Chapter 911: Harvesting the Sunflowers

"If this were before the Calamity, one sprayer of herbicide would keep the ground clear for half a year — not a single blade of grass would grow." Zhao Ze, weeding inside Territory No. 4, complained in the lord channel and called out Yue Haiying, "Brother Yue, you there?"

Yue Haiying, weeding single-handed with a hoe inside Territory No. 15, straightened his back and pressed the button. "Here."

"Brother Yue, did you check yesterday and find out the price of the myoelectric prosthetics?" Zhao Ze's mother was also missing an arm, so he was especially concerned about this prosthetic benefit the Hui San Hospital was offering to veterans.

The lords who were working all pricked up their ears and listened carefully.

Yue Haiying answered, "This batch of prosthetics comes in two types. One is made of a new material that better captures the faint electrical signals produced when the muscles of the residual limb contract, making the prosthetic more agile. This kind is priced by the weight of the new material used; for my situation, the full price is 450,000 credits. The other kind is made from traditional carbon fiber and titanium alloy, with relatively poorer agility; the full price is 280,000 credits."

"Then for my mom, the new-material prosthetic would cost over 500,000, and the carbon-fiber one over 300,000. At least I finally have something to work toward — thanks, Brother Yue." Yue Haiying still had his right elbow, but Zhao's mother was missing most of her left arm, so she would need more prosthetic material than Yue Haiying.

Over 300,000 credits is an astronomical sum for an ordinary person, but with the Hidden Valley, X-2, and Red-Leaf Bamboo, Zhao Ze felt that if he tightened his belt and worked hard for five or six years, he could get his mom fitted with a prosthetic. Having something to strive for, Zhao Ze worked with even more vigor.

Qi Fu asked, "Lao Kuang, can you get your hands on this batch of Scar-Clear? How many credits per tube?"

Yuan Yan had spent most of yesterday squeezing into the Hui San Pharmaceutical Factory and still hadn't drawn a chance to buy the medicine at the original price.

Kuang Qingwei replied, "Someone in the Safe Zone who drew a number is quoting 5,800 credits per tube. Brother Qi, should we wait a bit longer? I heard the pharmaceutical factory is preparing to expand production, so next month it'll definitely be cheaper than now."

Although everyone was in the same alliance as Hui San Pharmaceutical Factory's chairman Zhou Zhaoping and chief researcher Zhang San, no one would contact them to get the medicine cheaply through their channels. Because one of the six basic agreements of the Territory Alliance is that any mutual help and material exchanges between members must be settled at market price.

Having left the army and finished his exams, Huo Zhun had completely let himself loose. "That price really is absurdly expensive. Brother Yue, Dazi, when the farming's slack, how about we team up and be Calamity-era gold prospectors for once, heading to the Ruins Continent to pan for gold? If luck's on our side, we won't have to worry for the rest of our lives."

Yue Haiying was perfectly calm. "If luck's not on our side, there won't be a rest of our lives."

Everyone…

Tang Huai laughed heartily. "Brother Yue's in a good mood after being fitted for the prosthetic — he's even cracking jokes. Brother Huo, count me in when you go gold-prospecting. Sister Qing, coming along?"

Xia Qing, who was working, never joined in this kind of discussion. Hu Zifeng came online. "Going to the Ruins Continent means wearing titanium-alloy shoes, because the rocks over there are way harder than ours."

On his last mission, a stone had stubbed his toe — a lifelong shame for Tang Huai. He instantly flew into a rage. "Madman, get out here, you bastard!"

Hearing the two of them start arguing again, Xia Qing simply turned off the walkie-talkie and focused on harvesting the sunflowers.

A while back, Xia Qing had harvested over twenty early-ripening sunflowers. Today, she was going to harvest all the half-acre of Yellow-Lamp sunflowers in Greenhouse No. 6 and the sunflowers on a terraced plot in Gao Po's Breeding Greenhouse No. 1.

After the sunflower heads are cut off, they need to be dried in the sun. Bringing them home to dry would require someone or some wolf to stand guard, so Xia Qing chose to dry them inside the greenhouse.

