Chapter 68: Trading Earthworm Castings

Passing through the original northern isolation belt of Territory Three, Xia Qing entered Gao Po.

After the Gao Po area was incorporated into Xia Qing's territory, the patrol teams no longer passed through this old isolation belt when inspecting the territory's perimeter, since it had already been drawn into Xia Qing's territory.

If Xia Qing hadn't regularly sprayed insecticide and weed killer on the isolation belt, this ten-meter-wide strip would have disappeared long ago.

Xia Qing kept it as a precaution against insect plagues—the isolation belt could block pests coming down from Territory Forty-Nine, serving as a half-line protective wall for the territory.

The other half of the wall, of course, was Xia Qing herself. Even if an army of evolved locusts attacked, they wouldn't get past the protective wall she had built.

Passing through the old isolation belt, Xia Qing entered the Gao Po planting zone. First came the evolved perilla—since she wanted Sheep Boss to be able to eat it, Xia Qing hadn't enclosed the evolved perilla in the insect-proof netting.

Pinching to death an evolved mantis on an evolved perilla plant that was raising its scythe to attack her, Xia Qing entered the vegetable garden covered by the insect-proof netting. The first terrace inside the netting was planted with green-light alfalfa—out of the twenty plants Zhao Ze had compensated her, only two had died, and the rest were doing quite well. Xia Qing had once plucked and eaten the tender shoots, and the flavor was actually even better than perilla.

Of course, that might be because she'd eaten evolved perilla so many times she was thoroughly sick of it.

The next terrace up was planted with pumpkins, which gave Xia Qing a headache. If she hadn't tested it repeatedly, she'd really suspect these pumpkin vines—growing wildly yet not producing a single flower—had already evolved into something wrong.

The five green-light pumpkin vines had not only filled the fifty-square-meter terrace, they'd also taken over half of the green-light alfalfa terrace below. The fifteen yellow-light pumpkins planted next to the sweet potato field at the bottom of the slope were equally worrying.

Sun Zhe's voice carried a cheerful note. "Got it. Our family's partnered with someone and taken Territory Forty-Eight to raise earthworms for manure. How many jin does Sister Qing want?"

Further up were three terraces of peanuts, then empty terraces prepared for sweet potatoes. Xia Qing crawled out through the insect-proof netting and climbed up, arriving at two apple trees that had been pruned of their fruit and two jujube trees that had not only sprouted but also bloomed.

Returning to the reservoir, Xia Qing called Sheep Boss—who was treading the water wheel—down to eat, while she squatted by the fish pond to feed the fish.

After Sun Zhe confirmed the quantities of small green onion seeds and yellow-light bamboo shoots for the trade, he happily told Xia Qing, "I'll have Captain Zhong Tao deliver them to you tomorrow. Our family is partnered with Captain Zhong's cousin Zhong He, and we took the territory together. It's close to the Safe Zone, so it's pretty safe. The spot in our territory closest to the Safe Zone is still within signal coverage, so we can use regular phones."

Further up were the green onion, ginger, garlic, and chive plots. To make management easier, Xia Qing had transplanted all the vegetable seedlings she'd found in the Gao Po wasteland yard here.

When several dozen insects of various sizes—freshly killed—were tossed in, the fish pond immediately exploded into chaos. By the time the surface calmed again, not even an insect's wing could be seen.

Xia Qing quoted her price directly. "I have one hundred fifty yellow-light small green onion seeds, one credit for two seeds; and twenty jin of sun-dried, vacuum-sealed yellow-light dried bamboo shoots, twenty credits per jin."

Sun Zhe gave his number straight. "At most four hundred jin, one credit for two jin—can Sister Qing accept that? Any cheaper and we won't even earn back the labor."

Because they came out late and missed the best sowing season, and because Territory Forty-Eight was close to the Safe Zone and had been scoured by humans countless times, no edible plants had been found within the territory. So Sun Zhe wanted to trade for edible vegetables or seeds. "Does Sister Qing have edible plants? Seeds for edible plants that can be traded would be even better."

