Chapter 636: After the Killing Rain

"How do we break this deadlock? We can't!"

Tang Huai cursed in the lord channel, "Before the territory was opened up, it was an evolution forest any animal could enter. Humans burned the woodland to clear fields for farming and didn't allow other animals in. The wolves didn't say a word—they retreated. But those bastards from the Dongyang Squad actually went and dug out their den, tortured their pups to death. It'd be strange if the wolf pack didn't go mad!"

"But…" Wen Nengjie muttered in his young voice, "Brother Huai, but this was originally our human territory."

"You want to discuss pre-catastrophe territorial ownership with evolution wolves born and raised after the catastrophe?" Tang Huai laughed coldly. "The ten best-located shops on East Street, District Two of the inner city—all have my name on the property deeds. After the catastrophe, the people who opened shops there—who the hell paid me rent? You can't even reason with humans, and you think you can reason with evolution wolves?"

Zhang San warned lazily, "Tang Huai, is your killing-evolution emotion getting out of control?"

"No." Tang Huai's fire died down, voice muffled, "Third Brother, I just watched the video and felt sick to my stomach."

Xia Qing, driving the micro-tiller while cutting grass on her way home, stared through the rain cover's glass at the dark sky, her expression grave.

Zhao Ze's voice was hoarse and weary, "The lords of the western territory just survived 53 hours of killing rain and were thinking about how to farm, how to plant spinach, when the wolf pack slashed open the rain-proof cloth on their greenhouses."

Fellow lord Shi Zhong empathized, "Can those western fields still be planted?"

No one could answer that question.

Xia Qing returned home, drove the micro-tiller to cut the killing grass in the yard, and saw two large evolution locusts that the plucking weasel had placed on the mat in front of the security door.

The plucker was still very meticulous—both locusts had their wings and legs removed.

Xia Qing had no energy left to test the quality of the two locusts. Her voice hoarse, she thanked the sheep shed, stuffed the locusts into the snake box, dragged her weary body inside to wash the mud off her protective suit and her two companions', changed into loungewear, and collapsed onto the bed. She was asleep almost the moment she closed her eyes.

At six the next morning, rustling sounds came from outside the window. Xia Qing, in the middle of a nightmare, opened her eyes—her hand already gripping the gun handle.

After a few seconds of silent reaction, she lowered the gun and lifted a corner of the curtain. Sure enough, the red squirrel was squatting on the windowsill, waving its wet tail and rubbing its little paws, begging her for water.

This was the first time the red squirrel had come to beg her for water since she had hammered down the dawn redwood tree in her territory ten days ago. The little fellow was still a little afraid, standing sideways—a posture that let it flee for its life the moment something seemed off.

When Xia Qing raised her hand to open the window, the red squirrel immediately darted up onto the roof.

After she scrubbed clean the small jar on the windowsill that was filled with rainwater, poured in uncontaminated spring water, and closed the window, the red squirrel crawled back down from the roof to the windowsill and plunged its head into the jar, drinking greedily.

This little fellow had no Use Yishi protection and had endured over 53 hours of killing rain—truly not easy.

After drinking, the red squirrel quietly stared at Xia Qing for a while. Finding that Xia Qing had no intention of giving it food, it squatted on the windowsill and began using the spring water to groom its fur and big tail.

Sitting on the bed, Xia Qing used her phone to check in turn the surveillance cameras at various spots in her territory and at the entrance of Xiong Dong. Finally, she tapped open the sheep shed's feed and saw the plucking weasel and little Bai Mao sleeping on a tall haystack, with five little pups firmly protected in the middle, sprawled out and sleeping soundly.

At this moment, Xia Qing missed the Wolf Queen and the Broken-Waist Wolf terribly.

She took a screenshot and saved it on her phone, cleared away her negative emotions, and went downstairs full of energy to greet her companion, "Boss, good morning!"

"Meh."

