Chapter 404: Red Squirrel’s Secret, Wolf Den Errands

Tomorrow morning, Xia Qing would have to leave her territory for a bit. She needed to deliver medicine to Lame Wolf’s little sister, who was still holed up in the Wolf Den.

But this trip wasn’t dangerous. The Wolf Den was in Section Three of Hill Forty-Nine. All she had to do was step out her territory’s northern gate and cross a fifty-meter buffer zone.

No matter how cocky or trouble-hungry the people from Territory Two got, not even they would dare mess with Hill Forty-Nine during daylight.

If any of them so much as set half a foot onto Hill Forty-Nine, Yang Jin would have no problem chopping off that half foot. Then the Sufeng Squad would slap them with a hefty trespassing fine—plus ten times the cost for replacing the blade Azure Dragon Squad used to do the chopping.

That Iron Rooster sure knew how to pluck feathers.

The next morning, Xia Qing was actually woken up by the sound of the Red Squirrel coming by for a drink.

With the chickens moved to the greenhouse, there was no crowing to disturb her. That counted as a nice bonus.

She quietly lifted the curtains just a crack and looked out at the Red Squirrel, tracker still clipped to its back. Her eyes went wide in an instant.

She’d been so focused on digging and building the greenhouse lately, she’d forgotten a huge thing—checking Red Squirrel’s stash every so often.

She tossed off her cozy new quilt and started getting dressed.

The Red Squirrel, startled, shot straight up to the rooftop and peeked back down cautiously. Once it saw the human hadn’t opened a window, it snuck back to the windowsill and resumed drinking water.

By now, dawn was starting to break.

Xia Qing went to check on the greenhouse first, then hurried toward the high slope and Buffer Forest.

She stood perfectly still in the Buffer Forest for two minutes, making sure there was no one within three hundred meters. Only then did she swipe her pass at the northern gate and dash into Section Three of Hill Forty-Nine, heading straight for Red Squirrel’s food stash.

Thanks to the camera, she could see Red Squirrel was under its own eaves, digging at cracks in the concrete with its little paws—probably hoping to fish out some corn or sunflower seeds.

Perfect.

Red Squirrel snuck into her house while she was out. Now Xia Qing planned to steal from all six of its storerooms while it was away.

She quickly scrambled up the tallest pine and shone her flashlight into Red Squirrel’s first pantry.

Chestnuts, corn, hazelnuts, pine nuts, and some random seeds she didn’t recognize… but no peanuts.

She hustled down and jogged two hundred meters to a rocky cave for Red Squirrel’s second stash. Then she checked the third, and fourth storerooms as well.

Inside the squirrel’s fifth food stash, Xia Qing actually found a small handful of peanuts mixed in among the grass seeds!

She whipped a long-handled grabber from her backpack and fished out two peanuts. Then she sprayed deodorizer around the cave to mask her scent before hurrying off to Section Three to bring anti-inflammatory meds and spring water to Lame Wolf’s little sister.

The Alpha still hadn’t shown up, and there was no sign of Crippled Wolf either. They couldn’t have left long ago, though, because Lame Wolf’s little sister was sprawled out in the valley, gnawing on a wild boar.

With both hind legs injured, she couldn’t hunt alone—the boar must have been caught by Lame Wolf or even the Alpha, who filled their bellies first and left the rest for her.

A half-grown boar weighing sixty-plus pounds was way too much for one wolf. Xia Qing sat on the hillside, pulled out her Lethal Element Detector, and started testing the peanuts’ quality. While she waited for the wolf to finish eating, she planned to bring back the leftover meat to cook for Er Gou.

The results made Xia Qing breathe easy: both peanuts came up as Red Lantern grade.

She’d grabbed those two at random, so the odds were good that all the peanuts Red Squirrel collected were Red Lantern ones.

It hadn’t managed to find any Green or Yellow Lantern peanuts—probably because, even though the leaves on those vines were wilted and fallen, their roots and vines were still plenty dangerous. With Red Squirrel’s strength, there was no way it could break through Green Lantern peanut vines to get the nuts.

In the next few days Xia Qing needed to watch that squirrel like a hawk. If it ever left Section Three, she was going to follow—she had to know where it was finding those Red Lantern peanuts.

Were they coming from refugees in Territory Two?

Xia Qing didn’t want to run into them outside her territory—not out of fear, just because it was a hassle. Now that the Evolved Forest was practically waving precious Green Lantern food at her, nothing was going to get in her way.

Glancing at the camera feed, she saw Red Squirrel had managed to dig two sunflower seeds out of the cracks in its own concrete. The little thing was bouncing all over the place clutching them.

Xia Qing casually tossed the Red Lantern peanuts to the wild boar rooting for grass by the pond in the valley, then hopped easily to the mouth of the Wolf Den.

“Awooo—wooo—”

Freshly fed, Lame Wolf’s little sister immediately took a defensive stance and growled low at Xia Qing.

“Water change,” Xia Qing announced, pulling a water bottle and medicine from her backpack and setting them down for Crippled Wolf’s little sister. Then, before a circling raptor could swoop in for the leftovers, she shoved the now-empty boar carcass into a bag, sealed it tight, and tucked it into her backpack to carry home.

Back home, one quick scan confirmed the boar was Red Lantern grade, so Xia Qing skinned and butchered it, packing the meat and storing it in the freezer for Er Gou later.

With all that pork and some veggies, Er Gou would have plenty to eat for the next ten days.

After breakfast, Xia Qing was cutting sweet potato vines in the terraces when the sound of helicopter blades from the south made her whistle, loud and clear.

Hearing her signal, Old Goat—sniffing through the sweet potato vines—and Er Gou, busy hunting bugs, both hid themselves at once. It had taken Xia Qing over a hundred training sessions to get them this sharp.

Xia Qing only whistled again for her two companions to carry on once the helicopter landed over in Territory Two. Then she went right back to cutting vines.

She snipped the sweet potato vines with a sickle, rolled them into a bundle and set them aside. When Old Goat wandered over she said, “These are for your rations. You decide, keep them here or take them home.”

Old Goat didn’t answer—he just squinted and stood his ground, ready for anything.

“All right, got it,” Xia Qing replied.

She dug a compressed ration from her suit pocket and tucked it into Old Goat’s pouch, then praised him gently, “You hid so well when I whistled earlier, I couldn’t find you at all! You really are amazing. I bet the captain of Azure Dragon Squad can’t even compare…”

Old Goat soaked in the praise, eyes half closed and head tilted back, then finally turned to nudge the sweet potato vines with his hoof.

Xia Qing hefted her mattock and started digging for sweet potatoes.

With experience from unearthing potatoes and peanuts, Xia Qing’s aim had really improved—no need to shovel dirt bit by bit anymore. One swing of the mattock, a lift, and the whole sweet potato plant popped right from the soil.

She bent down, gently knocked the dirt off by hand, and just like that, harvest done.

The first plant yielded Yellow Lantern sweet potatoes—seven tubers, big and small. Not a bad crop, though three of them were kind of misshapen and split.

She lifted them up for a closer look and realized the cracks weren’t from insects or injuries; they’d just formed during growth.

Why sweet potatoes split like that, she really didn’t know. That was a question for the experts.