Chapter 30: Elm Seed Steamed Buns

After finishing a patrol lap, Tan Junjie told his team members to head back to camp first, while he himself carried a vegetable basket into Plot One. The Blue Dragon Squad team members hiding in the trees jumped down and saluted, "Instructor Tan."

The Blue Dragon Squad was a team put together by graduates of Military Academy A; before the Catastrophe, Tan Junjie had been an instructor at this military academy, and the core members of the Blue Dragon Squad were all students he had taught (and trained).

"Some vegetables." Following the Blue Dragon Squad's rules, Tan Junjie handed the basket over to let the team member inspect it carefully before going to find his old comrade Luo Pei.

Luo Pei had only been leading his team at Plot One for two days, and this courtyard was already completely different from when the previous lord was here. The clutter inside the courtyard had all been cleared away, and there wasn't even a single blade of grass on the ground; it looked bright and open.

Luo Pei, whose eyes were covered with gauze, was sunbathing on a reclining chair. Hearing footsteps, he slowly sat up. "Finished your lap that fast?"

"There are only ten plots in total." Tan Junjie set the basket beside Luo Pei and sat down on a chair the team member had brought out.

Tan Junjie and Luo Pei were classmates and comrades-in-arms. After the great biological evolution of Blue Star, Tan Junjie evolved a Level Four Speed ability, while Luo Pei evolved a Level Ten Vision ability. Once the gap in their strength widened, the paths they took changed accordingly, but the ten years of camaraderie forged through struggling together had never changed.

Luo Pei was injured and holding on; Tan Junjie kept the ache in his heart entirely to himself. "This is the evolved perilla and Chinese toon buds Xia Qing from Plot Three gave you. The harmful element content of the evolved perilla is 1.3, and the Chinese toon buds are probably even lower."

Luo Pei fumbled to open the lid of the basket. After smelling the Chinese toon buds, he sighed, "When we cleared that patch of evolved forest, we absolutely couldn't have missed edible plants with such low content. Did these just grow this year?"

Tan Junjie explained, "It's not from the patch you cleared, but from the hillside further up north of Territory Three. I traded that hillside with Xia Qing for a green-light wild boar piglet. Yang Jin didn't mention it to you?"

Luo Pei lay back down. "That guy's a closed-mouth workaholic; he never has a single idle word to say."

It seemed Yang Jin hadn't mentioned Xia Qing's matter to Luo Pei. Tan Junjie didn't say more either. He took out a high-grade detector and tested the Chinese toon buds, overjoyed. "The harmful element content of the Chinese toon buds is only 0.25 per thousand. Eat more of them; they're good for your body."

Luo Pei laughed. "Take it back for Sister Qiqi to eat. I'll find Xia Qing to trade later. That girl—I remember her, she's not bad."

Tan Junjie's daughter Tan Qi currently has only a tested speed evolution of three times. She's still young and has the possibility of further evolution; eating more safe food is beneficial to her growth and development.

Tan Junjie put away the detector. "What I need for Sister Qiqi, I'll trade supplies with Xia Qing for. She didn't use the Chinese toon buds to trade with other lords, so don't mention this matter on the lords' private chat channel."

Luo Pei snorted. "You think I'm as loose-lipped as you? By the way, if she wants something you don't have on hand, just tell me."

Tan Junjie trading Chinese toon buds with Xia Qing for his daughter definitely couldn't use military supplies. Although Luo Pei had left the safe zone, he was still a core member of the Blue Dragon Squad, and obtaining supplies was more convenient for him than for Tan Junjie.

Tan Junjie didn't stand on ceremony with Luo Pei. "If I don't tell you, who would I tell? By the way, have the Tang family people in Plot Two to your east made any moves these past two days?"

"They haven't, and they wouldn't dare. Even though I'm about to become a blind man, I still have the strength to crush a few ants."

