Chapter 581: Victory

At two in the afternoon, Xia Qing received a video from Yang Jin, with a caption of only three words:

"It's started."

In the video, a tall macaque with a distinct vertical scar on its left brow ridge stood upright on a large tree, shaking the branches with all its might, baring its teeth and roaring. The monkeys in nearby trees roared along with it. These squeaks—some long, some short, some high, some low—left Xia Qing feeling restless and distracted.

When evenly matched animals fight, the confrontation usually begins with roaring, slapping rocks and trees, hoping to let the other side clearly see its strength and resolve, and yield and retreat.

If they don't retreat, then they fight.

Xia Qing wasn't sure whether the wolf pack had been startled, but the tamed beast observing the scene was so startled it began to tremble. It might also have been a bionic bird, swaying along with the shaking branches.

The trembling camera panned to the opposite side, and Xia Qing's eyes instantly went wide.

The handsome giant wolf of Number Sixty stood shoulder to shoulder with the western wolf pack's alpha wolf, towering atop a protruding rock. Two pairs of ice-blue wolf eyes stared murderously at the monkey troop more than twenty meters away. The trembling camera did nothing to diminish their majestic bearing, nor the chilling killing intent radiating from the dozens of wolves in the forest behind them.

These two wolves—sure enough, something's fishy between them!

Xia Qing held her breath, waiting for the wolf pack to let out an angry howl. But to her surprise, the two giant wolves on the rock only coldly watched the monkey troop displaying its strength, making no extra moves.

Xia Qing suddenly understood: these two giant wolves did not consider the monkey troop worthy or strong enough to challenge them.

They stood at the edge of their territory, waiting for the leaping monkeys to enter the wolves' domain so they could begin the slaughter.

Just as the trembling camera was about to turn toward the monkey troop, a large gray-white-furred paw with black pads suddenly appeared in the frame, and then the screen went black.

That was a leopard's paw.

A leopard had silently approached the scouting device or scouting bird and swatted it to pieces. The instant the leopard's paw appeared, Xia Qing's heart clenched.

How had humans managed to invade the territory of such formidable and alert evolved beasts and kill their cubs?

There was only one way: tranquilizers.

Xia Qing watched the video carefully two more times before replying to Yang Jin with a message: There are monkeys in the troop infected with a pathogenic fungus.

That was also Yang Jin's concern: Already reported.

The pathogenic fungus absolutely could not be allowed to spread through the western evolved forest, or the animals here would die off in droves.

Xia Qing asked: Why isn't Hui Six carrying out disinfection of the monkey troop's territory?

Yang Jin answered briefly: It's too far from the safe zone. They can't manage it.

"Can't manage it"—a very practical and very helpless reason.

After the Great Evolution of Blue Star, the population was reduced to one-tenth, huddling inside more than forty safe zones. The area of these safe zones was less than 0.1% of Huaguo's national territory.

The remaining 99.9% belonged to evolved forests, evolved lakes, deserts, snow mountains, and other uninhabited zones.

The nation did not want to abandon these areas. For ease of management, they were also divided into more than forty sections, each assigned to one safe zone for administration.

Therefore, a human safe zone plus the evolved forest assigned to it for management was collectively called a Base. A Base was Huaguo's top-level administrative division during the Calamity years.

Members of the public living in a safe zone could gather and hunt in the evolved forest assigned to that safe zone to obtain survival resources. At the same time, the safe zone was required to monitor the evolution of organisms in the evolved forest, and when the ecological balance of the evolved forest suffered serious damage, carry out necessary human intervention to maintain ecological balance and achieve sustainable development.

But fulfilling this "obligation" required the people inside the safe zone to expend massive manpower, materials, and time.

In the resource-scarce Calamity years, most Bases could only look after the evolved forest within a few dozen to a hundred kilometers outside the safe zone—this was the main area where safe zone combat teams went out to hunt and gather.

The evolved forest beyond this range could only be left to grow wild and evolve wild.

In the tenth year of the Calamity, Huaguo implemented the Territory Policy, and each Base established territories outside its safe zone. This policy extended the range of evolved forest each Base had to monitor outward by dozens to over a hundred kilometers. For every Base, it was an extremely heavy workload.

This monkey troop's territory, damaged by the advanced evolved fungus, was probably very far from Hui Six's safe zone and territory, so they couldn't manage it. Even if the advanced evolved fungus in that area wiped out large numbers of animals, those animals were already outside the range humans could hunt, so their deaths didn't affect humans much. In that area, there would always be some animals immune to this fungus that survived and continued to breed.

If Hui Six's monkey troop hadn't taken a fancy to Hui Three's western wolf pack's territory—and this territory was less than a hundred kilometers from Hui Three's western territory—and the western wolf pack hadn't happened to clash with humans, Hui Three wouldn't have paid attention to the territorial dispute between the wolves and monkeys deep in the evolved forest, nor to this advanced evolved fungus capable of infecting humans.

Watching the behavior of the monkeys and wolves in the video, Xia Qing knew the wolf pack wouldn't lose its territory.

An hour later, the western wolf pack and the northern wolf pack joined forces and defeated the monkey troop that had trekked a long way to seize the territory.

The defeated monkeys fled; the victorious wolves threw back their heads and howled, proclaiming their victory to every creature in the evolved forest.

Surrounding wolf packs and lone wolves howled along. These rising and falling calls traveled to the northern evolved forest, where the Broken-Waist Wolf, standing on Number Sixty Mountain, also raised its head and let out a long howl. Then it and the alpha wolf sniffed each other before running down the mountain and heading south.

The two giant bears standing on the summit of Number Sixty-One Mountain also headed down. A few cubs that were roughhousing were too lazy to walk and simply rolled down the mountain.

In the western evolved forest, Yang Jin, who had just finished reporting the battle between the wolf pack and the monkey troop to the Base Commander, heard the scout beside him ask in confusion, "Brother Jin, look at what the wolf pack is doing?"

Yang Jin turned to the surveillance feed and saw that the victorious wolves had not only refrained from eating the monkey corpses, but had piled the dozens of monkey bodies into a heap. This behavior was very inconsistent with the habits of evolved wolves.

Yang Jin recorded this scene and sent it to Xia Qing, and quickly received a reply: The wolves guarding the monkey corpses are from the northern wolf pack. The Broken-Waist Wolf has learned how to handle the carcasses of animals infected with microorganisms. Has it gone over?

The wolves and the leopard had already destroyed three scouting bionic birds. Now that the wolf pack had won, it would expand its patrol range. Yang Jin didn't order the bionic birds to approach. He crawled out of his tent, climbed a large tree, observed carefully through binoculars, then replied to Xia Qing:

The Broken-Waist Wolf isn't there.

Hearing that the Broken-Waist Wolf wasn't there, Xia Qing suddenly had a very bad premonition and continued asking: After the wolf pack wins, what's the Base's next move?

Yang Jin answered: Sampling the evolved fungus, disinfection, and doing our best to investigate the reason the wolf pack launched a beast tide.

Each of these three tasks had to be carried out right under the wolves' noses—the difficulty was extremely high. No wonder they needed Yang Jin to lead the team there.

Xia Qing rubbed her face: Don't take any action yet. I expect the Broken-Waist Wolf will find a way to handle the disinfection. It should already be in motion.

Yang Jin stared at his phone screen for a few seconds, then decisively ordered: "Mission on hold. Pull out of the wolf pack's territory first."