Chapter 7: Three-System Evolver

After securing the windows, the room was tightly sealed, and sleep felt especially sound.

After a good night's sleep, Xia Qing dreamed that a high-grade evolved cow had wandered into her field and refused to leave, so Xia Qing hitched it to a plow, and it could till fifty mu a day.

When she woke, Xia Qing couldn't help but laugh. If only she really had a cow. Because cows don't burn fuel, and nowadays diesel and gasoline are both very expensive—too expensive for ordinary people to afford.

After washing up with the spring water and eating a piece of ration as breakfast, Xia Qing shouldered three drinking-water buckets and went to fetch water.

Yesterday, between drinking, cooking, and washing up, she used up an entire 20-liter bucket of spring water. The extra two buckets were ones she had found yesterday in a half-smashed kitchen cabinet from a household in the village ahead; the lids screwed on tight, so after a scrub they were still usable.

After killing three venomous snakes along the way, Xia Qing arrived at Shi Dong and found that the stone she had used to block the cave entrance had been pushed aside.

She gripped her machete, listened carefully, and observed closely with her eyes. Confirming that within a fifty-meter radius there were no large animals besides herself, a few sparrows, and a few snakes, she felt slightly reassured.

The ability to observe the surroundings within fifty meters is because Xia Qing is actually a three-system Evolver.

Besides strength, her vision and hearing had also evolved. Although she hadn't gone to a research lab to be tested and rated, by comparing with other Evolvers of the same kind, Xia Qing judged that her hearing and vision evolutions were both no lower than Level Four. Also, her strength wasn't the Level Four she had reported, but a Level Six evolution.

Therefore, Xia Qing was not a low-level Evolver, but a three-system high-level Evolver.

Multi-system Evolvers were very rare. Among the two million people in the entire Hui-3 Base, there were only twelve two-system Evolvers, and only two three-system Evolvers. These two three-system Evolvers had not made their identities or evolution directions public. Xia Qing only knew that one of them held a post in the military, and the other had gone to the research institute at Hui-1 Main Base.

After that, there was no more news of these two people. Rumors in the safe zone said they had been sliced up for research and had long since died.

After Xia Qing evolved three systems, Xia's father was afraid she would be taken away for research, so he only reported her strength evolution.

Her three-system evolution abilities had allowed Xia Qing to avoid danger time and again over the years, and were also the reason she dared to leave the safe zone alone to farm.

At the spot outside Shi Dong where Xia Qing had left her water buckets yesterday, there were clear tracks of three kinds of animals: one kind of bird, one weasel, and another that was either a sheep or a deer.

Birds could be ignored; weasels were the natural enemies of rats, so they should be left alone; as for sheep or deer… she was the natural enemy of those two. Catch them!

If Xia Qing could find the spring, how could the animals in the mountains not know about it? After the reservoir water downstream was polluted, it was perfectly reasonable for the clever animals to come here to drink the spring water.

Xia Qing's eyes lit up as she looked around, and she quickly made a new discovery: on a branch two meters away, several strands of white hair were hanging!

The length, the curl, the toughness, plus the footprints—it was undoubtedly a sheep. Xia Qing wished she could drop everything today and just guard the cave here waiting for the sheep.

She hadn't eaten mutton in many years.

The pit Xia Qing had cleared out under the spring inside Shi Dong hadn't collected a single drop of spring water; it had all flowed away through the cracks in the rock. Xia Qing wasn't surprised at all. If the water could be stored or if the spring flowed outward, this place would have been discovered by search teams long ago.

She set the water buckets in the pit to catch the spring water, then tested the meat quality of the three venomous snakes, and was pleasantly surprised to find that one of them showed a green light.

This delighted Xia Qing immensely and made her even more eager to lie in wait for the sheep that came to drink.

But with this snake today, it was enough. While waiting for the water to fill, Xia Qing selected and tested the wild vegetables she recognized.

Only after all three buckets were full did she find seven small wild vegetables. Although after blanching there was barely a single mouthful, Xia Qing was already very satisfied with this haul.

