Chapter 259: The Green Lantern Pines on Mountain Fifty

Although these Qiang grasses grow on Mountain Fifty, their seeds can easily be carried by strong winds into human territories that have only just been painstakingly cleared, where they take root and sprout with the next Qiang rain, growing rapidly and seizing living space.

Qiang grass is the evolved plant Xia Qing hates most since the Great Biological Evolution of Blue Star.

After a Qiang rain ends, the Qiang elements in the atmosphere drop, and the growth rate of Qiang grass slows. Normal plants that have not had their growing space seized by Qiang grass continue to grow, but plants swallowed up by Qiang grass will grow weak from lack of sunlight and inability to compete for nutrients in the soil.

The herbivores that evolved after the Great Biological Evolution did not evolve iron stomachs, and are unwilling to gnaw on Qiang grass, which has an extremely high Qiang element content. If Qiang grass is allowed to grow wild, the vast majority of plants on Blue Star will go extinct because of it, and the food chain on Blue Star will be broken.

After discovering the harm of Qiang grass, Hua Nation assembled the country's top research teams and, after three years of work, developed a relatively safe Qiang grass suppressant, which they named Qiangcao Di.

After Qiang grass absorbs Qiangcao Di, the rate at which it puts out ears and produces seeds drops to within ten percent of the original, curbing the rapid spread of Qiang grass.

The reason it is called "relatively safe" is that if Qiangcao Di is sprayed on crops, it raises the probability of Qiang-evolution in those crops.

Even when used inside an Evolution Forest, the concentration of Qiangcao Di must be carefully controlled: too low a concentration is ineffective against Qiang grass, while too high a concentration will adversely affect other plants inside the Evolution Forest.

What's more troublesome is that Qiang grass keeps evolving, so the researchers have had to work day and night to improve the quality of Qiangcao Di. Xia Qing is out of the loop and doesn't know whether the Dao or the magic is higher now.

Because Mountain Fifty and Mountain Forty-Nine are close to territories planted with crops, planes or drones cannot be sent to spray Qiangcao Di. So in the half-year since Xia Qing moved into the territory, having weathered three Qiang rains, the only option has been to eliminate Qiang grass by manpower.

Besides using Qiangcao Di to slow the reproduction of Qiang grass, the base has also issued a long-term task for collecting Qiang grass ears. Turning in collected Qiang grass ears at the Government Affairs Hall earns points by the jin, and this is one of the ways many low-level ordinary people obtain rations.

Xia Qing's squad now collects Qiang grass ears not for the points, but simply to deal with the hidden danger as they go.

Passing through the outer edge of the Evolution Forest and entering the densely wooded area, the density of Qiang grass drops sharply. Xia Qing's squad also stops collecting the ears and picks up the pace.

Deep inside the Evolution Forest, it is as if it were another world entirely.

In the corners the sun cannot reach grow fungi and mosses of every color. These seemingly fragile plants are in fact lethal killers.

Before protective suits became widely available, the number of people in Hua Nation alone who died from being parasitized by fungal or moss spores exceeded one hundred million.

People covered in moss and fungi, as they approach death, become gaunt and skeletal, their skin taking on an eerie color, looking extremely similar to the post-apocalyptic zombies depicted in films.

So many people call the catastrophe the apocalypse—the apocalypse belonging to humanity. Those terrifying scenes are nightmares that surviving humans cannot escape at midnight. In the few years before the catastrophe, Xia Qing dreamed several times that her body was covered in moss, and woke with a start.

Walking through a dense forest like this, even wearing a Grade-Three protective suit and even being flanked by Jing Kuan and Hu Zifeng, Xia Qing still softened her breathing and raised her vigilance to the fullest.

An hour later, Xia Qing suggested swapping positions. "Captain Hu, let me take the front."

Today she was not a logistics team member being protected; she was also a main combatant, and could not stay in the protected position the whole time. She had to swap places with the other team members and take point.

