Chapter 307: Will You Trade Eggs?

An oil press is a household appliance Xia Qing urgently needs.

Xia Qing has grown peanuts and sunflowers herself, and next May she expects to harvest several hundred jin of rapeseed as well. Of course she doesn't want to sell these oil-bearing crops and then buy cooking oil from the Safe Zone at a high price.

There's another point: even if she were willing to pay a high price, she still couldn't get good oil. So pressing her own oil is far more cost-effective.

Xia Qing isn't the only one thinking this way — the lords have been chatting about it these past few days too.

During the agricultural trade fair, the Territory Management Department sold sunflower seeds to the lords for planting. But now the sunflower seeds are about to be harvested, and the lords can't find an oil press anywhere. Not only is there nothing on the open market, even people with connections like Kuang Qingwei and Zhong Tao can't get their hands on one.

What does this tell us? It tells us the base management wants to buy back all the sunflower seeds in the lords' hands.

Without an oil press, the lords can't turn their sunflower seeds into cooking oil, which keeps much longer. Without the Safe Zone even having to push them, they'll rush to sell off their harvest.

To get an oil press, Kuang Qingwei specifically asked Zhang San, but Zhang San didn't respond. Xia Qing had assumed Zhang San didn't have an oil press, so she planned to wait for Yang Jin to return from gathering herbs and trade with him. After all, Xia Qing has an underground storage room fitted with Yishi stones and constant-temperature, constant-humidity equipment, so sunflower seeds can sit in her territory for a year without going bad.

But Xia Qing didn't expect that today Ji Li would take the initiative to offer to trade her an oil press, and would urge her not to tell anyone about the exchange — which further confirmed her earlier guess.

No matter why the base is doing this, Xia Qing will keep enough for her own use before selling any surplus. She took the risk of coming out here, toiled over her fields, and she has no nobler reason than to eat well and eat her fill.

Seeing Xia Qing return, Chen Zheng, who was clearing weeds, stopped what he was doing and waved to greet her.

Although Xia Qing had only been away for a little over two hours, and her territory has wolves, sheep, and surveillance cameras, she still notified the "Security Squad" to come watch over it — because the Beard Feng Squad was something she got in exchange for pollution-free spring water. After mid-March next year, if she wants to use the Beard Feng Squad again, she'll have to pay points.

When Chen Zheng and the others come help Xia Qing guard her territory, they always do some farm work on the side in exchange for vegetables — a deal both sides are happy with.

When Xia Qing walked over, the usually steady Chen Zheng excitedly pointed at the newly installed camera and said, "Sister Qing, this camera of yours is amazing!"

The camera really is amazing, but "the price is amazing too — a hundred times that of an ordinary camera."

A hundred times…

The price was so terrifying that Chen Zheng immediately gave up on the idea of trading with Territory Seven to get one for study.

Chen Cheng reported the morning's situation to Xia Qing: "The lords were still chatting about oil pressing and the autumn harvest this morning. Tang Huai heard our tiller running and asked several times, but I didn't say a word. About an hour ago a hen clucked — probably laid an egg."

This morning when Xia Qing left the territory, she attached weeding wheels to the tiller and asked the Chen brothers to help clear the weeds behind the house. Driving the tiller is the Beard Feng Squad's favorite job. In one morning they not only cut the weeds but also used the bulldozing and digging shovels to fill in the big pits left from yesterday's tree digging.

After Xia Qing finished explaining the afternoon's arrangements to Chen Zheng, she hurried home to check on her Lao Da and Wolf Lao Er. The two of them had taken a medicinal bath that morning, and she didn't know if they had recovered yet.

Before Xia Qing even reached the house, Sheep Lao Da charged out ready to fight her. Judging by its speed, the discomfort from the medicinal bath had already passed.

After Xia Qing finished her bath last night, she felt her shoulders and heels much lighter this morning, and she'd been looking for a chance to test it out. Without a word, she charged right in.

Bang!

When person and ram collided at full force, one went flying — and unsurprisingly, it was Xia Qing, who was at a disadvantage in both weight and strength.

Mid-air, Xia Qing twisted her waist, quickly changed her posture, and used the momentum of her fall to kick at Sheep Lao Da. Sheep Lao Da neither dodged nor yielded, taking the hit head-on with its spiral horn.

The Chen brothers, who had just reached the western buffer forest of Territory Three, heard the commotion and turned to look — both of them felt the ache in their own bodies.

The hobbies of these two lords of Territory Three are really not something ordinary people can appreciate.

Tang Huai in Territory Two heard the familiar ruckus and immediately asked, "Xia Qing, Xia Qing, what are you doing?"

Xia Qing, who had just returned from Area Three, hadn't had time to turn on her walkie-talkie, so of course she didn't hear.

So Tang Huai switched to a high-volume loudspeaker and shouted toward Territory Three, "Ahem, ahem. Xia Qing, what are you doing? Turn on your walkie-talkie."

Everyone…

Xia Qing knew Tang Huai couldn't have anything serious, otherwise he wouldn't use this method — he'd have made a commotion at the north barrier of Territory Three himself. She happily finished her bout with Sheep Lao Da before turning on the walkie-talkie. "Looking for me?"

Tang Huai immediately replied, "Yes, what are you doing? I've been looking for you forever. I heard a hen clucking in your territory — of course I wasn't eavesdropping on purpose, they're just too loud. Will you trade your eggs?"

Xia Qing didn't refuse outright, because hens crow and cluck, so she can't keep the fact that she has chickens in her territory secret. She planned to trade eggs for high-quality supplies: "My hens only just started laying the day before yesterday, so I have very few eggs. I want to trade for Green Light soybean seeds or Green Light carrot seeds."

Zhong Tao has come so many times, and each time Xia Qing has checked the trade lists brought by the lords in his hands, but she never spotted these two crops.

Originally, Xia Qing had a chance to trade for Green Light soybeans, but the lord who had them died in the third Harmful Rain, and his territory was reclaimed by the base.

Carrots are an extremely nutritious vegetable that can be stored long-term, but unfortunately this plant didn't evolve successfully, so seeds suitable for open-air planting in a territory are very hard to find.

Zhang San doesn't have these two kinds of seeds either, for a simple reason: he doesn't like eating them, so Territory Seven doesn't grow them.

Tang Huai doesn't have either of them. "Can't you just trade directly with points?"

"No." Xia Qing refused very crisply. She only has two laying hens, and before winter the eggs they lay won't even be enough for her to eat herself. She isn't short on points, so of course she won't sell eggs for points — she only wants to trade for the Green Light seeds she urgently needs.

Li Si spoke up, "I have Green Light carrots. How do you want to trade?"

She hadn't expected that Li Si also wanted to trade for the eggs from her own chickens.

Li Si wants eggs, Xia Qing wants carrots — their needs match, so of course they can trade. Xia Qing named her price: "Sister Si, what I raise are Green Light hens, and they lay fertilized hatching eggs. A hatched cockerel is worth a thousand points, a pullet is worth two thousand. So the eggs aren't cheap — 750 points each. How many points are your carrots?"

It was Assistant Xiao Liu who answered Xia Qing: "Miss Xia should have heard that carrots are plants highly sensitive to Harmful Elements and need to be grown in a Harmful-Element-free environment. Because the cost of growing carrots is high, the price is also high — five hundred points per jin."