Chapter 243: Chestnuts and Danger: The Hunt Beneath the Pines

Xia Qing might not be a scent evolver, but with her phone, sharp eyes, and keen ears, she could still track the evolved squirrel. Xia Qing pressed on.

She couldn’t keep up with the squirrel’s blistering speed, but it was darting back and forth between the chestnut tree and its nest. All Xia Qing had to do was follow its path, use her phone to pin down the exact location of the chestnut tree, and gradually make her way there.

The lush vegetation of Valley One made travel tricky. Only the stones lining the creek offered a passable path and even that required fending off leeches and other aquatic threats.

After four minutes of trekking, Xia Qing saw the red dot on her phone app stop—about 2,800 meters to the northeast. That put her completely at ease—the spot was still firmly within Area Three. That chestnut tree grew on her turf!

Eight minutes later, her phone showed the squirrel had doubled back. Xia Qing slipped into the woods to hide.

Not long after, the evolved squirrel shot past at lightning speed and landed not far from Xia Qing on a maple. Droplets clinging to the leaves shook loose, tumbling onto the thick grass below like a sudden rainfall.

Up on the branch, the squirrel’s mouth and tiny paws were crammed full of huge chestnuts. Xia Qing’s eyes lit up.

Once the squirrel left, she continued along the creek for less than two hundred meters and found herself in front of a field of wild daisies blooming in lurid colors.

Xia Qing glanced at the portable toxin detector strapped to her arm. The air here was laced with C-grade toxins, and the closer she got to the wild daisies, the higher the concentration climbed. To make things worse, bees buzzed restlessly around the flowers.

Her only choice was to take a detour.

She hopped across to the other bank and crept forward a dozen meters, only to find herself blocked by a patch of low, needle-leaved evolved plants. Their spiky leaves impaled the corpses of insects big and small—no doubts about their danger level.

Neither the wild daisies nor the needled grass were passable, and the woods on either side looked twice as deadly. If Xia Qing wanted to keep going, she’d have to move like the squirrel by jumping tree to tree, or wade through the creek itself.

After dodging the squirrel again, Xia Qing decided to skip the valley and swing around via the hillside. She’d already locked onto the area where the chestnut trees grew and with her level nine vision evolver skills, as long as the chestnuts weren’t buried, she’d spot them easily.

Crushing Xiang grass and hacking her way through evolved insects and brush, Xia Qing started climbing. Before she even reached the top, the squirrel zipped past again, lugging another load of chestnuts.

Caught in this labyrinth of hazards, Xia Qing found herself itching to just raid the squirrel’s nest and be done with it!

She finally crested the hill, only to realize while the slope was easier, the way wasn’t clear either. She skirted three evolved vine-trees and dodged a patch of exploding evolved burrs before reaching the top of the slope where the squirrel harvested its chestnuts.

By now, after more than a dozen trips, the evolved squirrel had already flopped down in its comfy, safe nest for a well-earned rest.

Despite all that trouble, Xia Qing was actually in high spirits. Along the way, she’d discovered that her hard-to-explain sense—her ability to feel something off about certain plants—wasn’t just tied to sunflowers.

In these last two hours, Xia Qing had detected two saplings, a patch of grass, and a stand of shrubs that set off her instincts. She marked all four spots for a future look.

Standing atop the slope, Xia Qing peered down, only to find she couldn’t see the chestnut trees from here. She’d have to climb lower.

From her perch, she estimated a drop of about two hundred meters down to the valley floor. The steep slope was dotted with pines, while the undergrowth and scrub beneath weren’t too dense. Still, the wet, slick ground made it easy to lose your footing, and if an evolved beast or plant attacked mid-descent, you’d be in a bad spot—injuries would be hard to avoid.

Something else was off—there were barely any insects here. Normally, after the Xiang Rain, this should’ve been bug central. Something nearby must be wiping them out or chasing them away.

That meant if she continued down, there might be hidden treasure—or much greater danger.

“If only I had a scout bird,” Xia Qing muttered, scanning for a safe way down.

She soon spotted an animal trail trampled into the hillside by passing beasts. Following it halfway down, Xia Qing found wild boar and wolf tracks, along with the telltale marks of a boar struggling and being dragged off.

She figured the alpha wolf had nabbed the forty-pound boar and hauled it back to Territory Three, probably nabbing it right here. Carrying a whole wild boar through such a deadly valley? That’s serious skill—Xia Qing could only admire it.

She kept to the trail and found more big boar prints, but she wasn’t here to hunt pigs today, just chestnuts, so she let them be.

At last, at the bottom of the valley, Xia Qing spotted not just one chestnut tree, but more than twenty of all sizes scattered about!

Nearly every tree was covered in spiky balls full of plump chestnuts, just waiting to be picked!

Jackpot! Absolute jackpot!

Spotting the chestnut grove made Xia Qing realize why there were so few insects around.

If she hadn’t seen it with her own eyes—the huge, fist-sized spiky balls cracked open to reveal chestnuts on the trees across the creek—she wouldn’t have believed these were really chestnut trees.

These evolved chestnut trees had leaves and spiky husks smeared with insects, big and small. Xia Qing could see mosquitoes, lacewings, caterpillars, flies, grasshoppers, even longhorn beetles—all stuck fast, missing limbs from being gnawed, still struggling hopelessly.

Unlike the peanuts in her territory, these trees weren’t the ones eating the trapped evolved insects. The real predators were the evolved hornets buzzing around, each longer than a human finger.

The hornets’ stingers were razor sharp and their toxin was potent. Every attack released a nearly impossible-to-remove scent. If an intruder picked up that odor, the whole swarm would relentlessly hunt them down, tearing them apart piece by piece.

Humans, no matter how weak, were absolutely on their hit list.

Since hornets don’t make honey, there’s no reason to bother with them. On missions, the Squad always made a wide detour when they spotted hornet swarms.

Not that they couldn’t fight them, but who wanted to tangle with that pack of maniacs?

But today, Xia Qing couldn’t back off. Even with her sturdy grade-three field protective suit, who could guarantee it would hold up to a thousand hornets jabbing her with toxic stingers?

So braving the hornets head-on was out of the question.

But how did the evolved squirrel manage to collect chestnuts unharmed?

With a little patience, Xia Qing pieced it together. The squirrel just waited for chestnuts to drop and snatched them off the ground. Whenever a nut fell, a few squirrel buddies would dash in, grab one, and bolt.

They were so fast, the hornets didn’t even have time to react.

But Xia Qing wasn’t as speedy as a squirrel. And she wasn’t settling for scraps; she wanted the whole haul—not just this year’s, but next year’s too.

If she wanted chestnuts again next year, she couldn’t wipe out the hornets. The trees and the swarm were in a symbiotic relationship—without hornets eating the insects stuck to the leaves, the chestnut trees wouldn’t last long.

Smoking them out wasn’t an option either; the grove was too big, and if a fire started, it’d be a disaster.

If she didn’t want to leave empty-handed, there was only one option left: try out that insect repellent medicine she’d just traded for with Zhang San yesterday.