Chapter 779: Hurry Up and Sharpen the Knives

The tiller had already driven off, but the off-road vehicle was still inside Territory Nine.

Tang Huai followed Xia Qing out of the rundown house and was about to open the passenger door when Xia Qing suggested, "Sit in the back."

"Okay." Tang Huai was very obedient. He climbed into the back seat, stared at the unusually special passenger seat, and immediately understood what was going on. "This is… reserved for Boss Sheep?"

Xia Qing gave an acknowledging sound, fastened her seatbelt, and set off.

Tang Huai's eyes grew wider and wider. "The passenger seat in the tiller is also Boss Sheep's? That guy has a strong sense of territory, and its nose is pretty useful too, right? How could you not tell me something this important earlier?"

Xia Qing explained, "There are only two seats in the tiller."

If you don't sit in the passenger seat, where would you sit? Squat in the spot behind the driver's seat where the baskets and oil drums are placed, or sit on the toolbox mounted on the right side cover of the driver's seat?

"…Fair point. Good thing you had Chen Zheng and Chen Cheng drive the tiller back. They sat in the passenger seat too, otherwise Boss Sheep would have held a grudge against me."

Xia Qing didn't say anything, but she knew Chen Cheng would definitely be squatting in the back. The members of Beard Edge's squad all avoided provoking the stubborn, strong Boss Sheep, never touching its things, and not even going under the big toon tree.

But Tang Huai sitting in the tiller's passenger seat wasn't a big deal. Xia Qing still had several new seats for Boss Sheep in her warehouse. She'd find time to swap one out after getting back.

The off-road vehicle stopped under the north signpost of Territory Two. After Tang Huai returned to his territory, Xia Qing turned the steering wheel and entered Territory Three.

Hearing her beloved vehicle return, Boss Sheep immediately ran out from home. Although Xia Qing was in a hurry, she still stopped the car and opened the door to let Boss Sheep in. "Boss, the bamboo we planted has undergone a second evolution. I need to go check it out."

"Baa." Boss Sheep, wearing a protective mask, lay down on its dedicated seat and responded in a good mood.

When Xia Qing parked the car by the West Buffer Forest, Guan Tong was already waiting nearby. "Sister Qing, we just cut the bamboo an hour ago, and now another twenty-plus stalks have sprouted again. The fastest one is already over a meter tall. This growth is really fierce."

Blue Star truly has no limit to madness—only ever more madness.

Xia Qing brought Boss Sheep and followed Guan Tong to see the crazy bamboo.

When they were still fifteen meters from the bamboo, Xia Qing could already feel the evolved bamboo's even stronger and fiercer magnetic field attack, confirming it had undergone a second evolution.

After the second evolution, the hardened evolved bamboo not only had its leaves turn red, but the growth speed of its roots had also accelerated. Xia Qing looked down at the muddy ground in front of her. Less than twenty centimeters below here, a bamboo root was hidden. The nearest magnetic field fluctuation Xia Qing felt came from right here.

"Baa—" Boss Sheep called out uneasily.

"I know, there's danger ahead, we won't get close." Xia Qing tightened the strap of Boss Sheep's protective mask, took out a steel ball, and shot it at the nearly two-meter-tall red-leaf bamboo.

"Thud."

The newly grown bamboo wasn't hard enough yet, and the steel ball got stuck in the stalk. The bamboo root in the soil launched another attack, not only lifting the several-dozen-jin stone slab placed near the bamboo, but also pushing up bamboo root needles in the ground less than a meter in front of Xia Qing.

"Holy crap!" Guan Tong exclaimed. "The bamboo root has grown longer again, and the rootlets are stronger!"

Xia Qing's voice remained calm, but her eyes also lit up. "The bamboo's hardness has increased too. Cutting bamboo will be harder than just now."

"Hard work doesn't matter, as long as it's useful." Guan Tong was excited too. "There's still over forty hours before the Calamity Rain ends. At this rate, we can cut at least five more batches of bamboo stalks."

The first batch yielded twenty-eight bamboo stalks; this batch squeezed out thirty-five, and the bamboo rhizomes have also lengthened. The next batch will very likely produce over forty stalks. If we harvest five batches, there'll be at least two hundred stalks!

