they caught up with the other plants within a few days. This proved Xia Qing's feeling was right—the slow growth of that patch of sunflowers was caused by that strange sunflower.

As for how it caused the harm, Xia Qing couldn't figure it out.

Over the next few days, Xia Qing carefully inspected the sunflower field and found three more sunflowers that felt strange, moving them all into the small shed. Because the soil clumps she transplanted were large enough not to damage the sunflowers' root systems, these four sunflowers wilted for two days but then recovered and continued growing.

After recovering, the feeling they gave Xia Qing was still off. And this feeling was no ordinary kind of off.

After becoming familiar with Beard Feng, Xia Qing had asked him how, when they teamed up to dig bamboo shoots in the Evolution Forest in early April, he had judged that the bamboo bearing green-light shoots was an aggressive evolved plant.

Beard Feng's judgment was based on the external characteristics of dangerous evolved creatures and their surroundings. For example, that green-light bamboo had sparser leaves than other bamboos, the main stems of the surrounding bamboos bore scars cut or stabbed by bamboo leaves, and the green-light bamboo shoots had no animal bite marks.

The reason Xia Qing felt her sense this time was extraordinary was that the four sunflowers she found, apart from making the few surrounding sunflowers grow slowly, showed no difference from other yellow-light sunflowers in any indicator or characteristic—including their grey-green leaves and main stems covered in fine fuzz.

Xia Qing didn't want to tell anyone about this feeling she couldn't clearly explain because she didn't know whether it was the result of some kind of ability evolution.

If it wasn't, that would be easy to handle.

If it was, Xia Qing would have transformed from a three-ability evolver into a four-ability evolver. In the Calamity Era's ten years, Xia Qing had never heard of a four-ability evolver, which both delighted and unsettled her.

So Xia Qing decided to keep this matter absolutely secret, even from her closest companion—Sheep Boss.

After finishing her plans and completing tonight's training, Xia Qing said goodnight to Sheep Boss and Sick Wolf, "Boss, Wolf Lao Er, I'm going to sleep. I'm leaving the territory's night watch to you two. Guard well, and I'll make you something good when I get up tomorrow morning."

"Baa." Hearing about good food, Sheep Boss replied.

Sick Wolf raised its head to look at Xia Qing, tilting its emaciated head to one side—it was clearly in a good mood too.

Sheep Boss didn't have night vision, so the main force for night watch duty was actually Sick Wolf.

Evolved wolves are animals that sleep during the day and are active at night; even when sleeping, they remain very alert and wake at the slightest disturbance.

Since Sick Wolf's vision recovered and it could move slowly, it had taken on the night watch duty on its own initiative; no rustle of wind or grass in the territory escaped its ears.

After the great evolution of Blue Star life, not only did humans' various abilities evolve, wolves did too. Wild wolves, whose vision, hearing, smell, and running speed were already superior to humans', remained superior after evolution. Although Xia Qing was a level-seven hearing evolver, her hearing still couldn't match that of an ordinary evolved wolf.

In the past half month, wild rabbits had twice sneaked into her territory at night, damaging the pest-prevention net trying to get into the greenhouse to steal vegetables. Because they hadn't triggered any traps, Xia Qing didn't notice while sleeping, but Sick Wolf detected them both times.

Xia Qing only discovered the rabbits' tracks because she heard Sick Wolf open the door to go out but didn't hear it return after relieving itself, so she went out to check.

Xia Qing was certain that if Sick Wolf weren't so weak, it would definitely have caught the rabbits and crunched them up. After that, Xia Qing handed the night watch duty over to Sick Wolf.

With Sick Wolf on night watch, Xia Qing slept more soundly.

The next day, the first thing Xia Qing did after waking up with the sun was open the window to check what was on the windowsill.

After releasing the red squirrel wearing the tracker, Xia Qing had placed pollution-free spring water, a few grains of food, and a wad of tobacco on the windowsill, hoping the little fellow wouldn't go steal from other territories and get caught.

Just ten minutes ago, Xia Qing heard rustling outside the window. Checking her phone app, she saw the red dot representing the red squirrel had appeared on the windowsill two meters from her phone—this was the closest it had come to Xia Qing since being released.

After opening the window to check, Xia Qing found the little fellow had not only drunk the water but also carried off a wad of red-light tobacco. For a moment, Xia Qing couldn't tell whether the red-light tobacco or the pollution-free spring water was more attractive to the red squirrel.

After going downstairs to wash up, Xia Qing said a few words to Sheep Boss and Sick Wolf, then shouldered her big backpack, picked up the chicken coop, and left home.

After putting the chickens and geese into the new chicken pen, Xia Qing left the territory and headed to the abandoned mountain cave in District Three to deliver medicine to the injured wolf.

On the way, she took out her phone to check the red squirrel's location and found the little fellow had run far early that morning; the arrow showing its direction of departure pointed northwest toward Mountain Fifty. She wondered if it had gone to look for chestnuts.

After arriving at the cave, Xia Qing fed the medicine to the brain-domain evolved wolf, and the broken-leg wolf dropped a prey animal that looked very similar to yesterday's catch right in front of Xia Qing.

This one was bigger than yesterday's—it should be that one's mother. Xia Qing praised it sincerely, "Broken-leg, you're really something. That kind of animal obviously runs really fast—you caught the kid yesterday and the mom today, that's impressive. But at this rate, will we still have anything to eat next year?"

The broken-leg wolf dropped the prey and turned to drink water; Xia Qing's concerns were completely beyond its perception or understanding.

Xia Qing tested and found this prey was also yellow-light, making her even more convinced the broken-leg wolf was hunting them by the nest. She instructed seriously, "In two days the third Harmful Rain will fall. You understand Harmful Rain, right? The kind of rain that makes plants grow wildly and animals go berserk."

The broken-leg wolf wasn't interested; after drinking water it went back to the cave to rest. The black wolf responsible for protecting the injured wolf was catching bugs nearby to play, and only the brain-domain evolved wolf listened seriously to Xia Qing.

Xia Qing stuffed the sealed prey into her backpack and continued chatting with it, "The Queen has been gone so long and still hasn't come back. How are you few planning to avoid this Harmful Rain?"

The brain-domain evolved wolf stared at Xia Qing, seeming thoughtful.

Language barrier, no way to communicate. Xia Qing sighed, shouldered her heavy backpack and returned to the territory. After dealing with the prey and finishing breakfast, Xia Qing immediately began bustling about.

The first thing on her plan for dealing with the Harmful Rain was: harvest the peanuts.