Chapter 459: The Forgotten Valley’s Secret Harvest

This hidden valley is the “private garden” of the two evolved bears that live on Hill Fifty.

After entering from the Bear Cave, the left side of the valley serves as the bears’ toilet, with a massive pile of bear droppings. To the right, there’s a half-meter-wide animal trail lined with dense weeds and trees. The trees aren’t very tall, looking like they’ve only been growing for two or three years.

Even though she couldn’t see Green Lantern peanuts from where she stood, Xia Qing was sure they were growing somewhere in the valley.

She stepped into a bear paw print, one even bigger than her winter boots, and immediately sensed something was off.

This place was a crevice valley formed by a split in the mountain. Even if rainwater had washed soil into these cracks, there should be more rocks than dirt here. But right now, it’s actually the opposite—more soil than stones.

This place…

“Scratch—”

The sharp scrape of wolf claws against stone made Xia Qing look up. She spotted the Alpha standing on a boulder over a hundred meters away, one paw pinning down a fiery red snake as thick as a finger. With her sharp eyes, Xia Qing immediately noticed the bulge on the snake’s head.

Devastation Snake!

“Queen, watch out for the venom!” Xia Qing hurried over, stashing the Devastation Snake into a bag, then quickly checked the Alpha for wounds. “Queen, you didn’t get bitten, did you?”

The Alpha shook itself, flinging off Xia Qing as she patted it down, then leapt onto an even higher rock.

Watching the Alpha’s reaction, Xia Qing knew it hadn’t been bitten and let out a sigh of relief. She quickly looked around for Er Gou and Crippled Wolf.

Rustle, rustle—

Hearing movement, Xia Qing turned around to see Crippled Wolf running over with a fiery red Devastation Snake in his mouth. He dropped it onto a stone at Xia Qing’s feet.

Though the snake’s tail was still twitching, it was dead. Xia Qing picked it up and stuffed it into her bag.

The evolved bears had formed an alliance with the giant python living in the lake near Hill Sixty-One, and Devastation Snakes were symbiotic with the python. Since this valley was the bears’ ‘garden,’ it was only natural to find Devastation Snakes here. Xia Qing gathered up the snakes and called out: “Queen, Crippled Wolf, Er, you three take a break. Leave the exploration to me.”

The wolves’ protective suits only covered their bodies and feet; their heads, legs, and necks were exposed. If any of them got bitten by a Devastation Snake, those two small herbs in Section Three’s cave would take a big hit.

Er Gou came out of the dense grass with a rabbit in his mouth and hopped onto a boulder, dropping it in front of the Alpha. The Alpha didn’t hesitate and started devouring the rabbit. Crippled Wolf soon returned with a rabbit of his own and settled beside the Alpha to eat. Er Gou crouched next to them, standing guard.

Wearing her level-three wilderness protective suit and gripping a black long blade, Xia Qing pushed forward to explore the valley.

After walking a dozen or so meters, Xia Qing spotted wild chives growing among the weeds. She didn’t even need to test them; the tender green leaves were clear proof—these were Green Lantern plants.

A bit further ahead, she saw several vine plants with dark purple leaves. The large, cracked, triangular-oval leaves looked familiar, but for a moment she couldn’t quite recall what plant it was.

Beneath the next patch of weeds, a few sprouts poked out. Xia Qing instantly recognized them as soybeans.

Pressing forward, Xia Qing found even more familiar crop seedlings. The leaf shape was unmistakable—she’d planted over two acres of these in her own territory and knew them well.

There was just one clear difference: the seedlings here looked different in color from the ones in her own fields. These had to be Red Lantern wheat.

Xia Qing quietly observed the small wheat patch, which covered more than ten square meters. A very reasonable theory slowly took shape in her mind.

A streak of red shot for her ankle. Xia Qing blocked it with the flat of her blade. The Devastation Snake bounced off and onto a nearby sapling, then tried to slither away. Xia Qing simply pinched it by the head and dropped it into her pocket.

The little fangs of a Devastation Snake couldn’t even pierce her level-three wilderness protective suit, let alone the hardness-evolved python skin gloves on her hands. Armed and armored, Xia Qing didn’t need to worry about these toxic snakes at all.

Another fifty meters ahead, Xia Qing finally found what she’d been searching for—peanuts.

Because the valley’s temperature was different from the outside, the peanuts here were just entering late maturity. No wonder Red Squirrel had only just begun gathering them in the past couple weeks.

With all the peanut leaves gone, there was no way to judge their quality just from the dried, yellowed stems.

A bit farther on, Xia Qing found green onions, cucumbers, eggplants, sweet potatoes, and corn…

She didn’t bother digging anything up yet. Xia Qing continued deeper into the valley. Another fifty meters in, she uncovered a concrete-built hot spring pool—just the proof she needed for her theory.

No matter how clever evolved bears are, they couldn’t have built such a neat, square pool with concrete. This hidden crevice in the mountainside had once been a human base.

When the calamity first struck, tectonic shifts cracked open Hill Fifty, exposing a hot spring inside. Someone found this valley, turned it into a base, and poured their energy into building it up.

They used explosives to widen the crevice, making the valley what it is today. There were still signs of blasting and chiseling on both valley walls.

They layered the base with the blasted rock, then hauled in fertile soil from outside to lay on top, turning sunny spots into farmland.

They built the hot spring pool from stone and concrete, then used bamboo pipes and channels to bring water from the spring to irrigate the crops.

The passage leading to the Bear Cave had likely been dug by them too, and even the huge boulder blocking the cave entrance was probably their doing.

How did this human base end up as the private garden for evolved bears?

What happened to the people who built it?

Did they abandon this little base for the larger Safe Zone, or did they die here?

Time slowly ticked by. Sunbeams shifted across the valley. Because the direct sunlight didn’t last long here, no grow lamps had ever been installed on the cliff walls.

How did the people who lived here give their crops enough light?

Xia Qing kicked away a long evolved centipede crawling onto her protective boots, then scraped at the dirt beneath the weeds with her blade. Before long, she found scraps of broken white plastic film.

No longer a farming rookie, Xia Qing instantly recognized it. The people who lived here had once spread this reflective film on the ground or stuck it to the stone walls to supplement light for their crops.

After chopping up a few fat evolved beetle grubs she dug out, Xia Qing continued until she reached the end of the farmland. Ahead, nothing but rocky ground and the rest of the valley; behind her, the cultivated plots.

Beside her lay five graves with upright stone markers and a single human skeleton.

The tombstones were carved from stone. According to the inscriptions, buried here were the skeleton’s parents, in-laws, husband, daughter, and son.

All five tombstones had tilted or toppled, with thick grass growing over the mounds. The last to die, a woman, lay on her back atop her husband’s grave. Her skeleton had all but vanished into the overgrowth, only her pale skull still angled upward, gazing at that shining band of sunlight above the valley.