Chapter 69: Sweet Potato Cuttings

After seeing Zhong Tao off, Xia Qing and Old Goat carried the worm castings straight to the terraced fields reserved in the planting zone.

Xia Qing loved eating sweet potatoes, so the plots she set aside for sweet potato cuttings were the terraces with the thickest planting soil—one plot in the high-slope planting zone, one in the low-slope planting zone.

Following the method Tan Junjie had sent her, Xia Qing first fertilized the terraces, then plowed them and built up raised rows. Once the ground was ready, Xia Qing cut the long vines of the Green Lantern sweet potatoes into twenty-centimeter segments and planted two hundred cuttings.

After finishing the cuttings, Xia Qing was both happy and worried.

What made her happy was, of course, two hundred more sweet potatoes; what worried her was that this might not only fail to take root, but also disrupt the internal element balance of the sixteen sweet potato plants that, after pruning, had only two or three vines left—causing them to shift from Green Lantern to Yellow Lantern.

If that happened, the loss would be devastating.

She had already obliquely confirmed this method of cutting propagation with Qi Fu. Since the method was sound, and she had the spring water in hand, even if only half of these two hundred survived, and each surviving plant yielded only three sweet potatoes, she could still harvest three hundred sweet potatoes—three hundred!

Xia Qing cheerfully watered the sweet potato cuttings with filtered water mixed with spring water—because there were too many seedlings, she didn't have enough spring water to irrigate them all.

Then, Xia Qing used the remaining worm castings to top-dress the other plots.

The vegetables currently flowering and fruiting needed top-dressing; the wheat, mung beans, and cotton were all about to flower and needed top-dressing; the jujube trees were flowering and needed top-dressing.

The original Green Lantern sweet potato and Yellow Lantern potato fields had already used plenty of fermented goat manure, so they didn't need top-dressing; the pumpkins, which only grew vines without flowering, got no top-dressing.

She had thought four hundred jin of worm castings was quite a lot, but once she started top-dressing, she found it wasn't nearly enough for a single round. So, Xia Qing messaged Sun Zhe and placed another order for eight hundred jin, with delivery in twenty days.

For this trade, Xia Qing used spinach seeds that were nearly mature. By the time Zhong Tao delivered the worm castings, the spinach seeds should already be ripe.

In other words, Sun Zhe could produce at least eight hundred jin of worm castings in twenty days, in exchange for four hundred points. Raising worms for castings suited him better than working on a construction crew—though of course the risks were greater. Since he had left his territory, he was prepared to take risks.

Xia Qing brought the few remaining jin of worm castings home and mixed them into four large earthen pots. These pots were ones she had prepared for the strawberries—the Planting Encyclopedia said strawberry plants would grow runners, and new strawberry seedlings would sprout from those runners.

Looking at the illustrations in the Planting Encyclopedia, Xia Qing thought they looked fake.

But! Her two strawberry plants had really grown two runners—although the stems were still too short to have produced new seedlings. But the runners were there—how far off could the seedlings be?

Xia Qing had already prepared the pots and soil, ready to welcome the new seedlings.

Just like the newly transplanted vegetable seedlings, the sweet potato cuttings wilted all over after being sunned the next day. But what wilted were the leaves; the vines still stood upright. Xia Qing had gained experience by now and didn't show the panic she had when transplanting the vegetable seedlings last time.

Let them wilt if they wilt; once they've wilted enough, they'll perk back up. She went on with whatever she needed to do.

These past few days she had gone to learn from Luo Pei twice more, and every night she diligently practiced disassembling and assembling firearms. Now, even with her eyes closed, Xia Qing could quickly complete the disassembly and assembly of a gun.

Today, what she was going to practice was the basic posture for shooting.

Wearing protective gear, Xia Qing lay prone in the grass. Following the method Luo Pei had taught, she pressed the stock firmly against her shoulder, slowly moved her eye behind the scope to find the most suitable eye relief, controlled her breathing, and gently squeezed the trigger.

Accurate shooting requires a steady gun. A steady gun requires a steady person. A steady person requires a steady mindset, strength, and breathing. Xia Qing's mindset and strength were both fine; what she needed to practice now was breathing control and the trigger pull and follow-through for each shot—she couldn't afford to spend time re-finding eye relief after every shot, because that interval was long enough for an opponent to kill her ten times over.

