Chapter 372: The Scavenging Squirrel and the Furious Sick Wolf

Sheep Boss refused to go back, and Xia Qing didn't press the matter. She said hello to Guan Tong and Chen Zheng, went to check on the construction crew's progress, then picked some vegetables and headed home.

Once home, Xia Qing noticed the Sick Wolf lying listlessly in the yard, guarding the corn from the birds. She set her things down and asked, "Lao Er, not feeling well?"

Xia Qing was now something of a half-trained animal doctor. After checking the Sick Wolf's temperature and stool and finding both normal, she cooked a meal, cooled some meat porridge and brought it to the Sick Wolf, and found its appetite was normal.

If it wasn't a physical problem, then it had to be an emotional one. After eating and washing the dishes, Xia Qing didn't rush off to the fields or the construction site, but sat down beside the Sick Wolf.

The Sick Wolf rested its head on Xia Qing's lap, visibly unhappy.

Xia Qing stroked the wolf's fur as she spoke softly, "Lao Er's been staying home guarding the corn these past few days — feeling worn out? Thanks for the hard work. This afternoon I'll stay home and guard the corn, so go find Boss to play. It's up on Gao Po watching the construction crew work."

The Sick Wolf kept its head on Xia Qing's lap and refused to leave.

Not that, then? Xia Qing tried again, "Is Lao Er missing the Queen and Broken-Leg Wolf's little sister? Want to move into the wolf den and live with your pack?"

The Sick Wolf lifted its eyes to look at Xia Qing, still showing no sign of cheer.

Xia Qing couldn't figure out what would make a wolf unhappy, so she simply stopped trying. She sent the Sick Wolf out to play with Sheep Boss, while she stayed home to clear away the corn cobs left over from threshing, pod the dried mung beans, and shoo birds while she was at it.

The mung beans were already dried. After removing the pods, they weighed a total of 208 jin. For her second crop, Xia Qing had planted one mu of Yellow-Light mung beans and a terraced plot of Green-Light mung beans — a yield that would have been laughable before the Calamity.

But this was a Calamity year, and given the influence of the Calamity Elements and Calamity Rain, Xia Qing was already very content with such a yield.

Through her second planting, Xia Qing had discovered that breeding high-quality grain seeds and keeping the Calamity Element content from rising was truly a difficult thing to do.

Of the six jin of Yellow-Light mung bean seed she had brought out from the Safe Zone in spring, she had harvested just over four thousand mung bean plants in the end, of which only 27 were Green-Light.

For the second crop, Xia Qing continued planting mung beans, following Li Si's "Mung Bean Cultivation Guide" as closely as she could in terms of cultivation method and fertilizer use.

However, the planting conditions in Xia Qing's territory fell far short of Li Si's requirements, so the germination rate and yield of the mung beans hadn't improved by much.

Take the terraced plot of Green-Light mung beans from her second planting: the seed germination rate was 66%, the loss rate under Calamity Rain was 20%, and 60% of the surviving plants had Calamity Element content exceeding five parts per thousand, converting from Green-Light to Yellow-Light plants.

So although Xia Qing had planted half a jin of Green-Light mung bean seed and harvested 75 jin of mung beans, only 30 jin were Green-Light.

Blue Star had already evolved, and the atmospheric environment was no longer what it once was. The "near-zero Calamity Element" cultivation environment described in Li Si's planting guide couldn't be built widely within a territory due to cost and technical constraints.

To expand planting area and increase grain yield, Xia Qing believed it was necessary to breed Yi-evolved seeds with strong resistance to Calamity Elements as soon as possible.

She sincerely hoped that technical personnel and experts like Li Si would spend less time on scheming and put their minds to researching grain seeds, for the benefit of all humanity.

Shortly after four in the afternoon, Xia Qing received a notice from Er Yong that the construction crew was nearly finished installing the wire-mesh wall. The project had to pass the lord's inspection before it could be handed over.

Lord Xia Qing packed the processed mung beans into bags and bundled up the half-dried corn and carried it into the house, out of sight and reach of the birds in the trees, before going to meet construction foreman Deng Yuhui.

She had barely taken a few steps from the house when her phone beeped an alert. She looked back and burst out laughing.