During years of natural disaster, to ensure crops aren't affected by Calamity Rain and evolved pests and diseases, greenhouses must be built.

Building one greenhouse requires 117 arched supports and one main beam plus four secondary beams—five beams in total—to secure the arched supports. All of these need to be made from bamboo, because bamboo has suitable elasticity and hardness, and is lightweight. The center posts and side posts inside the greenhouse that support the arched supports and the main and secondary beams can be made from hardwoods like beech or maple.

Besides these, insect nets, rainproof cloth, film-pressing lines, and snap springs are also needed—consumables that must be purchased. Of course, the greenhouse frame can also be built directly with steel, but such greenhouses are too expensive for lords to afford.

Therefore, besides busy with farm work, lords are busy preparing timber for building greenhouses. If they can't find good timber, the greenhouses they build won't be sturdy enough and will only last a year or two.

This is the lords' second year in the territories, and many territories are looking for timber to replace the supports or posts on last year's greenhouses that have already broken.

Although Guan Tong isn't a lord, listening to lords chat about these things on the channel every day has given him a sense of urgency too. When out on missions and seeing trees as thick as an arm or a leg, his first reaction is: this tree can be cut down and used as a post.

So, seeing the hardened evolved bamboo with accelerated growth after its second evolution, he got so excited. "Sister Qing, how many stalks of this bamboo are enough to build one shed?"

Xia Qing accurately reported the numbers. "If this kind of bamboo is cut when it grows to about 18 meters, the bamboo's diameter will be around 20 centimeters, and you can split out at least 15 bamboo strips 4 centimeters wide. One bamboo strip can make one arched support. Using this bamboo for the greenhouse's supports, main beams, and secondary beams, 11 stalks are enough. 15 greenhouses need 165 stalks; the extras can be used as posts."

Guan Tong got even more excited after hearing this. "Sister Qing, shall we go back and sharpen our knives?"

Xia Qing was of course even more excited than Guan Tong. "You go sharpen the knives first. I'll fertilize the bamboo."

Even after its second evolution, red-leaf bamboo is still a plant. To make red-leaf bamboo grow quickly, Calamity elements, water, and nutrients are all indispensable.

Xia Qing drove home, carried eight bags of manure and nine bags of green fertilizer out of the rack-building warehouse, hauled them by car to the foot of the buffer forest, then carried the fertilizer up the slope together with Boss Sheep to fertilize the green-light bamboo.

The growing space Xia Qing cleared for the red-leaf bamboo in the West Buffer Forest is 4.5 mu. The nutrients provided by seventeen bags of fertilizer are estimated to only be enough for one batch of red-leaf bamboo growth.

No worries—after cutting this batch, keep fertilizing!

After Tang Zhengrong fell and Jiang Yansheng, who had snatched Sun Zhe's business, and his uncle—Territory Management Department head Jiang Quan—were arrested together, Lord No. 48 Sun Zhe's worm castings business picked up again. Xia Qing has dozens of bags of worm castings stored in her warehouse, and combined with the manure she ferments from wild boar droppings, it's enough for the red-leaf bamboo to use.

Of course, Xia Qing can't bear to use green-light manure on the red-leaf bamboo. After using up the worm castings and wild boar droppings, she can exchange with other lords for their stored manure. After the compost bacterial powder produced by Territory Eight hit the market, fertilizer prices dropped.

So Xia Qing doesn't feel the slightest heartache using fertilizer to feed the red-leaf bamboo. Because what she lacks now isn't fertilizer, but quality building materials.

Scattering 17 bags of fertilizer in the rain across 4.5 mu of hillside is only a ten-minute job for Xia Qing, a Level Six strength evolver who's thoroughly familiar with farm work.

After spreading the fertilizer, she and Boss Sheep stood in the rain at the edge of the bamboo field, excitedly watching the rapidly growing red-leaf bamboo, as if they were seeing sturdy greenhouses made of steel and iron bones.

With greenhouses built from bamboo of this hardness, even if the gale in the next Calamity Rain surges two more levels above this one, she won't be afraid!

Listening to the scraping sound of knife-sharpening, and watching through the camera the person and sheep standing side by side under an umbrella at the edge of the hillside bamboo field, Hu Zi Feng also felt his blood boiling.