Chapter 43: The Boss Sheep Who Moved Xia Qing

Early the next morning, the inspection team delivered twenty green-light alfalfa plants.

Xia Qing stared at the palm-tall seedlings in the grass bundle—roots, soil, and all, a fresh green color—and fell silent. The color of these seedlings was indeed far more normal than the evolved perilla, but were these really alfalfa and not clover?

Or was the scientific name for clover actually alfalfa?

Xia Qing took out her phone and flipped through the Complete Guide to Planting, once again finding the picture of evolved alfalfa to compare. The leaflets of the mature alfalfa, over a meter tall in the Complete Guide to Planting, were indeed ninety percent similar to the leaflets of the seedlings in the grass bundle.

She stopped fretting over whether alfalfa was clover, and following the key points mentioned in the Complete Guide to Planting, planted the seedlings in the terraced fields above the evolved perilla, and fenced them in with branches of evolved sour jujube.

If these alfalfa seedlings could survive, once they went to seed she could sow them again, and next year, after she filled this terraced field, she could remove the evolved sour jujube branches and let Boss Sheep eat alfalfa to its heart's content, just like perilla.

Thinking about next year, Xia Qing's heart surged with emotion.

After the catastrophe, the vast majority of people at the bottom lived one day at a time, with no plans at all, and no possibility of having any. Xia Qing was something of an oddity among the bottom rung. But when she had been planning to rebuild her home back in the safe zone, what she felt for the future was only a vague, elusive longing—she had no idea when it might come true.

Now, standing on her own territory and thinking about the future, she was filled with a solid sense of security.

Reaching out to ruffle Boss Sheep's curly fleece as it munched on perilla, Xia Qing, her heart swelling, stretched her arm across the entire territory and declared, "My beloved consort, look! All of this is the empire I have conquered for you!"

Boss Sheep ignored Xia Qing, who was having one of her fits, and kept eating.

By late March, the vegetable seedlings in the nursery were ready for transplanting, which meant it was time for the lords to exchange seedlings with one another.

To keep things fair, each lord had to first test the seedlings' qiang-element content and confirm the seedling grade before any exchange.

The other lords announced on the channel that most of their seedlings were yellow-light, a few red-light, and green-light was rare. In Xia Qing's fields, ninety percent of the seedlings were yellow-light and ten percent green-light, with no red-light. However, Xia Qing concealed the existence of the green-light seedlings and claimed she had some red-light ones as well.

When trading seedlings with the other lords, Xia Qing dug up only yellow-light seedlings. The first ones she dug were the tomato, cucumber, eggplant, and pumpkin seedlings to trade to Territory One—ten of each kind.

Of course, these seedlings weren't exchanged for a tiller in name only; together with fifty spinach seeds, they brought Xia Qing forty bags of putty powder and three buckets of wall paint in return.

Beyond decoration, the most basic functions of post-catastrophe wall paint and putty powder included one additional feature: pest prevention. These two building materials were both in high demand, and ordinary people couldn't get them at all. When Xia Qing had been on the construction crew, these two items had been issued by the jin, so she hadn't been able to stockpile any.

Her original plan had been to trade with Qi Fu for putty powder, but Qi Fu said he didn't have any on hand either.

A few days earlier, Xia Qing had heard Hu Zifeng say on the lord channel that they were going to build a house in Territory One, so she tried proposing a trade with him—and it actually worked, which made Xia Qing marvel once again at the formidable strength of the Azure Dragon Squad.

Once she finished planting the seedlings and digging the bamboo shoots, Xia Qing would have to hurry to whitewash her little building before the next heavy rain came, to make her home feel more like a home.

After delivering the seedlings to Territory One, Xia Qing used ten tomato seedlings to trade with Territory Five for five cowpea seedlings, and with Territory Seven for five pepper seedlings. It wasn't that she didn't want to trade for more—it was because she had only fifteen tomato seedlings left.

Because pumpkin, cucumber, and eggplant had been distributed to every territory, Xia Qing had more of them left: twenty pumpkin seedlings, twenty-five cucumber seedlings, and thirty eggplant seedlings.

Apart from the extra pumpkin seedlings, all of these seedlings and the ones she had traded for were planted by Xia Qing in the still-empty planting strip on the hillside.

