Chapter 5: Springwater Claim

Aside from the territories right around the Safe Zone, the following plots are considered relatively secure: 2, 15, 68, 113 and 166. The Tang family has their eye on three of them.

Because Xia Qing kept a close watch on territory updates, she knew the five plots listed in the message really were among the safest available. She trusted this information.

Xia Qing had been quietly keeping tabs on the Tang family, so she knew they were after new land. That was why she got in line early at the mission hall, waiting for them to show up.

To speed up use of farmland outside the Safe Zone and tackle the food shortage, the nation’s top authorities demanded all bases, military, and government agencies work together to push territory trials forward as quickly as possible.

With the Hui San Base military overseeing things, the Tang family didn’t dare grab the best land openly. They had to put on a good show, at least on the surface.

No matter how hard they tried, there were always cracks in that act. Xia Qing planned to spot a loophole and use it to snatch Plot Three for herself—because this land held resources she desperately needed.

The same person who sent her the territory info texted it to her public number in the Safe Zone, then quickly used a satellite to send the same message to a number she hadn’t touched in seven years. Too bad Xia Qing’s old phone stayed off and she never saw it.

Xia Qing owed her success in claiming Plot Three to that anonymous tip. As for who sent it, or whether their motives were pure or self-serving, time would tell. She wasn’t in any rush to find out.

After deleting the message again, Xia Qing stifled a yawn and crawled into her sleeping bag. Tomorrow, her new life would begin. She needed all the rest she could get.

***

The next morning, after clearing weeds and shrubs from her yard, Xia Qing wandered out of the village with a piece of ration in her mouth. She headed north, trekked across scorched fields, circled around a narrow reservoir, and climbed up the hillside.

Here, the farmland was flanked by mountains on the northwest sides. To protect fields from attacks by Evolver beasts, the base cleared a buffer zone at least fifty meters wide between the wild Evolver forest and the cropland. The zone was regularly sprayed with insect repellent to keep mutated bugs from crawling over and invading.

To keep both the land and its lord safe, a broader buffer separated the barrier from the farmland itself. Over three thousand mu of mountain woods on Plot Three’s northwest side were cleared as this protective belt, so the territory’s size soared to an incredible six thousand mu.

Only harmful Evolver creatures were removed from the buffer woods, leaving thick greenery that stood in sharp contrast to the blackened farmland below.

Xia Qing poked through underbrush with her stick, hiking uphill for twenty minutes to reach her destination—a small stone cave with a natural spring.

She’d stumbled on this spring during a base clearing mission. Water seeped quietly from inside the shallow, narrow cave, pooling half a meter deep before slipping through cracks underground—silent and nearly invisible.

If it hadn’t been for an Evolver squirrel darting out of the cave that day, Xia Qing might never have discovered it.

To solve the water shortage, Hui San Base had drilled three deep wells in the Safe Zone, but all of them produced contaminated water that needed heavy purification before it was safe to drink.

Because purifying tainted water was costly, the base always had an open mission for teams to find an unpolluted natural source. Every squad, no matter their task outside the Safe Zone, kept an eye out for springs.

In ten years, they’d only found four sources in Hui San Base territory, and every one was a mountain spring. Still, each produced such a meager flow that only a few people could drink from it.

People like Xia Qing, who scraped by through sheer hard work, never made that privileged list.

Not every spring was clean, either. So when Xia Qing’s portable tester flashed a green light for this one, she immediately marked this patch as her first choice.

Water is life.

Now, the spring was finally hers alone. After gulping down half a bowl of water, those corny slogans from bottled water commercials kept ringing in her head.

This is just the best!

With such pure spring water, she could drink to her heart’s content.

And not just drink—she was going to wash her face with it too, just because she could.

After splashing off the dirt, Xia Qing grinned like a fool while clearing and expanding the cave. For a Strength Evolver, this was easy work.

The sound of springwater running down bamboo slats and filling her bucket was pure music to her ears.

Collecting water took time, so Xia Qing straightened up and looked out over her territory.

There were no volcanoes or major earthquakes in Hui San Base, so the land hadn’t changed much since disaster struck—but those woods still hid enough Evolver beasts to kill you in an instant.

Just three months ago, those same forests and fields had belonged to them. The ground was riddled with deep craters—scars from the battles people fought with Evolver beasts to reclaim this land.

With both 20-liter buckets brimming, Xia Qing stuffed them in her oversized backpack for safekeeping, then blocked off the cave with rocks and branches so no one else would find it.

After hauling the water home, she headed to the village store, dug through the moldy wreckage, and pulled out a battered stainless steel solar water tank. Once she got it back into shape, she carried it down to the reservoir to fill up.

She was just at the water’s edge when a black shadow shot from the surface, aiming straight for her face. Xia Qing smacked it five meters away, sending it crashing into the rocks.

Watching the thing flop a few times before going still, Xia Qing couldn’t help but smile.

Her attacker was an Evolver catfish, thicker than her arm. Like most carnivores after mutation, the Evolver catfish had added humans to its menu and would strike without hesitation. If Xia Qing had been caught by those saw-like teeth, she’d have lost a chunk of flesh for sure.

But now…

Xia Qing sliced off a piece of fish and dropped it in her portable multi-function tester. The green light flashed on.

This Evolver catfish was safe to eat!

Xia Qing quickly stashed the catch in her basin and hid it to keep mutated birds from swooping down.

Once she’d loaded up, she shouldered the four-hundred-jin water tank all the way home. She used fine sand, pebbles, and layers of gauze to rig a basic filter, then finished up with a starter filter core from the base for a second round of purification.

While the water slowly filtered, Xia Qing grabbed her tools and scraped every bit of moldy, yellowed paint off the two-story house. She cleaned out the big iron pot, boiled some purified water, and took her first hot bath in ages.

After chugging down a glass of fresh spring water, her stomach growled. Knife in hand, Xia Qing headed straight for the catfish.

For her first real meal as lord of her land, she was going to eat meat.