Chapter 741: Rolling Up

The chicks, just over a month old, have already shed their down, grown tail feathers and combs, and can now be sexed by their outward features.

Of the 92 chicks Xia Qing hatched from 180 eggs, 33 roosters and 36 hens remain—69 in all.

The chicks now are the same size as the ones Xia Qing traded back from Territory Seven last spring. Over a month old, the chickens have stronger resistance and won't be trampled or sickened to death so easily.

But Xia Qing still worried something might go wrong, that she wouldn't have enough to deliver the 50 chickens she'd promised her idol last year. So, when she spotted another hen going broody two days ago, she gave her 20 eggs as well and let her keep hatching.

Of course, when choosing eggs, Xia Qing still preferred those laid by the advanced-evolution Bai Yu hens. Advanced-evolution chickens had higher resistance and a better survival rate.

Previously, when selecting hatching eggs, Xia Qing had also preferred eggs from Bai Yu hens, but she still didn't know which of the 69 surviving chicks were their offspring.

A chick's feather color depends not only on genetics but also on light, altitude, and diet. In other words, those white chicks were very likely Bai Yu hens' offspring, but they could also be the offspring of the Luhua chickens.

So, to truly confirm how many advanced-evolution chickens were in this batch, their Qiang and Yi two-element content had to be tested. Those with Qiang below 5‰ and Yi above 5? were advanced-evolution chickens.

There was no rush—she could wait until next month when she gave this batch their final vaccination to test and confirm. If three or four of these chicks turned out to be advanced-evolution pullets, she could eat only eggs laid by advanced-evolution chickens from then on.

Xia Qing happily mixed up chick feed with green-lamp vegetable leaves, wheat bran, mealworms, and pollution-free spring water, then put out fresh water. Seeing the chicks peck normally with none of them wilting or refusing to eat, she went off to feed the rabbits.

Reaching the rabbit hutch, Xia Qing froze. Her rare breedable, optimizable little rabbit was already dead, lying stiff inside the hutch, while the only remaining baby rabbit huddled motionless in a corner.

Xia Qing's heart ached terribly. She immediately opened the wire mesh on the hutch, pulled both baby rabbits out, and checked them over. Confirming there were no external injuries and no blood-sucking parasites, a rather grim guess formed in her head.

Xia Qing took the dead baby rabbit straight to Territory Seven. After Zhang Song performed a "necropsy," he confirmed the rabbit had indeed been scared to death.

Scared by whom?

Nine times out of ten, it was the evolution wolf that had been clinging to the hutch peering inside last night! Because when Xia Qing fed the rabbits that evening, both little ones had still been perfectly fine.

After giving the surviving baby rabbit the medicine Zhang Song prescribed, Xia Qing sent it to Territory Four and asked Mother Zhao to keep raising it. Because tonight not only Broken-Waist Wolf but also Handsome Giant Wolf might come, and the last remaining baby rabbit could be scared to death.

This morning was class time, so it was Zhao Ze who came over to pick up the rabbit.

Seeing the baby rabbit looking listless, Zhao Ze didn't chat much with Xia Qing either, hurrying the little fellow back to the territory and putting it together with the two big rabbits.

The number of students Mother Zhao teaches has grown from one to three; the two new students are Jiang Ying and Zhu Li.

Though nineteen-year-old Jiang Ying could recognize common characters, she couldn't write many, and her arithmetic was poor. The year the catastrophe began, she was only in second grade of primary school. After Hui-3 Safe Zone built a primary school, neither she nor Jiang Hu went back to continue their studies, because the points Mother Jiang earned alone couldn't cover the living expenses of a family of three, let alone buy the stationery and books they would have needed for school.

After arriving at the territory, Jiang Ying never threw a fit about wanting to go back to the safe zone just because the work was hard. Every day she either worked alongside Yue Haiying and the others or reclaimed the patch of wasteland assigned to her.

Seeing she was sincere about staying, Tan Junjie asked whether she wanted to go to Territory Four with Tan Qi to study. That way Jiang Ying could improve her literacy, and his ten-year-old daughter would have a companion.

Jiang Ying agreed without hesitation, declined Tan Junjie's kind offer to pay her tuition, paid it herself, and asked Zhong Tao and Zheng Kui to help her buy books, paper, and pens. Then she happily went off to class with Tan Qi.

Seeing nineteen-year-old Jiang Ying go study, Zhu Li also decided to go along with the two of them. When the catastrophe began, Zhu Li hadn't even finished primary school, so she needed to study too.

Zhu Li's continuing education wasn't only about literacy and arithmetic—her goals were far more ambitious.

Their territory was developing better and better, and the Lord Alliance was growing stronger too. Once the Lord Alliance grew large enough, there would surely be more positions than just Chairman, Secretary, and Minister of Commerce. Zhu Li was determined to study hard so that when the Lord Alliance added new positions, she'd have the confidence to compete with Zhao Ze, Shi Du, Tang Heng, and the people from Territory Fifteen.

Kuang Qingwei of course supported his wife's decision. Besides the necessary books, paper, and pens, he planned to buy her a second-hand laptop once they had the money, so she could self-study more knowledge at home.

To combat illiteracy, over the years Hua Country had produced many online courses, covering not only primary and secondary school but also various university and professional-skill courses.

After self-studying, citizens could take unified tests to obtain the corresponding diplomas, and use those diplomas to compete for publicly recruited positions in the safe zones.

So now, even though Tan Qi had left the safe zone and no longer attended primary school in person, she could still sit for the school's exams at the end of the term. As long as she passed every subject, she could move up to the next grade.

With only a primary school diploma, Zhu Li—who had just started seventh grade the year the catastrophe began—was planning to take the junior high graduation exam next June, so she had to study hard.

Sometimes Zhu Li, Jiang Ying, and Tan Qi would ask Mother Zhao about Chinese and math on the Lord Channel, and other lords would listen attentively while working.

Upon learning Zhu Li was going for the junior high graduation certificate, Mother Shi also had her son Shi Du study along with them and take the exam too.

Hearing that the young people in the territory had all started studying, Lord Huo Lei's sense of urgency flared up again. He called his son Watching Huo Zhun and, cursing and nagging, told him to get serious about studying—otherwise, in another year, he'd be the only young person in the territory without a nine-year compulsory education diploma!

Being told both to work hard and to show his face at Territory Three from time to time, Watching Huo Zhun told his old man with perfect sincerity, "Dad, the least important thing about joining Sister Qing's squad is a diploma."

None of the squad's core members—Head Wolf, Broken-Waist Wolf, Handsome Giant Wolf, and the farting yellow weasel—had a diploma.

The result, of course, was his old man cursing him until his ears buzzed: "The squad doesn't need a diploma, farming doesn't need a diploma—then why are Shi Du and Zhu Li studying and taking exams? Is everyone else a damn fool, and only you good-for-nothing is the smart one? Xia Qing's only two years older than you, but she opens her mouth and it's this ratio, that composition—she talks like she knows her stuff. If you useless lump don't get your act together, you won't even know what people are saying, so how are you supposed to hang around with them…"

Xia Qing of course didn't know about the Huo father-and-son exchange. If she had heard it, she would surely have told Watching Huo Zhun: wolves may not take diploma exams, but they too are seizing every moment to study. If he were to take the multiple-choice tests on medical and evolution knowledge with Broken-Waist Wolf right now, Broken-Waist Wolf would probably score higher than him.