Chapter 303: What Is Its Evolution Ability?

Daye guided Xia Qing in installing the phone app and connecting it to the camera, then picked a big tree on Gao Po and had her mount the camera on it. By sheer coincidence, the one he chose was the green-light big toon tree on Gao Po.

Of all the trees on Gao Po, this was Xia Qing's favorite, because it had the lowest qiang element content of any of them, making it the safest. Mounting the camera on the big toon tree brought not only the Gao Po and Low Slope terraced-field greenhouses but also Gao Po's green-light orchard under its surveillance.

After installing the Gao Po camera, the two of them went to the east and west sides of the greenhouse south of the reservoir and set up two more monitors.

Actually, this new camera has a monitoring radius of 300 meters, so one camera would have been plenty for the few greenhouses south of Xia Qing's reservoir. But Daye meant well by suggesting two, and of course Xia Qing didn't object—the more cameras, the safer the territory.

Next, it was time to install the camera at home. Xia Qing reminded him, "Brother Ya, one of the wolves in my territory has come back. You'll see it as soon as we get to the house. Just don't go near it or pull out a weapon, and it won't attack you."

Daye had already seen the wolf in Xia Qing's territory before and had no qualms at all. "Third Brother told me about it. Which one came back—the one with the broken leg, the broken back, or the one infected with parasites?"

When she called them that herself it was fine, but hearing Daye say it made Xia Qing feel like every wolf she knew had a rough time of it. Xia Qing led the way and explained, "The one infected with parasites came back to keep recuperating. It hasn't fully recovered yet, but it can already run and jump, and it can fight."

So Wolf Lao Er wasn't doing so badly after all.

After hearing Xia Qing's account of meeting the sick wolf in the Evolution Forest, Daye asked, "What's this wolf's evolution ability?"

Xia Qing paused for two seconds. "... I haven't figured it out yet."

Daye cheerfully tried to smooth things over. "Then maybe it's a balanced, all-element evolution."

The sick wolf and Sheep Boss, freshly bathed, were drying their fur on the hay under the eaves. With a full belly and clean fur, the sick wolf sprawled on the hay, feeling thoroughly comfortable and drowsy.

Hearing footsteps drawing closer, the sick wolf opened its eyes and stood up, staring warily at the courtyard gate.

"Baa." Sheep Boss gave a call, then lay back down on the grass and kept chewing its cud, wordlessly telling the sick wolf there was no need to be nervous—Xia Qing was here.

But when the sick wolf saw Daye following behind Xia Qing, its gaze instantly turned fierce. It dropped into an attack stance, ready to tear this human to shreds.

Under Xia Qing's care, the sick wolf had put on some flesh, and its freshly washed fur was fluffy. Once it squared up, it actually looked pretty intimidating.

Daye, who hadn't been nervous before, felt his heart pounding. The leg he'd stepped into the yard with shrank back, and he whispered to Xia Qing, "The wolf's definitely better, but it looks a lot fiercer than last time."

"It got scared by the wolf howl from the loudspeaker last time, so after coming back to human territory it's become more alert than before. Brother Ya, wait here a moment—I'll have it go back inside the room." After explaining, Xia Qing went into the yard to soothe the sick wolf.

Daye watched the evolved wolf, fierce as anything toward him, obediently follow Xia Qing's order and head into the room with the evolved sheep. He couldn't help but look at Xia Qing in a new light.

Anyone who could tame a fully grown evolved wild wolf must have something special about them.

After the wolf and sheep went inside, Daye quickly picked the spot for the camera. "Cut down those few trees between the back of the house and the cultivated-field greenhouse, and the camera there can cover the area behind the house. Then sink a wooden stake over three meters tall here and hang the camera on it, and the whole yard plus that big stretch of ruins to the south will all be within monitoring range."

"Okay, I'll dig the hole later." Trees near the house were dangerous—qiang rain could cause qiang evolution in them—so Xia Qing had cleared all the big trees around home. To make the most of the camera, it couldn't go on the wall; she had to sink a stake.

