Chapter 107: Night Visitors and the Silent Agreement

“Hello, I’m heading back to the Safe Zone tomorrow for the produce exchange. Do you need any vegetables or grains? If so, how much?”

After sending the message, Xia Qing couldn’t focus on anything she did. Her hearing was sharp enough that she’d never miss her phone going off, yet she still found herself checking it every few minutes.

But even after most of the day had passed, as she lay in bed at eleven, that person who’d sent her inside information before she left the Safe Zone still hadn’t replied.

Anything could happen in a year of disasters. Had something happened to them, too?

Staring up at the ceiling, Xia Qing felt wide awake.

“Ding—”

A clatter of metal pipes rang out from outside. The sound traps she’d set by the spring had been triggered.

Wolves again?

Xia Qing quickly grabbed her night vision goggles and rolled out of bed, peeking past the blackout curtains toward the back hillside. She spotted a flash of flashlight at the spring.

Her phone buzzed just then. She glanced at it—it was from Wei Chengdong. Only two words: “Evolved animal. Escaped.”

Just as expected! Xia Qing headed downstairs, telling Boss Sheep to keep an eye on the house, and made straight for the spring behind the hill.

“Chengdong?”

“Yeah, it’s me.” Wei Chengdong, who came for spring water, answered. Xia Qing stepped out. “What happened just now?”

Wei Chengdong explained, “I’d just arrived when a dark shadow shot out of the vegetable shed. I tried to grab it but accidentally triggered your trap.”

Xia Qing gripped her gun. “Did you get a good look? What was it?”

“Four legs, taller than Boss Sheep, crazy fast. In a blink, it leaped right over my head and headed for the North Barrier. Should we alert Hu Zifeng?”

From his description, Xia Qing had a pretty good idea who it was. “You still need to bring back water. No need to alarm everyone.”

Even when faced with a large evolved animal on her territory, Xia Qing’s first thought was how to get spring water back to Luo Ge safely for his treatment. That touched Wei Chengdong. He gently reminded her, “Once I fetch water tonight, that’s my last trip. The defenses around Territory Three need a serious upgrade. You’ve got too much good stuff here—need to be careful of both animals and people.”

From mid-March to mid-July, Luo Pei’s Xiang Synthesis Poison treatment was completed, meaning Xia Qing’s first deal with Yang Jin was finished. From now on, she would supply the Azure Dragon Unit with 300 liters of spring water each month, split into two deliveries. Xia Qing would bring the water to Mountain 49 and hand it off to either Luo Pei or Wei Chengdong, which was why tonight was Wei Chengdong’s final water trip to Territory Three.

Now that Wei Chengdong wouldn’t be coming for water anymore, Xia Qing could finally schedule her own security team for night duty.

Once he’d left, Xia Qing switched on her flashlight and checked every inch of the vegetable shed along the low slope. With her sharp eyesight, she spotted several animal hairs caught on the half-open door.

She collected the hairs into a tiny vacuum bag, then entered the shed. On the soft soil of the terraced plot, she found a few clear paw prints—canine, with a plum-blossom shape.

Judging by the size, depth and stride, she was almost certain this was the same wolf she’d waited nearly half a month for—hoping to adopt it as Little Fifth but never got the chance.

Given how cunning that wolf was, there’s no way Wei Chengdong would have noticed it if it hadn’t wanted to be seen. So why did it spook him and leave such obvious tracks?

Was it asserting itself? Claiming ownership of the territory?

Gun in hand, Xia Qing followed the wolf’s prints to the Greenlight cucumber trellis, where she found her best cucumber—the one she’d planned to save seeds from—with a chunk bitten clean off.

This wolf had good taste. Out of all the cucumbers, it picked the single best one. No chance of saving seeds from it now.

She picked the half-eaten cucumber and set it atop the big stone blocking the mouth of the spring cave.

She could only hear faint scrabbling from insects but could feel something powerful watching her—a sixth sense, sharpened by a decade of disaster. If she’d lost that sense, she probably wouldn’t have survived this long.

“I know you’re still nearby.”

Leaning casually against the stone wall, Xia Qing looked relaxed but stayed on high alert. Facing a wolf that had wiped out an entire squad, how could she afford not to be?

“My name’s Xia Qing. I’m the human lord of this territory and a companion of Boss Sheep. If you want, you can be the wolf lord here. Come drink water and eat cucumbers whenever you like, but don’t destroy things or hurt anyone in the territory.”

With that, Xia Qing headed home. Only after shutting the door behind her did her nerves finally let go. She walked over to Boss Sheep and sat down on the tatami, giving his head a good rub. “Boss, your friend came by.”

Boss Sheep was probably too simple to understand what “friend” meant. In this place, there was only Xia Qing and Boss Sheep—no such thing as a friend.

Xia Qing felt around Boss Sheep’s left ear. “The wolf with the notch in his ear—the one that killed a wild boar and howled—came into our territory to steal a cucumber.”

At the mention of food, Boss Sheep finally stirred. He glanced at Xia Qing, eyes wide: Where’s the food?

Hand it over.

Xia Qing ruffled his head again. “I’ll pick one for you tomorrow morning. I’m going to bed. Keep an eye on the courtyard.”

With a wolf in the territory stronger than herself, Xia Qing had a restless night. She got up early and her first stop was the hillside behind the house.

At the spring’s cave, she found that the big stone blocking the opening had been moved, leaving a crack. Dozens of ants were swarming inside, working hard to carve up the cucumber stub—bits and pieces of tender green carried past Xia Qing by the tiny workers. Next to the cucumber, two half-dead evolved crickets writhed, also covered in ants.

Apparently, there’d been a fierce fight for the cucumber—cricket against cricket, then crickets against ants. No way could ants or crickets have moved that stone. Was the wolf showing off its strength and cunning with this little demonstration?

Xia Qing took out the tiny bag, brushed the ants off the cucumber, and tossed it into her basket before continuing her rounds. Aside from the vegetable shed, the wolf had left no tracks anywhere else; only by searching carefully did Xia Qing realize it had gotten around by leaping from trees and stones.

That wolf was almost supernatural.

She filled a sack with insects to feed the green-glow peanuts, snakes and fish.

Once she tossed them in, she watched ripples spread through the fish pond—just two, but seeing them put her in a great mood because both belonged to edible spring-water fish.

After feeding the fish, Xia Qing turned her attention back to the wooden crate’s snake and, following her composting guide, stirred the straw, bean vines, and weeds under the compost shed before heading home for breakfast.

At seven-thirty, Xia Qing sent Hu Zifeng a message, and soon he showed up at Territory Three, bringing the Olfactory Evolver Chen Zheng with him.