Chapter 675: Spring Is a Season of Hope

Stupid dog?

You're the stupid one!

My Wolf Lao Er is a wolf-dog with half-wolf bloodline. It came to me for treatment after the alpha wolf paid Yishi—it's not a sale. It's a free evolved wolf, not a pet kept by humans. It goes wherever it wants.

Xia Qing quickened her pace back home, opened the small pouch, and carefully examined the spinach seeds she had received. The X-2 spinach seeds were identical in color, shape, and size to the first-generation seeds in her terraced fields.

Strictly speaking, the batch of seeds issued by the Territory Management Department should be considered X-1 first-generation seeds. Because, as the idol had said, this batch was cultivated under conditions that completely isolated qiang elements throughout the entire growth process, so not only the appearance, but even the qiang and yi element content was nearly the same as the first-generation seeds in her terraced fields.

The reason it's called X-2 is to make people at other bases think that Hui Three has higher-quality high-yi element spinach seeds. Currently, the base is increasing its investment in personnel, finances, and materials to cultivate even better seeds.

If the qiang element content of Hui Three's high-yi element spinach seeds can exceed 10%, they can be used to produce higher-value yi element stimulant liquid, creating enormous economic value for Hui Three Base.

Cultivating higher-quality spinach is no easy task, so the base didn't place all its hopes on the official experimental fields, but rather on every individual.

Every resident and lord of Hui Three Base received seeds!

Xia Qing divided the 150 seeds she received into two equal portions—one planted in the spinach terraced fields, the other in the hidden valley.

Not only Xia Qing, but lords number four, five, six, ten, and fifteen in the territory alliance would also plant half of their spinach seeds in the farmland within the valley.

Because during the qiang rain period, the valley would also rent out yishi to protect the farmland. After this year's first qiang rain, the lords discovered that not a single rice seedling protected by yishi was lost, and became full of confidence in yishi.

Territory number eight joined the alliance late, so it didn't receive any farmland in the valley. However, Seeing Xin Yu's territory has standardized planting greenhouses, so she looked down on the small plots other lords treated like the apple of their eye, only sending people regularly to fetch the hot spring water.

The hidden valley has a total of two mu of land, of which Xia Qing exclusively occupies one mu.

75 spinach seeds couldn't even take up two square meters of farmland, so after moving out the grown rice seedlings and sweet potato seedlings, Xia Qing planted peanuts in her one mu of land in the valley—half a mu of green-light and half a mu of yellow-light. Because when she discovered that valley, peanuts had the highest quality among all the crops grown there, from which she could conclude—the valley is suitable for growing peanuts.

The other lords also planted peanuts in their allotted two-fen plots. The yellow-light peanut seeds for territories four, five, six, and ten were obtained through exchange with Xia Qing; territory fifteen's yellow-light peanut seeds were obtained from the military.

In response to the base's territory policy, many retired soldiers who still had some combat ability chose to farm. Retired soldiers farm through cooperation and mutual aid—dozens or hundreds of people living in the same territory, improving farming efficiency and safety. Territory number fifteen adopted this model.

Retired soldiers who farm can exchange high-quality seeds from the military at preferential prices, but the quantity is limited and cannot be used for trade.

After receiving the spinach seeds, the alliance lords couldn't wait to discuss in the phone chat group when to form a team to go plant spinach in the hidden valley.

Area fifty was originally a restricted zone for outsiders, and a few days ago qiang snakes were discovered there, raising the danger level again. Without teaming up with evolvers, the ordinary lords of territories four and five had no qualification to enter at all.

Xia Qing had to wait for the wolf pack that might come at any time and couldn't leave her territory, so she finally decided that Yue Haiying and Shi Du would lead the team to plant spinach tomorrow. Xia Qing's 75 spinach seeds would also be handed to them to take over and help plant.

After settling the spinach planting matter, Xia Qing left home to feed the chickens, fish, insects, and rabbits in the breeding greenhouse.