His old comrade's voice was calm, but Tan Junjie still heard the anger in it. "Yang Jin and Xie Yu are definitely thinking of ways everywhere. You absolutely won't go blind. When you have time, study the 'Territory Law' more. The seven people in Plot Two are written up as ordinary people on the file, but there are definitely eavesdropping experts hidden among them. Be careful—don't fall into their trap."

Luo Pei nodded. "You don't need to worry about me here."

Tan Junjie wanted him to relax and laughed. "You should spend more time with Xia Qing. She raised a strength-evolved sheep called Boss Sheep—bad temper, full of personality, and quite amusing."

In front of his old team members, Tan Junjie talked just as much as Su Ming did.

Luo Pei laughed out loud. "Boss Sheep is a good name."

Luo Pei didn't go disturb Xia Qing, continuing to stay quietly in his own territory to recover from his injuries, and Xia Qing also remained busy in her own territory as usual.

Five days later, the temperature climbed again, and the eyes of the evolved potatoes finally became obvious. Xia Qing cut the potatoes into chunks according to the eyes, rolled them in plant ash, let the cut surfaces be fully coated with plant ash, and then dried them for half a day before planting them in the ground.

The soil requirements for potatoes are the same as for sweet potatoes, so Xia Qing planted the potatoes next to the sweet potatoes.

After planting the potatoes, the elm seeds in Plot Six were ready to eat. Xia Qing traded one jin of evolved perilla for three jin of elm seeds, and testing confirmed they were indeed yellow-light food. She used the elm seeds with cornmeal and white flour to make a pot of crooked, lopsided elm seed steamed buns. The taste was so good that it nearly made her swallow her own tongue, and to protect the buns she even had a fight with Boss Sheep, which also smashed the newly piled courtyard wall.

The steamed buns were too delicious. Xia Qing stopped clearing harmful weeds and tidying the courtyard, and coaxed the sulking Boss Sheep to go find elm trees.

Elm trees—there were still a few within the territory.

First, the western hillside. Xia Qing broke off a branch of the elm tree covered with elm seeds and held it in front of Boss Sheep. "Boss, try this?"

Seeing Boss Sheep disdainfully turn its head away, Xia Qing knew without testing that the elm seeds on this tree were not edible.

Tossed it, next tree.

After wandering for over an hour, Xia Qing went from the western hillside to the northern hillside, and then to the new territory's Gao Po, breaking off more than a dozen elm branches.

All the elm trees within her territory bore inedible seeds, and Boss Sheep's squinty eyes grew harder and harder to look at.

Xia Qing didn't feel much disappointment, because this was the normal phenomenon. If edible plants were that easy to find, there wouldn't be so many people dying because of food.

Xia Qing picked Chinese toon buds for Boss Sheep, letting it eat under the tree, while she went to the vegetable garden of the abandoned courtyard on Gao Po to check on the small scallion seedlings.

Because this was already her territory, Xia Qing didn't take the risk of transplanting the small scallion seedlings. Instead, she cleared out the vegetable garden, fenced it in, and let them continue growing where they were.

Sure enough, quite a few tender seedlings as thin as needles had sprouted again from her two patches of yellow-light small scallion seedlings. Xia Qing squatted happily in the vegetable garden, weeding on one side and counting seedlings on the other.

While counting, Xia Qing felt something was off.

These small scallion seedlings—how come they look exactly like the chive seedlings Qi Fu traded her?

Relying on her excellent visual evolution, Xia Qing carefully observed the "small scallion seedlings" in both vegetable gardens back and forth. After picking some to taste, Xia Qing finally confirmed that the two vegetable gardens on Gao Po didn't contain only small scallions, but small scallions and chives.

A pleasant surprise, a pleasant surprise. Xia Qing, with a small scallion leaf dangling from her mouth, watered the seedlings with spring water on one side and hummed a little tune on the other.

While humming, Xia Qing heard footsteps coming from the direction of the wild boar breeding center.