Chapter 873: The Intermediate Sniper of the Territory Alliance

"Attention all lords, attention all lords: the supply patrol vehicle will enter the Northern District One territory through the south gate in half an hour. Lords who have reserved seeds and rice seedlings, please prepare your grain in advance."

The voice of the duty officer on the investigation team came through the loudspeaker, spreading across the entire Northern District One territory.

After Tang Zhengrong stepped down, Hui-Three Base cut a lot of its formalism and vanity-project policies. For instance, this year they no longer called all the lords back to the safe zone to hold an on-site agricultural products trade fair like they did last year. But the benefits owed to the lords were not reduced by a single item.

This year's Xia Bo, besides exchanging supplies with each other through the patrol vehicle, lords can also use grain to exchange for high-quality crop seeds from the safe zone's planting center, including SY-2 green-light and yellow-light corn seeds, H-12 yellow-light rice seedlings, J-2 yellow-light rice seedlings, as well as yellow-light seeds for common vegetables like sunflowers, radishes, cabbage, celery, and oil-wheat lettuce.

The high-quality green-light seed SY-2 newly cultivated by the Hui-Three Research Institute is the premium grain seed everyone is scrambling to buy this year. Because the total quantity is limited, each territory is restricted to two jin per purchase; it can be bought with points or exchanged for eight jin of yellow-light wheat.

"Right. The J-2 rice seedling is a new variety with better quality and a lower mutation rate than the H-12 rice seedling, so the exchange price is a bit higher." At the south side of Territory Four, Zheng Kui earnestly answered Zhao Mother's question.

Zhao Mother nodded and began to call out the quantities, "I want 500 stalks of J-2, 500 stalks of H-2, 2 jin of green-light SY-2, and 40 jin of yellow-light SY-2."

Zhao Ze and a few workers handed over the sacks of grain they were carrying on their backs to Zhao Kui, and began weighing and exchanging.

"Territory Four is exchanging at the maximum limit across the board. That must have been approved by Teacher Wang; Zhao Ze doesn't have that kind of boldness." Listening to the trade happening a thousand meters away, Tang Huai, who was standing beside Xia Qing, chatted with her, "By the way, how many sheds has Territory Nine built so far?"

Xia Qing glanced at him. Tang Huai knew the progress of Territory Nine better than she did—what was there to ask about?

Tang Huai had originally wanted to use that question to make Xia Qing happy, then lead into the main topic. Since she stayed silent, Tang Huai went straight to the point, "When you're done, want to team up for a hunt? You, me, Brother Huo, Dazi, Zhu Li, Shi Du, Tan Qi—the seven of us have a reasonable mix of abilities, we could team up long-term. We should go out a few more times to build our coordination."

Tang Huai had a good eye. If he were swapped out for one or two of Yuan Yan, Qi Fu, and Yu Shou, that would be the team lineup Xia Qing had chosen. "You and Zhu Li have the same ability, so bringing one is enough."

Tang Huai immediately pulled a fist-sized little red booklet from his pocket and held it up in front of Xia Qing's protective mask, "Zhu Li and I have the same evolution ability, but our abilities aren't actually the same. I'm now a hearing-evolution sniper! Look!"

Based on accuracy, far-sight, endurance, agility, and judgment, snipers are divided into four classes: beginner, intermediate, advanced, and top. The one Tang Huai held was an intermediate sniper certificate issued by the Hui-Three Battle Team Alliance.

Xia Qing was very surprised. These past few months she had often heard gunshots inside Territory Two, but had never imagined it was Tang Huai practicing shooting, because the guy hadn't breathed a single word about it on the lord channel or in the alliance group.

Seeing a surprised expression on Xia Qing's Daigua face made Tang Huai burst with joy. After learning that Zhu Li had hearing evolution, Tang Huai immediately felt a sense of crisis and began secretly working hard, all for this very day.

"You're a strength-evolution sniper, I'm a hearing-evolution sniper. How about it, want to team up?"

Xia Qing nodded, "Sure."

Tang Huai jumped up happily, "You, me, Brother Huo all have black blades. It'd be great if Xin Yu could come too, but too bad she's not an evolver…"

Tang Huai kept chattering away until the supply patrol vehicle started up, then stopped with great reluctance, turned around, and went to get the grain for exchanging seeds.