Spring is a season full of hope. The chickens in the greenhouse are brooding, and the female fish and mother rabbits are pregnant, in the pre-delivery stage, requiring careful feeding and care.

Today is a critical day, because the first batch of chicks in the territory has been incubating for 21 days—it's time to hatch.

Xia Qing first went to the planting greenhouse, picked quite a few vegetable leaves and chopped them up, added crushed yellow-light corn and pollution-free spring water, then grabbed a few mealworms from the wooden tray, and mixed them into chicken feed.

After the feed was mixed, she didn't even need to call them—the chickens were already lined up by the feeding trough, stretching out their necks waiting to eat. Xia Qing counted: a total of fourteen chickens were waiting for food, among them seven were brooding hens, and two more brooding hens were squatting in their nests and hadn't come over.

This spring, a total of nine hens are brooding. Xia Qing stuffed 180 eggs under them. If all goes well, they should hatch about 90 chicks.

But!

Three hens have a very unserious work attitude—besides mealtime, they come out for a stroll when they have nothing to do! Xia Qing was afraid the eggs in their nests wouldn't hatch, so she could only redistribute a few eggs to the other hens that were seriously incubating, to improve the hatching rate.

If a chicken's belly weren't so small and unable to hold too many eggs, Xia Qing would have long ago revoked the brooding qualification of these three slacking hens.

Seriously brooding hens, in addition to the nutritious feed, can also get a reward of a few mealworms. The advanced evolved Bai Yu hen is also among those being rewarded—she's brooding too.

While the chickens were eating, Xia Qing ran to the chicken nest and stared hopefully at the eggs in the Luhua hen nest.

She had been staring at this nest of eggs since yesterday. Although the eggs still looked the same to the eye, picking up a few and holding them to her ear to listen carefully, she could already hear faint sounds inside.

When Xia Qing took out another warm egg, her eyes instantly widened—because this egg was vibrating!

"Tap tap." The reason for the vibration was that the chick inside was trying to break through the eggshell and get out! This was an egg whose internal embryo had fully developed and was about to hatch!

"Cluck cluck—"

The Luhua hen spotted the sneaky Xia Qing, abandoned eating, flapped her wings and charged over. Xia Qing immediately put the egg back, watching helplessly as the Luhua hen tucked all the eggs tightly under her belly.

She squatted by the chicken nest for twenty minutes, and when she still hadn't heard any chick sounds, she could only turn away regretfully to feed the fish.

Sheep Lao Da doesn't work as carefully as Lao Er—the number of insects caught was insufficient, so the fish weren't full. Xia Qing caught some more insects. Pregnant fish, of course, also get mealworms to eat.

After the temperature rose, the mealworms' growth speed noticeably accelerated—the small worms hatched from the eggs laid by the first batch of mealworms had already grown up. After frying and eating them once, Xia Qing no longer ate the worms herself, only using them to feed chickens, fish, and weasels, occasionally giving the swallows a couple.

It's not that she doesn't like eating them, but these things need to be deep-fried in oil, and Xia Qing doesn't have much green-light cooking oil to begin with—she really can't bear to use it that way.

Relatively speaking, boiling green-light pork suits her current conditions better.

While feeding the mealworms, Xia Qing noticed that one fish's belly had gotten smaller. She immediately turned on her flashlight and carefully observed the rack built with long strip-shaped stones at the bottom of the tank—and sure enough, inside she discovered a patch of dense, transparent fish eggs!

Xia Qing excitedly called her companion, "Lao Da, Lao Da!"

Sheep Lao Da came running from the neighboring greenhouse, clip-clop clip-clop, with a stem of alfalfa still in her mouth.

"Lao Da, the fish we're raising have finally spawned!" Xia Qing shared her joy with her companion.

Finding no tasty treats, Sheep Lao Da squinted her eyes and continued eating grass with an expressionless face. Joy? Nope!