The sweet potato vines weren't growing slowly either—they just weren't as terrifyingly fast as the pumpkin vines.

While weeding, Xia Qing flipped through the sweet potato vines and found tiny red nodules had grown on them. In a few more days, these nodules would grow roots that burrowed into the soil, and the vines could be cut and propagated by cuttings.

On the third day, Zhong Tao delivered four big bags of worm castings to Xia Qing. Xia Qing gave him the dried bamboo shoots and small green onion seeds, and traded fifty jin of dried evolved Bai Mao chicken-dropping vine for soy sauce, salt, and vinegar. She also gave Zhong Tao and Zheng Kui fifty small green onion seeds and two jin of pickled bamboo shoots.

The yellow-green little flowers blooming on the jujube trees were both fragrant and beautiful.

After hanging up the phone, Xia Qing leveled the ground beside the sweet potato field while marveling at how well Sun Zhe had chosen his partners.

Xia Qing's voice also took on a smile. "How many jin do you have to trade right now?"

The branches and leaf undersides of the evolved jujube trees were covered with a dense layer of sharp thorns—any insect that dared to bother the jujube trees would be pierced by the thorns and slowly turn into a dried bug. This couldn't help but make Xia Qing suspect that the jujubes she harvested in the future might all taste like meat.

If the pumpkin vines still didn't bloom next month, Xia Qing was going to cut the vines and feed them to the sheep.

Not expecting Sun Zhe had already produced this much worm castings, Xia Qing was very straightforward. "That works. Can you sell it all to me? Do you want to trade for supplies or take credits?"

To propagate the sweet potato vines by cuttings, the prepared terraces needed to be enriched with fertilizer.

This—this is the new Blue Star world where the strong devour the weak. Any creature that isn't strong enough and can't survive by lying low will die without even scraps remaining.

Although Zhong Tao was an ordinary person, he was very good at networking, and as the squad leader in charge of supply transport for the fifty territories north of the Safe Zone, he was extremely familiar with the situation in those territories. With his help, the worm castings produced by Sun Zhe and Zhong He's partnership could be traded with lords who needed worm castings without any advertising at all, greatly improving safety.

Finally, Xia Qing came to the flat area on Gao Po and broke off quite a few Chinese toon leaves from the big Chinese toon tree for Sheep Boss. In summer, humans can't eat Chinese toon sprouts anymore, but the leaves are still food for Sheep Boss.

Xia Qing—strong and able to hold her ground—stood up, brushed off her hands, said goodbye to Sheep Boss, and went to check on her sweet potato seedlings while weeding along the way.

The call connected quickly, and Sun Zhe's voice was full of energy. "Sister Qing."

Xia Qing wasn't worried at all about the jujube flowers being eaten by insects, because these two green-light jujube trees could actually kill insects!

Xia Qing took out her phone and called Sun Zhe.

Not only was there no noisy background noise of a construction crew on the other end of the line, she could even hear birds singing. Xia Qing deduced Sun Zhe wasn't with the construction crew and asked directly, "Have you started making worm castings? If you have, I'm planning to buy a few bags."

Green onion and chive seedlings look very alike, but they look different once grown. Xia Qing had sixty green onions, eight of which had flowered and produced seeds. She had traded away more than half of the seeds. Among her trading partners—besides Zhong Tao, Zheng Kui, Sun Zhe, and the two lords Wu and Liu—the one that surprised her most was Tang Huai of Territory Two.

This month, Tang Huai's interest in farming had suddenly increased, and he occasionally even joined in the pest-control discussions on the lord channel. Territory Two hadn't been wasted on him after all.

If Territory Three didn't have a spring, Xia Qing's top choices would have included Territory Two, which was flatter and had a thicker soil layer.

The yellow-light pickled bamboo shoots Xia Qing had pickled last month hadn't gone bad. The flavor couldn't exactly be called good, but they were still edible, so she'd added bamboo shoot stir-fried with bamboo rat meat and bamboo shoot soup to her menu.