Perhaps because the three consecutive days of killing rain had finally passed, Sheep Boss was in a good mood too and opened its mouth to return a bleat to Xia Qing.

"How about Chinese toon sprouts for breakfast this morning?"

"Meh!"

"Good, I'll go start the micro-tiller and pick some Chinese toon sprouts."

Xia Qing stepped outside, looked at the calf-high killing grass stubble filling the yard and the little insects leaping about everywhere, and didn't find it a headache either.

These grass stubble—in another couple of days when the ground dried a bit, she'd hitch up Sheep Boss and rake it all clean in one pass.

All kinds of little insects? Heh, a flock of little swallows that loved eating bugs lived under her eaves—these insects wouldn't be enough for them; they'd be cleared out in no time.

What mattered now was tidying up the farmland as soon as possible and getting the seeds in the ground. Right, and the red killing grass in the high-danger zone of Mountain Fifty also had to be dealt with quickly.

Xia Qing drove out the micro-tiller, and Sheep Boss immediately ran out of the house and sat in its dedicated seat. One person and one sheep drove the micro-tiller, clearing killing grass all the way, heading toward the ruined houses in the west.

Hearing that familiar sound, Tang Huai, who was sleeping in Territory Two, grumbled and turned over, pressed a pillow over his head, and went on sleeping.

Seeing the Sick Wolf emerge from the killing grass carrying a basket in its mouth, Xia Qing stopped the micro-tiller, opened the door, and took the small basket from the Sick Wolf's mouth.

She hadn't come out this trip to cut grass—she had come specifically to pick up the Sick Wolf.

"Wolf Lao Er caught so many bugs—amazing!" Xia Qing praised her hardworking companion, looking at the small basket already filled with all kinds of insects.

The Sick Wolf sat in its dedicated seat, showed a happy smile, and nuzzled Xia Qing's protective mask with its head to express its joy.

Then, a layer of wolf fur, long and short, ended up stuck all over Xia Qing's mask.

Driving the micro-tiller to the edge of the greenhouse, Xia Qing entered with her two companions. After first checking on the animals, she went to inspect the planting greenhouse and the three farm plots, then jumped across the wide river into the buffer forest and arrived beneath the big Chinese toon tree.

The big Chinese toon tree wasn't a killing-evolution plant, so its toon sprouts had barely grown during the killing rain period.

Xia Qing took out a long-pole sickle, hooked down a small basket of toon sprouts, and also fetched a big bucket of uncontaminated spring water before heading home with Sheep Boss.

The Sick Wolf? Until its fish were fed full, it wasn't coming back.

After a hearty breakfast, Xia Qing took her hoe and went to clear the killing grass from the yellow-light rapeseed field.

Because there was much grass and few seedlings, and because Xia Qing was strong and her tools worked well, she quickly cleared all the killing grass from the one-mu plot.

After tossing the grass outside the shed, Xia Qing counted carefully. Of the one mu of rapeseed planted in early November last year, after last winter's killing snow and this spring's killing rain, 265 plants remained.

But judging by the color of the leaves, among those 265 plants, at least fifty or sixty had already turned into red-light rapeseed. Even if they bloomed and set seed, she wouldn't be able to press oil from them for eating.

In other words, of the ten thousand rapeseed seeds she had sown late last autumn, only two hundred remained. The stability of this batch of rapeseed seeds issued by the Safe Zone was terrifyingly poor.

By this comparison, one could see how high the quality of the M-14 yellow-light wheat Xia Qing had traded with her idol was. After the same killing snow, severe cold, and killing rain, half of the yellow-light wheat still remained.

Idol, mighty!

After Xia Qing had also tidied up the two mu of yellow-light wheat fields, it was already 11 o'clock. She tidied up briefly, took the Sick Wolf to Territory Seven for a "checkup," and along the way listened to what Third Brother planned to do about the red killing grass in the high-danger zone of Mountain Fifty.

Several of her Yi Stones were still placed in the danger zone—those were all points!