Chapter 80: Preparing Fish Jerky for the Cat Companion

Beard Feng went all out, "Of course it sprouted, that's why I have the nerve to scold you. If your Territory Two hadn't raised hundreds of evolved rats, my potato seedlings wouldn't have been gnawed by them!"

Detecting a yellow-light snake, Xia Qing pressed the walkie-talkie button in a wonderful mood. "Eighty-six evolved rats entered Territory Three from Territory Two, bit through a solar panel and wiring. To clear the evolved rats, I hired help for seven hundred points and used up a hundred and fifty bullets. Territory Two must compensate me for my losses."

Beard Feng immediately followed up, "You'll have to compensate me for the losses in my territory too. If you don't, I'll report you to the Safe Zone Administrative Hall!"

Tang Huai ignored Beard Feng and angrily asked Xia Qing, "Eighty-six rats—how could you have used a hundred and fifty bullets?"

Xia Qing pressed the button, "Bad aim."

Tang Huai, who had two people in his territory killed by evolved rats and had himself taken three lashes, cursed, turned off the walkie-talkie, and grimaced as he tried to climb out of bed.

Tang Heng, who had brought in water, hurried forward to support him. "Brother, do you need to pee?"

"No." Tang Huai pushed his brother's arm away and climbed up, gnashing his teeth. "I'm going to dig out those rats!"

Tang Heng advised in a low voice, "Brother, Captain Xu hasn't left yet."

Tang Huai cursed angrily, "Whether he leaves or not is none of my damn business! If he hadn't come to my territory to release rats, would I be hurt like this?"

"Brother, this territory belongs to the Young Lady."

Tang Huai...

In Territory Four, Zhao Ze walked out of his house leaning on a crutch and arranged for people to go cut vegetables and trade for medicine.

In Territory Six, Kuang Qingwei, who was lying down eating elm-leaf cakes, listened to his young and pretty wife scoff at Xia Qing for being a big fool.

In Territory Five, Qi Fu, with one arm splinted and slung around his neck, spoke with feeling. "Back in the construction team, Xia Qing was already a tough one. No matter how tiring the work or how heavy the injury, she never made a sound and just bore it. Now that she's left the Safe Zone to work for herself, she's even tougher."

Qi Fu's wife Yuan Yan guessed, "Has Xia Qing's endurance also doubled through evolution?"

"No." Qi Fu said with certainty, "When she was in the construction team, she sweated bucket after bucket, her arms and legs were all trembling."

Yuan Yan was stunned for a moment. "For a woman to do what she's done, it's really not easy, and it's admirable."

After the great biological evolution of Blue Star, any single woman who doesn't rely on a man to provide for her and lives respectably through the tenth year of the catastrophe is worthy of respect.

"How many of those who've survived to now have had it easy?" Qi Fu finished his last puff of evolved tobacco and stood up. "Let's go, we're heading to the fields to prop up every seedling that fell over that can be propped up."

Xia Qing turned off the walkie-talkie, chopped the red-light snake into segments, threw them into the water to feed the fish, packed two edible snakes into a bag to bring along, then pulled up qi grass all the way while going to check on the qi-evolved cotton transplanted to the field outside the shed.

These cotton plants had all grown over two meters tall, and the flower buds sprouting among the dense branches and leaves made one's eyes burn with envy.

Xia Qing poked them with a stick, confirmed the cotton hadn't evolved any attack ability, and decided to keep them around for observation a while longer.

The Complete Guide to Planting says that after cotton undergoes qi-evolution, there's still a ten percent chance it will bloom and grow cotton. What Xia Qing was keeping these cotton plants for was betting on that ten percent possibility.

After getting home, Xia Qing stuffed the newly caught edible snakes into the wooden snake-raising box, then stuffed the insects she'd caught in to feed the snakes. Inside, there were already over a dozen edible snakes, big and small.

To maintain physical health and promote bodily evolution, whether in the past or now, Xia Qing always ensured the best diet within her ability. With snake meat and bamboo rat meat on hand, of course she had to balance meat and vegetables in her meals.

