Chapter 404: Peanuts

Tomorrow morning, Xia Qing had to leave her territory, because she needed to deliver medicine to the broken-legged wolf's sister living in Wolf Den.

However, this trip wasn't dangerous, because Wolf Den was in Area Three of Territory Forty-Nine—just a fifty-meter buffer zone past her territory's north gate.

No matter how arrogant or trouble-seeking the people of Territory Two were, they wouldn't dare make a move on Territory Forty-Nine in broad daylight.

If they dared set half a foot into Territory Forty-Nine, Yang Jin would chop off that half-foot, then have the Sufeng Squad add a fine for trespassing on the training grounds, plus ten times compensation for the Green Dragon Squad's blade edge that broke from chopping the foot.

The Iron Rooster really knows how to pluck feathers.

The next morning, Xia Qing was actually woken by the sound of a red squirrel coming over to drink water.

The chickens had been sent to the greenhouse, and since none crowed this morning, they couldn't disturb her sleep—an unexpected bonus.

Xia Qing quietly pulled back a corner of the curtain, and the moment she saw the red squirrel wearing a tracker on the windowsill, her eyes flew wide open.

She'd been so busy digging soil and building the greenhouse lately that she'd completely forgotten something important—checking the red squirrel's storage on schedule!

Xia Qing immediately threw off the warm new cotton quilt and started getting dressed.

Startled, the red squirrel darted up to the rooftop to hide, then cautiously peeked down. Seeing that the human inside hadn't opened the window, it sneakily crawled back onto the windowsill and continued drinking.

By now, the sky was already faintly light.

Xia Qing first checked the greenhouse, then hurried to the Gao Po buffer forest.

Standing still in the buffer forest for two minutes and confirming no one within three hundred meters, Xia Qing scanned her face to exit the north gate, sprinted into Area Three of Territory Forty-Nine, and arrived at the red squirrel's food storage area.

Through the camera, Xia Qing saw the red squirrel under her own eaves, using its little claws to dig at the cement cracks, searching for any corn or sunflower seeds that might have fallen in.

Perfect.

While Xia Qing was away, the red squirrel had snuck into her home to steal. While it was away, Xia Qing snuck into its six food storage rooms to steal.

Xia Qing quickly climbed the big pine tree and turned on her flashlight to check the red squirrel's first storage room.

Chestnuts, corn, hazelnuts, pine nuts, seeds from some unknown plant… no peanuts.

Xia Qing climbed down, hurried two hundred meters to Shi Dong, checked the red squirrel's second storage room, then the third and fourth.

In the squirrel's fifth food storage room, Xia Qing actually found a small handful of peanuts mixed in with grass seeds!

She immediately took a long-handled clamp from her backpack, extracted two peanuts. After spraying odor-neutralizer near the cave to mask her own scent, Xia Qing headed to Area Three of Territory Forty-Nine to deliver anti-inflammatory medicine and spring water to the broken-legged wolf's sister.

The alpha wolf still hadn't appeared, and the broken-waist wolf was nowhere to be seen either—but they couldn't have been gone long, because the broken-legged wolf's sister was lying in the valley gnawing on a wild boar.

Both its hind legs were injured, so it couldn't hunt for itself; the wild boar must have been caught by the broken-legged wolf or the alpha wolf, who ate their fill and left the rest for it.

A half-grown wild boar weighing over sixty jin—one wolf definitely couldn't finish it. Xia Qing sat on the hillside, took out her Qi-element detector, and began testing the peanuts' quality while waiting for the broken-legged wolf's sister to finish eating, so she could take the leftover boar meat back and cook it for the sick wolf.

The test results made Xia Qing breathe a sigh of relief: both were red-light.

She'd grabbed those two peanuts at random, so at this rate, the ones the red squirrel had gathered should all be red-light peanuts.

It hadn't collected any green- or yellow-light peanuts, probably because although the leaves on the green-light peanut vines had withered and fallen, the vines' and roots' attack ability remained. The red squirrel simply couldn't break through the green-light peanut's defenses to harvest the fruit.

For the next few days, Xia Qing had to keep a close eye on the red squirrel—the moment it left Area Three, she'd have to follow and see where it dug up the red-light peanuts.

Refugees from Territory Two?

Xia Qing didn't want to leave her territory to meet them—not out of fear, but because it was a hassle. Now that precious green-light food in the Evolution Forest was beckoning her, nothing was going to stop her!

Through the camera, she saw the red squirrel had actually dug two sunflower seeds out of the cement cracks at her house, and was now hugging them while leaping about excitedly.

Xia Qing casually tossed the red-light peanuts to the pig rooting around for grass roots in the valley pond, then nimbly hopped to the entrance of Wolf Den.

"Awoo—wuu—"

The just-fed broken-waist wolf's sister immediately struck a threatening pose and let out a low snarl at Xia Qing.

"Fresh water." Xia Qing took the water bottle and medicine from her backpack, set them down for the broken-waist wolf's sister, then—before the circling raptor could dive down to snatch the food—sealed the hollowed-out wild boar into a packaging bag, stuffed it into her backpack, and brought it back to her territory.

Back home, after testing confirmed it was a red-light wild boar, Xia Qing skinned it, deboned the meat, sealed it in packaging bags, and froze it, saving it as rations for the sick wolf.

This boar's meat, plus a certain amount of vegetables, would be enough to feed the sick wolf for ten days.

After breakfast, while cutting sweet potato vines in the terraced fields, Xia Qing heard the roar of a helicopter from the south and immediately let out a sharp whistle.

Sheep Boss, who was pawing through the sweet potato vines, and the sick Wolf Lao Er, who was catching insects, heard the whistle and immediately found places to hide nearby. This was a skill Xia Qing had drilled into them over hundreds of training sessions.

Only after the helicopter slowly landed in Territory Two did Xia Qing whistle again, signaling her two companions to resume activity while she continued cutting the sweet potato vines.

Using her sickle to cut the sweet potato vines, she bundled them into a pile and set them aside, then told Sheep Boss, who had walked over, "This is all your feed—leave it here or take it home, your call."

Sheep Boss didn't call anything; it just stood motionless in front of Xia Qing with half-closed eyes, striking a ready-to-fight pose.

"Okay, got it."

Xia Qing pulled a compressed ration from her protective suit pocket, tucked it into Sheep Boss's carrying pouch, and said softly in praise, "When I whistled, Sheep Boss hid right away—I couldn't even find where Boss was hiding. Amazing! How are you getting smarter and smarter, Boss? Even the Green Dragon Squad's boss is going to be outclassed by you…"

After Sheep Boss stood with half-closed eyes and slightly raised head, listening to its heart's content, it turned and used its hooves to paw through the sweet potato vines.

Xia Qing picked up a hoe and began digging up sweet potatoes.

With her experience digging up potatoes and peanuts, Xia Qing's accuracy at excavating root vegetables from the soil had improved—no longer needing to shovel dirt one scoop at a time. One swing of the hoe, a lift upward, and an entire sweet potato plant was unearthed.

Then she bent down and gently shook the dirt off the sweet potatoes by hand—the harvest was complete.

The first sweet potato plant was yellow-light, bearing seven sweet potatoes of various sizes. The yield wasn't bad, but the appearance was a little ugly—three of them had cracks.

Xia Qing picked one up and examined it carefully, finding that the cracks weren't caused by insect bites or other external damage, but had formed naturally during growth.

As for why sweet potatoes crack, Xia Qing had no idea—she'd have to consult an expert.