Chapter 116: The Missing Egrets and a Day on the Farm

“Wait!”

Xia Qing stopped and gazed up at the two large bird nests in the dawn redwood tree. “Boss, what happened to the egrets and night herons in our territory?”

Boss Sheep ignored her and carried on with the water buckets slung on its back.

Xia Qing trailed after Boss Sheep, her eyes scanning for any sign of the birds. Nothing on the nearby trees, nothing by the reservoir, or at either of the fish ponds…

So the egrets and night herons hatched their chicks and then moved out with their families?

Well, that saves on fish. She could put tobacco fiber in their old nests and lure magpies—which love eating bugs—to move in. That would solve two problems at once.

Xia Qing wasted no time. She hurried home, grabbed two tufts of redlight tobacco fiber, and stuffed them into both nests. Then she soaked the rice seedlings, passion fruit, and Sichuan pepper saplings in spring water. These seedlings couldn’t soak too long though, so after dinner Xia Qing put on her night vision goggles, tuned into the radio, and headed to the fields to transplant rice and plant trees. The night made it hard to see, but Boss Sheep still followed her closely.

The paddy was ready beforehand and Xia Qing deftly transplanted all four hundred rice seedlings. Next, she brought two kinds of saplings up the hillside and planted them on the edge of her cultivated land.

Technically, Hui San Base wasn’t ideal for passion fruit—which liked hot, humid weather. But some plants had evolved to adapt to just about anywhere. If that lord could trade passion fruit grown in his land, then surely it would thrive here, watered by pollution-free spring water.

Once she finished planting the trees, Xia Qing hoisted the stumbling Boss Sheep, who was struggling in the dark, onto her shoulders and carried it home.

Maybe because they’d been apart for nearly two days, Boss Sheep was extra clingy that night. It gave up the comfy tatami on the first floor and chose to sleep right beside Xia Qing’s bed on a straw mat.

Lying there, Xia Qing listened to Boss Sheep’s steady breathing and fell into a deep, peaceful sleep.

The next morning, Boss Sheep woke up and shook its head. At the sound, Xia Qing opened her eyes and greeted it warmly. “Morning, Boss!”

Boss Sheep squinted at her for a couple of seconds before getting up and trotting downstairs. It couldn’t talk, but Xia Qing had no trouble reading its expression:

This sleeping spot is uncomfortable!

Xia Qing rolled over, burying her face in the quilt, and laughed quietly before getting up to change. She headed downstairs, started a pot of greenlight rice porridge, and went out to patrol her land. She picked some fresh vegetables, tossed together a chilled salad, and made a couple of flatbreads. They only had oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar at home, and her cooking skills were average, but Xia Qing thought her food tasted way better than what the Evolver cafeteria served back in the Safe Zone—maybe even as good as the restaurant she and Xu Juan once visited.

If she really put her heart into it, Xia Qing was sure her meals would beat the restaurants hands down. She didn’t need a chef with skills like hers—one more person in the territory would mean more complications than adding another simple-minded sheep. After ten years scheming for survival in the Safe Zone, she just wanted to live a cozy, easy life now.

After breakfast, Xia Qing went to check on the seeds that had been soaking in the spring water overnight. The Encyclopedia of Cultivation said corn seeds needed a full twenty-four hours to soak. She’d started yesterday afternoon, so she’d have to wait until the afternoon to sow them. Radish and sunflower seeds only needed two hours, while cabbage would have to wait until next month. She stored the excess seeds she’d traded from her idol in a safe place for now.

Gathering up her fertilizer and tools, Xia Qing set off to prep the terraced fields for radishes and sunflowers.

With plenty of terraced land to use, Xia Qing didn’t have to pull out the cucumber, eggplant, beans, or tomatoes that had passed their best. Instead, she cleared two plots that had been left fallow all this time. She had a decent stash of fertilizers: earthworm castings, crab shell fertilizer, fully-fermented leaf mold, plant ash, and some rare sheep manure—which she reserved for the greenlight spinach. For the others, Xia Qing followed the fertilizing ratios from Li Si’s Evolved Mung Bean Cultivation Guide and applied plenty.

After her first season of farming, Xia Qing understood how vital good fertilizer was. Only with enough nutrients would crops grow strong, boosting resistance so they wouldn’t get wiped out by Xiang Rain, and increasing yields.

Why farm? Obviously, to maximize the harvest, so she wouldn’t cut corners.

