Chapter 56: Worm Castings

"Qing-jie!" Sun Zhe's voice instantly regained its vigor; he called out once before lowering his voice, "Qing-jie, you're back too?!"

"No, I'm still in the territory." Xia Qing didn't ask why he'd used the word "too," and went on, "Are you free right now? There's something I'd like to talk to you about."

"I'm free, of course I'm free."

Xia Qing heard Sun Zhe quickly walk away from where he'd been; the originally noisy background sounds on the call grew quieter. "Go ahead, Qing-jie, no one can hear me here. You can make calls from your territory—did you switch to a satellite phone?"

"Mm, to make contact easier, I went on a few missions with the squad and traded points for one. The reason I'm looking for you is this…" Xia Qing told Sun Zhe about the territory farming's need for organic fertilizer. "Qi Fu said your dad knows how to make worm castings, so I'm giving you a heads-up. Of course, whether you do it or not still depends on your own plans."

Sun Zhe was so excited his breathing pounded against the phone's earpiece; Xia Qing heard it clearly. "Qing-jie, someone will really buy worm castings?"

"The only three lords I can reach all have a need for organic fertilizer, and Qi Fu is one of them. I can't vouch for anyone else, but I myself need to buy at least a thousand jin." Xia Qing only mentioned the three lords nearby who actually farmed; Lords One, Two, and Seven were directly excluded by her.

Sun Zhe controlled his excitement and answered crisply, "Thanks, jie, I'll go back and tell my dad right now. The planting center in our safe zone raises earthworms to make castings, and my dad went to apply, but because he's disabled he didn't get hired. Jie, do you think we should raise earthworms for castings inside the safe zone, or outside in the territory?"

Xia Qing was surprised. "Haven't all the plots been claimed? Has our base cleared out new territory?"

Only then did Sun Zhe realize Xia Qing's information was out of date in the territory, and he hurried to explain, "No new territory's been developed; it's still the two hundred plots from the start of the year. But some lords have died, some have come back, and now over thirty plots are empty and no one dares claim them. My dad wants to claim one, but my mom doesn't agree."

Xia Qing answered seriously, "Raising a lot of earthworms gives off a strong smell, which will definitely attract carnivorous evolved animals. So raising them in the safe zone is less dangerous than in the territory, but correspondingly you can raise more in the territory, and the yield is higher than in the safe zone. You'll have to decide that yourselves. If you come out to the territory, it's best to pick one close to the safe zone—the closer, the safer."

Sun Zhe's whole family are ordinary people; the risk of leaving the safe zone to claim territory is great, but raising earthworms for castings might be the only way out their family can currently grasp. Sun Zhe thanked her sincerely, "I understand, thanks a lot, jie. If you need hands on your end just give me a shout, I'll come whenever you call. Everyone misses you too."

If you can produce worm castings, that's already a huge help to me. Xia Qing instructed Sun Zhe, "I'm managing fine for now, so don't tell anyone that I contacted you."

After hanging up, Xia Qing took a deep breath of air that tasted of grass and earth, lay down on the grass, and gazed at the deep blue sky.

The familiar, noisy background sounds on the other end of the phone instantly pulled Xia Qing back into the suffocatingly crowded safe zone. She didn't care what others thought—either way, she wasn't going to give up her territory and go back.

"Baa—"

"Thump thump thump!"

Xia Qing heard Ram Boss's anxious bleating and running, turned her head and saw it charging toward her, and quickly jumped up to prove she was fine. "Boss, don't panic, I haven't been poisoned or hurt, I'm fine, just lying down for a rest. Look, I'm up, I can even jump."

Ram Boss saw Xia Qing was fine and got angry. It backed up a few steps, showed off its spiral horns, and bellowed in a smoke-cured voice, "Moo!"

Xia Qing sighed, "Boss, you've been treading that water wheel for so long, aren't you tired?"

Ram Boss charged without a care in the world, and Xia Qing turned and ran. "Come on, let's go to the open ground, I'll spar with you till you've had enough."

One person and one ram ran to an open patch where nothing was planted. Xia Qing didn't use any clever tricks, just met force with force and wrestled Ram Boss for strength. Then, as expected, she was flipped by Ram Boss.

An hour later, Xia Qing collapsed on the ground, panting heavily, and asked, "Boss, I suspect you're a dual-system evolved ram—strength and endurance."

