Chapter 73: Qiang-Evolved Eggplant

Sitting on the ground, Xia Qing asked in a soft voice the irritable Sheep Boss, who stood between her and the pumpkin vine, pawing the ground with its front hooves, "Boss, this pumpkin vine can't be touched, right?"

"Baa." Sheep Boss bleated once, then tried to shove Xia Qing backward again, deeply wary of this Qiang-evolved pumpkin vine that looked completely harmless to Xia Qing.

Xia Qing stood up and retreated two steps with the force of Sheep Boss's push, stroked its spiral horns and praised, "Boss is really amazing, spotted the problem with the pumpkin vine at a glance. If it weren't for Boss, I'd have fallen for it today. Our home would collapse without Boss."

Sheep Boss, receiving praise, visibly cheered up, eyes narrowing into slits. It stood tall and proud at the side, signaling Xia Qing to keep praising.

While praising the sheep, Xia Qing followed the pumpkin vine, which was threading outward leaf by leaf, and locked onto the root of this vine. She picked up a shovel and mimed digging the soil; only after seeing Sheep Boss show no objection did she begin to act.

Digging down to the root, Xia Qing finally discovered the ability this pumpkin vine had evolved: this Qiang-evolved pumpkin had developed stickiness, its root system clinging to the shovel and impossible to shake off.

No wonder Sheep Boss wouldn't let her touch it with her hands—if this stuff stuck to her protective suit, setting aside whether it was corrosive, she'd definitely turn green.

Fortunately she had bundled the pumpkin vines one by one; otherwise normal pumpkin vines would all have gotten stuck and been ruined.

Xia Qing used the shovel to roll the pumpkin vine with its root into a bundle and forked it out of the rain shelter, roots up, stuck into the ground so it had no chance to touch soil and keep growing.

Xia Qing performed the same operation on the other Qiang-evolved pumpkin.

Then Xia Qing pressed the lord-to-lord walkie-talkie button to share information with the other lords, "Three Qiang-evolved potatoes have appeared in Territory Three, blooming and releasing C-grade toxic gas; two Qiang-evolved pumpkins have developed high stickiness, able to stick to shovels and wooden sticks. Please be careful."

Qi Fu immediately replied, "Copy that. A Qiang-evolved eggplant has appeared in Territory Six, with thorns that can pierce protective suits. Please be careful."

Zhao Ze spoke with a sobbing tone, "My two workers are injured, and I don't have enough hands now—I can only guard the fields with rain shelters built. Can you send someone over to help me?"

No one picked up his thread; in the Qiang rain, everyone had enough to worry about, with no mind to help others.

Zhang San's voice came through the lord channel, "Save those sticky pumpkin vines for me, I'll trade supplies."

Xia Qing pressed the button, "Copy that, already bundled into a ball, stuck into the field on a stick, still alive."

Kuang Qingwei asked the price, "Third Brother, how do you want to trade for the Qiang-evolved pumpkin field?"

Zhang San replied, "Fifty points per vine."

Two vines meant a hundred points, enough to buy five new shovels—finally recouping some of the loss.

Xia Qing's mood improved a bit. After leaving the sweet potato rain shelter, she opened her umbrella to cover herself and Sheep Boss, carefully observing the buffer forest.

After confirming no large trees had undergone Qiang evolution, Xia Qing led Sheep Boss, stepping on the Qiang grass path she hadn't had time to clear, toward the hillside.

More than an hour had passed since her last patrol; the seedlings in the vegetable garden were more important than clearing the Qiang grass.

Between the hillside and the cultivated land of Territory Three, a river flows east to west. The wider section of the river channel had been modified and expanded into a long, narrow reservoir; the narrowest section was only a little over three meters wide, and Xia Qing had built a stone bridge one meter above the water surface at this section.

Crossing the river in Qiang rain is extremely dangerous; the stone bridge must rise a bit above the water surface so Xia Qing can take the initiative when aquatic creatures leap out of the water to attack.

After more than four hours of rain, the river had risen somewhat, but the water level was still eighty centimeters below the stone bridge surface—safe to cross.