Because there was a wolf in the house, Daye couldn't go inside, so he gave Xia Qing the instructions in the yard. "This is the highest-security camera available right now. All the data it collects is encrypted—if anyone tries to steal it, you'll be alerted immediately on your phone. But…"

Daye lowered his voice. "You can't rely entirely on the alert function passively. Use it for a few days first. Once you have some basic footage, I'll edit a few clips for you and install an anti-hacker program…"

At first Daye's explanation was something Xia Qing could follow, but past a certain point she couldn't understand a word. Still, she felt that the image of this man—shorter than her, even—had grown more than twice as tall in her eyes as he spoke. "Brother Ya, I didn't expect you to have this kind of skill!"

"I made my living at this before the catastrophe." Daye gave a brief explanation, then got to the price of the cameras. "Two ten thousand per camera, four cameras total eighty thousand. How many jin of green-light Chinese torreya nuts did you just harvest?"

The cameras Daye had brought cost as much as a hundred ordinary cameras from the Safe Zone. But you got what you paid for—Safe Zone cameras were made of ordinary materials and couldn't withstand evolved animals at all, making them useless in a territory. Daye's were made of new materials, military-issue even. Xia Qing would have paid thirty thousand apiece, let alone twenty.

Xia Qing then took the green-light Chinese torreya nuts out of her backpack. "Forty jin."

Daye did a quick calculation. "Normally five jin of fresh torreya nuts yield one jin of dried nuts. Third Brother wants two jin, so with the fruit flesh that's 1,760 points total. Let's round it off—just pay me in points for the cameras."

After Xia Qing transferred the points to Daye, she still had over thirty-one thousand points left from selling the fish—more than enough to fence the territory. She was very satisfied.

Daye pointed at the cardboard box holding the cameras that he'd set on the ground, and with a look told Xia Qing there was something inside. She took the hint, nodded firmly, and cupped her fist in thanks.

Even though only Xia Qing and Daye were in the territory, who knew if there were top-tier hearing-evolved users in nearby territories? Medication for healing physical damage couldn't be revealed to outsiders—caution was essential.

"I'm off. If anything goes wrong with the cameras, come find me anytime." Daye had just started to take his leave when he heard the clucking of hens from the chicken coop.

Xia Qing asked Daye to wait. "I exchanged with Third Brother for some chickens a few months ago, and they started laying yesterday. Brother Ya, hold on—take a couple of eggs back for Third Brother to try."

Green-light food was Third Brother's favorite. Although Territory Seven was hardly short on eggs, Daye still happily accepted the "thank-you gift" from the lord of Territory Three and advised, "Feed your green-light chickens as much edible grass and filtered water as you can. Otherwise, if they take in too much qiang element over the long term, the quality of the chickens will drop."

"Got it, thanks, Brother Ya." Xia Qing thanked him.

Her green-light chickens were indeed semi-free-range. They ate wild insects of unknown quality and pecked at all kinds of wild grass, but Xia Qing fed them wheat bran mixed with vegetable leaves and pollution-free natural spring water every day, and during qiang rain she used yi stones to shelter them. So she had no worries at all about quality dropping.

Yi stones and pollution-free spring water were the foundation of her farming and chicken-raising.

After seeing Daye out of the territory, Xia Qing found a pine log over four meters tall, hauled it home, dug a hole, and sank it in the southeast corner of the yard, then mounted the last camera on it.

After opening the monitoring software, Xia Qing entered her own face and figure, along with Sheep Boss's and the sick wolf's, into the system. She stressed the cameras' importance to her two companions and told them in no uncertain terms not to damage them. Then she negotiated with them: "Boss, Lao Er, you two go catch some bugs to feed the fish, and I'll go clear the trees behind the house. How about it?"

Once her two companions left the room, Xia Qing immediately opened the phone app and watched them appear on screen carrying little baskets in their mouths. Just as she'd hoped, the camera didn't trigger an alarm. She tapped smart recognition, and the names she'd set—"Sheep Boss" and "Wolf Lao Er"—popped up above their heads.

A camera at twenty thousand apiece really was far smarter than the two-hundred-yuan ones from the Safe Zone. With these four cameras in the territory, Xia Qing would feel a lot more at ease leaving for the Evolution Forest from now on.