Chapter 569: Xia Qing, Let's Form an Alliance

Xin Yu first nodded her thanks to Xia Qing, who had poured her tea, before answering, "Molly likes sparkly things. She snatched my pocket watch when I wasn't looking and carried it up a tree to play with, then lost it. I checked the surveillance for a long time before I discovered a red squirrel had picked it up, so I followed the buffer strip to look for it. I didn't expect your territory's area to be inconsistent with the map, so I took a wrong turn. Is that red squirrel also free-range on your land?"

That red squirrel was extremely fast. Xin Yu had only managed to catch it by using tobacco shreds baited with several jin of Green Lantern dried fruit. If it were free-range, there would be no way to tame it at all.

"Yes. Its stored winter food was snatched away by evolved rats, so right now it's living in a tree hollow on my territory." Xia Qing tossed a few Green Lantern pine nuts and Green Lantern chestnuts into the fireplace, roasting them slowly, and discussed with Xin Yu, "Why don't you stay for dinner tonight before heading back?"

"Sure."

Xin Yu had originally planned to stay for dinner when she came over at this time. She took a pack of frozen shrimp out of her backpack. "These are Green Lantern shrimp from Lancheng. They're delicious either steamed or with garlic."

"Hard to imagine that after the catastrophe, inland Lancheng has actually become our country's largest aquaculture base for seafood." Xia Qing happily took the palm-length large shrimp and brought them to the kitchen to thaw with filtered warm spring water.

"A few years before the catastrophe began, Lancheng had already been using its abundant saline-alkaline water resources to do land-based marine farming, and on a very large scale."

Long before the Neon Country publicly released nuclear-contaminated water into the sea, several coastal countries, including the Neon Country itself, had already secretly dumped large amounts of nuclear-contaminated water into the ocean, so the sea had long been polluted. In Xin Yu's memory, her family had only eaten seafood from Lancheng for several years before the catastrophe.

Xia Qing raked out the roasted pine nuts and placed them on a wooden tray. Xin Yu cracked pine nuts and sipped tea as she got down to business. "The three people I took away were all from Heavy Alliance. More specifically, they were Yu Wenchuang's people. Yu Wenchuang is my uncle — the son of Yu Dongming, Heavy Alliance Group's current chairman. Do you know how I was able to find the hiding place of the evolved bat manipulator so quickly?"

Xia Qing looked up. "You've tamed evolved bats?"

Although bats aren't birds, they do have wings. Xia Qing felt that Xin Yu, who liked keeping birds, had very likely tried taming them.

The pine nuts Xia Qing had gathered were hardness-evolved, their shells much harder than ordinary pine nuts. Xin Yu used pliers to crack open the tough shells, picked out the creamy-yellow pine kernels, and placed them on a small wooden dish that was clearly handmade by Xia Qing herself.

"Mm. I presided over Heavy Alliance's first batch of taming experiments with evolved bats. Bats use echolocation to navigate and forage — this ability requires complex cognitive analysis to achieve, so I felt bats should be successfully tameable. But no matter how we trained them, the bats couldn't execute commands issued by humans in spoken language; they could only be directed with a weak-current controller, so I terminated the project."

Using weak-current controllers to direct or manipulate small evolved animals to carry out covert missions was very common during the catastrophe years, and a very cruel method as well. Xin Yu letting go didn't mean Heavy Alliance let go. "However, some people in the experimental group believed this experimental project had very practical value. With my uncle's tacit approval, the project has been ongoing. Now, evolved bats have become one of the secret biological weapons of Heavy Alliance's security team."

Xia Qing raked out the roasted chestnuts as well, placed them on a stainless steel plate, and set it on the table. "I heard Heavy Alliance Group was founded by your maternal grandfather, and your dad was the second chairman?"

Xin Yu corrected her. "More precisely, Heavy Alliance Group was funded by my maternal grandfather, with my parents in charge of operations. They acquired several bankrupt machinery factories, carried out quality asset restructuring, and developed from there. My maternal grandfather was the chairman, my dad was the CEO, and my mom was the CFO. After my maternal grandfather retired, my dad took over as group chairman and CEO, and my uncle was the manager of a subsidiary. During a massive insect tide in the third year of the catastrophe, my dad was bitten to death by venomous insects while protecting us, and my mom was bitten too. Because she was an Evolver with stronger resistance, she held on until the fourth year of the catastrophe."

"Before my mom died, with my maternal grandfather, my uncle, Red One, and the relevant leaders of Huicheng as joint witnesses, she made out her will, giving both her and my dad's shares to me, and clearly stated the disposition of the shares after my death: if I die accidentally, regardless of whether I have direct descendants, my 35% stake in Heavy Alliance will be handed over to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. That is the main reason I've been able to survive until the eleventh year of the catastrophe."

Calculating by time, Xin Yu should have been sixteen or seventeen that year. This will was a mother's love and lingering attachment for her child, hard to let go of as she faced death.

Xia Qing asked softly, "You moved to Territory No. 8 last year because living in Hui-2 wasn't safe?"

"After my mom passed away, I had dozens of accidents, big and small — every one of them intended to cripple me or make me lose my mind." After calmly and briefly recounting her experiences, Xin Yu explained the reason she had come to Hui-3. "This is where my dad was born and grew up. It's safer and freer for me than staying in Hui-2."

Xia Qing refilled Xin Yu's tea and asked, "Did you come here alone at that time?"

This was a territory, not a safe zone, and it wasn't safe. If anything happened to Xin Yu, over a third of Heavy Alliance's shares would be transferred to the state. Heavy Alliance was the largest engineering equipment R&D and manufacturing enterprise in Hui-2, and indeed in the entire Huicheng Base.

Xin Yu nodded. "Alone. My maternal grandfather was worried, so he sent people to build a very high safety-grade house within the territory, and also gave the Hui-3 administrator advance notice. This time, it was Blaze who approached Yu Wenchuang, and the evolved bats that bombed the territory were also Heavy Alliance's."

"If they go through proper channels, my uncle and aunt could perfectly well spin Yu Wen's actions as my cousin not bearing to see me suffering here, wanting to bomb the factory and bring me home. Going through unofficial channels, there are many more ways to operate." After explaining the cause and effect, Xin Yu asked, "You're planning to live in this territory long-term, right?"

Xia Qing nodded. "As long as no catastrophic-level disaster strikes here, I won't leave."

"Me too." Xin Yu showed Xia Qing her sincerity. "The reason I can stay here safely is that I'm a magnetic-sense Evolver. I can clearly detect strong emotional fluctuations from people and large animals within a 100-meter radius. So I can very clearly sense whether someone approaching me harbors goodwill or malice, and avoid danger."

After showing her sincerity, Xin Yu extended an invitation to Xia Qing. "The fact that I'm a magnetic-sense Evolver is currently known by only two people — you and Uncle Ping. Xia Qing, let's form an alliance. You and I, my evolved birds combined with your wolf pack acting together — even if Blaze and Heavy Alliance's security team core combat power joined forces, they wouldn't necessarily be our match."