After holding the gun steady for thirty minutes, Xia Qing fired her first bullet since obtaining the gun upon hearing a sharp eagle's cry. Masked by the eagle's cry and the suppressor, the gunshot didn't alert anyone in the nearby territories.

Zhao Ze of Plot Four was still leading people in carrying water to irrigate the wheat; Tang Huai of Plot Two was still sitting in his field digging up bugs. Hu Zi Feng of Plot One was still leading people in continuing to patrol the isolation belt between Mountain Forty-Nine and the territories.

After confirming through the scope that she had accurately hit a fist-sized clod of earth placed at a distance of one thousand meters, Xia Qing walked over, placed another clod of the same size in the same spot, and returned to her original position to continue aiming.

After aiming for half an hour, Xia Qing removed the scope from the sniper rifle, maintained the same aiming posture, and continued aiming at the clod.

Using the scope was to find the correct aiming posture and let the body develop muscle memory. Xia Qing was a nine-times visual evolver, possessing the ability to aim with the naked eye at a chicken-sized target at a distance of one thousand five hundred meters. Within one hundred meters, no target larger than a mung bean could escape the pursuit of her naked eye.

This was the ability second only to that of Luo Pei, the ten-times visual evolver.

In Luo Pei's underground second-floor testing room, when Luo Pei used standard testing equipment to determine that Xia Qing's visual evolution was nine times, he was not the only one greatly shocked—Xia Qing herself was greatly shocked too.

She knew her vision was a high-level evolution, but she hadn't expected it to reach nine times.

Not only her vision—her hearing had also reached an astonishing level-six evolution, one level higher than Luo Pei's!

After the test, Luo Pei, who was thirty-four years old and considered himself mature and steady, was so thrilled he couldn't speak. He forcefully patted Xia Qing on both shoulders, then solemnly told her, "With your physical conditioning, as long as you're willing to put in the hard work, you can absolutely kick Nie Hong off his perch!"

No wonder Yang Jin had placed such high hopes in Xia Qing—no wonder!

*Pat pat pat, pat pat pat! * The more thrilled Luo Pei became, the more he couldn't help patting Xia Qing again and again.

Xia Qing, who had been floating on air after learning her true evolution level, was patted back down to earth by Luo Pei. She humbly asked, "Luo-ge, who is Nie Hong?"

Luo Pei, whose eyes were brimming with happy tears……

"……Our Huaguo's number one sharpshooter."

Xia Qing had no interest whatsoever in kicking Huaguo's number one sharpshooter off his throne and taking his place. She only wanted to be an ordinary strength evolver, quietly farming in her territory.

Since that head wolf had broken into the wild boar breeding center, it hadn't appeared again, and there was no major activity at the breeding center either. Xia Qing still patrolled her territory diligently every day, using odor-removing agent to eliminate the goat smell within the territory. Old Goat persisted for a few days then gave up, no longer going to the wire fence to gaze out and call. Every day, besides eating grass, he just stayed by Xia Qing's side.

When Xia Qing was busy, Old Goat kept a certain distance and watched, or was coaxed by Xia Qing into helping out.

When Xia Qing rested, Old Goat would come over and rest beside her.

At this moment, Xia Qing lay on the ground practicing shooting, while Old Goat lay beside her, chewing his cud.

When a sharp eagle's cry again rang out from the sky, Xia Qing fired her second shot.

This time the bullet missed the target by more than ten meters, striking the trunk of a nearby tree. The big tree trembled, and a few yellow leaves drifted down.

There was a difference between naked-eye aiming and scope aiming, so missing was perfectly reasonable. Xia Qing put the spent casing in her pocket, got up, carried the gun over, dug the bullet embedded deep in the tree trunk out and stuffed it in her pocket, then returned to her original position to continue aiming.

Under the blazing sun, Xia Qing didn't move a muscle.

Old Goat, having finished chewing his cud, slowly closed his half-squinted eyes; his head gradually sank and pressed down on Xia Qing's back. This heavy burden made the corners of Xia Qing's mouth curve up high, yet her grip on the gun didn't change one bit.

In three hours, Xia Qing fired a total of ten bullets, with two hitting the target. She was very satisfied with this result, and called it a day to go home and eat.