Her right hand gripped the sunflower head; the black blade in her left hand first cut through the stem beneath the head, then cut off another dozen or so centimeters of the still-standing sunflower stalk, and finally inserted the cut sunflower head onto the hollow sunflower stalk standing about a meter tall.

This drying method was something Xia Qing had learned from the planting books she had collected.

Standing in the sunflower field, her right hand gripped the head, her left hand flashed twice with the blade, and her right hand slotted the head back in place. In less than a second, the sunflower head that had just been growing on the plant was now slotted onto the stalk, head-up, drying in the sun. Two more flashes of the blade and a slot-in, another head harvested — Xia Qing grew smoother and smoother as she worked.

Cutting from this end of the ridge to that, the sunflower heads — large and small — that had just been hanging low were now neatly slotted onto their stalks, taking the full brunt of the sun. Xia Qing glanced back and felt an inexplicable sense of satisfaction.

If the weather held, drying like this for six or seven days would evaporate most of the moisture from the heads, and the sunflower seeds could be threshed out.

Although Xia Qing was the only human bustling about in the greenhouse, she had no shortage of animal helpers.

Sheep Boss, having been given permission, was gnawing on the leaves of the sunflower plants; Little Feimao hopped from one head to another, and whenever it found a quality seed, it pried it out and carried it back to Xia Qing's coat pocket; Wolf Lao Er followed behind Xia Qing, carrying the dozen-or-so-centimeter lengths of sunflower stalk she had cut into a basket in its mouth.

The jobs of Wolf Lao Er and Little Feimao were taken on by the two of them on their own initiative — they liked doing this work.

Does Daigua the monkey?

Broken-Waist Wolf had thrown it back into Wolf Valley, but wouldn't allow it to stay in the wolf den. When Xia Qing went to Wolf Valley in the morning to feed it medicine, she found it hiding in a patch of poisonous, thorny shrubs.

After feeding it the medicine, even though Does Daigua the monkey kept calling out "ah-ah," Xia Qing didn't look back. Because damn it, the sweet potato Does Daigua the monkey had secretly dug up had a qiang element content of only 3.6‰ — it had destroyed a cultivable optimized strain in Xia Qing's field!

When Tang Huai and Hu Zifeng finally finished arguing, Wen Nengjie hurriedly seized the chance to come online and make his presence felt. "Sister Qing, are there a lot of weeds in your field? Do you need help?"

Xia Qing naturally didn't respond — she was in the middle of testing and recording the detailed data for this batch of sunflowers. Wen Nengjie assumed Xia Qing was weeding because that's what she herself had said; Xia Qing hadn't told her allies that she was growing sunflowers in her territory.

Because the sunflower seeds distributed by the Territory Management Department last year had a 2% probability of undergoing aggressive qiang-evolution during qiang rain. Once aggressive qiang-evolution occurred, the sunflower head would grow rapidly, force-ripen its seeds, and then shoot the seeds out at high speed like a machine gun.

The kinetic energy produced by an aggressively qiang-evolved sunflower shooting its seeds was far greater than the explosive kinetic energy of X-2 spinach seeds when they ripened.

When X-2 was nearing maturity, a thickened transparent protective film could be used to catch the ejected seeds; but intercepting the seeds ejected by aggressive sunflowers required iron plates or thickened wooden boards — otherwise the greenhouse's wooden support frames and rainproof cloth would be smashed to bits by the high-speed sunflower seeds, and people could even be injured.

During last year's third qiang rain, a worker inside Territory No. 6 was injured by sunflower bullets because his clothing was non-compliant, and died.

Because the lords had all been terrified by the machine-gun-firing sunflowers and the wildly dancing potato vines, no one besides Xia Qing grew these two high-risk crops in their territories.

Although Yuan Yan of Territory No. 5 possessed magnetic-sense evolution ability and could clear aggressively qiang-evolved plants in advance, the couple feared that exposing their ability would bring trouble upon them, so like everyone else, they only planted a small patch of sunflowers and potatoes inside the Hidden Valley.

Because the valley was protected by Yi Stones during qiang rain, these two plants couldn't come into contact with excess qiang elements and wouldn't undergo aggressive qiang-evolution.