Chapter 239: Cultivating Mushrooms?

That stinking woman!

Tang Huai's voice was sour. "The greenhouse plastic sheeting will be delivered tomorrow morning. Tomorrow at eleven sharp, let's trade under the road sign, just the two of us?"

Xia Qing replied, "Sure."

She had a mission tomorrow, but the members of Beard Feng's squad would stay and guard the territory.

"Then it's settled. I want ten sturdy ones." Tang Huai added a cautious reminder, then asked, "Have any mushrooms grown on your hillside? Can I come over and pick some? Or you pick them yourself—if there are any edible ones, I'll trade points for them."

After four straight days of Calamity Rain, how could mushrooms not sprout? But mushrooms that grew after Calamity Rain—even ones showing a yellow light—no one dared eat.

No, correction—even mushrooms that grew after normal rain, no one dared eat either. After the Great Biological Evolution, mushrooms, that kind of fungal food, had been abandoned by humanity.

They had no choice but to abandon them; the risk of eating mushrooms was just too great. Even if every test showed the mushrooms contained no toxins, humans could still end up flat on a slab.

Xia Qing pressed the button and rejected him without hesitation. "None grew."

Tang Huai...

Damn it!

Kuang Qingwei replied, "Brother Huai, I've got a lot of mushrooms growing here. You want some? Is green-light or yellow-light okay?"

"Right." Tang Huai added, "Not just mushrooms—I want the soil or wood that grew the edible mushrooms too. As much as you've got, I'll take it all."

"Got it, got it, I'll go pick them right now."

After Kuang Qingwei replied, Zhao Ze and Qi Fu also chimed in with questions, then went off to pick mushrooms too.

Li Si suddenly asked, "Tang Huai, are you trying to cultivate mushrooms?"

Tang Huai immediately explained, "Yes, Sister Si. After I came to the territory, I found that the termitomyces mushrooms in our area are safe to eat and taste pretty good. I was thinking of getting some mycelium and trying to cultivate them."

Li Si pressed, "Was it just you who ate them and was fine, or have a lot of people eaten them and been fine?"

Tang Huai chuckled. "Just me. The others are too chicken to try. Oh right—when I first came to the territory, Third Brother traded me some termitomyces mushrooms, and he ate them too."

Zhang San replied lazily, "I'm a coward. I gave them to other people to eat."

Everyone...

Li Si proposed a trade. "Tang Huai, can you set aside some of every edible mushroom variety found in Territories Four, Five, and Six for me? Do you still have the termitomyces mushrooms you ate in spring? I'd like to trade for them."

Tang Huai replied immediately, "Sister Si, I only picked termitomyces mushrooms once. Go ahead and pick first from the other territories—take as many as you want, however many you want."

Li Si asked again, "Do you still remember where you picked the termitomyces mushrooms? Can you trade me some of the soil from there?"

Before Tang Huai could answer, Zhang San spoke up. "That fungal soil is with me. Not trading."

Tang Huai, back in Territory Two, was baffled. "Third Brother never asked me for soil."

Tang Heng furrowed his brows into a figure eight, signaling his brother not to speak.

Li Si asked Zhang San, "When did Third Brother start researching fungi?"

Zhang San replied lazily, "None of your business."

The chat on the Lord channel fell silent. Xia Qing rubbed the fur of the wolfhound beside her, feeling that today's little episode was unusual. She immediately called Qi Fu to ask whether Zhang San had ever traded termitomyces mushroom-growing soil with Tang Huai through the Lord channel.

Qi Fu, who was online every single day except when injured, answered without hesitation, "No. And I don't think Third Brother would privately trade with Territory Two either."

Xia Qing felt the same. "Knowing Third Brother's temper, he really wouldn't. Brother Qi, besides what's already been publicly traded, don't go trading the good stuff from the territory with Li Si. Li Si is from the Blazing Fire Squad at Huiyi Base. Third Brother being this guarded around her—he must have his reasons."

Between Zhang San and Li Si, Xia Qing unhesitatingly sided with Zhang San.

Qi Fu replied immediately, "I've been keeping my guard up against her. Sis, you have to be careful—she cares most about the stuff in your territory. I won't go pick mushrooms either. Later I'll just say they all showed red lights."

After hanging up, Xia Qing picked up a bamboo basket, gathering stones from the ground as she mulled over why Zhang San wanted to stop Tang Huai's trade with Li Si this time.

When Tang Huai traded green-light bugs with Li Si before, Zhang San had never stepped in to stop it. If it wasn't because Zhang San was in a bad mood today, it had to be because the goods in this trade were fungi and fungal soil.

Zhang San definitely wasn't interested in the termitomyces mushrooms or the fungal soil themselves—after trading the termitomyces mushrooms with Tang Huai, he never brought it up again. So what on earth was it about?

Going by instinct, Xia Qing felt this matter was important. She sent a message to Luo Pei.

Luo Pei replied quickly:

Zhang San might be protecting Tang Huai, or he might be trying to add to his own leverage. Read and delete.

Inside Territory Twelve, Tang Zhengpo hung up the phone and methodically briefed his two sons. "Anyone whose parent or child has already become a Lord can no longer apply for a new territory. A-Huai comes back to the safe zone with me tomorrow to handle the territory transfer paperwork. A-Heng stays and guards the territory, keeps clearing land."

"No way." Tang Huai objected firmly. "The person in our family who most needs the protection of the Lord Law is you. I just ate a few bites of mushroom and didn't die—it's not that big a deal..."

Tang Zhengpo raised a hand, cutting his son off. "This matter isn't huge, but it isn't small either. Because of certain concerns, I've never told you two about the backgrounds of Zhang San and Li Si."

Tang Huai cut in, "Dad, Zhang San is that legendary traditional Chinese medicine researcher from the Research Institute, and Li Si is from the Blazing Fire Squad. We've known that for ages."

"Before Li Si joined the Blazing Fire Squad, she was also a researcher at the Huiyi Research Institute." Seeing both sons listening attentively, Tang Zhengpo continued. "In the sixth year of the Calamity, I went to Huiyi Base—officially to handle some business."

Tang Heng answered, "I bet your trip to Huiyi had something to do with Sister Feng. Otherwise you wouldn't have stayed so long."

Tang Feng was Tang Zhengpo's own niece—a dual-evolution user with both speed and vision, immense potential. She was the second-most powerful ability enhancer in the Sufeng Squad after Tang Zhengsu, and the very reason the squad carried the word "Feng" (Wind) in its name.

In the fourth year of the Calamity, Tang Feng, then vice-captain of the Sufeng Squad, vanished during a mission outside the safe zone.

Tang Zhengpo nodded. "I got reliable word, so I went to Huiyi Base to pull strings, hoping to rescue A-Feng from the Research Institute. But I was still too late. When I saw A-Feng, she had already been tortured beyond recognition."

Tang Huai's eyes went wide. "How dare they! Sister Feng is a rare dual-evolution user!"

"She'd been poisoned before being sent over, and her eyes were destroyed. Once she lost her sight, her speed-evolution advantage became useless too."

Tang Zhengpo paused, not describing his niece's condition at the time, and went on. "The Research Institute was secretly running a lot of illegal experimental projects. Because the labs were built underground, these projects were also called 'Underground Experiments.' Shen Yongdong's younger brother—the three-evolution user from our base—died on an operating table in one of those underground labs."