Chapter 661: Fishing the Brute

Before six in the morning, the early-to-bed-early-to-rise body clock she had developed over a year of farming woke Xia Qing.

She opened her eyes, listened quietly for a few seconds to the sound of flowing water, birdsong, and insects, then got up, tidied herself, ate breakfast, and only then crawled out of the tent to let Yang Jin go in and rest.

The post-Disaster Evolution Forest was full of dangers; without entering the tent, one must not remove the protective mask or expose any skin on the body. Otherwise, fungal spores or bacteria drifting in the air could invade the body, or one could be bitten by a poisonous insect and die.

Let alone drinking water or eating—even using the toilet had to be done inside the tent. This was one of the very inconvenient aspects of carrying out missions outside, so before setting out on team missions in the past, Xia Qing would eat only compressed rations for two days beforehand to reduce the number of times she needed to use the toilet during the mission.

A better option than eating compressed rations was drinking nutrient solution.

But compressed rations made mainly from grass cost only one or two points per block, while a single ordinary nutrient solution cost two hundred to four hundred points, and premium nutrient solution cost as much as two thousand points. So when going on missions, although Xia Qing would buy two ordinary nutrient solutions just in case, unless she ran into a dangerous situation or the solution was about to expire, she couldn't bear to use them.

To maximize the use-value of these two nutrient solutions, after buying them Xia Qing would take on several more missions within their shelf-life period to earn more points.

Apart from eating, there was the issue of drinking water. Although activity levels in the Evolution Forest were high and most of the water she drank was expelled from her body as sweat, Xia Qing still reduced her water intake to cut down on trips to the toilet.

After Yang Jin came out, he first showed Xia Qing the route map and data on the tracker display. "That python, carrying the Disaster Pythons, took five hours and sixteen minutes, traveled 【number】 meters, and only stopped once it reached an area 【number】 meters north of our location."

Then Yang Jin showed Xia Qing the paper map on which he had already marked the python's travel route and the location it reached. The python that had set out from Mountain 55 carrying the Disaster Pythons had indeed arrived at the lake on the north side of Mountain 60.

Some of the waterways the python traveled were in rivers above ground, some below ground, where the map showed forest terrain—which made sense. Green Disaster Pythons evolved from bamboo-vine snakes; they breathe with lungs and have to surface every so often to take a few breaths, so a python can't stay underwater for long.

Seizing on this point, if they ever needed to wipe out the Disaster Pythons in the future, all they had to do was hold the river channel the python had to pass through on its way back to the northern lake.

What they needed to do today was continue capturing Disaster Pythons and harvesting the underwater herbs.

Xia Qing explained the situation to Yang Jin, then proposed teaming up to gather herbs. "While that python hasn't come back yet, let's team up and dig up this kind of herb from the pool. What do you think?"

Yang Jin looked at the picture on Xia Qing's phone and immediately recognized it. "This is one of the herbs needed to detoxify Zhang Hongda. I didn't notice that leaf flashing by in the video was this herb—good thing you spotted it. Since we've found it, of course we have to bring it back."

Xia Qing knew that, given the relationship between Luo Pei and the Yuehai Camp, Yang Jin was certainly one of the channels the Yuehai Camp had enlisted to search for herbs, so it was no surprise at all that he recognized the use of the herb in the picture.

It was also no surprise that he hadn't recognized that fleeting leaf, which looked very similar to an ordinary grass leaf, because Yang Jin wasn't a dedicated herb-gatherer. If Xia Qing hadn't spent every day with the two weasels studying them, etching the subtle differences between the two herbs deep into her memory, she wouldn't have noticed that briefly flashing leaf either.

Still, one had to remain humble and objective. "It was Third Brother who recognized it. He said the herb growing on the underwater stone wall is probably a different evolved variant of the same species of herb, and its medicinal effects can't be confirmed yet."

If this herb could be used, once she got back Xia Qing could change the herbs posted in the sheep pen from two kinds to one.

To harvest herbs growing at around ten meters deep in the python pool, a feasible plan had to be worked out in advance.

Xia Qing's plan was to cut down a tree and lash it together into a wooden pole over ten meters long, then tie a stone, flashlight, and hook to one end and lower it into the water to hook out the herbs.

This plan was rejected by Yang Jin, because according to the underwater probe's observations, the herbs grew in cracks in the rock. The harvesting method Xia Qing proposed lacked flexibility, couldn't guarantee the herbs' integrity, and would damage their medicinal efficacy. Moreover, this pool was connected to an underground river, and there might be pythons or other large creatures hiding inside. It was very likely that before the pole even hooked a herb, a python would smash it in half.

The final plan was: the two of them would first lure away any python or other aggressive animal that might be lurking in the water, then Yang Jin would go down to gather the herbs while Xia Qing was responsible for sniping any fierce beasts lying in ambush in the water to protect Yang Jin. As for how to split the take, it would depend on each person's contribution during the mission.

Yang Jin handed a special pistol to Xia Qing, taught her how to fire it, and then went off to find a suitable spot to make a trap that could temporarily hold the python.

The fact that the pythons of Mountain 55 could drive away wolf packs and gather Disaster Pythons from the surrounding mountain ranges to form a mutually beneficial, complementary symbiotic relationship with them suggested that a Brain Domain Evolved leader might have evolved among the python group.

Large fierce beasts with high intelligence could rally their own kind to form a powerful fighting force. If humans actively provoked or hunted members of such a group, it could easily trigger the beasts' frenzied retaliation. The recent conflict between the western wolf pack and the humans of Hui-3 Base was a bloody lesson learned the hard way.

Therefore, the python group of Mountain 55 needed to be added to the "Advanced Evolved Fierce Beasts Not To Be Actively Provoked" list and handled with great caution.

Xia Qing and Yang Jin's teaming up this time was neither about killing pythons nor about contesting territory or prey with them—just digging up a few plants of grass inside the python's territory. There was no need to make enemies of them; luring them away would be enough.

While Yang Jin went off to find a spot and make the trap, Xia Qing used her sniper rifle to hunt an evolved animal that she couldn't tell was a deer, a cow, or a sheep, butchered it into chunks, tied them securely with rope, and made it into bait for fishing pythons.

After Yang Jin used the aggressive Disaster-evolved tree vines to make a rope trap capable of holding a giant python, the two of them went to the edge of the small pool, tossed one piece of bait into the water, and began paying out the rope.

After waiting less than two minutes, Xia Qing saw a dark shadow appear in the deep water and rapidly grow larger, and instinctively shouted:

"It's coming!"

Just as Yang Jin, gripping the rope, quickly pulled the bait out of the water, a python with a gaping bloody maw burst out of the water, shooting up more than six meters high.

Being this close to a living giant python for the first time, every hair on Xia Qing's body stood on end; she was both thrilled and nervous.

After watching how Yang Jin used the bait to lure this giant python away, Xia Qing lowered the second piece of bait into the water and stared wide-eyed at the bottom.

When she saw the dark shadow surface, Xia Qing couldn't help cursing: Holy shit!

With a single chunk of meat, she had fished out two giant pythons!