Chapter 691: Childish Honey Badger

Xia Qing looked at the honey badger standing at the entrance of the mountain stream, head held high and acting like a blockhead, and was a bit speechless.

The honey badger noticed Xia Qing wasn't running away, so it opened its mouth and bared a mouthful of small teeth to scare her.

This made Xia Qing even more speechless.

The reason honey badgers dare to challenge animals many times their size is mainly because of their eyes, which resemble concave lenses and have a visual "shrinking" function.

Through these unique little eyes, the tall Xia Qing didn't look that tall to the honey badger. So it figured that baring its small teeth would be enough to scare Xia Qing off.

It had just eaten its fill and had no desire to hunt; it only wanted the creature in front of it to leave the territory it had just claimed.

Not leaving? Then get driven off!

Xia Qing recognized this honey badger—it was the same one she'd run into when leading the bamboo shoot digging team. Based on this honey badger's "childish" behavior, Xia Qing judged that although it looked old, it was probably quite young, and it had never been taught a lesson by humans, so it didn't yet know how terrifying humans could be.

"Li Kai, yeah, I'm here. Open the stone door, I'll go in right away."

Xia Qing hung up the phone, leaped over the little honey badger that was charging at her indignantly, rushed into the mountain stream and into the valley, and shut the stone door behind her—all in one fluid motion.

The honey badger outside the stone door discovered Xia Qing had vanished and paced back and forth in annoyance, searching for her.

"Sister Qing."

Zhang Hongda, standing by the stone door, explained, "That honey badger just moved here recently. Li Kai and I ran into it a few times when we went out. Its combat ability is average—it should be a non-evolver. Since it likes eating snakes and scorpions, we didn't bother it."

The honey badger would clear out the snakes and scorpions, making the valley safer.

Only then did Xia Qing understand that the reason the little fellow outside dared to provoke humans was because these two guys in the cave had given it a false impression. "After just two doses of medicine, your skin already looks much better."

Zhang Hongda wasn't wearing a protective mask, and the dense, pus-filled boils on his face and neck had already faded quite a bit. Judging by his movements, the boils on the rest of his body had also improved a lot. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to push open the valley's stone door by himself.

Zhang Hongda grinned, flashing a mouthful of white teeth. He had already thanked Xia Qing the last time she came to deliver medicine, so he didn't repeat it this time, but he kept this kindness in his heart and would surely repay it.

Xia Qing took out the medicine and the pollution-free spring water and placed them in the storage compartment they'd hollowed out of the stone wall. "This is what Third Brother asked me to bring over—still two doses' worth."

Zhang Hongda's grin widened. "Once I finish these two doses of medicine, I'll be able to go on missions with Sister Qing."

"No rush—wait until the poison is completely cleared." The second course of treatment was still missing one ingredient. Luo Pei had gone on a mission before his poison was fully cleared, and the residual poison in his body had rebounded; even now he still hadn't recovered to peak condition.

"Sister Qing, the meat's ready—come over and try it." Li Kai, sitting by the pool grilling meat, called Xia Qing over to eat.

"Okay." Xia Qing took off her protective mask and gloves, walked over, washed her hands with filtered spring water, sat down on a small wooden stump, and took the grilled meat skewer Li Kai handed her.

"It's a green-light snake Dazi caught. The green-light grilling seasoning is something we traded with Tang Huai before." Li Kai's complexion had also improved a lot—he even seemed to have gained some weight.

The valley had a pleasant temperature, grew green-light vegetables, and had an unlimited supply of high-quality filtered spring water—making it an excellent place for recovery.

"Delicious. The meat quality of this snake is pretty good." Xia Qing gave an honest assessment.

"Sister Qing, eat more. The two of us have already eaten quite a few of them." Zhang Hongda didn't mention that he'd caught over a hundred snakes before testing and finding this one green-light one, which he kept in the valley, waiting to treat Xia Qing when she came to deliver medicine.

Wearing gloves, he lifted the lid off the pot on the stone-built stove; steam rose and slowly dispersed through the valley.

The smoke vent of the stove inside the valley was well-designed. The bit of smoke from cooking with a small wood-fired stove in the valley wouldn't reveal the secret that people were living inside the rift valley.

He took out the steamed wild vegetables mixed with cornmeal from the pot, seasoned them with soy sauce and salt, and set them on the wooden table. Zhang Hongda called out warmly, "Sister Qing, try these. These are green-light wild vegetables we found on the mountain—they taste pretty good steamed."

Besides the wild vegetables, there were also freshly steamed coarse flour buns in the pot. This one meat dish, one vegetable dish, and a big pot of buns had taken the two of them quite a bit of effort to put together.

"Delicious!" Xia Qing was very supportive, eating over a dozen meat skewers, four buns, and half a basin of wild vegetables. Then she took out half a jin of freeze-dried pork, a quarter jin of jerky, and a bottle of sesame oil from her own backpack and told them to keep it for eating.

In a year of natural disasters, there was no such thing as freeloading. When Li Kai called last night and said he wanted to treat her to lunch, Xia Qing had already prepared these supplies.

After the meal, Xia Qing fished out a small piece of freeze-dried meat from her pocket, placed it on a rock, and called out to the weasel, "Plucker, you there? Little Whitey, you there? Plucker…"

Li Kai and Zhang Hongda had long known that a poison-gas evolved weasel lived in the cracks of the valley, so the two of them had always been very careful, never daring to approach the crack the weasel used to come and go.

But they'd lived here for almost a month and had never once seen the weasel slip into the valley.

Would the weasel come out if Xia Qing called like this?

"Not necessarily—I'm just trying." Though Xia Qing said this, in her heart she was actually very certain.

Because with her excellent hearing, she'd heard a faint, familiar little weasel cry from inside the rock. If the little weasel was here, its parents had to be around too.

After Xia Qing called for two minutes, the plucked weasel's little head poked tremblingly out of the crack. It first stared at the two humans in the distance with its big shiny black eyes for a while, then looked at Xia Qing, as if asking what she wanted.

This works too?!

Li Kai and Zhang Hongda in the distance saw this scene and their eyes went wide.

"Plucker, are you home alone?" Xia Qing pointed at the freeze-dried meat. "I brought this for you—see if you like it?"

The plucked weasel quickly snatched the jerky and darted back into the hole.

Xia Qing placed two more pieces of jerky at the cave entrance before going to check on her own one-mu plot of land.

With suitable temperature and moisture, plus supplemental lighting, the half-mu of green-light peanuts and half-mu of yellow-light peanuts in the field were growing well. The Gao Yi element spinach seeds hadn't sprouted yet, so it was still impossible to judge whether spinach would grow well here.

The field looked like it had been loosened with a hoe just yesterday—the weeds had been cleared out completely, and the small stones picked out during weeding were piled nearby. Xia Qing also walked over to check the other half—one-mu plot and found it was also very well managed.

Managing two mu of farmland wasn't easy for the two people in the valley. Because one of them had been poisoned with a synthetic toxin and the boils on his body hadn't gone down yet, so gripping a hoe must have been very difficult; the other only had one leg.

Achieving this level must have cost them a lot of energy and time. With them here guarding the farmland, Xia Qing felt very reassured.

After walking around, Xia Qing put her protective mask back on, left the cave, and headed toward Mountain 52. She wanted to bring back the hardness-evolved bamboo she'd cut down last time.

On her way down the mountain, she ran into that indignant little honey badger again.