Chapter 299: Secrets Among the Wild Hills

Xia Qing didn’t want anyone knowing about her grudge with Tang Zhengsu, so she made up an excuse to patrol Section Three of Hill Forty-Nine to get the best spot for watching over Territory Two.

She asked a member from Hu Zifeng’s team to watch her territory while she slipped into Section Three, climbing a tall pine to keep an eye on the movements in Territory Two.

Right now Tang Zhengsu and Xu Pin had already left and Tang Heng went off to Territory Twelve. Tang Huai was fast asleep under a sun umbrella. With nothing left to observe in Territory Two, Xia Qing figured this was the perfect chance to visit Valley One to search for wild ginger.

It was mid-October, still a month before the wild ginger would be fully ripe. But she could check its quality now and then swing by the chestnut grove to see if the migratory bird season and last night’s thunderstorm had done any damage.

Thanks to the photos Hu Zifeng sent her, Xia Qing quickly found the wild ginger spot. Last time she’d been near the valley, she was in a rush chasing the Red Squirrel and hadn’t cut through, so she only just now realized there was a six-square-meter patch of wild ginger hidden here.

If these were all Red Lantern variety, that patch could be worth hundreds of points. There were real treasures tucked away in this valley.

The mountainside soil was still soft from the rain, and if she accidentally slipped into the territory of an aggressive plant, she’d be in trouble.

After making sure there were no big animals around, Xia Qing picked a solid-looking tree, tied her climbing rope to the trunk and rappelled down. Since she had protective suit sprayed with pesticide from the Evolved Forest—courtesy of her trade with Zhang San—she wouldn’t be bothered by insects for three hours. That let her reach the target quickly.

She checked the air toxin detector strapped to her arm—good, no toxins here. After washing the mud from her shoes in the stream, she finally examined the patch of wild ginger and soon noticed something odd.

Unlike other dense plants, this wild ginger patch had gaps between its leaves, even on the same stem. And the shapes of the leaves looked like they’d been trimmed by something—none of them were the same.

What did that mean? It pointed to the wild ginger leaves being aggressive, attacking any object that touched them—including other leaves from the same plant.

But how did they attack?

Even though it was the same type of plant as before, its evolution was different. The wild ginger Xia Qing had collected before gave off a toxic vapor, but this one clearly didn’t.

She grabbed a centipede and tossed it onto the leaves. The wild ginger didn’t extend vein-needles like the Green Lantern peanuts, nor did it fire leaf darts like the Green Lantern bamboo.

So she probed the stem and leaves with a stick, but the plant acted perfectly normal, like any ordinary flora.

Not reacting at all was even stranger. Xia Qing had survived ten years of disasters—she knew never to underestimate anything. If it wasn’t toxins or physical attacks, maybe the plant’s sap was poisonous.

She cut off a stalk with her knife and used a blade of grass to touch the clear sap slowly seeping out. The grass didn’t change at all.

One more glance at the air toxin detector: still safe, no toxic gases. Then she took out her detector for harmful elements and found this stalk contained around 0.4% of the deadly element—right in line with Green Lantern plants. She decided to take one back for Zhang San to check the quality.

Just to be safe, Xia Qing layered a pair of thick disposable gloves over her protective gloves and dug up the wild ginger with a shovel, shook off the dirt, and sealed it in a bag. She also packed the rhizome to bring back—maybe Old Goat would want a taste.

Wild ginger looked just like kitchen ginger, but it was actually a rare medicinal plant. It was even more valuable than the White-Haired Chicken Manure Vine she had grown in her territory. A pound of dried White-Haired Chicken Manure Vine sold for 40 points, but a pound of fresh medicinal-grade Green Lantern wild ginger could fetch the same price—and it could be used directly as medicine.

Of course, that value depended on the plant’s potency, the demand, and how much she could harvest. The evolved White-Haired Chicken Manure Vine could be collected and dried for money three seasons a year, but wild ginger ripened just once—in November. The yield was far lower.

After packing up the wild ginger, Xia Qing slapped down a few aggressive evolved lizards trying to attack her and shoved them into her cloth bag. Just as she was about to climb the rope back up the slope, she spotted the blade of grass that had touched the sap—it was starting to rot.

While her gloves showed no visible change yet, Xia Qing wasn’t taking chances. She added an extra thick bag over the sealed bag with the wild ginger stalks and roots, washed her gloves clean in the stream, then took them off and stored them away.

That done, she climbed back up, and after trekking a few hundred meters, she stopped in front of a tree.

There were all sorts of strange evolved plants, and Xia Qing had no idea what species this one was. It looked ordinary enough, but last time she’d marked it because it gave her a weird feeling—the same kind of unease as with sunflowers before they’d evolved.

Even after the bird migration and the storm, the tree had grown taller, but that odd feeling was still there.

She plucked a leaf and tested it, finding the level of harmful element in the tree hadn’t changed at all. She made a note and hurried over to two clumps of grass that also seemed off.

Testing the grass revealed the same twenty percent level of harmful element as last time. They looked like ordinary Red Lantern grass, but Xia Qing still clipped the seed heads and sealed them in a bag. She wanted to see if their seedlings would be any different than the usual Red Lantern grass.

When she reached the spot overlooking the chestnut grove, she followed the same animal trail down into the valley for a closer look.

Seeing it up close was a shock. It had only been a month since she’d harvested chestnuts, but already most of the sticky leaves had fallen from the trees, and the hornets that usually circled the grove were nowhere to be seen.

Just a few chestnut burrs clung to the bare branches, showing their reddish-brown nuts inside—it made her greedy just looking at them. The grove had turned into the perfect hornet trap.

Xia Qing didn’t rush over. She used her sharpened vision evolution to hide behind a tree and watch from a distance.

Soon enough, a bird flying over Section Three spotted a chestnut burr and landed to peck at it. But as soon as its beak touched the burr, it got stuck fast.

The bird struggled, and hornets swarmed out from cracks in the rocks, stinging it to death before hauling the whole bird back to their nest—not a single feather left behind.

From start to finish, the hunt took less than ten minutes. With that kind of killing power, those hornets must have bagged loads of birds this season as winter rations.

If it could hold a full-grown bird, the chestnut burrs’ sticky sap had to be way stronger than it was a month ago. Trying to harvest those now would be far harder than before.

She owed the Red Squirrel big time for leading her to the chestnut grove at just the right moment.