Chapter 811: Can Eggs Be Traded?

Xia Qing parked her beloved car at the edge of the Number Fifty Mountain parking lot, which still hadn't been cleared after the bombing, and asked Xin Yu, her teammate for the day, "Do you want to take a walk around the valley? There aren't many people inside."

It was still early, so Xia Qing needed to first inspect two high-danger zones on Number Fifty Mountain.

Xin Yu, a magnetic-sense evolver who could perceive human kindness and malice, shook her head. "You go ahead, I'll wait in the car."

"Alright, I'll be quick."

Accompanied by Zhang He, Xia Qing first inspected the high-danger zones and the cleanup status of the areas where red harmful grass had spread due to malicious human dispersal of seeds. She also finalized the wrap-up arrangements for the red harmful grass planting project in the high-danger zones, then took a detour to reach the entrance of the hidden valley—a crack in the southeast face of the third peak's mid-slope.

Hu Ningsheng opened the stone door and warmly invited Xia Qing inside in a low voice.

Xia Qing handed the supplies she'd brought to Hu Ningsheng and asked, "The crab fry are all still alive, right?"

"All alive. The water in the pool is filtered, and the green algae and other feed were prepared according to the raising method Tang Dong provided. Zhang Wenshe's family did aquaculture before the catastrophe, so he knows how to raise crabs."

Zhang Wenshe was attacked by an evolved venomous centipede during a mission, and his right leg was poisoned and amputated, making him one of the severely wounded in Territory Fifteen. After arriving at Territory Fifteen, he began taking the antidote prepared by Zhang San, and his body was slowly improving.

When Yue Haiying retired and entered Territory Fifteen, he brought 19 severely wounded soldiers. Although he did everything he could to treat their illnesses and injuries, 12 of them died one after another.

The remaining seven, nourished by the valley's quality water and green-light vegetables, couldn't all be said to be improving, but they were all still alive.

Although during the catastrophe people had wailed that they didn't want to keep living and suffering, when it truly came to a life-or-death moment, everyone still fought desperately to survive.

Survival is human instinct, and "fighting desperately" involves both psychology and physiology. Even if a person subjectively doesn't want to keep living, when faced with a threat, the body will automatically take defensive actions—including increased adrenaline secretion, accelerated heartbeat, and so on. In other words, even when the mind has given up the will to live, the body will instinctively try to save itself.

Being able to receive care in such a safe and comfortable environment after being injured, the severely wounded of Territory Fifteen were already luckier than the vast majority of wounded in the safe zones.

Now five of the wounded were sitting or lying in the sunlit area by the spring; the two who hadn't come out were probably not in great shape.

As Xia Qing walked over, three of the wounded stood up to greet her, and the two in wheelchairs also raised a hand and called out "Sister Qing."

Xia Qing couldn't always remember all their names. She stopped to greet everyone before continuing on her way to feed her green-light peanuts some bugs.

The green-light and yellow-light peanuts planted in March had already begun flowering one after another. Green-light peanuts needed to eat plenty of bugs for the peanut pods to grow large and plump.

Zhang Shi, who lived at this end of the valley, wearing a white lab coat and glasses, walked over on her own initiative. At the same time, Zhang Shiyi squatted beside the wooden hut, watching Xia Qing intently. Xia Qing was all too familiar with this kind of positioning—it was the stance of the wolves tasked with defense in a wolf pack.

The moment Xia Qing attacked Zhang Shi, Zhang Shiyi, positioned at the flank, would immediately spring out to attack Xia Qing, protecting her mother. Five-year-old Zhang Shiyi had positioned herself as her mother's companion, not as a pup who constantly needed her mother's protection.

Zhang Shi came over to greet Xia Qing. "The attack method of this green-light peanut is very similar to that of the aggressively evolved harmful cassia seed."

