Chapter 706: Secret

After trying every move and still failing to beat that little grass-eating sheep, the honey badger lay on the ground in a huff, grunting and refusing to get up.

Boss Sheep raised its head high and looked at Xia Qing.

Tang Huai? The moment the honey badger stopped getting up, he ran off.

Chen Zheng? He had already gone back to Mountain Forty-Nine. Here only one person, one sheep, and one badger remained.

"That flat-top came over to provoke us, and I wasn't in the territory, so Boss came out on its own and beat it. Boss, you're just too reliable. What would our territory do without you? What would I do without you? Boss, you're truly the most reliable sheep in the world. If Blue Star had a ranking for the most reliable evolved sheep, Boss, you'd definitely be in first place…"

"Baa."

"Right, it's getting dark, and Boss is hungry too. Shall we go home for dinner? The barley grass in the field has grown up—shall I pick some for Boss?"

"Baaa~~~"

Barley grass—that is, flatspike wheatgrass.

The broken-waist wolf had brought Xia Qing two stalks of evolved flatspike wheatgrass, but Xia Qing killed them both while trying to plant them. After that, every time she went to the Evolution Forest, she would look for this kind of grass along the way, and she really did find a few stalks that were edible. But this small handful of seeds wasn't enough to plant, so Xia Qing went through Zhong Tao and traded for two more packs of grass seed.

Flatspike wheatgrass: before the Catastrophe, it was used to feed livestock; the post-Catastrophe evolved flatspike wheatgrass is one of the main raw materials used by the Lan City Base in the northwest of Hua Country to make compressed rations. Hui Three Base's Breeding Center also grows this grass—part of it is used to make rations, part of it to feed livestock. The grass seed Xia Qing traded with Zhong Tao was green-light grass seed cultivated by Hui Three Safe Zone's Planting Center.

Ever since Xia Qing traded the meat of the high-grade green-light python to Zhong Tao and Zheng Kui last year, those two had been especially diligent about finding seeds for her.

This spring, Xia Qing not only planted some green-light evolved flatspike wheatgrass seed in her terraced fields to cultivate even better grass varieties, but also scattered quite a lot in the buffer forest of Territory Three and in the valley of Mountain Forty-Nine's Zone Three, to feed Boss Sheep and the wild boars in the valley.

Every so often, humans use helicopters to scatter the high-quality grass, vegetable, and grain seeds cultivated by the Planting Center in the Evolution Forest outside the Safe Zone. This matter is a base secret.

Some of these green-light or yellow-light plants are also unexpectedly discovered by collection squads out on missions, brought back to the Safe Zone, and turned in at the Mission Hall in exchange for points. The Mission Hall then sorts the recovered plants by variety and quality—most are sent to food processing plants to make compressed rations and other foods, while a small number of high-quality varieties are sent back to the Safe Zone to continue being cultivated.

The first time she heard Yang Jin mention this, Xia Qing was speechless for a long time. She had never imagined that the plants she and her squad had worked so hard to collect in the Evolution Forest were actually scattered there by the base.

Yang Jin fully understood the base's approach: "The green-light plant seeds the Planting Center cultivates aren't exactly scarce. The supplies you get from trading them away are far less than the benefits of scattering them in the Evolution Forest and letting the plants grow and evolve naturally. This way, not only can you select better seeds, you can also improve the quality of wild animals in the Evolution Forest near the Safe Zone, give the squads something to do, and cut down on fighting."

Xia Qing felt Yang Jin was absolutely right.

The Safe Zone had a high population density and limited planting area; the crops grown there simply couldn't meet the needs of two million people. On top of that, there couldn't possibly be enough jobs inside the Safe Zone, so they always had to find something for the unemployed to do.

Going out to collect is one of the squads' main missions. Every year, the squads organize large numbers of people to go out collecting. To gather more supplies, the squads recruit outside personnel—evolved ones like Xia Qing and some ordinary people with strong physiques earn their living supplies by taking part in collection or hunting missions.

As for why it had to be kept secret, Xia Qing thought it over carefully and understood.

If it weren't kept secret, people's expectations and sense of accomplishment when going out to collect would drop sharply, and there would be a lot of complaints.

Xia Qing suspected that the evolved perilla she had found in her territory after arriving last year had grown from seeds scattered by the Safe Zone, because evolved perilla is the main raw material Hui Three Base uses to make Number Three rations. The alfalfa in Territory Four was probably the same.

And damn it—those Iron Yellow Beans she had treasured last year, fussing over with plenty of fertilizer and water for half a year—those were definitely seeds the Safe Zone had scattered too!

Even the high-yi-element green-light spinach on the slopes of her territory was spinach seed the base had scattered with drones, an optimized variety that appeared after natural evolution.

This possibility excited Xia Qing.

Because if it really was so, it proved that the soil in the high-yi-element planting zone of her territory could indeed cultivate better-quality spinach seeds. If she carefully cultivated it for another two years, she might really be able to breed premium spinach with a yi-element content exceeding 10%!

The flatspike ice-fog grass seeds in the Evolution Forest were probably also scattered by the base, because this kind of grass seed wasn't scarce.

After the rain, quite a lot of the ice-fog grass seed Xia Qing had scattered in the buffer forest and Zone Three had taken root and sprouted, giving Boss Sheep a lot of extra fun.

Because it liked finding edible grass to eat in the buffer forest.

The reason Xia Qing now calls flatspike wheatgrass "barley grass" is that Yuan Yan had once come to her territory, seen the flatspike grass Xia Qing had planted in the terraced fields, and said that back home they called this kind of grass barley grass. Xia Qing felt the name was more亲切, so she changed what she called it.

"Boss, next time you want to come out and fight that flat-top, you have to put on your protective suit, otherwise it'll be trouble if it bites you…"

The grumpy little honey badger lying on the isolation strip had been watching the two enemies with its shiny little black eyes. After they walked far away, the honey badger flipped over, scrambled to its feet, ran into the Evolution Forest of Zone Three, and viciously practiced its claws on the pine tree it had previously peeled a chunk of bark from, before turning around to look for food.

After running so far and getting into a fight, it was now both thirsty and hungry.

Grass has tenacious vitality and grows much faster than vegetables. Xia Qing plucked some barley grass leaves in the terraced fields, then loaded a full bucket of uncontaminated spring water from the spring-water cave into her back basket and put the lid on, and led Boss Sheep home to cook and eat.

"Bro, what are you thinking about?"

Inside Territory Twelve, Tang Heng handed a paper towel to Tang Huai, who was standing by the washbasin in a daze.

Tang Huai took the towel, dried his hands, sat down at the table, and muttered, "So annoying. The people from Territory Fourteen are trying to drive a wedge between me and Xia Qing!"

Tang Heng laughed. "You and Xia Qing weren't that close to begin with—no one needs to drive a wedge. What did Yan Meng do?"

"It wasn't Yan Meng, it was someone new in his territory called Liao Chen…" Tang Huai recounted what had happened, then viciously stuffed a chopstick-load of vegetables into his mouth.