To grow the seedlings well, Xia Qing did everything she could with the planting techniques she knew. To boost the soil nutrients in the vegetable plot, she composted the sheep droppings and bird droppings she had collected from the territory and spread them on the plot; after transplanting, she also watered everything once with the mountain spring water she had saved up.

Now, it all came down to their vitality.

In the days after planting, Xia Qing wished she could live in the vegetable plot.

The lords of Territories Four, Five, and Six were even more attentive than she was, keeping their pagers on around the clock and sharing vegetable-growing tips at any moment.

Zhang San of Territory Seven, aside from eating, had no interest in anything else and wasn't online during the day; Hu Zifeng of Territory One was always online, but only to keep tabs on Xia Qing's movements and needs at all times; Tang Huai of Territory Two was online to keep tabs on Hu Zifeng's movements, and also kept his device on constantly. Of course, those two rarely spoke.

At noon, the sun made the transplanted seedlings droop their leaves, and even half of them bent at the waist. Xia Qing watched, heart aching, and following the method Qi Fu had taught her, carefully propped up the seedlings that had bent over with their heads touching the ground using small forked sticks. If she hadn't known the seedlings needed sun, Xia Qing would have wanted to put up a shade shelter for them right away.

By evening, when the sunlight was no longer harsh, most of the drooping leaves on the little seedlings had perked up again, and Xia Qing was so happy she couldn't close her mouth.

The next morning, the bent-over, droopy-headed seedlings had also perked up, and Xia Qing was so delighted she spun in circles.

At noon, the seedlings were once again wilted and droopy-headed under the sun, and Xia Qing sat by the field with a long face, sighing.

On the third morning, the cycle repeated. Xia Qing swung between excitement and anxiety, so much so that Boss Sheep thought she was sick, and trotted over with a mouthful of grass, dropped it beside the planting strip, and pawed at the sour jujube branches to get Xia Qing to come out and eat grass.

Xia Qing, with nowhere else to vent her frustration, didn't understand what Boss Sheep meant and thought it wanted to munch on the vegetable seedlings, so she rushed out and had a fierce fight with it.

Although for the first time ever she had defeated Boss Sheep by a landslide, it still didn't cheer Xia Qing up, and she went on guarding the seedlings and sighing.

The defeated Boss Sheep brought the grass back home again and spat it into Xia Qing's bowl, and only then did Xia Qing realize it wanted her to eat the grass.

This grass is edible?

Xia Qing tested it and discovered that the grass Boss Sheep had brought back was also a green-light plant, so she boiled it and tried to eat it—but she spat it out after one bite because it was truly awful.

Boss Sheep was unhappy and brought some more back, spitting it into Xia Qing's rice bowl.

Seeing how insistent Boss Sheep was, Xia Qing asked Tan Junjie to look into it and learned that this utterly unremarkable vine grass was actually an evolved Bai Mao chicken-dropping vine, which could treat indigestion and abdominal pain as well as itchy skin!

Only then did Xia Qing understand that Boss Sheep had thought she was sick and had even gone out of its way to gather medicine for her. Deeply moved, Xia Qing plucked a few alfalfa leaves—ones she herself hadn't even been willing to taste—and made Boss Sheep a special feed top-up.

Thanks to Boss Sheep, the specialty products of Xia Qing's territory gained another valuable green-light herb—evolved Bai Mao chicken-dropping vine.

Although the name was ugly, it was worth a lot: the whole plant (roots, stems, and leaves included) could be sold dried for forty points per jin.

When she had the time, Xia Qing would definitely cut some, dry it, and trade it for points to buy compressed rations for Boss Sheep.

Six days after transplanting, ten seedlings in the terraced field had died, the most of any being cucumbers. Xia Qing figured cucumber seedlings were the most delicate—their thin outer skin seemed to be all water inside, wilting the moment the sun hit them and toppling at the slightest breeze.

She absolutely refused to admit that two of them had been accidentally snapped off by her while she was propping up the seedlings.

Territories One and Two had lost nearly half their seedlings; Territory Seven wasn't online, but the situation was probably similar. Territories Four and Six were about the same as Xia Qing, while Territory Five had fared best, losing only two seedlings. This was because Qi Fu's family had been farmers before the catastrophe, so they had the most experience.