Chapter 640: Out of Meat

After tidying up the terraced fields and spreading fertilizer and fungicide powder, it was time to plow the land.

The terraced plots were too small for a sheep-drawn plow to operate, so Xia Qing turned the soil in the terraces one shovelful at a time. Fortunately, although there were many plots, the total area was only 1.7 mu, so the workload wasn't too heavy.

After turning the soil, she needed to use a flat rake to level the ground—a skilled job. Xia Qing had learned how to find level ground from Qi Fu and his wife, and had already mastered this technique.

Once the land was leveled and the ridges made, it was time to sow.

Common green-grade spinach, cucumbers, eggplants, tomatoes, peppers, scallions, green beans, pumpkins, and other vegetables she'd grown last year posed no difficulty at all. Xia Qing skillfully pre-soaked and sprouted the seeds in advance, and finished planting them quickly.

Yellow-grade potatoes needed to be cut into chunks according to the eyes on the potato, mixed with plant ash, then sun-dried for half a day so the cut surfaces dried, before they could be planted in the field.

Plant ash could not only be used to coat the seed pieces, but also provided the nutrients potatoes needed to grow, making them grow larger. So Xia Qing also spread plenty of plant ash in the potato terraces as base fertilizer.

The potatoes Xia Qing had grown last year hadn't left much after being eaten all winter. If she hadn't later been poisoned, causing the level of hostile elements in her body to spike and forcing her to eat only green-grade food, there would have been even fewer potatoes left.

Because the yellow-grade potato seeds she'd kept for herself weren't enough to plant, Xia Qing traded with other lords for quite a few more.

This was because potatoes had a hostile mutation rate as high as 25% in hostile rain, and the probability of aggressive hostile mutations was no less than 8%, making them a low-stability variety unsuitable for open-field planting.

The risk of growing potatoes was something many ordinary lords couldn't bear. Added to that, after lords traded seeds with each other, the variety of vegetables each territory could grow increased, so among the ordinary lords who grew potatoes last year, quite a few gave up on potato cultivation this year.

Taking advantage of this opportunity, Xia Qing traded for a batch of potato seeds with hostile element content between 8-10‰, enough to fill two terraces.

Holding the Yishi stone, Xia Qing declared that hostile mutation rates were no concern of hers.

After planting the potatoes, Xia Qing planted another terrace and a half of corn.

The green-grade corn seeds Xia Qing planted in her plowed fields and terraces this spring were all premium corn seed Y-3 that Tan Junjie had traded for from Red Eleven Base. Keeping last year's overwinter wheat lesson firmly in mind, Xia Qing didn't plant all six jin of seeds, holding back two jin just in case.

Corn was also a crop with a very high hostile mutation rate in hostile rain.

Last year Xia Qing had grown two kinds of yellow-grade corn: one from seeds traded with the Territory Management Department, with a hostile mutation rate of 39%; the other obtained from Luo Pei, with a hostile mutation rate of 22%.

Although the hostile mutation rate was high, corn didn't develop aggressive hostile mutations, so it could still be planted.

However, this corn required relatively high growing temperatures and wasn't suitable for spring planting. So the corn seeds Xia Qing had kept from last year needed to wait until June or July, when temperatures were suitable, before they could be planted.

After planting the corn, Xia Qing took out the garlic cloves from the storage room and planted them in the prepared terraces.

Counting what she'd found herself in her territory last year plus what she'd traded with others, she had a total of 71 heads of green-grade garlic and 28 heads of yellow-grade garlic. The small-clove garlic had all been broken off by Xia Qing for eating, while the large-clove ones were kept as seed.

After planting the garlic, Xia Qing straightened her back, looked with pleasure at the white garlic skins scattered across the terraces, then took out her notebook and drew a checkmark next to the garlic-planting task.

Once the final checkmark was drawn, all the crops that needed to be planted at this stage were completely sown.

Next came quietly waiting for the crops to sprout, then waiting until late in the third ten-day period or early April when temperatures rose, to plant cotton and sunflowers.

