Chapter 460: The Paradise Valley Dream Shatters

Xia Qing didn't know how the other people who built this canyon had died, but she could tell the cause of death of the woman lying on the grave mound—poisoning.

Her bones were a pale black, a typical symptom of poisoning.

A family of eight had hidden inside this rock crevice, dodging wave after wave of beast tides unleashed when the large predators lost control, but they couldn't escape the attack of poisonous insects.

Perhaps she didn't die from the poisonous insects' attack. Rather, after she was the only one left in her family, she lost the will to live and took poison to end her own life.

Xia Qing's gaze shifted from the skull to the grass-covered grave mound. A few seconds later, a rabbit cautiously poked its head out of the hole to look around. Spotting Xia Qing still standing outside, it shrank back into the hole in fright.

The soil in the valley had been laid down for growing crops, about thirty centimeters thick—not nearly enough for a rabbit to dig a burrow to live in. That's why the rabbit had made its home inside the piled-up grave mound.

Xia Qing turned and walked toward the three stone houses not far away, swallowed by plants.

The gravestones in the valley were carved exquisitely, and the stones used to build the houses were cut very neatly, showing this family not only had tools for cutting and carving stone, but also mastered the craft of stone sculpture. Before the catastrophe, they likely made their living from this.

However, this family's skill at making wooden furniture was quite ordinary, and their eye for choosing wood wasn't great either.

"Squeak—creak—"

Xia Qing swung her blade to cut through the vines and weeds blocking the door, then pushed open the warped wooden door.

The Broken-Waist Wolf, which had been resting on a fallen rock, immediately pricked up its ears, stood up, and looked toward the source of the sound.

Tables, chairs, benches, pots, bowls, pans, an electric stone-carving machine, big hammers, small hammers, plum-blossom hammers, a generator, oil drums, a radio, a child's wooden rocking horse… This family's supplies were even more abundant than Xia Qing had expected.

Xia Qing's gaze lingered on the family portrait hanging on the wall. Four people in their fifties or sixties sat on chairs; the grandmother and the maternal grandmother in the middle each held a child. Behind them stood a young couple. The whole family wore peaceful, happy smiles.

The date in the lower right corner of the photo was three months before the catastrophe.

Xia Qing stared at the smiling, pretty woman in the photo for a few seconds before lifting the several-dozen-jin lid off the stone vat leaning against the wall. Inside, more than half the vat was still filled with moldy wheat and corn.

The bedroom on the left had a wooden bed and a wardrobe. The roof had leaked, so the bedding on the bed and the clothes in the wardrobe were all moldy and had become insects' nests.

On the middle shelf of the cabinet was a still-intact waterproof bag with the words of some quarry printed on it. Inside the thick plastic briefcase, sealed airtight, a phone, a notebook, kindergarten textbooks and workbooks were all well preserved.

Xia Qing put the sealed bag into her backpack, went into the other bedroom to search through it, packed all the supplies that still had some value into her backpack, walked out of the stone house and closed the door, then returned to the grave once more.

The stone house had grain, salt, and clothing, but no protective suits, medicines, or other daily necessities developed and produced after the catastrophe. This showed the family had lived here continuously after the catastrophe, cut off from the outside world.

Xia Qing used a shovel to dig a shallow pit and buried the pale-black skeleton that lay on its back on the grave. It wasn't that she didn't want to dig deeper—it's just that the soil layer here was only thirty centimeters thick; digging further down would hit rubble.

Having buried the last builder of this valley, Xia Qing shouldered her shovel, kicked away a Qi Snake, took out her Qi Element Detector to test the Qi element content of the hot spring.

Red light—not uncontaminated spring water. Xia Qing wasn't disappointed either. She turned and headed straight for the two peanut growing areas.

Although the peanut leaves had turned yellow and were starting to fall off, the peanut stems were still alive. Xia Qing picked up a palm-length millipede and tossed it over.

The millipede landed on the peanut stem and wasn't attacked by leaf-vein needles, showing this peanut plant wasn't a green-light plant.

Xia Qing used her shovel to dig up this peanut plant, squeezed out the juice to test it—yellow light.

The very first plant was yellow light, which delighted her. As Xia Qing stripped the mature peanuts off and put them into her bag, an evolved sharp-nosed pit viper raised half its body from the peanut thicket and opened its mouth to threaten her.

This snake, standing up, was nearly as tall as Xia Qing—perfect for testing the quality of this patch of peanuts.

Xia Qing quickly reached out and grabbed the pit viper by the neck, swung it around in circles through the peanut thicket, and discovered that among this patch of peanuts, there were at least thirty or forty green-light peanut plants!

Happily, Xia Qing stuffed the evolved pit viper into her pocket. She first dug up the green-light peanuts that had launched the attack, shook off the dirt, then used the high-concentration salt water made from the salt found in the stone house to soak the peanut seedlings, deactivating them, before packing them—stalks and all—into a large bag.

Then Xia Qing took the evolved pit viper to test the second peanut thicket, accurately identifying all the green-light peanuts, harvesting them, and packing them into bags.

After harvesting the green-light peanuts, Xia Qing began testing the remaining peanuts one by one, separating the red-light and yellow-light peanuts and storing them by category.

On this trip, Xia Qing harvested a total of 138 green-light peanuts, 246 yellow-light peanuts, and over 400 red-light peanuts—a very gratifying haul.

After finishing the peanuts, Xia Qing didn't rush to test the other crops. Instead, she ran to the big rock where the three wolves were, took out the uncontaminated spring water from her bag and let them drink. She herself sat on the rock to rest.

It was now one in the afternoon. In winter it gets dark early, so in two hours she had to set off back to her territory. The Lead Wolf and the Broken-Waist Wolf also needed to return to their own territory.

This valley is over twenty meters wide and over seven hundred meters long, but only the farmland area west of the spring—over three hundred meters long—and the human living area east of the spring—over fifty meters long—were covered with a soil layer. The three hundred meters further east was uncleared rubble. In other words, the planting area was less than one mu.

Xia Qing could use these two hours to test the quality of the plants in the valley and pick out varieties that could continue to be grown.

After testing for over an hour, Xia Qing found only three yellow-light vegetables—scallions, garlic sprouts, and ginger—and one green-light vegetable, Chinese chives. This result didn't disappoint her.

There's a hot spring here but no uncontaminated water source, so it can only maintain a temperature suitable for plant growth. There's no Yi-element soil to keep plants stable, so most crops have turned red-light. That's perfectly normal.

This—this is Blue Star in the year of the catastrophe, where the living environment has changed beyond recognition.

For humanity to build a paradise on earth, the primary conditions are uncontaminated water sources, technology or Yi Stones that can drive away Qi elements, protective suits and medicines that can resist super-evolved fungi or poisonous insects—only then come sturdy barriers that can defend against beasts and temperatures suitable for human survival.

Without the former, humans who aren't high-level evolved in resistance cannot continue to survive on the evolved Blue Star.

Clearly, this family were not high-level resistance evolvers.

It was nearing three in the afternoon—time to head back to the territory. Xia Qing sent a message to Hu Zifeng, confirmed the location of the ten-person squad at Territory Nine, then, carrying a backpack as tall as a person, left the hidden valley together with the wolf pack, exited Xiong Dong, and headed down the mountain.

After advancing over three hundred meters, the Lead Wolf, which had been scouting ahead, stopped, lowered its body, and bared its fangs. The Broken-Waist Wolf and the Sick Wolf immediately moved up to stand on either side of the Lead Wolf, forming the wolf pack's attack formation.