Chapter 106: Harvest, Hustle, and the Squirrel’s Escape

While spreading out the pond mud from the first fish pond, Xia Qing noticed most of the mung bean pods in Territory Three had turned black. She quickly harvested all the mung beans and hauled them home, then pulled up the mung bean vines. A small portion she saved as sheep feed; half the rest she chopped up for fermenting into organic fertilizer, the other half she burned into plant ash.

After Xia Qing leveled out and irrigated the two acres of mung bean fields, the wheat was suddenly ripe as well. This evolved wheat only took thirteen or fourteen days from flowering to harvest—an astounding speed. According to Li Si, the expert, this was the result of artificial breeding, specifically to prevent evolved insects and birds from devouring the wheat at this vulnerable stage.

When the wind swept through the wheat, it turned into rolling waves of golden grain that whispered and rustled. Blended with birdsong, frog croaks, and burbling streams, the effect was enchanting. Xia Qing recorded a video on her phone. The sound in the video wasn’t nearly as beautiful as in person, but just listening and watching filled her with happiness and pride.

Xia Qing only had a little over 150 square meters of wheat—barely two ‘fen’, so for someone with strength evolver abilities, harvesting this was a breeze. In just over an hour, Xia Qing pulled up all the wheat, hauled it onto the sun-baked threshing ground, cut off the root ends, and spread the wheat stalks with heads attached flat across the yard. Boss Sheep rolled a heavy stone roller back and forth over them, threshing out the grain.

This was when the evolved birds went wild, flocks swooping down like dark clouds to snatch the grain. Xia Qing shot them down with bullets and steel balls—none of the birds made off with any food today.

Tang Huai, assigned to monitor communications, heard gunshots from Territory Three and immediately messaged the group: “Territory Three, Xia Qing, what’s going on? Did a dangerous evolved animal break in?”

Xia Qing calmly replied as she stuffed the dead birds into vacuum bags: “No, just clearing out birds pecking at the wheat.”

Tang Huai sounded puzzled. “Didn’t you cover your wheat fields with an insect net? How could birds even get in?”

“Insect nets are for insects,” Xia Qing replied, careful not to mention she’d moved the wheat outside the net.

Tang Huai almost cursed, but remembering his father was still in the chat, he forced himself to hold back. “You’re right.”

Zhao Ze grumbled too. “My insect net got pecked through—there wasn’t even much wheat left to steal, now it’s totally clean!”

Qi Fu chimed in with advice. “Now’s when you really need to throw a rainproof tarp over the whole thing and harvest fast. If the birds can’t see in, it’s way safer.”

After Boss Sheep had finished rolling every last grain from the heads, Xia Qing handed it a fresh flavor of compressed rations she’d traded with Zhong Tao, then let it rest nearby.

Next Xia Qing quickly pried apart the stalks with a big iron pitchfork and used a giant broom to sweep the wheat kernels into a pile, then winnowed the chaff away on the breeze. Only after she’d stuffed the harvested wheat into sacks did the flock of evolved birds finally scatter.

It took a little over half an hour to thresh, and Xia Qing ended up with two baskets of shot-down evolved birds and three bags of wheat—more than she’d expected, with over 300 jin in total. Grinning, she stacked all three sacks onto Boss Sheep’s back, sent it home to unload, then returned to gather up the wheat stalks and the bird carcasses.

Boss Sheep wasn’t interested in wheat chaff or stalks, so it all got turned into organic fertilizer, half burned and half fermented as usual.

Xia Qing had run out of the two sacks of high-efficiency compost starter she’d traded for from Li Si. Now, the only way to get more was by swapping a Yellowlight fish and four jin of sour bamboo shoot for a new batch, which Li Si was more than happy to do since he wanted the same snacks as his idol.

Of course, all of the sour bamboo shoots Xia Qing traded with Li Si and Zhang San had been fished out of Spring Water soup and soaked in distilled water for a while first. She guarded the territory’s biggest secret with her life.

With the wheat chaff and stalks finally cleaned up and the field irrigated, Xia Qing was about to head home when she spotted a red squirrel at the edge of the sunning ground, foraging through spilled grains.

She’d seen plenty of squirrels while clearing out the Evolver Forest lately, but never one so brilliantly red before.

Funny how anything named ‘rat’ made people want it gone, yet give it a bushy tail and call it a squirrel and suddenly it was cute—hard to resist catching one.