A red squirrel had darted out from some corner or crevice and was scavenging at the very spot where Xia Qing had just been working. After gathering several hundred jin of grain there, it was inevitable that a few unruly mung beans or kernels of corn had hopped off to places Xia Qing couldn't see.

At last she understood where that little handful of corn kernels in the red squirrel's nest had come from.

Xia Qing had no objection to the red squirrel scavenging. She arrived at Gao Po and found the Sick Wolf and Sheep Boss lying together under the big camphor tree, staring through gaps in the grass wall and shrubs at the inspection team busy in the northern buffer strip.

The Sick Wolf, so gentle in front of Xia Qing, now looked like the mother of the Broken-Leg Wolf siblings — full of wildness and aggression. Even though Xia Qing had walked right up beside it, its hostility toward the construction crew hadn't diminished.

It was unhappy today — and it had something to do with the construction crew? The crew had never entered the camera's surveillance range at the house, so they shouldn't have come into contact with the Sick Wolf.

Xia Qing rubbed the Sick Wolf's head and went to meet Deng Yuhui.

Over twelve days, a twenty-person construction crew with three excavators and two cement mixers had finally finished installing the wire mesh that had taken three helicopter trips to deliver.

A nine-thousand-meter-long, 4.3-meter-high sturdy wire-mesh wall now enclosed Xia Qing's entire territory, including her farmland, reservoir, west buffer forest, and north buffer forest.

Xia Qing inspected the wire-mesh wall installed today, confirmed there were no quality issues, then gave Deng Yuhui two large cabbages as thanks. "You've all worked hard this period."

Receiving edible food during a Calamity year was the most delightful thing. Deng Yuhui happily took the cabbages and put them in the work vehicle. "I'll be doing construction in Territory Eight for a while. If Sister Qing finds any quality issues with the wall, contact me anytime."

Xia Qing nodded in agreement and watched the construction crew drive their work vehicle slowly along the northern buffer strip toward Territory Eight.

The northern buffer strip of Territory Three was on a hillside. Though fifty meters wide, it wasn't flat. To make it easier for the work vehicles to go up and down the slope, the crew had used excavators to level the entire surface of the northern buffer strip, and now it looked very much like a road.

Xia Qing was thrilled to have a wall. She walked along the level surface of the buffer strip beside the wall, heading slowly west until she reached the main gate of her territory. She took out her key, opened the big iron padlock on the wire-mesh gate, pushed the gate open, and stepped into her own territory, a smile fixed on her face the whole time.

Though her territory's wire-mesh wall wasn't as sturdy or tall as the Safe Zone's walls, it was more than enough for her. Standing inside her territory with its new wall, Xia Qing felt completely secure.

With the wall and surveillance combined, she could sleep more soundly at night, and when she went to train at Area Three of Mountain Forty-Nine, she no longer needed Beard Edge's squad to come help guard her territory.

Xia Qing locked the iron gate, returned to the terraced fields of the Gao Po planting zone, and carefully inspected the high-Yi-Element spinach growing there.

The spinach seeds in the vegetable greenhouse on the farmland had ripened several days ago, and the harvested spinach roots, stems, and leaves had already been sent to Territory Seven in exchange for a batch of premium nutrient solution. But the spinach in the Gao Po terraced field still hadn't ripened.

This terraced field had been cultivated by Xia Qing according to the "Spinach Planting Guide" given by Zhang San, with Yi Stones hung to repel Calamity Elements and unpolluted spring water for irrigation, so its quality was definitely higher than that of the spinach in the farmland greenhouse.

Did ripening later mean higher quality? Xia Qing was full of anticipation.

Leaving the Gao Po planting greenhouse, Xia Qing went up to Gao Po and found that both the Sick Wolf and Sheep Boss had come to the wire-mesh wall at the northern edge of the territory. Sheep Boss was leisurely grazing, while the Sick Wolf was slowly approaching the wire-mesh wall, baring its sharp fangs.

Seeing the Sick Wolf's attitude toward the wire-mesh wall, Xia Qing understood why it had been unhappy today and hostile toward the construction crew.

Unlike the herbivorous evolved animal Sheep Boss, the carnivorous predator raised in the Evolution Forest — Wolf Hound Lao Er — hated the wire-mesh wall that penned it in.