Chapter 256: Hardness-Evolved Pine

After wrapping up the chestnut deal, Xia Qing moved another evolution task onto her schedule: harvesting the green-light pine cones from Mountain Fifty.

Mountain Fifty lies east of Mountain Forty-Nine on the ground.

In the first few years of the catastrophe, Blue Star's crust shifted frequently, and the mountain ranges thrust up by the movement utterly destroyed three cities in the northern part of Hui-3 Base, forming vast stretches of forest, lakes, and marshland.

Humans who had recovered from the catastrophe found their homeland utterly transformed, unable to use the old place names and mountain names to fix their bearings. So Huaguo adopted a system of dividing areas by base, switching to a landform-type-plus-number method to name the mountains and rivers of the transformed Blue Star.

This was not only simple and easy to remember, but also a way to forget the sorrow and start anew.

The evolved forests near Hui-3 Base were named by ridges and lakes in sequence, according to their landform features. A "Mountain Number-Number" does not necessarily refer to a single peak, but rather a mountain area encompassing several connected peaks. For example, Hui-3 Base's Mountain Forty-Nine includes three connected peaks, while Mountain Fifty is even larger, encompassing four peaks of varying heights.

Unlike Mountain Forty-Nine, which had been cleared repeatedly by the Azure Dragon Squad, Mountain Fifty was an uncleared, purely evolved forest.

The two green-light pine trees Hu Zi mentioned grew on the south side of the second-highest peak of Mountain Fifty, in a pine forest over two thousand meters above sea level.

Although those two pines had not evolved any attack ability, over a hundred evolved crossbills lived in them. They fed on pine nuts, and their sharp claws and pointed beaks could tear through Grade-3 outdoor protective suits—the greatest obstacle for humans harvesting pine nuts.

Xia Qing traded with the Azure Dragon Squad for Grade-3 outdoor protective suits, along with matching protective masks, worth 4,900 credits. Getting bits of leaves and bug corpses from the evolved chestnut tree on her didn't bother Xia Qing, but getting torn up a few times by crossbills or pecked full of holes would drive her to despair.

Getting from Territory Three to the green-light pines took at least three hours. Although Hu Zi said there were no high-risk attack plants or large beasts along the way, Xia Qing couldn't go alone—she needed teammates who were fast, had good eyesight, and were good shots.

Xia Qing quickly picked her pine-cone harvesting squad: Grade-5 visual evolver Hu Zifeng, Grade-5 speed evolver Jing Kuan, and Grade-6 strength evolver—herself.

The squad only had three people because no matter how much those two evolved pines could produce, five hundred jin of pine cones was the absolute limit, and having one strength evolver in the squad was enough to haul the cones out.

More people, and the pine nuts they extracted wouldn't be enough to divide.

Xia Qing contacted Hu Zifeng, and they quickly locked in this mission. The trip to Mountain Fifty to gather pine nuts was set for the day after tomorrow. Xia Qing decided that before going, she would first harvest the edible pine cones from the pines in Area Three of Mountain Forty-Nine.

Within Area Three of Mountain Forty-Nine, which covered thirteen thousand mu of surface area, grew pines of all sizes—too many to count—and it was impossible to test every single one.

So Xia Qing only tested the pines bearing a relatively large number of cones, and in total found four green-lights and eight yellow-lights—a very low ratio.

These twelve pines did not show the banded distribution seen in the green-light plants within Xia Qing's own territory.

After taking Area Three of Mountain Forty-Nine, Xia Qing would test along the Gao Po planting belt whenever she had spare time, hoping to find a planting belt within this evolved forest area nourished by unpolluted spring water.

But after testing, she found that no clustering of low-harmonic-element plants had appeared in the Area Three evolved forest—in other words, no planting belt existed.

This situation was also perfectly reasonable.

If low-harmonic-element plant planting belts truly existed over large areas, the eye spring in her territory would long since have been found by the squads—there was no way it could have stayed hidden until now.