Xia Qing first shook her aching arms, then rolled her cracking neck, before stepping through the afterglow of the sunset to her green-grade orchard.

The orchard contained one large Chinese toon tree, two apple trees, two jujube trees, one Sichuan pepper tree, and one passionfruit vine. Because she hadn't taken proper cold-protection measures last winter, the passionfruit had frozen to death.

Not only in Xia Qing's territory—after asking around, she learned that the passionfruit vines other lords had traded for at last year's agricultural products fair had also all frozen to death.

Although it was a pity, there was nothing to be done about it.

In a couple of days her orchard would gain a new variety: two green-grade orange saplings, which was the exchange item she'd arranged with Territory Five last year.

Xia Qing broke off all the mature Chinese toon sprouts and put them into a basket.

Seeing Xia Qing break off so many toon sprouts, Sheep Leader widened its big, beautiful sheep eyes and bleated happily at her, "Baa~~~"

Xia Qing handed it a cluster of toon sprouts and led it home.

The reason she'd picked so many toon sprouts was that Territory Three now had a vegetable storage room, which could extend the freshness of toon sprouts to a month and a half. Breaking off this batch would let the toon tree put out the next batch of buds.

The reason Xia Qing couldn't explain this on the hillside to Sheep Leader was that the Chonglian construction crew had already arrived and was currently clanging away laying foundations on the isolation belt to the north of her territory.

If there were advanced auditory evolvers in the construction crew, the storage room in her territory capable of long-term food preservation would be exposed.

After returning home, Xia Qing processed the toon sprouts and stored them in the vegetable storage room, then began making dinner.

Sheep Leader of course got toon sprouts plus compressed rations, the sick wolf got green-grade raw eggs plus a piece of green-grade wild boar meat, and Xia Qing herself had steamed rice and green-grade chives scrambled with eggs.

Because the Head Wolf and the Broken-Back Wolf hadn't come to bring her meat in a long time, Xia Qing's stock of green- and yellow-grade meat had nearly run out. She could go without meat, but Wolf Hound Lao Er, whose digestive tract had already recovered, had to eat meat—and good-quality green-grade raw meat at that.

Lao Er was no longer a sick wolf now; it had recovered and was a healthy, mature evolved wolf.

Because the Chonglian construction crew was outside building the wall, the sick wolf couldn't leave the territory to hunt, so Xia Qing decided that tomorrow she would have Beard Feng's squad help guard the territory while she went to Area 3 of Mountain 49 to hunt and dig chestnut saplings, and also make a trip to Valley Two to clear the spot where yellow-grade chrysanthemums had grown last year.

The easiest prey in Area 3 of Mountain 49 was the wild boar raised by the wolf pack. Xia Qing was the wolf pack's "team medic," and Lao Er was a pack member, so when she and Lao Er wanted meat, of course they could slaughter a pig.

Xia Qing happily made her plans, went out to patrol the territory and do her night run, then returned home and was falling into a drowsy sleep in bed when she was woken by her phone on the bedside table.

Beep.

Xia Qing had a premonition and immediately sat up to check her phone, and sure enough saw a long-awaited notification:

Broken-Back Wolf entered Territory Three through the Beimen at 11:28 on March 2.

Broken-Back Wolf had come—there were very likely Chonglian's eyes and ears outside the Beimen!

Danger!

Xia Qing immediately got dressed, rushed downstairs, opened the security door, and dashed out.

Then she stopped.

Broken-Back Wolf, standing at the sheep pen entrance, turned its head to look at Xia Qing; beside it was Wolf Hound Lao Er, and facing them was a cowering plucked yellow weasel.

Xia Qing's eyes lit up, and she raised her hand in an enthusiastic greeting. "Broken-Back! Long time no see!"

Broken-Back Wolf, clad in its snakeskin protective suit, narrowed its eyes and bared its lips, revealing its two adorable, snow-white little fang tips.