Cassia seed is a medicinal herb; it grows in Valley Two of Zone Three on Number Forty-Nine Mountain, but those are all yellow-light or red-light, with no aggressively evolved harmful plants appearing, so Xia Qing didn't know this plant's attack method. Pretending she hadn't noticed Zhang Shiyi hiding there, she calmly replied, "The flowers and leaves of cassia seed look quite a bit like peanuts."

"Yes," Zhang Shi said with a gentle smile and sincere eyes. "When I first discovered cassia seed, I thought I'd found peanuts and was happy for several days. Once these peanuts are mature, may I trade for a few jin? Yellow-light or green-light both work."

Zhang Shi had traded precious medicinal herbs with Zhang San for over 200,000 points in credit cards, used to purchase daily supplies and food.

Xia Qing nodded. "Under twenty jin of yellow-light, under five jin of green-light, at market price."

"Then I'll take 20 jin of yellow-light peanuts and 5 jin of green-light peanuts. Thank you." Zhang Shi then asked, "Can I buy the eggs your territory's chickens lay?"

"I raise green-light chickens, and they lay hatching eggs. The price is higher than green-light eggs in the safe zone—750 points each." It was precisely because hatching eggs were so expensive that since Xia Qing started raising chickens, only Li Si and Tang Huai had traded with her; other lords couldn't bear to spend that many points on a single egg.

Her idol was the exception, because he also had hatching eggs, and he and Xia Qing traded one-for-one.

Also, because the quality of Territory Three's eggs was too high to be traded externally, the eggs she'd traded to Tang Huai and Li Si at the time were also ones Xia Qing had first traded with Territory Seven for eggs, then taken out to trade.

It really was too expensive.

No noise could be made in the valley, so no live animals could be raised. So after Zhang Shi entered the hidden valley, she traded the eight green-light wild chickens she'd been raising in the town ruins to Professor Fu Tianfeng, that is, Zhang San, planning to move into the valley and trade with Xia Qing for eggs. She hadn't expected the green-light eggs in Xia Qing's territory to be so expensive, let alone hatching eggs.

Zhang Shi asked, "Can I raise a few wild chickens or that kind of chicken from your territory in the valley? I guarantee they won't make any noise."

Xia Qing nodded. "Sure."

"Thank you." Zhang Shi had lived with her daughter in the evolved forest for many years and had unique experience in raising animals without being discovered and caught by humans or beasts of prey.

After Xia Qing left, Zhang Shiyi walked over and gazed at her mother with those expressive eyes of hers.

Zhang Shi rubbed her daughter's soft short hair. "Eggs are too expensive. Shall we trade for a few chickens to raise?"

Trade? Zhang Shiyi was a little confused—why not just catch them in the evolved forest? Trading cost points, and would also expose their hiding place.

Zhang Shi read her daughter's meaning and gently explained, "The environment here is different. Outside there are leopards and wolves—it's very dangerous."

Zhang Shi had previously lived with her daughter in the ruins outside the safe zone, where there were few large animals. The wolves and leopards here were very formidable; even with their muzzle-loading guns, the two of them were no match for these large beasts of prey.

Although they were recovery-type evolvers and wouldn't be in life-threatening danger even when injured, the recovery process still consumed bodily energy.

Zhang Shiyi nodded and looked over at the wounded sunbathing on the other side of the valley.

Zhang Shi patted her daughter's little head. "Go sunbathe with Uncle Ye and the others for a while. You need to get vitamin D to grow stronger."

Zhang Shiyi shook her head, pulled her mother to stay on this side of the valley where the sun reached, and took out a book from her little bag to read. These books were ones her older brothers and sisters had used before; the children's clothes in the pictures were very clean and pretty, and Zhang Shiyi liked them very much.

While this mother and daughter were discussing raising chickens, Xia Qing was squatting beside a burrow hidden in the bushes on the east side of Number Fifty Mountain's mid-slope, quietly observing a family of yellow weasels she hadn't seen in a long time.