Chapter 32: Human-Powered Water Bicycle

The next morning, Xia Qing rose early, gnawed on two rations for breakfast, and headed straight for the sweet potato and potato fields. She crouched at the field's edge and listened for a while; after accurately pinpointing the location of the pests in the soil, Xia Qing raised her small iron trowe and brought it down, flipping out in one stroke the pest most damaging to plant root systems—the evolved grub.

Xia Qing scooped up the evolved grub that was desperately trying to burrow back into the soil with her trowel and flung it into the air.

Four evolved great magpies circling overhead shot out in four black streaks to fight over the bug, a few feathers drifting down and landing at Xia Qing's feet. These four great magpies were the avian overlords within Xia Qing's territory; fortunately, after evolving, their diet hadn't changed, and they hadn't turned their sharp beaks and talons on Xia Qing, so she and they coexisted peacefully.

Grubs are the larvae of scarab beetles. After evolution, the scarab beetle's coloration becomes however beautiful, and its bite force becomes correspondingly powerful. A single Level-Three evolved scarab beetle can bite through a finger-thick electrical wire or plastic pipe in one chomp. If a plant seedling's taproot is seized by its evolved grub larva, there is only one outcome—death.

The evolved grubs had developed resistance to the repellents and pesticides Xia Qing had been issued, so they had to be eliminated by hand. Therefore, after hearing the broadcast, Xia Qing's daily routine gained one more task: grub removal.

Every sweet potato seedling and every sprouting potato in the field was Xia Qing's treasure, so this was the first stop on her daily pest-clearing route. If a grub dared to set its sights on her treasures, she'd take its life.

The evolved grubs' bite force had increased, but they didn't move quickly through soil. After Xia Qing finished clearing the sweet potato and potato fields along with a hundred square meters of surrounding land, she made sure that even if they burrowed with all their might, they wouldn't reach the sweet potato seedlings before the next morning, then moved on to clear the grain fields.

By the time she finished clearing, all four evolved great magpies had eaten their fill and flown off; the only ones left waiting for bugs were two great egrets. These two egrets had flown into her territory a few days earlier and settled in a small grove of dawn redwoods beside the reservoir.

When she was clearing the evolved forest last winter, the tallest dawn redwood in that grove had evolved terrifying offensive power—when provoked, it would shoot leaf-needles of extreme hardness in all directions. At the time, if Luo Pei hadn't sensed something off about that dawn redwood in time, Xia Qing would already have become a porcupine. If these two great egrets had arrived last winter, there wouldn't even have been bones left of them.

After making a round of her cultivated land, Xia Qing began testing the harmful-element content in the seedlings in her fields. She discovered that among seedlings in fields where seeds had been soaked in filtered water, those irrigated with mountain spring water had harmful-element levels over one-thousandth of a point lower than those irrigated with water from the reservoir.

The lower the harmful-element content in a plant, the lower the chance of harmful mutation during harmful rain. A lower mutation rate meant more food she could harvest!

Mountain spring water might be able to reduce the harmful-element content in seeds and seedlings—this delighted Xia Qing greatly. Unfortunately, her spring was too small to irrigate all her fields.

Xia Qing strolled to the hillside on the north side of the reservoir to check on the soybean sprouts, garlic sprouts, and spinach she had newly discovered. The soybean sprouts and garlic sprouts were inedible, but the spinach could be picked leaf by leaf and eaten.

Green-light edible plants all attracted the attention of Boss Sheep. After coaxing Boss Sheep to the north hillside to eat perilla, Xia Qing sprayed evolved camphor-leaf water around the spinach, then began testing the harmful-element content of the plants in this area.

The small weeds around the soybean sprouts and garlic sprouts mostly showed yellow lights; the small weeds around the spinach seedlings showed green lights for the most part.

Xia Qing stuck wooden sticks of varying lengths into the ground as markers, then tested her way up the hillside, checking every plant from a few-centimeter weeds to trees over ten meters tall, not missing a single one.

Effort did not disappoint the diligent. After carpet-style testing, she truly discovered a curved, upward-sloping gentle-slope belt over five meters wide and more than a hundred and thirty meters long, leading all the way to the spring. Although most of the plants in this belt were not on the human menu, quite a few showed yellow lights, and the harmful-element content of the red-light plants in the belt wasn't very high either—generally between fifteen and twenty-five thousandths. If there were no other food options, these plants could serve as a stopgap; eating them for a short time wouldn't kill anyone.

Green-light plants were noticeably more abundant near the spring, which was why Boss Sheep liked to graze the grass in this area. But the area above the spring didn't match the belt's characteristics—it was all high-harmful-content red-light plants. Crossing the isolation belt between the old and new territories, the over-five-meter-wide, hundred-and-twenty-meter-long steeper slope belt extending from the evolved perilla area up to the Chinese toon tree on Gao Po's hill also had mostly yellow-light plants, followed by red lights, with green lights the fewest.

Testing the plants took two days, and the harvest made Xia Qing so excited she wanted to drift like seaweed: she now possessed two slope belts with a total area of nearly two mu, which Xia Qing named planting belts.

After clearing all the inedible plants from the two planting belts, she planned to develop them entirely into terraced fields. The vegetables currently being raised as seedlings, the vegetable seedlings to be traded for in the future, and the sweet potato vines that could later be propagated by cutting—all were to be planted in these two belts.

Beyond these, Xia Qing's gaze turned to the sweet potato seedling and potato fields.

She really wanted to dig up all the sweet potatoes and potatoes and transplant them over here...

She'd heard that people thrive when moved but trees die when moved—what if she dug them up and fussed with them, and the sweet potato seedlings died, or the potatoes got so angry they refused to sprout?

Lacking planting experience, Xia Qing didn't dare act rashly. She gave up on transplanting the sweet potatoes and potatoes and began clearing the planting belts in high spirits.

Harmful weeds? Pull them out, dry them, and burn them.

Red-light shrubs? Cut them down, dig out the roots, dry them, and burn them.

Red-light large trees? Saw them through, dig out the roots, dry them, and burn them.

All kinds of harmful evolved insects? Wipe them out.

Evolved snakes, evolved frogs, evolved centipedes? Catch them alive and trade them to Zhong Tao when he arrives in exchange for testing instrument reagents—hers had run out.

Stones and rocks of all sizes cleared away, but the planting soil layer isn't thick enough—what to do? Dig more soil to supplement it.

While Xia Qing was working furiously in her territory, she received a call from Zhong Tao: "Sis, you there? Hu Zi and I are coming over to install your water wheel."

"I'm here." Xia Qing nodded. The strength-evolved Hu Zi didn't just know how to install solar panels, he also knew how to install water wheels—he was a technician, while she was a laborer.

Xia Qing dumped the soil from her back basket into the newly developed terraced fields in the planting belt, picked up the evolved animals she'd caught, and headed to the reservoir. Before long, Hu Zi and Zhong Tao arrived.

Xia Qing saw the old bicycle Hu Zi was carrying and froze on the spot.

So the "human-powered water wheel" Tan Junjie mentioned was a modified bicycle? How could these two things possibly be connected? Was she supposed to pedal a bicycle by the reservoir?

The danger coefficient by the reservoir was relatively low, so no one had brought protective masks. Thus the astonishment on Xia Qing's face was seen clearly by Zhong Tao and Hu Zi, and both couldn't help laughing.

Zhong Tao asked with a grin, "Sis can't figure out what the water wheel looks like?"

Unlike her usual calm and sharp self, Xia Qing was now genuinely baffled. "I really can't figure it out."