When the patrol vehicle stopped in the passage between the Territory Three and Territory Four road signs, Xia Qing walked out, handed Zheng Kui, who had gotten off the vehicle, eight jin of yellow-light wheat to exchange for green-light corn seeds, and six jin of yellow-light wheat to exchange for the new variety of cabbage seeds. Xia Qing already had the other seeds and didn't need to exchange.

Zheng Kui took the seeds his partner handed over and passed them to Xia Qing, "This bag of SY-2 is what Sister Qing exchanged for. These three bags are your reward for assisting the investigation team during the second mutation rain. This is the corn seed."

After handing over the exchanged supplies to Xia Qing, Zheng Kui pulled another small bag of seeds from his pocket, "This is green-light lettuce seed, you can plant it all year round."

After handing over the seeds, without waiting for Xia Qing to ask what supplies he wanted to exchange, Zheng Kui said with a smile, "I'm quite fond of lettuce. If I can grow it, Sister Qing just let me eat it for free."

"Sure." Xia Qing handed over two packs of vegetables—one for Zheng Kui, one for Xu Juan.

Xu Juan had already been discharged from the hospital and started her job, moving into the staff dormitory of the safe zone inner-city hospital. She would begin work once her leg injury healed.

Because she had saved the chief physician Wang Xin of the inner-city hospital, the hospital treated her especially well, giving her a single room of a full six square meters, with water and electricity, plus a private bathroom. So Xu Juan could cook for herself in the dormitory, or eat at the hospital cafeteria.

Even Xia Qing envied those living conditions.

Although the inner city had a higher safety factor, there was still a possibility of robbery. So Xu Juan decided not to go out before recovering, and would just cook for herself in the dormitory.

She turned the sunny spot inside her dormitory into a two-square-meter little vegetable garden, specifically for planting X-2. For the grain and vegetables she needed in her daily diet, she exchanged points with Xia Qing, then asked Zheng Kui to deliver them to her dormitory. This way was both safe and nutritious.

After Xia Qing entered Territory Three, the little soldier in the rear carriage looked at Xia Qing's back, then glanced at Tang Huai, who was staring at him from the side, and didn't dare utter a single word of nonsense.

Xia Qing, who had turned past the wild-grass wall, raised her eyes and looked at the white clouds drifting over the peak of Hill Forty-Nine. Just now, the momentary change in Zheng Kui's expression when he said he liked eating lettuce allowed Xia Qing to guess that the one who liked eating lettuce wasn't him, but his deceased family member.

After his wife and newborn daughter died, Zheng Kui lost the will to live. It was a little better when he was with Zhong Tao before, but now he seemed to have already made his preparations, ready to rush toward death and reunite with his family at any moment, which was why he had no supply exchange needs at all.

Xia Qing's gaze moved down, landing on her own territory full of hope. After returning home, Xia Qing took Little Feimao out of her pocket and placed it on the eight jin of SY-2 green-light corn seeds spread flat on the second-floor balcony.

Little Feimao, landing on the pile of food, sniffed around, quickly selected one seed, picked it up, and hid it in the protective suit pocket Xia Qing had placed beside it.

Xia Qing went downstairs to make lunch. When she came back up, she found Little Feimao had already finished its work and was squatting on her protective suit, grooming its scabby fur.

When Xia Qing opened the refrigerator, Little Feimao immediately darted over, clambered up her trouser leg to her shoulder, and gazed longingly at the food inside the fridge.

Xia Qing took out the small bag containing Gao Yi element spinach seeds, pulled out one, and handed it to Little Feimao. The little fellow immediately caught it, stuffed it in its mouth, and ate it with a crunch crunch.

Xia Qing walked to the balcony, took out the over one hundred corn seeds Little Feimao had selected from the protective suit pocket, placed them separately in a small basin, and poured in pollution-free spring water to soak the seeds.

Through observations over the past few days, Xia Qing discovered that Little Feimao was extremely sensitive to Yi elements. It could pick out the seeds with the highest Yi element content from a pile of grain and carry them back to its own nest.

In professional terms, Little Feimao could, without damaging the seeds, screen out the cultivable optimized seeds mixed in among them.