Having thought this through, Xia Qing felt grateful once again that the spring had appeared on the hillside terraces. Because terraces that humans had opened up and farmed for years were already likely to grow edible vegetables, so the fact that edible plants grew on the terraces within Territory Three hadn't drawn any special attention from humans.

After resting for half an hour at noon, Xia Qing took her tools and hurried off to Area Three of Mountain Forty-Nine. To keep the red squirrels from freeloading, Xia Qing called in help: "Wolf Lao Er, how about coming out to work with me for half a day?"

Sick Wolf stood up immediately when it heard Xia Qing call it. It hadn't had diarrhea again today, and its stamina had clearly improved—it could walk farther.

Xia Qing told Sheep Boss and Broken-Waist Wolf to watch the home, then took the wolf-dog Wolf Lao Er straight for the green-light pines she had marked in Area Three of Mountain Forty-Nine.

Arriving beneath the pine, Xia Qing looked up at the great tree—over a person's width thick and more than twenty meters tall—tightened the protective gloves on her hands, and took out the special tree-climbing tool from her backpack: the foot spikes.

The foot spikes were made of iron, with five sharp iron hooks on the sole—three in front and two in back. The curve of the hooks was modeled after the arc of a cat's claws, so they were also called cat-claw shoes. Humans wearing these iron shoes could climb trees very quickly.

Xia Qing had always survived as a strength evolver; on missions she was an uns combat-capable auxiliary logistics member, only able to follow behind the main force picking up supplies, packing, and hauling.

But for this team-up, Xia Qing, Hu Zifeng, and Jing Kuan were all main-force members, and she would have to climb the trees too. So Xia Qing needed to practice moving quickly up trees in the foot spikes before setting out.

After putting on the foot spikes, Xia Qing stuffed a piece of jerky into Sick Wolf's saddlebag and gave it its assignment: "Wolf Lao Er guards the base of the tree. I'm going up to knock down pine cones—don't let squirrels or other small animals steal our cones."

Especially that freeloader.

After Sick Wolf wagged its tail, Xia Qing began climbing.

Although she had repeatedly tested these green-light and yellow-light pines and confirmed they had not undergone any attack-type evolution, Xia Qing still didn't dare be careless and climbed slowly.

At fifteen meters up, after confirming that neither the branches nor the needles would attack, and having gotten used to the cat-claw shoes, Xia Qing sped up and soon reached the top of the pine.

From a height, the view stretched far.

From this position, Xia Qing could not only take in her own territory and those of Zhao Ze and Qi Fu, but also see the neat plots of cultivated land opened up in Territory One, the vast stretches of wasteland in Territory Two, the standardized greenhouses in Territory Nine, and in Territory Eight...

Xia Qing closed her eyes in disbelief, then opened them again, staring at the three-story villa in Territory Eight.

The villa was a clean white, with windows smaller than those from before the catastrophe—clearly just built.

Unlike the container-style houses in Territories One, Seven, and Nine, Seeing Xin Yu had actually built a beautiful villa in her own territory!

Moreover, quite a few trees of varying heights grew in Territory Eight, so Seeing Xin Yu didn't need to leave her territory at all to chop firewood in the evolved forest.

The lord of Territory Eight absolutely could not be underestimated.

Xia Qing shook her head and pulled her attention back to the pine. Standing on a great tree over twenty meters high, swaying constantly in the wind, an ordinary person would be so scared they wouldn't dare move. Apart from the one time she'd been chased up a tree by a wolf pack while on a mission with the Wind and Cloud Squad, Xia Qing had never climbed a tree this high. She needed to get used to this height and view, and to this swaying frequency.

The day after tomorrow, she would have to knock down pine cones in this kind of environment while fending off attacks from evolved crossbills.

The foot spikes on Xia Qing's left foot gripped the trunk firmly; her right leg and left arm hooked around a pine branch to steady her body. After adjusting for a moment, she used her right hand to pull out the telescoping pole and began knocking down pine cones.

This tree was indeed a green-light, but the cones growing on it weren't that many. Xia Qing swung the pole, the pine branch trembled, and the cone actually didn't fall.

It turned out this green-light pine had undergone a hardness evolution.