Chapter 6: House Repair

Under the combined influence of the Harmonic element and the Nourishing element, during the overall evolutionary process of Earth's organisms, a phenomenon appeared that still cannot be clearly explained to this day, namely:

The lower the organism, the higher its degree of evolution.

While humans generally evolved by two times, with about two-thousandths evolving by multiple times, many invertebrates with simple body structures commonly evolved by eight times, and their multi-fold evolution rate was also significantly higher than that of humans. Therefore, after the catastrophe, Blue Star became several times more dangerous to humans than before.

While Blue Star's evolved creatures brought life-threatening danger to humans, they also brought survival opportunities: organisms containing trace amounts of harmful radioactive elements, and with Harmonic element content no higher than five-thousandths, which humans could eat directly.

Researchers named them: Safe Food.

Currently, research has confirmed three points: first, the lower the content of the two types of elements, the more beneficial to the human body; second, the higher the proportion of Safe Food in the food consumed, the stronger the human ability to resist environmental pollution; third, multi-fold evolved Safe Food enhances human resistance significantly better than ordinary Safe Food.

Because Safe Food cannot meet the eating needs of the entire nation's people, Hua Nation designated edible organisms containing trace amounts or no harmful radioactive elements to the human body, and with Harmonic element content between five-thousandths and fifteen-thousandths, as Optional Food.

Both Safe Food and Optional Food show a green light when tested with an ordinary detector. If the evolved catfish Xia Qing had killed were taken to the Safe Zone, it could be exchanged for enough rations to last her three months.

Having eaten her fill of rough compound compressed rations, Xia Qing now only wanted meat.

She swiftly cleaned the catfish, chopped it into pieces, threw them into the pot, added mountain spring water, and started boiling.

Seasonings? Only salt and chili powder.

Side dishes? None.

Wait, she had six jin of evolved potato seeds.

But Xia Qing couldn't bear to eat them, because the "Complete Guide to Planting" clearly stated that these were Safe Food with harmful element content of only two and a half thousandths, and had a very low sprouting rate, between 30% and 35%.

How many seedlings the six jin of potatoes she received could grow, and how many jin of potatoes she could harvest, were all unknowns; she couldn't bear to eat them.

Soon, an enticing meat aroma drifted from the pot. Xia Qing lifted her nose and sniffed, confirming that her stewed catfish smelled better than the stewed fish sold at the Safe Zone cafeteria, and had less muddy smell.

This catfish was very likely Safe Food.

Although her appetite had doubled after evolution, this catfish weighing over ten jin, Xia Qing still couldn't finish even half before she was full. Fortunately, it was now February, and the fish meat left over from noon wouldn't spoil by evening.

In the future her food would grow more and more plentiful; she had to figure out how to arrange for solar panels and a refrigerator as soon as possible. But before that, she had to first find glass to patch the windows, to defend against attacks by evolved insects or vermin like snakes, bugs, rats, and ants.

Xia Qing picked up her large canvas bag and tools, deciding to use the afternoon to patrol the abandoned village.

Within Plot No. 3 there were three villages arranged in a pin shape, separated from each other by large tracts of farmland. Xia Qing lived in the abandoned village near the mountain to the north, with one abandoned village to her front-left and another to her front-right.

The abandoned villages had all been swallowed by plants. Xia Qing pushed aside the wild grass, and Xia Qing saw quite a few human and livestock bones that had been gnawed clean.

Xia Qing had seen such scenes too many times and had long become numb to them.

After searching the three villages, Xia Qing carried home the glass that could be used, picked out suitable tempered laminated glass and wiped it clean, used a glass cutter to cut it to the right size, sealed it with glass glue, and then firmly sealed it again with special sealing strips.

By the tenth year, the building materials produced before the catastrophe had long passed their shelf life and deteriorated beyond use; the ones she was using now were brought out from the Safe Zone.

The catastrophe destroyed Blue Star's original industrial production system, causing many supplies that could be bought with a simple tap on a phone before the catastrophe to become scarce goods that couldn't be found even when searched for.

Even this glass glue and these sealing strips were obtained by Xia Qing only thanks to her identity as a construction team squad leader.

After her father died, the helpless and beautiful Xia Qing, if she wanted to live comfortably and respectably in the Safe Zone, either needed overwhelming strength, or a group of powerful teammates she could entrust her back to, or had to trade herself for daily necessities.

Xia Qing had no overwhelming strength, no one she could fully trust, and was even less willing to sell her body, so she chose to cut off her long hair, smear her face black, and blend into the construction team.

Earning credits was a secondary purpose; Xia Qing's main purpose was to hide herself, learn construction skills, and stockpile materials and tools unavailable on the market, preparing for living alone after leaving the Safe Zone.

Of course, there were also people in the construction team who had designs on Xia Qing, but after experiencing her fierce strength, none of them dared to act.

After installing the bright glass, Xia Qing let out a long sigh of relief; her home was finally sealed tight. Taking advantage of the time before dark, Xia Qing took an iron shovel to the neighboring yard, and dug a pit to bury an adult, a child, and a dog whose grim white bones were all that remained beneath the wild grass.

These two people and one dog had all been killed by the evolved plant mistletoe; from their postures, this dog had been trying until death to save its master.

Evolved mistletoe seeds could parasitize not only on tree trunks, but also on animals and human bodies. If the host did not detect and thoroughly remove them in time, they would soon be drained of flesh and blood and die. Xia Qing still remembered to this day that when she first saw the clusters of bright red mistletoe berries growing on the body of a person killed by mistletoe, she felt that was the most terrifying scene of the catastrophe.

But in the years since, one dangerous encounter after another taught her that there was no most terrifying, only more terrifying. Fortunately, humans now had protective suits and other self-protection methods; as long as one did not rashly enter uncleared evolved forests, one would not suffer large-scale attacks from evolved creatures.

After burying this family of three, Xia Qing casually cleared the wild grass and house in this yard as well.

This household had been building a house; the two-story reinforced concrete main structure had just been completed when they encountered acid rain and the great biological evolution, so the secondary structure and doors and windows of the house had not been done in time, but the materials had all been purchased and were piled up in the second-floor rooms. Fortunately, this roof used resin tiles, and the owner had done his utmost to protect the house; otherwise, under half a year of pounding by strong acid rain, let alone concrete, even the rebar would have already been washed away.

Xia Qing was alone, and the current two-story small building was enough to live in, so she decided to use this place as a warehouse, storing some large but not very important supplies, such as farm tools, discarded furniture, and timber.

After tidying up and taking another turn around, Xia Qing felt a great sense of accomplishment, and at the same time felt she should raise an evolved animal that could guard the house as soon as possible, preferably a smart one.

A high-level evolved dog or goose would both work; a goose was best, because it ate vegetables.

But this was just a thought; animals that could still be tamed by humans after high-level evolution were hard to come by. Xia Qing didn't think she had the luck to just wait by a stump for a rabbit to show up and pick one up within her territory; planting the land first was still the most important thing.