Xia Qing, who’d never managed to raise a cat, suddenly wanted a squirrel for a pet. But just as she began to approach, the little critter—cheeks stuffed full of wheat—noticed her coming. In a flash, it bolted like a streak of fire, gone in an instant.

Turns out the little guy had speed evolver abilities. Xia Qing shook her head, went home to shower, then weighed her day’s gains on the portable scale.

After a full day’s work, she’d harvested 330 jin of Yellowlight wheat and three and a half jin of Greenlight wheat. She saved all the Greenlight wheat for seed, and set aside 50 jin of the Yellowlight for wheat seed too. Another 40 jin she’d take to the produce fair, with the rest kept as her own rations.

The produce fair would kick off in two days and run for two days straight.

Later that night, after listening to the weather report and Hui San Base’s enthusiastic broadcast of “Welcome back, lords, come visit home for the produce fair!” the lord’s group chat was abuzz with discussion about the event.

Zhao Ze spoke up first. “Are you all planning to exchange for flour mills? My wheat and mung bean haul together isn’t enough for one. If anyone gets one, can I borrow it? Lend it for a day and I’ll trade four alfalfa seeds.”

The household flour mill was one of the goods provided to returning lords by the Safe Zone at a steep discount, but only for those attending the fair.

No one else spoke at first, so Kuang Qingwei jumped in. “One flour mill’s worth 800 points, and running it wears down the blades. You want to use it for four alfalfa seeds a day? Nobody’s that generous. Better trade your seeds with Tao for a machine of your own.”

Zhao Ze sighed. “My alfalfa’s just started flowering—hasn’t even seeded yet. The flour mill is only cheap at the fair. Once it’s over, I can’t get one.”

After Blue Star’s great evolution, seeds in their husks kept better than processed flour. After ten years of disaster, who wouldn’t want to guard their grains for themselves?

But to turn grain into eatable flour you needed the right tools.

So for half a month, the base’s radio broadcast had been hyping up the flour mill—only available at the fair for a steep discount and only one per lord. By the time Zhao Ze’s alfalfa seeded, the discount would be long gone.

Kuang Qingwei, a true businessman, haggled with Zhao Ze until they agreed—2 points to mill a jin of grain if Zhao brought it over to Territory Six.

Then Kuang Qingwei kept advertising. “No need for every territory to buy one. Why spend 800 points? Other than Zhao, anyone can come here to use mine.”

Xia Qing, doing pushups, laughed. Why did the lords all want their own mills? So no one else would know how much grain they really had. Only a fool would skip out on the cheap fair mill just to spend points at someone else’s territory.

When no one responded, Kuang Qingwei changed the subject. “It’s dangerous outside. We should all travel together—safer that way, right?”

“You’re right, Qing.” Zhao Ze agreed right away. “More people means more safety.”

Qi Fu added, “We’re all riding with Tao, both there and back, and we’ll be stuck in the same hall. Hard to get separated even if we wanted.”

Still not reassured, Kuang Qingwei pressed. “Tao’s bringing 50 lords from the North District—there’ll be a crowd. There might be thieves, but if we stick together, we’ll watch each other’s backs.”

Of course, by “we” he meant lords Three, Four, Five, Six, and Seven, and only the ten who seriously farmed. Lords One, Two, Eight, Nine, and Twelve never showed any interest in the fair and never joined these chats. Who knew if they’d show up?

As for the lord of Plot Eight? Always silent no matter what—everyone had long since given up expecting a reply.

The next day, Xia Qing started preparing the supplies to take to the fair. To qualify, you had to bring at least three types of vegetables, no less than five jin each, along with forty jin or more of grain.

Xia Qing planned to bring 40 jin each of mung beans and wheat for grain, and for vegetables, eggplant, cucumbers, and long beans plus a little sack of scallion seeds—all Yellowlight varieties, of course.

After swapping farm goods for a flour mill, Xia Qing hoped to buy every type of seed the Safe Zone offered, and was keen to pick up anything good the other lords brought.

Besides that, she needed to repair her machete, buy woodworking and electrical tools, plus various daily necessities, clothes, and the list went on. Altogether, she’d need a huge amount of points.

Over the past stretch, Xia Qing had hauled plenty of plants and animals out of her private training ground to trade with Zhong Tao, racking up over 3,000 points. Still, even with these points and her supplies, she was falling short. But Xia Qing already had a quick way to earn more in mind.

After checking her goods, Xia Qing grabbed her phone and, looking deadly serious, finally sent a text to a certain number she knew by heart. It sounded casual enough, but she’d rehearsed it a thousand times in her mind first.