Chapter 500: The Abnormal Pool

If there was a silver lining, it was that on the day Xia Qing fought the Fierce Fire beast-hunting squad, the wind was blowing from the northeast, so the toxic gas spread toward the southwest. Xiong Dong wasn't within the gas's coverage area, wasn't marked as a danger zone, and wasn't inside the firefighting isolation belt either.

Yang Jin adapted to local conditions and fitted a door onto Xiong Dong, converting it into the on-site disaster-relief command room.

Xia Qing was very satisfied with those two solid iron doors. As she knocked, her mind was on making sure to tell Yang Jin in advance that the cost of building the command room should be included in Fierce Fire's compensation, so the iron rooster wouldn't make her pay with points.

If Xia Qing refused to pay, that guy might very well take the iron doors off Xiong Dong and carry them away.

The iron door opened, and the one who came out was actually Hu Zifeng. Xia Qing greeted him and asked, "Captain Yang isn't here?"

"Our boss went up the mountain to patrol. I'm about to head out to protect the mission team—you stay here and rest." After saying that, Hu Zifeng told Xia Qing, "Lock the door from the inside."

He was afraid someone would break in, discover Xia Qing wasn't in the cave, and expose the valley's location.

After watching Hu Zifeng leave, Xia Qing locked the iron door from inside and took in the greatly transformed cave.

A layer of waterproof light-reflective film had been stuck to the stone walls inside the cave, and sandwich-colored steel panels had been used to divide the cave into an inner and outer room. The outer room was the office, the inner room was the rest area—quite proper-looking.

Xia Qing passed through the rest room, which held a camp bed and a storage cabinet, went through the back door into the interior of Shi Dong, and with some effort pushed aside the stone blocking the entrance, entering the hidden valley.

Outside it was well below minus twenty degrees, but inside the valley it was warm as spring. The qiang grass that had sprouted during the qiang snow period had actually grown taller than a person.

This qiang grass was the familiar color Xia Qing knew—not as freakish as the qiang grass in the danger zone. She hung her backpack on the wooden pole where she'd hung the peanuts last time, and began clearing the qiang grass.

If this valley full of qiang grass wasn't dealt with, in three to five days it would be sending up spikes and setting seed.

Although Xia Qing's combat strength hadn't fully recovered, pulling up grass over a quarter-acre was still a breeze for her. If snakes and insects hadn't kept jumping out to interfere, she could have pulled even faster.

The qiang grass on the grave mound was cleared by her along the way, but unfortunately she didn't manage to catch a rabbit.

After piling the qiang grass on the gravel area without soil to the east of the stone house, Xia Qing washed the dirt and grass leaves off her protective gloves, went into the stone house, wiped clean the picture frame hanging on the wall, hung it back in its original spot, went out, and continued working.

After using an air detector to check the concentration of qiang elements in the air, Xia Qing found that the qiang-element concentration here matched that outside the valley.

So, what exactly was causing the qiang grass in the valley's farmland to grow more sparsely than normal?

Was it because the evolved grizzly bears that once lived here regularly cleared qiang grass, reducing the density of qiang-grass seeds in the valley's soil?

Or was it that the soil here, like the soil in the Third Territory's planting zone, had a higher yi-element content, effectively reducing the content and activity of qiang elements in the soil?

She didn't dare run off to ask the evolved bears, so she took a test tube from her backpack, collected soil, and brought it back for testing.

Then, Xia Qing began sampling the spring water.

At the spring's outlet, in the pool, and in the irrigation channel leading to the farmland—she sampled each one in turn and placed the samples into an insulated small medicine box.

Thanks to her idol, over the past half year or more Xia Qing had accumulated quite a few glass test tubes and an insulated small medicine box. The spring-water samples placed in the medicine box could be carried out of the valley without freezing.

After finishing the sampling, Xia Qing returned to the pool's edge and checked the readings on the air detector, confirming she hadn't misread them: the atmospheric qiang-element concentration near the hot spring pool was indeed lower than elsewhere.

Xia Qing lifted her foot and crushed a large locust that came buzzing past, stood quietly by the pool for half a minute, and then a wildly crazy—but most reasonable—hypothesis formed in her mind.

She took down the backpack hanging on the wall, took out a piece of insect netting and a length of wire, and added a wooden pole over three meters long from inside the valley, making a fishing net.

When she lowered the fishing net into the square pool with four-meter sides, she discovered the pool wasn't the two meters deep it appeared, but about two and a half meters, with a thick layer of silt at the bottom.

The silt was stirred up by the net, and the clear pool water quickly turned murky. Sharp-eyed Xia Qing saw aquatic creatures darting away.

There were actually loaches and yellow eels in the water—and not small ones at that!

Whether these loaches and yellow eels were wild, raised by Shi Jiayi's family, or raised by the evolved bears, Xia Qing didn't know. She kept using the fishing net to sift through the silt, making sure not to miss a single corner.

By the time she fished out the first fragment of yi stone, Xia Qing smiled.

Just as she'd guessed: there was yi stone in this pool, which was why the qiang-element content in the air near the pool was lower than elsewhere.

However, the effect of these yi stones had already weakened, so they couldn't completely drive away the qiang elements.

There must be more than one yi-stone fragment in this pool. Xia Qing scooped and scooped with the net, and when she fished up the first half of a yi stone, she was delighted.

When she fished up the other half of the yi stone, Xia Qing was speechless: in such a small pool, someone had actually placed an entire walnut-sized yi stone—what a waste!

Deserved a beating!

After fishing up the third, fourth, fifth, all the way to the thirtieth half of a yi stone, Xia Qing went numb.

She tested each yi stone's condition one by one and found that only two halves were still slowly releasing yi elements. She felt she'd gotten hold of an extraordinary truth:

The black-and-white veining on the yi stones in the pool was identical to that on the stones the wolf pack had traded to Xia Qing.

The evolved bears' family had a mine too—they didn't just know the value of yi stones.

Could the conflict between the evolved bears and the evolved wolves be related to fighting over yi-stone mines?

Xia Qing tossed the two halves of yi stone that still had some effect back into the pool, packed the spent yi stones into a bag to bring back, where she'd smash them to bits to use for raising qiang withered grass.

It wasn't that she didn't want those two halves with their faint remaining effect; she was worried the evolved bears might return before the yi stones completely lost their power.

Although humans had designated this area as an experimental zone, for the animals inside the evolved forest, this place was still part of the evolved forest, where they could come and go freely.

Especially the evolved bears, who considered themselves more formidable than humans—if they still wanted this territory, they could come back at any time.

Xia Qing both hoped they would abandon this mountain because of the gas bombs, and hoped they would come back and keep tossing yi stones into the pool.

When that time came, the spendthrift bears would toss in a cracked yi stone, and Xia Qing would fish out most of it. Using an entire yi stone in such a small pool was truly too wasteful.

After packing away the yi stones, Xia Qing used the net to scoop up a few yellow eels and loaches, tested them, and confirmed they were indeed edible.

She'd bring them back to add a dish for herself and the sick wolf—anyway, no matter how clever the evolved bears were, they couldn't count exactly how many loaches and yellow eels were in their pool!

Xia Qing shouldered her backpack, left the valley in high spirits and entered Xiong Dong, then with some effort pushed the big stone back to block the cave entrance. Just as she opened Xiong Dong's iron door to leave the command room and check on the mission team, she saw Yang Jin walking down from the mountain.