Chapter 317: Harmful Withering Grass

After Xia Qing moved aside the two-hundred-plus-jin stone slab, Yang Jin used the dim evening light to carefully examine the situation inside the cave.

The mountain cave was far smaller than Yang Jin had assumed—only half a meter deep, and the height and height were only a little over thirty centimeters. Spring water seeped slowly out of the innermost rock wall, then trickled down through the cracks back into the ground. The faint sound of flowing water was completely drowned out by the river flowing at the foot of the slope, utterly inaudible.

Once the cave was blocked off, no one could discover the spring without moving the stones to look. But with so many stones on the mountain, who would move them one by one to check? No wonder every squad had combed the area several times and still failed to find this spring.

Yang Jin pointed at the pit beside the spring—big enough to hold a water bucket—and asked, "Did you dig this pit?"

Xia Qing nodded. "Back then I didn't yet know that damaging the mountain's structure might ruin the spring. I just hollowed out a hole to make fetching water easier."

"A pit this small can't damage the mountain's structure, and it won't affect the spring."

After the two agreed on where inside the cave to plant the grass and cleared the spot, Yang Jin opened the outer lid of the planting box. Xia Qing peered in and froze.

Where are the herbs?

It was rare to see her such a vivid expression at such close range. Yang Jin smiled. "Look carefully."

Xia Qing widened her eyes and looked closely, and on the black, moist soil inside the planting box she spotted two finger-tall, cluster-leaved, colorless transparent little plants—and was even more stunned.

After Blue Star's evolution, holy shit, it's insane.

This was her first time seeing grass evolve this freakishly—colorless and transparent, and growing right beside an unpolluted spring. Springs already discovered by humans must have been protected, so Yang Jin had to find ones humans hadn't found. Those springs were surely deep in the Evolution Forest, in places hard for humans to reach. No wonder Yang Jin had gone for a month and come back wounded.

Yang Jin explained, "This is called Harmful Withering Grass—a plant species only discovered after Blue Star's Great Biological Evolution. As the name suggests, this grass has an excellent healing effect on the bodily damage caused by Harmful Elements. It's extremely rare, with no public price. Even if we sold it for a million points a stalk, people would fight to buy it."

If Luo hadn't been poisoned so deeply that only this grass could cure him completely, Yang Jin wouldn't have risked a near-certain death going to Bai Qi's base.

Yang Jin took a small bag of soil from his pack. "This is the native soil I dug up from where the Harmful Withering Grass grows. Pour it into the pit first, then plant the grass."

"Let me do it." Xia Qing finally dragged her gaze away from the two miraculous little plants and took the soil bag. Although Yang Jin was acting perfectly normal, his hand was wrapped in bandages and not suited for heavy work.

With her rich farming experience, Xia Qing saw at a glance that this small bag of soil wouldn't fill the pit they had just dug. She used some of the rubble they'd dug out to raise the bottom of the pit a bit, then poured in the soil mixed with small gravel fragments and smoothed it flat, before asking, "Captain Yang, are you planting the Harmful Withering Grass or am I?"

"You plant it—you've got more experience than me." Yang Jin pulled out a flashlight and switched it on, shining it on the Harmful Withering Grass, and reminded Xia Qing, "Be careful, don't touch its leaves."

"Okay." Xia Qing carefully used a seedling-transplanting trowel to plant the two stalks of Harmful Withering Grass into the soil.

Fearing that when fetching water she might accidentally brush against the Harmful Withering Grass, which was nearly impossible to spot without looking closely, Xia Qing stuck two small wooden sticks on the outside of the grass. This was grass that could cure synthesized Harmful poison, a million points a stalk—no amount of caution was excessive.

The hole they had dug was ten centimeters from the water, very similar to its native growing environment. But Bai Qi's base was more than ten degrees colder than here, and Xia Qing worried the two little plants might not be able to take the temperature and simply melt from the heat.