Telling Zhong Tao in the past that she didn't eat snake meat? That was just to avoid the back-and-forth polite pushing over a single snake with him.

After breakfast, Xia Qing began clearing the qi grass in the yard.

Qi grass has a very well-developed root system. When you pull up the grass, the roots bring up a large clump of soil. When you shake off the soil, any broken qi-grass roots left in the soil will sprout into another qi grass when they encounter qi rain. So not only does the qi grass need to be burned, the soil containing qi-grass roots also has to be burned.

Although her body was still aching, Xia Qing quickly pulled up the qi grass in the yard and laid it out to dry on a bamboo rack, then opened the garage door, drove out the micro-tiller, and hitched on the cylindrical stone roller.

The next step was to level the pitted and bumpy yard left after pulling the grass.

Ram Boss sat in the passenger seat, Xia Qing drove, and the two of them—one person, one ram—used the micro-tiller to pull the several-hundred-jin stone roller, pressing the yard flat and firm. Afterward, Xia Qing drove the micro-tiller back into the shed.

After leveling the yard, Xia Qing went to the living room in the middle of the second floor of the small building, sat in a bamboo chair, brewed a cup of hot tea and drank it, then hummed a little tune while sitting by the floor-to-ceiling window, picking out spinach seeds one by one.

Spinach seeds are about the size of mung beans, but they're not round—instead they're flat on both sides with one end pointed, and the shell is extremely hard. The reason spinach seedlings can fire seeds like bullets, unleashing tremendous attack power, is precisely because of this seed hardness. If she hadn't been wearing a high-quality protective suit, she would certainly have been riddled with holes.

How could a weak little spinach seedling possess such tremendous explosive force? Because this is Blue Star after the great biological evolution—anything bizarre is possible.

The green-light spinach's ability to stubbornly survive into the tenth year of the catastrophe should rely precisely on its tremendous explosive force and the hardness of its seed shells.

Picking spinach seeds out of dry soil mixed with small clods and stones is meticulous work, but for the very patient Xia Qing, picking spinach seeds is relaxation and rest.

After spending over two hours picking all the spinach seeds out of the mixed soil, Xia Qing harvested a total of two thousand eight hundred and thirty spinach seeds.

There were fifty-two green-light spinach plants in the terraced field, of which fourteen were male plants that only bloomed male flowers, and thirty-eight were female plants that bloomed and set seed. Xia Qing had counted before—each female plant bore between eighty and a hundred and twenty seeds, meaning she should have harvested three thousand to four thousand five hundred spinach seeds. The remaining thousand-plus seeds had either been shattered by hitting hard objects during the great spinach seed explosion, or might still be hidden in the soil or elsewhere.

Going to look for them, she should still be able to recover some.

After soaking the spinach seeds in uncontaminated spring water for over an hour, Xia Qing fished them out and laid them in the sun to dry, eliminating the effects of being soaked in qi rain.

After sweeping the floor clean, Xia Qing stared at the spotlessly clean balcony full of spinach seeds in a daze. It took a full two minutes before she remembered she had also killed two big fish in the qi rain.

Taking out the sealed bag and testing it, she found both fish were red-light. Xia Qing directly washed them clean, sliced them, and dried them, saving them for her second companion—the little nursing kitten.

At noon, when the patrol team passed by on their rounds, Xia Qing used a stick to skewer the still-vibrant qi-evolved sticky pumpkin vines and the qi-evolved potato vines that bloomed and released toxic gas, handed them over, asked them to pass them to Zhang San, and traded with Zhang San for a hundred large sealed bags in return.

Xia Qing consulted Tan Junjie, "Captain Tan, this batch of potato seeds not only has redder leaves and slower growth, but also a higher probability of aggressive qi-evolution. Please report this to the base."

Tan Junjie nodded, "We've already reported it. Your injuries really aren't serious?"

"I've used medicine, I can still hold on." Xia Qing inquired, "Captain Tan, how many casualties did the aggressive qi-evolution of the potatoes cause?"