Chapter 38: A Windfall of Weapons and Worries

Wei Chengdong invited Xia Qing into the living room to teach her how to disassemble, maintain, and use a handgun. “This is a fully automatic pistol designed for special forces. Only core members are allowed to use it in our squad. Its shooting stability and accuracy are among the best you can find. Here’s the detachable stock—once it’s fitted, you can brace it against your shoulder for rapid fire…”

An hour later, Xia Qing left the village, carrying a heavy basket on her back and another in her hand. Worried someone might be watching, she first wandered around an empty part of the village in the southeast, picked up a huge bundle of firewood, and only then headed home.

Once the door was tightly shut, Xia Qing changed out of her protective suit at lightning speed and spent a good while admiring the flashy new submachine pistol in her hands. Only then did she turn her attention to the three sets of protective suits she’d just received.

The heaviest set was a fully enclosed, airtight protective suit with a mask, gloves, boots, and an isolated breathing system—meant for extremely hazardous unknown environments that threaten both skin and respiration. It’s standard-issue for researchers leaving the Safe Zone, but not for sale to the public, no matter how many points you have. Wearing this does limit vision and hearing, but in dangerous, unfamiliar territory, it’s a real lifesaver.

The second set was a two-piece suit, also with boots, gloves, a protective mask, and night vision goggles. Its style and color matched the one Tang Huai gave her, but even a touch made the difference obvious. Xia Qing could tell right away this suit offered at least triple the protection of those sold on the market.

She slipped into the form-fitting camouflage suit, stretched her arms and legs, and realized the set Tang Huai had traded her was downright junk compared to this one.

Of course, the patched-up one-piece protective suit she’d just taken off was even more pathetic next to it.

She tucked the handgun into the front pocket of her protective vest, only to discover the pocket wasn’t for rations but was perfectly designed for holding a gun. Talk about thoughtful design.

Next time she returned to the Evolver Forest, this was the outfit she’d be wearing.

After happily stowing away her protective suit, Xia Qing gave the last suit—Boss Sheep’s—a look. Besides night vision goggles, protective glasses, body armor, and a gas mask, Boss Sheep’s kit even had an infrared camera, a daylight camera, and a walkie-talkie.

Laying all the gear out in neat rows, Xia Qing felt a pang at the idea of letting her rough-and-tumble sheep use such premium equipment. She almost wished she could catch an evolved dog as her assistant instead.

Just as Boss Sheep crossed her mind, she heard a rapid clatter of hooves in the courtyard.

She had just finished hiding the gun when the front door handle turned under Boss Sheep’s hoof.

“Bang!” The door was shoved open hard and Boss Sheep strode in, eyes narrowed at Xia Qing, clearly annoyed.

After living together for over a month, Xia Qing knew this beast responded better to sweet talk than toughness. She put on a croaky voice and asked, “I just got back from chopping wood. The Boss must be worn out patrolling the territory too.”

Boss Sheep pawed at the ground, lowered his head, and flashed his impressive spiral horns.

Well, so much for sweet talk. She switched tactics. “Want some rations?”

“Baa!”

Boss Sheep immediately lifted his head, tucked his hooves in, and switched to a squeaky tone.

Xia Qing hurried into the kitchen, chopped some Chinese toon shoots and grass, then grabbed two chunks of compressed rations from the metal cupboard, crushed half a piece, and mixed it with the fodder. She set it down at Boss Sheep’s feeding table.

As Boss Sheep dug in, Xia Qing sat cross-legged nearby, eating her own rations with mountain spring water. Between bites, she shared her excitement. “Boss, we hit the jackpot in this deal. We’ve got a gun and three top-tier protective suits—better than anything you can buy, no matter how many points you have. That’s three extra lives for the two of us. Of course, two for me, one for you, and only I get to use the gun. Heh heh…”

She washed down a scratchy mouthful of compressed rations with a big gulp of spring water and broke out in a silly grin.

Boss Sheep quickly finished what was in his bowl, then set his sights on the rest of Xia Qing’s rations.

She stuffed the remaining rations into her mouth and gulped them down, then got up to clean Boss Sheep’s bowl. After that she strapped the handgun holster onto her thigh, waved at Boss Sheep, and called out, “You relax, I’m heading out to check on the veggie garden.”

After she left, Boss Sheep clattered into the kitchen, pawed at the metal cupboard where rations were kept, found it locked, then ambled back to the living room. He sniffed the protective suits Xia Qing had brought home—when they turned out not to be edible, he slammed the closet door shut with a hoof, sprawled on the tatami, and kept an eye on the kitchen cupboard, chewing his cud.

Out in the garden, Xia Qing caught the sounds coming from inside the house and grinned.

All the vegetable seeds she’d sown two weeks ago had sprouted. Thanks to soaking them in mountain spring water, her germination rates were twenty percent higher than the other three lords’ territories numbered Four, Five, and Six.

She didn’t know about the plots in zones One, Two, or Seven—no one had said.

Nearby, the garlic and ginger sprouts were already palm-high. As long as no highly concentrated Xiang rain fell in the next two months, she’d have a harvest—especially the ginger. She only had six ginger plants in her whole territory, so she needed to protect them. She’d found more than thirty garlic sprouts later, totaling forty-four now, and was optimistic she’d be eating garlic scapes by May.

Imagining the savory aroma of garlic scapes stir-fried with meat and garlic scape dumplings made her mouth water, but that would require actual meat. Remembering Wei Chengdong’s shooting tips, Xia Qing took aim at a big elm tree 150 meters away. The four-kilo submachine pistol felt like a toy in her evolved hands.

Her advanced vision let her see a fat magpie perched on the elm’s branch, eyes closed. She kept the gun trained on the bird’s plump body for five minutes, but eventually lowered the weapon.

Partly she didn’t want the sound to draw attention from neighboring territories, and also, with only three hundred rounds of ammo, she couldn’t bear to waste a single shot. She’d wait for Luo Pei to teach her on the practice range, since those practice rounds wouldn’t count toward her stockpile.

That evening, Xia Qing and Boss Sheep ate while listening to the radio.

Usually the news broadcast only shared good news, but tonight, it spent five whole minutes describing the dire situation facing the Guilin Base in the south after sea creatures had evolved. That got Xia Qing tense all over again.

Land creatures on Blue Star mostly evolved under the influence of the Xiang and Yi elements. Sea life, on the other hand, had been changed by nuclear-polluted water and those two elements together. That made marine evolvers far more dangerous and unpredictable than their land-based counterparts, which was also why several coastal cities in Hua Nation had been abandoned by humans.

No one could have expected, ten years after the catastrophe, that evolved sea creatures would storm ashore and keep expanding their territory, now threatening the Guilin Base.

But important questions—how they came ashore, what species were involved, and what tactics they used—went completely unaddressed in the news, which Xia Qing found infuriating. She switched on the walkie-talkie, tuned to the lord frequency, and overheard Kuang Qingwei fretting over the same situation.

“There are only six bases in southern Guilin, and now three of them are in danger. If the Safe Zones at these three fall, we’ll see a flood of refugees fleeing north for their lives. Do you think they’ll wind up heading here?”

And that, Xia Qing realized, was the very thing she feared most.