Chapter 459: Graves and Bones

This hidden valley was the "back garden" of two evolved bears living on Mountain Fifty.

Entering the valley from Xiong Dong, the left side was the bears' toilet, piled high with a great heap of bear droppings; the right side had a beast path half a meter wide, with dense weeds and trees growing along both sides. The trees were not tall — they looked as if they had only grown for two or three years.

Although she couldn't see any green-light peanuts standing here, Xia Qing knew they must be growing in this valley.

She stepped on a bear paw print one size larger than her winter boots, and immediately sensed something was off.

This was a rift valley formed by the mountain splitting open. Even if mud had been carried in by rainwater, there should still be more rubble than soil in the valley — not, as it was now, more soil than rubble.

This place…

"Scrape—"

Hearing the sound of sharp wolf claws scraping against the rock, Xia Qing immediately looked up and saw the head wolf standing on a fallen rock more than a hundred meters away from her, a finger-thick fire-red snake pinned under its paw. Relying on her excellent eyesight, Xia Qing spotted the bulge on the red snake's head at a glance.

A Blight Snake!

"My lord, watch out for the venom!" Xia Qing rushed over at once, stuffed the Blight Snake into her bag, and quickly checked the head wolf's body. "My lord, you weren't bitten, were you?"

The head wolf shook its body, flung off Xia Qing who was pawing all over it, and leapt onto a higher fallen rock.

Seeing it like that, Xia Qing knew it hadn't been bitten, and finally breathed a sigh of relief. She immediately began searching for Sick Wolf and Broken-Waist Wolf.

Swish swish—

Hearing the noise, Xia Qing turned her head and saw Broken-Waist Wolf trotting over with a fire-red Blight Snake in its mouth, which it placed on the rock in front of Xia Qing.

Although the snake's tail was still moving, it was already dead. Xia Qing put the snake into her bag as well.

The evolved bears and the giant python in the lake beside Mountain Sixty-One were allies, and the Blight Snakes were the python's symbiotic beasts. This was the evolved bears' "back garden," so it was normal to find Blight Snakes here. Xia Qing pocketed the Blight Snake and called out, "My lord, Broken-Waist, Wolf Lao Er, you all rest. Leave the exploration of this valley to me."

The three wolves' protective suits only covered their feet and torsos; their heads, legs, and necks were all exposed. If any of them got bitten by a Blight Snake, the leaves on those two small plants in the Number Three Territory cave would suffer more losses.

Sick Wolf came out of the dense grass carrying a rabbit in its mouth, leapt onto the fallen rock, and placed it in front of the head wolf. The head wolf didn't stand on ceremony — it pinned the rabbit down and began eating. Broken-Waist Wolf also went for a stroll, quickly caught a rabbit, and came back to lie beside the head wolf and eat. Sick Wolf crouched beside the two wolves, on guard duty.

Wearing a Level-Three field protective suit, Xia Qing advanced with her black long saber, exploring the valley.

After walking a dozen or so meters, Xia Qing spotted some chives mixed in with the weeds. Without needing to test them, just from the tender green color of the leaves, Xia Qing knew these were green-light plants.

Further ahead were several purple-black-leaved vine plants. Xia Qing felt that these palm-sized, triangular ovate leaves with cracks looked very familiar, but for the moment couldn't recall what plant they were.

Further ahead, some sprouts poked out from beneath the weeds. Xia Qing recognized the plant at a glance: soybeans.

Further ahead still, Xia Qing discovered even more familiar crop seedlings. She would never mistake the leaf characteristics of these seedlings, because she had over two mu planted in her own territory, also currently in the seedling stage.

Only, the seedlings in this valley were a different color from those in her fields — these should be red-light wheat.

Xia Qing quietly looked at this patch of wheat covering a dozen or so square meters, and a very reasonable hypothesis gradually took shape in her mind.

A streak of red light shot straight at Xia Qing's ankle. Xia Qing blocked it with the back of her saber; the Blight Snake bounced off the blade onto a nearby small pine tree, and turned to flee. Xia Qing simply pinched its head with her hand and stuffed it into her pocket.

The Blight Snake's small fangs couldn't even bite through her Level-Three field protective suit, let alone the hardened evolved python-skin gloves on her hands. So these highly venomous Blight Snakes posed no threat whatsoever to the fully equipped Xia Qing.

After walking another fifty-plus meters, Xia Qing finally found the target plant she had been searching for: peanuts.

Because the temperature inside the valley differed from the outside, the peanuts here were in the late maturing stage — no wonder the red squirrels had only started gathering peanuts a dozen or so days ago.

Because the peanut leaves had already fallen, it was impossible to judge the quality of this patch of peanuts from the withered yellow peanut vines alone.

Further ahead, Xia Qing found green onions, cucumbers, eggplants, sweet potatoes, corn…

Xia Qing didn't start digging anything up; she continued exploring the valley. Another fifty meters on, she uncovered a cement-built hot spring pool, which directly confirmed her hypothesis.

No matter how clever the evolved bears were, they wouldn't use cement to build such a standard square pool. Therefore, this valley hidden within the mountain rift had once been a human base.

The crustal movement in the first year of the catastrophe caused the mountain body of Mountain Fifty to crack, and a hot spring gushed out from within. Someone had discovered this valley, once used it as a base, and undertaken major construction.

They had used explosives to widen the mountain rift into the present valley, and the walls on both sides of the valley still bore the marks of blasting and chiseling.

They had used the blasted rubble as a base layer, then transported fertile soil from outside to spread over the rubble, building farmland where the sunlight could reach.

They had also used stone and cement to build the hot spring pool, and bamboo pipes and water channels to channel the hot spring water to irrigate the farmland.

The passage leading to Xiong Dong should also have been carved out by them; even the large boulder blocking the cave entrance had likely been placed by them.

How did this human base become the evolved bears' back garden?

What about the people who built this base?

Had they voluntarily abandoned this small base and gone to the safe zone of the large base, or were they already dead?

Time passed slowly, and the column of sunlight shining into the valley shifted position. The plants growing here didn't receive direct sunlight for long, and there were no traces of supplemental lighting fixtures installed on the canyon stone walls either.

How had the people who once lived here supplemented the light for their plants?

Xia Qing kicked away a long evolved centipede that had crawled onto her protective boots, and used her long saber to scrape at the soil beneath the weeds. She quickly found broken pieces of white plastic film.

No longer a novice at farming, Xia Qing immediately recognized this as the reflective film that the people who once lived here had laid on the ground or stuck to the stone walls to supplement light for their crops.

Using her saber to cut apart a few fat evolved grubs that had been turned up, Xia Qing continued forward and reached the end of the farmland. Before her was the rubble-strewn valley; behind her was the farmland laid with soil.

Beside her were five graves with standing headstones, and one set of human bones.

The headstones were made of stone. From the text carved on them, Xia Qing knew that buried here were the bones' parents, parents-in-law, husband, daughter, and son.

Five of the headstones had already tilted or toppled, and the grave mounds were overgrown with grass. The woman who had died last lay on her back atop her husband's grave. Her bones had already been swallowed by the wild grass, only her pale-black skull gazing up at the shaft of light above the valley.