Endurance evolution means the ability to last is several times that of an ordinary person (or ram). For example, an ordinary person running at full speed gets tired in five minutes; a Level-Two endurance-evolved person gets tired in ten minutes; a Level-Five endurance-evolved person gets tired in thirty-five minutes. If someone with a very strong physical foundation also has endurance evolution stacked on top, they're very hard to deal with. Xue Jinchang, a core member of the Dongyang Squad, is a Level-Five endurance-evolved person—his strength is genuinely, solidly formidable.

Ram Boss's endurance is also very strong.

After teaching Xia Qing a lesson, Ram Boss got hungry, shook the dirt off itself, and went to eat grass. Xia Qing also patted the dirt off and stood up, following behind Ram Boss. "Boss, how did you used to get by all alone in the Evolution Forest?"

The longer they spent together, the more Xia Qing realized Ram Boss was afraid of being alone, so before it met her, it must have had companions too. "Are your companions still around? Bring them all back to the territory. We've got water, grass, and safety here—you can't enjoy it all by yourself and forget your buddies."

Imagining the scene of herself owning a whole flock of sheep, Xia Qing's mouth watered with greed. No—she had to hurry up and prepare the cumin for welcoming the flock.

Inside Territory Three, besides Gao Po's evolved perilla and the patch of grass by the spring where green and yellow lights mingled, there were also three patches of grass where yellow and green lights mingled. Xia Qing tasted every kind of grass and found them all terrible, so these three patches became Ram Boss's exclusive pasture.

But that was no longer the case, because Xia Qing was now raising fish; she would cut grass, scald it, chop it up, and feed it to the fish. As for whether the fish liked it or not, it was entirely outside her consideration. If they liked it, they'd eat; if they didn't, they'd starve; starve long enough and they'd eat anyway.

Five days later, Xia Qing's cucumbers bloomed their first flower, so she could no longer keep spraying camphor-tree sap to repel insects. Xia Qing set up a fine, sturdy insect-proof net over the vegetable garden in the planting strip on the hillside. The protective net could keep out evolved pests with poor biting ability, such as cabbage caterpillars, cabbage borers, cabbage moths, aphids, leaf miners, and so on.

By cutting off the pests' breeding paths on the plants and in the shallow soil this way, she no longer had to spray the crops frequently; she only needed to periodically spray the insect-proof net to drive away gnawing-type evolved insects.

Covering with an insect-proof net meant first building the skeleton of a greenhouse, then flipping the net over the frame, pulling it taut, and securing it. This kind of planting technique, Xia Qing had never even seen in the safe zone. If Qi Fu hadn't brought it up proactively, she wouldn't have thought of it at all.

As for why such a useful thing wasn't used by the planting centers in the safe zone, Xia Qing figured it was because there were fewer pests in the safe zone. The pests in her territory were more than one or two times those in the planting centers.

After covering the vegetables with the protective net, Xia Qing only needed to patrol regularly every day, killing any gnawing insects that approached the net so they wouldn't get a chance to chew through it. Fortunately, most gnawing insects were active during the day, and she wasn't the only one doing the patrol-and-cleanup work—the birds in her territory also liked to perch on the big trees and rocks beside the vegetable insect-proof net, waiting to catch bugs.

Because they were attracted by the vegetables, the density of all kinds of insects outside the insect-proof net was greater than elsewhere.

Since setting up the insect-proof net, Xia Qing had noticed more birds in her territory. Besides the original four black-and-white evolved magpies and a few crows, there were now also a flock of sparrows, several especially beautiful long-tailed red-billed blue magpies, and several kinds of small birds in various colors with lovely songs that Xia Qing couldn't name. With them around, Xia Qing truly experienced what "birdsong and flowers" meant.

Unfortunately, aside from the four black-and-white evolved magpies, none of the other birds had built nests inside Territory Three—otherwise Xia Qing would have been eating bird eggs long ago.

While Xia Qing was wandering around the hillside killing bugs, Luo Pei messaged her saying the purchase agreement and lease contract for the mountain were already drafted, and asked her to come over and see if there was anything that needed to be changed.

Xia Qing had been turning the matter of buying the mountain, leasing the mountain, and hiring people to guard it over and over in her mind these past few days, and now she had sorted out her thoughts. She also felt that keeping Mountain Forty-Nine in her own hands was more advantageous to her than leaving it in the hands of the Green Dragon Squad.