Chapter 394: Taming the Wilds: Clearing the Road

Xia Qing’s black Long Blade looked anything but ordinary, but at the end of the day, it was still just a blade.

To clear trees from an access road, you ought to use a shovel, pickaxe or an axe to dig out the roots along with the trunk. Otherwise, the heavy wheels of a hauling truck could easily get punctured by leftover stumps or roots.

After a year as a Territory Lord, you’d think this was common sense.

The crew from Territory Seventeen all stopped to see how Xia Qing would open up the path.

They watched as Xia Qing tapped the black blade a few times against the patch of barberry shrubs blocking the road. Once she was sure there weren’t any evolved animals hiding inside, she didn’t just swing her blade at the brush—but she wasn’t exactly clever about it, either.

Because she bent down and grabbed the base of the barberry with her hands. Everyone from Territory Seventeen winced. They knew all too well just how dense and tough those thorns were.

Just as they waited to see Xia Qing howling in pain and letting go, what they saw instead was her gripping a few of the shrub’s stems and effortlessly lifting. That two-meter-tall cluster of thorny red barberry rose nearly twenty centimeters off the ground like it was nothing!

What the hell?

This was a barberry bush growing on stubborn yellow clay—no way it should come up that easily!

Were her hands made of iron? Was she not afraid of being pricked? And what kind of gloves was she wearing? They looked almost like snake skin.

If it weren’t for those tangled roots still anchoring the bush in the earth, everyone from Territory Seventeen would have thought Xia Qing had just planted a stick there to show off.

And it wasn’t just Territory Seventeen. Even Yu Shou and Zhao Ze were startled by Xia Qing’s strength. Only Qi Fu, who’d once hauled chestnuts with her, stayed calm.

He was also wearing the Hardness Evolution protective gear Xia Qing had traded him. With those gloves, even he could handle uprooting thorny bushes like this, never mind Xia Qing.

Roots that wouldn’t threaten truck tires, like the side or fibrous ones, were left alone. Xia Qing simply sliced through the tough stems and roots with one clean strike, then tossed the bush more than four meters away, landing it exactly where it wouldn’t be in the way.

Qi Fu had to admit—he was seriously impressed now.

A horde of insects hidden in the barberry rushed at Xia Qing, but as soon as they caught a whiff of the pesticide she carried, they scattered in all directions.

Ignoring the harmless bugs, Xia Qing used her Long Blade to hack away the wild grass and moved on to the next patch of brush, ready to pull again.

It wasn’t just the shrubs—even two- or three-year-old thorny bushes as thick as an arm fell to a single chop from her, clean and crisp.

“Isn’t this… a bit much? She must be a high-level Strength Evolution!”

Someone from Territory Seventeen couldn’t help exclaiming, “The strongest Strength Evolution I’ve ever seen is actually a woman!”

She didn’t even look bulky—where was all that strength coming from?

Wen Nengjie shouted, “Would she be called a high-level evolution if she wasn’t this awesome? Come on! Ten more trees and ten more roots, then we can go back for breakfast!”

Wen Nengjie had come to scout for yellow clay to build a greenhouse yesterday when he noticed an excavator and several people chopping trees in the woods. After searching carefully, he found top-quality yellow clay under the thornwood, so this morning he brought his whole gang—fully geared up—to claim the spot.

Now? No need anymore, he was ready to withdraw.

Since their group hadn’t picked the same patch as the others, there wasn’t any competition anyway. Even if they had, they’d be the ones backing off.

No matter how decked out they were, it meant nothing facing a high-level evolution with even better gear. Getting flattened would be inevitable.

At 7:20, before Wen Nengjie’s crew had even finished to head back for breakfast, four crawler excavators rumbled over two by two.

Then five large transport trucks rolled forward along the path the excavators made, rolling straight through the section cleared by Territory Seventeen that morning, heading for the riverbank.

Most of those vehicles were emblazoned with the Section Two Heavy Union insignia! They’d better not get too close—otherwise, the Heavy Union’s security team might shoot them on the spot. That sort of thing had happened before.

Down by the riverbank, Zhao Ze barked orders through a megaphone: “Excavators, line up by the marked zones and start digging! Two excavators per truck. I need six people over here to clear grass and mark lines. Safety first—don’t enter the Evolved Forest past the cut grass or you’re on your own. The rest of you, clear rocks from the slope, but don’t go past the marked lines…”

Hearing this, Wen Nengjie realized those transport trucks were carrying quite a few people.

Now it hit Wen Nengjie just how far from the top dog Territory Seventeen really was in this territory.

He’d always known Section Three’s lord was a Strength-Based Evolution, but he’d also heard Section Three only had one person.

A lone hero still can’t fight off a dozen hands, so no matter how strong, one person alone wasn’t scary.

But he finally realized how naive he’d been. Xia Qing didn’t just have the strength to wipe out their whole gang herself. Even scarier was that she could rally way more people than he could.

Even the stubborn, unyielding Territory Fifteen followed her orders.

It took barely a dozen minutes for the first truck, fully loaded with soil, to turn back, rolling through the area cleared by Territory Seventeen and heading into the human territories.

Five minutes later, the second truck roared by.

“So fast!” The people from Territory Seventeen were practically drooling with envy. “Boss, can we work together with them?”

Wen Nengjie snapped, “Do they look short-handed to you? Didn’t you hear they’ve got enough people that a whole team went off to chop trees? You don’t want breakfast? Why are you just standing there? Get to work!”

More people, more hands—the work gets done faster.

On the riverbank, Zhao Ze used the rotary tiller to cordon off the soil excavation area. The weeds and rocks were cleared in no time. He directed one excavator over to haul wood from the felling zone, while the other three kept digging soil on the riverbank.

To make sure each transport truck could be fully loaded within five minutes of returning, several people had to stay behind and help the excavators with odd jobs.

After Xia Qing and Yue Haiying confirmed there were no dangerous animals or plants by the river and hillside, Yu Shou and two gun-toting members from Territory Fifteen stayed behind to guard. Xia Qing and Zhao Ze took the rotary tiller to the logging site.

Most machinery was concentrated near the riverbank, but there were even more people at logging—making things more complicated—so Xia Qing, with top combat skills and the best gear, went to cover them.

The felling area for today had already been swept by Yue Haiying’s team; no high-risk plants or large predators turned up.

Once Xia Qing arrived, there was no need for another sweep. She took a sip of Premium Nutrient Shake through the straw in her protective mask, then sat on a big rock up high to rest.

Kuang Qingwei edged over and said, “Sis, how’s this for a coincidence? The guy who rented the trucks just called me—said once we’re done, Territory Seventeen’s next in line to rent them.”

It really was a coincidence. Xia Qing asked, “So what did he want from you?”