Chapter 51: A Day of Hard Work and Small Victories

After venturing into the mountains and bringing back two Yellowlight Bamboo Rats and over two hundred pounds of bamboo shoots, Xia Qing returned to her territory and was greeted with an enthusiastic welcome from Boss Sheep.

Judging by Boss Sheep’s excitement, Xia Qing believed that if its tail weren’t so heavy, it would have wagged up a storm. She took her heavy backpack off and set it on Boss Sheep’s back for it to carry home. Then, generously, she handed it a small, tender Yellowlight bamboo shoot. “Eat up. Stick with me, work hard, and I promise you won’t go hungry.”

With good food in front of him, Boss Sheep had no interest in paying Xia Qing any more attention and just buried his head in the bamboo shoot, devouring it with gusto.

After putting away the supplies, Xia Qing nearly dragged her legs into the bathroom. Hauling seven hundred pounds for fifteen miles wasn’t quite her limit, but she’d only pretended to be nonchalant about it. Once her clothes were off, she braced herself against the wall under the showerhead, letting the warm water wash the fire out of her aching shoulders.

Thank you solar power, and thank you, hard-working me, she thought. At last, she could use a simple solar water heater and get a hot shower without burning wood.

After the shower, Xia Qing treated herself to a feast of bamboo shoots as a reward for a tough day’s work. The sky wasn’t even dark before she collapsed on the bed and drifted into a deep sleep.

After finishing his snack, Boss Sheep clip-clopped over to Xia Qing’s desk and carefully licked all the plates and bowls clean, then flopped onto a straw mat by the tatami, waiting for Xia Qing to come clean up.

He waited a long time. Xia Qing just lay there snoring, showing no signs of getting up. Boss Sheep squinted at her for a while, then walked back to the table, picked up a bowl in his mouth, and carried it to the kitchen.

The ceramic bowl landed in the stainless steel basin with a crisp clink.

“Clang!”

The sound jerked Xia Qing awake. She grasped a knife in her left hand and her gun in her right, jumping up and sprinting to the source. She stared at the bowl broken in two, then at Boss Sheep, who stood by the basin and squinted back at her, and all her tension melted away.

She put away her knife and gun and reached out to gently ruffle Boss Sheep’s short fur, her voice soothing. “Good job, Boss. You’re helping with the dishes now. It’s fine if a bowl breaks, we’ve got more.”

Pleased with the praise, Boss Sheep gleefully brought the plate over in his mouth. Xia Qing used the broken bowl to show Boss Sheep how to gently place dishes in the basin. “Look, do it like this: slow and gentle. That way nothing breaks.”

But Boss Sheep just squinted at the broken bowl in Xia Qing’s hand, not paying attention to his own strength. With a loud crack, he bit down and split the plate in two; half fell into the washing basin and the other half dangled from his mouth.

Xia Qing took the half-plate from Boss Sheep’s mouth and sat down, bursting into laughter. He’d ruined some of her precious dishes, but his antics were just too funny not to laugh.

She couldn’t help herself, though Boss Sheep smacked her twice with his hoof for it, making her bare her teeth and settle down before crawling back to bed to continue her nap.

The next morning, well-rested and full of energy, Xia Qing decided to pickle a jar of sour bamboo shoots. When she was a child, she’d helped her grandma make pickled bamboo, so she knew it was simple. She found a well-preserved clay jar in the tool shed, scrubbed it clean, and washed a few Yellowlight bamboo shoots—she couldn’t bring herself to use the Greenlight kind in case they were ruined. After slicing the shoots, she put them in the jar, filled it with mountain spring water, and sealed the mouth tight. Done.

If all went well, she’d have sour bamboo shoots to eat after a month of fermenting.

She lugged the clay jar upstairs and hid it in a spot Boss Sheep would never find. Only then did she take out her phone to message Luo Pei, wanting to send him some shoots.

Xia Qing knew Hu Zifeng would definitely send some as well, but gifts meant different things depending on who gave them. It had already been over half a month since she last visited Luo Pei, and she wanted to check how his treatment was coming along.

Luo Pei replied quickly, saying she could visit anytime.

Xia Qing picked up one Yellowlight and one Greenlight bamboo shoot and headed southwest within her territory to the ruined village where Luo Pei was recovering. This time, instead of Wei Chengdong greeting her inside the ramshackle house, it was Luo Pei himself.

He still had to be helped, but Luo Pei could finally stand. His cheeks weren’t sunken anymore—he no longer looked like a skeleton wearing human skin. Even his coloring and the red in his eyes had faded a lot. The effects of the Xiang Synthesis Poison treatment were better than Xia Qing had hoped.

Following Luo Pei down to the basement living room, Xia Qing quickly hid her surprise and handed over the vacuum-sealed bamboo shoots. “These are from when Captain Hu and I went digging in the Evolver Forest. You can use them to make bamboo shoot rice porridge—it’s nourishing and easy to digest.”

Though Luo Pei still couldn’t keep his eyes open for long, he glanced at the bamboo shoots and smiled gently. “Zifeng brought me some last night, too. Honestly, they taste even better than before the evolution. Didn’t expect a young thing like you to cook.”

When the disaster struck, Xia Qing was only fifteen. Back in those peaceful days, very few girls her age knew how to cook. After the catastrophe, food was so scarce there was no opportunity to learn, even if you wanted to. Instead of mentioning what she learned at home as a kid, Xia Qing simply said, “I’ve collected a few cookbooks. This porridge recipe happened to be in one of them.”

The recipe did exist in one of her cookbooks, though it called for sticky rice and she used regular rice instead.

After some small talk, Luo Pei brought up teaching her how to shoot. “Starting in mid-May, you can come every day for firearms training—whenever you’re free. We’ll do the basics and theory here, and then in June, I’ll take you to Evolver Forest for live-fire practice.”

Could Luo Pei really recover enough in two months to face dangers in the Evolver Forest? Xia Qing hesitated. “You should focus on recovering for now, Luo Pei. I’m not in any rush.”

Luo Pei smiled, raised a hand to signal the others to leave the room and close the door, making sure no one could overhear. Then he lowered his voice. “Your timing’s perfect. There’s something I want to discuss with you—to play it safe, the Azure Dragon Unit wants to purchase the rights to Mountain 49 north of your territory. Then, privately, we’d transfer the ownership to your name, making it yours.”

After the catastrophes—disaster, earthquakes, and the mass evolution of creatures—Blue Star’s landscape changed completely. Old place names were abandoned, and mountains, rivers, and valleys were renamed with numbers.

Hearing Luo Pei say they’d buy Mountain 49 just to transfer it to her, Xia Qing was utterly stunned.

Luo Pei kept his eyes closed and spoke gently. “Whether the spring in your territory wells up from underground or flows down from inside Mountain 49, if that spring is discovered, the unclaimed Mountain 49 will become a resource everyone fights over. In your name, purchasing it outright isn’t realistic—on paper, you don’t have the reason or ability. That’s why I’m proposing the Azure Dragon Unit buy it under the pretense of building a squad training base, then transfer it to you. There’s no rush—think it over and let me know tomorrow.”

“One day to think it over and that’s not rushed?”