"Captain Yang, does Harmful Withering Grass attract insects? Does it need fertilizer?"

Yang Jin wasn't sure either. "Harmful Withering Grass is extremely rare. Right now only Hong Yi's and Bai Yi's bases have a few stalks under cultivation. How to grow it—we'll have to ask around more."

Xia Qing asked, "Was it Third Brother who told you Bai Qi's base had this grass?"

"No, I got the information through other channels. Because there were no exact coordinates, it took some effort." Yang Jin instructed her, "The fact that you have Harmful Withering Grass here is known only to you, me, Luo, and Xie Yu. Apart from yourself, it's best not to let anyone get near the spring. Wei Chengdong won't be coming back to fetch water either. In a bit I'll carry a bucket of water back. Luo won't need much spring water for this detox. The rest of the matters, we'll talk about next time we meet."

After seeing Yang Jin off, Xia Qing quickly picked some vegetables and headed home, first going to the chicken coop to feel for eggs. To her great delight, there was one more egg today than usual.

She walked out happily with the egg, and—unsurprisingly—saw two wolves and a sheep lying in the sheep pen, while the wild rabbit in the cage beside them had curled into a ball, trembling.

"Queen, Boss, Wolf Lao Er, I'm back." Xia Qing greeted each of them in turn, carried the rabbit cage into the house, and gave it some sweet potato leaves she had just plucked. If she didn't bring it inside, she was afraid the rabbit would be scared out of its wits.

After putting the egg in the fridge, Xia Qing began to deal with the rabbit the lead wolf had brought. Although this rabbit wasn't as big as the one Shi Du had brought, it was genuinely a green-grade one.

Xia Qing first skinned the rabbit and set the pelt aside to deal with later. Thanks to the wolves, she had accumulated quite a few animal pelts these past few months and could make winter mats.

After cleaning out the rabbit's innards and putting them in a small basin, Xia Qing carried it to the sheep pen. "Queen, it's time to eat."

Offal was the wolves' favorite food. The sick wolf couldn't eat raw meat now, so the lead wolf didn't stand on ceremony and dug right in. Xia Qing went back inside to deal with the wild rabbit—half boiled with pumpkin for the sick wolf, the other half braised with chili and potatoes for herself.

The potatoes stored in the underground cellar for three months were still very fresh. But the few small potatoes Xia Qing had placed in the cellar beneath the abandoned village—one without constant temperature and humidity equipment—had already gone soft and rotten.

This also proved that without Yi Stones and constant temperature and humidity equipment, no matter how well a cellar was built, it couldn't store food long-term.

After the meal, Xia Qing sat under the eaves chatting with the lead wolf. "Queen, where have you been lately? It's been so long, not even showing your face once?"

The last time Xia Qing had seen the lead wolf was before migratory bird season, when she had gone to Mountain Fifty to gather green-grade pine nuts, and the lead wolf had been on another mountainside watching two evolved bears fight.

The lead wolf, lying at the sheep pen's entrance, naturally wouldn't answer Xia Qing's question—she just stared at the half-built swallow's nest under the eaves. The sick wolf and Sheep Boss lay on either side of the lead wolf, both looking like delicate little birds leaning on someone.

"This nest was built by a few swallows that flew in during migratory bird season. They didn't find a suitable flock to continue migrating with, so they stayed." Xia Qing explained, then kept chatting with the lead wolf. "Broken-Waist left wearing a protective suit. Did you see it, Queen? Has it taken the suit off after all these days?"

Broken-Waist was definitely still wearing the protective suit, because it cared a lot about its appearance, and the suit perfectly covered the patch of fur scraped off its back.

Xia Qing told the lead wolf the whole story of why Broken-Waist had left the territory and what had happened afterward. When she finished, Xia Qing went inside and took out the last set of canine-grade Level-4 field protective suit she had traded with Yang Huai, showing it to the lead wolf.

She had helped the wolf pack so much—she ought to get some real benefit from the lead wolf in return.