Chapter 405: A Crop Worth Its Weight in Gold

When spring first arrived in the territory, Xia Qing traded the centipedes and snakes she’d caught on her land, plus a wild pig she caught later in the valley, for the high slope with the Green Lantern Toon Tree. She also swapped for sixteen Green Lantern Sweet Potato seedlings from Tan Junjie.

Before the second Devastation Rain, she cut and propagated two hundred sweet potato slips from the vines. After surviving two Devastation Rains, she ended up with one hundred and fifty sweet potatoes that matured and had a Devastation Element below 15‰—sixty-six Green Lanterns and eighty-four Yellow Lanterns.

Just looking at the data, the sweet potato seedlings Tan Junjie gave her seemed pretty stable, but that wasn’t the whole story.

If Xia Qing hadn’t planted them in the high-evolution terrace fields and watered them with Pure Spring Water, there wouldn’t have been even a quarter as many Green Lantern Sweet Potatoes as she harvested this time.

Sweet potatoes have the longest growing cycle among all Xia Qing’s crops. They had to survive two Devastation Rains, with the Devastation Element rising by three to four per mille each time.

In other words, Yellow Lantern Sweet Potatoes with a Devastation Element above 10‰ are edible but can’t be used as seed potatoes. Those with a Devastation Element between 5 and 10‰ only have first-generation stability, while Green Lantern Sweet Potatoes below 5‰ can be used for two generations.

That means only Green Lantern Sweet Potatoes are truly worth spreading around, and their value is pretty high.

Both the leaves and tubers are edible, and after about two months you can propagate another batch by cuttings. Even without Pure Spring Water and high-evolution soil, their yield still outpaces any other crop currently grown in the territory.

The reason the Territory Management Department hasn’t promoted them is because cultivating Green Lantern Sweet Potato seedlings requires strict conditions, so it’s impossible to mass propagate cheaply.

Today, Xia Qing harvested over three hundred and fifty Green Lantern Sweet Potatoes of all sizes, but she didn’t want people to know about her territory’s fertile land, so she couldn’t sell them all.

Going by the agreement at the lords’ meeting about the number she’d return to her allies, Xia Qing began picking out the potatoes suitable for storage in Territory One’s Food Depot as seed potatoes.

Seed potatoes need to be large and whole. She set aside two Green Lantern Sweet Potatoes for each territory and four Yellow Lanterns with about 7‰ Devastation Element for each, including Territory Fifteen—thirty in total.

Since Xia Qing got her Green Lantern Sweet Potato seedlings by trading with Tan Junjie, Territory Fifteen shouldn’t need to trade seed potatoes with her, but she decided to prepare extras just in case.

Besides that, Xia Qing decided to count out a hundred Yellow Lanterns as her entire crop. She’d told everyone on the lords’ channel she had just over twenty plants and about one hundred and thirty potatoes—exactly matching the yield from twenty-some plants. That way, nobody would suspect she had a special storage room for long-term food preservation.

“Boss, try this sweet potato root. It’s Green Lantern,” Xia Qing said as she broke off the sweet potatoes from the root and placed them in a straw-lined bamboo basket, handing the root to Old Goat.

While Old Goat was happily munching away, Xia Qing’s phone rang. Inspection Team leader Tan Junjie was too busy to come himself, so he’d sent Tiger over to deliver the replies from the various territories.

There were too many people at the South Gate today, so the two made plans to meet at the Northern Barrier in Section Three.

“Sis, the note you gave our captain yesterday only got delivered this morning. I didn’t want to hold things up, so I asked all the lords to respond within half an hour,” Tiger said as he handed her the note.

Xia Qing thanked him, took the five notes, then handed over fifteen pounds of Yellow Lantern Sweet Potatoes.

Yellow Lantern Sweet Potatoes go for forty credits a pound in the Safe Zone, so that bag was worth six hundred credits. Tiger understood how tough farming was and knew how hard Xia Qing had worked for that harvest, so he was determined not to accept them.

Before Xia Qing could say anything, Tiger stepped back and waved his hands. “No, really, keep them for yourself. We’ll all get a few in a couple days anyway.”

“It’s not a gift—it’s a trade,” Xia Qing said firmly. “Solar power drops off in winter, so I need to find another way to generate electricity. I remember you said a pedal-powered bike can generate electricity as well as pump water. So, I want to trade fifteen pounds of Yellow Lanterns for one. Is that enough for a bike with a generator?”

Back in spring, Xia Qing had traded four pounds of Toon Sprouts and two pounds of perilla for a manual waterwheel, based on green lantern vegetable prices at fifty credits per pound—three hundred credits total. Since a pedal-powered bike for electricity needs a motor, she’d thrown in some extra sweet potatoes this time.

Tiger still wouldn’t accept, reminding her that pedal power isn’t very efficient for generating electricity. “Riding a bike for electricity takes more energy than it produces. You could trade for a fuel generator instead, and if you’re short on credits, just get your battery charged in Territory Six—it’s cheaper than cycling for power.”

The Inspection Team already knew that Kuang Qingwei’s territory had lots of solar panels and did a booming battery-charging business.

“It’s not for me,” Xia Qing explained. “It’s for my evolved sheep.”

Old Goat had plenty of strength and loved pedaling the water bikes. Now that winter was here, it didn’t need to water the fields, so Xia Qing wanted to set up a pedal bike with a generator in the living room. Old Goat could pedal for fun and make electricity at the same time.

If the solar panels and Old Goat’s pedaling still weren’t enough to meet the territory’s power needs, Xia Qing would use a diesel generator. After all, generators burn fuel the moment they run, but Old Goat just needed straw to keep going.

Of course! If Old Goat could pedal the water bike, it could definitely power a generator too. How had he not thought of that before?

Tiger grinned, his little canines showing, as he accepted the sweet potatoes. “Sis, your sheep is seriously worth its weight in gold. It’s so strong—I’ll try to find a really sturdy bike frame, but it might take a few days.”

Old Goat was just too strong. In six months, it had already broken three water bikes.

After Xia Qing thanked him, she asked, “Did something big happen in Territory Two last night? Looked like you had a long night.”

“Don’t even mention it!” Quiet as he usually was, Tiger got worked up as he started venting, “Same refugees, but the folks who went to Territory One know how to settle down and farm, and the ones in Territory Eight do fine in the factories. Why can’t the people in Territory Two get it together?”

“Sufeng Squad took those people in and dumped them on Tang Huai, then washed their hands of it. Refugees aren’t insects…” He paused and then continued, “Tang Huai really did his best, but that bunch didn’t come here hoping to earn their keep. Oh, and a couple of Blazing Fire Squad people came over on the same plane as Sufeng’s team—they’re in Territory Nine now. Sis, don’t walk the southern passage for the next couple of days or you might run into them.”

After all that, Tiger added, “The Blazing Fire Squad is one of the top teams in Hui One. They have connections upstream.”

Yang Jin might have tripped up Fire Phoenix with the news about spinach seeds, but Blazing Fire Squad sent their people anyway. Looks like Fire Phoenix really values the cordyceps fungus business.