With fertilizer scattered, Xia Qing grabbed her shovel to start turning the soil—but Boss Sheep came bounding up.

“Baa.”

Xia Qing paused. “Boss, what’s up?”

“Baa.” Boss Sheep planted itself in front of her, eyes narrowed.

At this hour, Boss Sheep shouldn’t be hungry or thirsty, so Xia Qing was stumped. “Did your wolf friend show up?”

When it just stood there, she knew she’d guessed wrong. With her seeds nearly done soaking, Xia Qing didn’t have time for charades. She turned to dig again but Boss Sheep nudged her hard—she almost face-planted in the dirt.

“Hey…” Xia Qing staggered forward a couple steps, then rolled up her sleeves, ready to give Boss Sheep a piece of her mind—except the sheep pushed the shovel aside and looked up at her. Suddenly, it clicked. “Don’t tell me you want to pull a plow?”

“Baa~”

The way Boss Sheep drew that out left Xia Qing speechless. “Boss, this terraced plot is only five meters wide by ten meters long. You’d barely have room to work with a plow. It’s not worth troubling you—I can handle it myself.”

She coaxed Boss Sheep as gently as she could, but once it set its mind, there was no persuading it. Xia Qing had no choice but to go home and haul out the three-share plow harness and strap it on.

Even then, Boss Sheep refused to budge. Xia Qing was exasperated, so she went up to the highland and broke off some fresh Chinese toon shoots, dropping them in front of Boss Sheep. Only then did it start plowing enthusiastically.

Guided by the promise of toon shoots, Boss Sheep avoided running into the insect net and helped Xia Qing plow both terraced plots in no time. Once unhitched, Boss Sheep lay down to rest while Xia Qing started sowing.

Each terrace measured about fifty square meters. Since the germination rate of yellowlight seeds soaked in spring water was around sixty percent, planting 150 sunflower seeds meant two plants per square meter—just right. Leaving space allowed her to quickly and thoroughly weed out any Xiang-evolved plants during the toxic Xiang Rain, so unaffected crops wouldn’t get infected.

She had 150 seeds in total for both green radish and white radish, and planted them all in the same terrace.

Once done, Xia Qing harnessed Boss Sheep again and had it plow the ground for greenlight cucumber, eggplant, and tomato seeds—all harvested from her own vegetables.

Qi Fu said it wasn’t the right time to plant eggplants or tomatoes, and the Encyclopedia of Cultivation didn’t recommend it either. But the technical notes from Luo Pei said otherwise, so Xia Qing decided to experiment with a batch after soaking the seeds. The evolved seeds were tough, her land was watered by spring, and she had plenty of fertilizer. If the Azure Dragon Unit could do it, she figured she could too. If it worked, she wouldn’t have to worry about fresh veggies for the next several months.

And if nothing flowered or fruited, she’d only be out a few greenlight seeds and some fertilizer. She had plenty of greenlight seeds for these crops, so she could afford to do a little field trial.

For chili peppers, long beans, and scallions, Xia Qing only had the yellowlight variety, so that’s what she planted. She also sowed all forty onion bulbs she’d bartered for.

To protect her secrets, Xia Qing opened up a four-meter-wide, one hundred sixty-meter-long vegetable patch near the yellowlight pumpkin shed by the reservoir. She planted some of every kind of vegetable here—for trading with other lords. She didn’t bother watering these with mountain spring water.

Once everything was in, Xia Qing collapsed into a bamboo chair under the shade of a tree. Even for a high-level strength evolver, planting over two acres of vegetables in a single morning was tiring. But the satisfaction made it worth it.

Munching on a big, lumpy red greenlight tomato, Xia Qing leaned back and stared at the empty egret nests in the dawn redwood. Boss Sheep lounged beside her, gnawing on an old cucumber. Xia Qing chatted idly, “It’s probably for the best the four fish-stealing birds moved out. All the fish in our ponds are yellowlight or greenlight breeds—we worked too hard to let them just snatch it all. I’d rather magpie guests who snack on bugs.”

Boss Sheep, not being a fish eater, just closed its eyes and kept chewing, unfazed.

Xia Qing didn’t mind. She took another bite of her tomato. Suddenly, she spotted a fiery red squirrel with a massive bushy tail climbing up the dawn redwood and darting into one of the egret nests.

Wasn’t this the same evolved squirrel that had stolen her wheat grains before? What was it doing in the egret nest? Weren’t squirrels supposed to live in tree hollows?