Now at the very front, Xia Qing held a sharp long blade in each hand, clearing various obstacles as she walked; what she could not clear, she went around.

"Twenty meters dead ahead there's a patch of purple glowing moss. Let's go around it on the left."

"Copy that." Hu Zifeng and Jing Kuan responded in unison, following Xia Qing as she detoured to the left.

After carefully avoiding the glowing moss and advancing another thirty minutes, Xia Qing stopped. "Three meters ahead there are tracks of a large animal passing through. Judging by the prints, it should be a bear."

"Let me take a look." Hu Zifeng stepped forward to examine the large prints in the soft earth. "It's a bear. Based on the size, depth, and stride of the tracks, it's over three and a half meters tall when standing and weighs more than a ton."

Jing Kuan tightened his grip on his gun. "Evolved bear."

"Right." Hu Zifeng drew a deep breath. "Judging by the direction of the tracks, it's not going the same way as us, so we probably won't run into it. Keep moving?"

"Keep moving." Xia Qing gripped her twin blades and continued to take point.

At nine-thirty in the morning, the squad reached the halfway slope of the second-highest peak of Mountain Fifty. Based on the features Hu Zi had described, they found two evolved Green Lantern Pines over forty meters tall.

Seeing those two pines, Xia Qing could only say: Good lord!

Qi Fu had said this year was a lean year for pine cones on the pines, and the pines in Zone Three of Mountain Forty-Nine hadn't grown many cones, so Xia Qing had taken Qi Fu's judgment at face value.

But seeing these two big pines laden with pine cones, she couldn't help doubting Qi Fu's judgment: if this counts as a lean year, how many cones would a bumper year have?

They had underestimated these two pines; too few people had come, and there was no way to carry all the cones out today. Xia Qing discussed it with her teammates. "Shall we take the one on the left first today?"

Hu Zifeng and Jing Kuan both agreed, and were excited as well.

Hu Zifeng confirmed with Xia Qing, "Hu Zi said the pine nuts on these two trees have a Qiang element content of around three parts per thousand, and taste really good?"

"Right, he said they're tastier than the ones on Mountain Forty-Nine." Xia Qing replied.

The unit Hu Zi belonged to had previously been stationed in the mountain hollow on the west side of Mountain Forty-Nine, where the big pines that grow pine cones are very conspicuous. So before the territory was carved out, the edible pine nuts from the mountain tops in this area had all been gathered by them.

"Once we carry the cones out and get the nuts out, we can use them to trade with Zhang San for high-quality potions." Jing Kuan grinned. "And we can get Er Yong to make pine-nut and corn for us."

"Count me in for the pine-nut and corn. I don't need potions right now, so when you trade with Third Brother, I'll sit that one out." Xia Qing spoke as she carefully observed the evolved crossbills nesting in the big pines.

This kind of bird has two beak tips that cross left and right—no wonder they got a name like that. She just didn't know whether they grew this way after evolving, or had always been this way.

After observing them, Xia Qing discussed how to collect the cones. "I can see it's not just the claws—their beaks are pretty formidable too. Captain Hu, shall the three of us go up the tree together?"

Hu Zifeng nodded. "Rest in place for half an hour, then we'll go up the tree together. Two people handle protection, one person knocks down the cones."

After resting in place and observing the evolved crossbills for half an hour, Xia Qing made another new discovery. "Their flight speed isn't that fast, so there probably won't be any major problems."

Jing Kuan silently answered in his heart: if collecting cones here were too dangerous, Hu Zi wouldn't have proposed teaming up with you.

The three of them arrived at the base of the big tree, which was more than two arm-spans thick, put on their tree-climbing spikes, and began to climb.

Once the hooks of her tree-climbing spikes bit into the trunk, Xia Qing knew this was also a hardness-evolved tree. She discussed it with her teammates. "This tree has hardness-evolved; we'll need to use sickles to cut. You two defend, I'll snip the cones. We'll snip from the bottom up, and when we reach a spot up high where we can't stand steady, we'll stop and switch to slingshots."