The cautious Xia Qing picked up a fist-sized stone and threw it to the opposite bank; only after confirming no aquatic creatures leapt up to attack did she lead Sheep Boss onto the stone bridge.

But just as the person and the sheep reached the center of the bridge, two red shadows suddenly shot out of the water, attacking Sheep Boss!

No matter how fast the aquatic creatures' attack, they couldn't escape the visual capture of Xia Qing, whose vision had evolved ninefold, "Boss, run across!"

While issuing the command, Xia Qing used her umbrella to block the two red shadows.

"Bang bang"—two sounds; the attacking aquatic creatures slammed into the iron-sheet umbrella surface, and Xia Qing slapped them onto the bank with her machete, "Boss, collect!"

Sheep Boss charged forward with two sharp kicks, kicking the two creatures that were trying to leap back into the water farther from the water's surface. Xia Qing rushed up and delivered two more slaps with her blade, smashing the creatures' heads flat, quickly bagging and sealing them.

They were actually two thirty-centimeter-long fish—goodness gracious, regardless of why there were such big fish in the river, she had struck it rich!

Stuffing the fish bag into her backpack, Xia Qing vigorously patted Sheep Boss's spiral horns and praised in a gentle voice, "Boss, you are the sheep standing at the top of Blue Star's pyramid, the sheep who opened a new era in evolved-sheep history—we have fish to eat!"

Sheep Boss, who didn't eat fish, remained expressionless.

The forest in Qiang rain is several times more dangerous than usual; entering the buffer forest in red-level Qiang rain is no different from seeking death.

But Xia Qing had long since cleared all trees within twenty meters of the planting zones, so although these two planting zones were on the hillside, they no longer fell within the forest's scope, and there weren't many hidden dangerous aggressive Qiang-evolved animals.

The rain shelter over the planting zone on the high slope—from the big Chinese toon tree to the evolved perilla—was about five meters wide and one hundred twenty meters long, covering twelve terraced fields with a fairly steep slope. The rain shelter on the low slope—from the spring eye down to the spinach field—was also about five meters wide and one hundred thirty meters long, covering thirteen terraced fields with a gentler slope.

To save materials and to improve the drainage capacity of the drainage ditches, Xia Qing had not built one rain shelter per terraced field, but rather built one entire rain shelter per planting zone, covering all the dozen-plus terraced fields from high to low.

Because the planting zones were not vertically aligned, the construction quality requirements were higher. Fortunately, Xia Qing was an expert at building rain shelters; this couldn't stump her at all.

Standing at the bottom of the hillside and looking up, these two rain shelters looked like two white long worms lying on the hillside. Outsiders might find them creepy, but in Xia Qing's eyes they were full of a sense of accomplishment and security.

These white rain shelters had blocked the Qiang rain for her vegetables.

Xia Qing led Sheep Boss into the rain shelter on the low slope first, starting the patrol from the spinach in the bottommost terraced field.

Spinach, peppers, green beans, tomatoes, cucumbers—not a single one had undergone Qiang evolution. Xia Qing paid special attention to the eggplants, and the thorny Qiang evolution Qi Fu had mentioned had not appeared either.

Continuing upward, entering the one hundred cutting-propagated sweet potato vine fields, Xia Qing discovered that the ten vines near both sides of the rain shelter had grown explosively by over a meter, sprouting more than ten leaves.

The cutting-propagated sweet potato vines had undergone Qiang evolution in the red Qiang rain.

Xia Qing dug out the sweet potato vines and discovered that on the buried section of the vines facing away from the shelter—vines that had only been cutting-propagated two days ago—a dense root system over thirty centimeters long had grown.

This patch of soil had already been dampened by the Qiang rain seeping in from outside the shelter; her terraced field drainage ditches weren't good enough and needed improvement.

After removing the Qiang-evolved sweet potato vines, Xia Qing continued upward, passed two grape vines and the spring eye, led Sheep Boss out of the first vegetable rain shelter, crossed the isolation belt, and entered the second.

After entering the second rain shelter, Sheep Boss refused to go further. Because the evolved perilla had also been enclosed by Xia Qing within the high-slope vegetable rain shelter, Sheep Boss wanted to eat it.