She washed the wild vegetables clean with spring water, picked a larger stone to block the entrance of Shi Dong, brought the things home, then grabbed a shovel and went to work the fields.

Once four mu of land were leveled, she could plant all the seeds the base had issued. Xia Qing chose a plot only a hundred meters from the flood-control wall by the water. It was convenient to irrigate here, and with the flood-control wall in place, there was no fear of being flooded by the river.

The first step in leveling the land was to turn over all the soil, picking out the large stones, tree roots, grass roots, and visible pests. Xia Qing pressed down her straw hat and got to work.

You don't know until you turn the soil, and when you do, you get a fright.

It turned out that on the land covered by a thick layer of plant ash, quite a few sprouts had already poked through. Xia Qing couldn't tell what kind of sprouts they were; after testing and finding they all showed red lights, she treated them all as weeds.

Without machinery or an ox to help, relying purely on manual labor, Xia Qing displayed the advantage of a strength Evolver. Although she wore out four shovels in one morning, she had cleared two mu of land.

At this rate, she could finish clearing four mu today, and Xia Qing was full of a sense of accomplishment.

"Xia Qing, Xia Qing!"

Hearing Zhong Tao's amplified shouts through the loudspeaker, Xia Qing wiped the sweat from her face with Mao Jin, went home to grab the edible venomous snake, and then hurried to the road sign.

Seeing Xia Qing arrive, Zhong Tao jumped down from the vehicle and waved to her, not stepping into Xia Qing's territory. "Sister!"

Xia Qing walked forward with a smile. "Brother Tao, here to inspect?"

Zhong Tao noticed that Xia Qing was much fairer than before, was surprised for a moment, then asked with a smile, "Yes, yesterday I checked the closer plots, today I'm coming around the foot of the mountain. How's it going, everything alright?"

"Everything's fine." Xia Qing handed over the woven grass bag containing the snake. "I got lucky; caught a snake while clearing the hillside this morning."

Zhong Tao hurriedly waved his hands. "That won't do, snake meat is a good thing, you keep it for yourself."

Xia Qing firmly pushed it forward. "I don't eat snake meat."

Seeing she really wasn't being polite, Zhong Tao took the grass bag and handed it to Zheng Kui, who was holding a cigarette in his mouth, and asked with concern, "I remember this mountain being cleaned up pretty thoroughly. Are there a lot of snakes? Should I report it and have people sent to clean it again?"

"Not many, no need to send anyone." Xia Qing refused directly, then handed Zhong Tao a slip of paper with her mobile number written on it. "This is my mobile number. What's Brother Tao's mobile number?"

As the squad leader of the vehicle team, Zhong Tao had been issued a satellite phone. Zhong Tao gave his mobile number, then lowered his voice and asked, "Sister, you have a satellite phone?"

Seeing Xia Qing nod, he immediately grinned. "That's much more convenient. Call me if anything comes up. There are two more things I need to make clear to you. One is to remember to tune in to the base broadcast every night from seven to eight. The second is that the army will send troops to regularly patrol the isolation belt and buffer forest area on the mountain. When they come, they'll greet you, and only enter your fields with your consent."

Xia Qing pressed, "Is it the people stationed at the regiment headquarters doing the patrol?"

"Yes—huh?" Only after saying it did Zhong Tao realize he had accidentally let slip a secret he shouldn't have. He glanced around guiltily, lowered his voice, and asked Xia Qing, "Sister, how did you know there are still people at the regiment headquarters?"

Xia Qing smiled. "I guessed. I don't know anything."

Zhong Tao scratched his head and laughed too. "It's fine as long as you know. Don't tell anyone. How about I give your number to the patrol team so they can contact you easily when they come?"

"Sure." Ten years of natural disasters, the army had paid a huge sacrifice to protect the people, and was the most trustworthy of all groups. Xia Qing added, "Don't tell people in the safe zone that I have a phone."

"Understood." Zhong Tao was just about to take his leave when he saw a person sprinting over from the east. He immediately raised his gun and shielded Xia Qing behind him. "Halt! Come any closer and I'll shoot!"