Chapter 617: An Honest Gift and the Rhythm of Spring

Looking at this little bird about the size of a fist, its feathers plucked in all directions, and not even sure what species it was, Xia Qing’s attention was drawn to the yellow weasel beside it. The weasel stared at her with shiny black eyes, holding an unplucked bird in its mouth.

No wonder you’re about to lose your job plucking feathers, Xia Qing thought. You really aren’t very good at this.

Her second thought was: How am I supposed to make this yellow weasel understand that when I let Broken Back Wolf and Lame Wolf stay here to recover, it had nothing to do with Alpha bringing me prey? I agreed because I took the Yi Stone as payment for my ‘consultation’ in advance.

Back when the Wolf Pack brought this yellow weasel here, it only saw them gifting Xia Qing prey. It didn’t see the pack deliver the Yi Stone. So now, the yellow weasel stayed in Xia Qing’s territory to raise its young and, following the wolves’ custom, gave her whatever it caught. Was it wrong to do that?

Not at all.

The Wolf Pack, two to three hundred pounds each, brought Xia Qing a scrawny, unplucked wild chicken that barely weighed a few pounds. This tiny yellow weasel, weighing less than three, brought her a bird maybe a third of a pound—fully plucked, at that. Was there even a problem here?

Nope. In its mind, it probably thought it did way better than the wolves.

Xia Qing smiled, bent down, and gently picked up the freshly plucked, still bleeding bird. She spoke kindly to the balding weasel, sincere and warm. “Thank you, plucked one, for this bird. You’re a truly refined weasel. If you can find the two medicinal herbs I showed you earlier, you’ll stand at the top of the pyramid and become Blue Star’s most outstanding weasel.”

After watching Xia Qing accept its offering and seriously listen to her words, the balding weasel showed no reaction, just calmly picked up the bird and slipped into the weeds, vanishing from sight.

Xia Qing brought out the Lethal Element Detector. Seeing that this was a Red Lantern bird, she put it in a small basket and handed it to Er Gou. “Old Er, this one’s Red Lantern. Neither of us can eat it, so take it to feed the fish.”

Er Gou gleefully trotted off to the breeding greenhouse, basket in mouth.

Before noon, Xia Qing and Er Gou managed to clear the weeds and stones from all five acres of wasteland. From afar, Xia Qing looked up at the Toon Tree on the high slope. The pesticide was still working; no Evolved Insect Moths were drawn to the smell, and the toon sprouts still covered by bags looked the same as they did that morning, unlike the wild growth they’d seen yesterday.

Xia Qing guessed the Toon Tree had passed its most dangerous phase, and its release of Evolutionary Synthetic Element had dropped sharply since yesterday.

She and Er Gou herded the chickens back into the greenhouse, picked some Green Lantern vegetables, and gathered three eggs before heading home for lunch. Old Goat wouldn’t come home, stubborn as ever, and instead guarded the Toon Tree. Xia Qing let it be, since she’d already refreshed the pesticide on the Toon Tree and wasn’t worried about it releasing gas for now.

Besides, to protect the tender new shoots that might pop up under the Toon Tree, Xia Qing circled the trunk with thorny branches, keeping Old Goat away. After a year of battling over this, Old Goat knew better: if a plant was surrounded by thorns, he couldn’t eat it straight away. He had to wait for Xia Qing to pick it and hand it to him.

Old Goat didn’t mind the arrangement. Even if he jumped as high as he could, he still couldn’t reach more than a fifth of the tree’s sprouts. The best ones at the top were always meant for Xia Qing to pick and share anyway.

Once Xia Qing, Old Goat, and Er Gou walked off from the newly cleared field, plenty of birds landed to peck through the dirt. The balding weasel seized another chance, catching two more birds and feeding its mate until they were both happily stuffed.

Xia Qing whipped up a hearty lunch, then opened the back window to call Old Goat back home to eat.

After they finished eating, she grabbed the sheep-drawn plow from the warehouse in the rack building and hauled it out by the new field. She hitched Old Goat into the harness and dangled a fresh bagged toon sprout in front of him. Fired up, Old Goat started plowing at a speed that forced Xia Qing to jog just to keep up.

This round of plowing was all about airing the soil, pulling out stones and roots, and getting rid of bugs. Once the greenhouse was set up and the next Devastation Rain passed, she’d spread fertilizer and turn the soil again before sowing seeds—just like the farm broadcast described for new farming methods.

Before the sun even set, the five acres were done and Old Goat still wasn’t satisfied—he wanted to plow even more.

So Xia Qing lugged out the smoothing rake, harnessed Old Goat to it and let him pull her along, flattening the freshly plowed soil twice over and uncovering even more roots. It spared her quite a bit of extra work.

With all that energy spent, Old Goat finally mellowed out and lounged in the shade, sipping water and narrowing his eyes as Xia Qing praised him for being such a good worker.

Once she’d cheered Old Goat up, Xia Qing shouldered her basket and began picking stones from the field. There were always a ton of stones at the foot of the mountain, making stone removal a vital part of farming. Removing them improved the soil and helped seeds take root and sprout.

The farming broadcast talked about machines using high-strength steel blades to crush rocks and plants into powder or sawdust, but those machines ran on oil and used too much energy—not nearly as efficient as doing it by hand.

In Xia Qing’s territory, even manual labor was just an assistant—the real workhorse was the sheep. Five acres plowed for just a bucket of water and a bundle of toon sprouts. That beat all the machines and people combined.

After nightfall, when Yan Long dropped Zhang He off at Section Three, Xia Qing noticed Yan Long wore a facemask connected to an oxygen tank, even though she wasn’t in an airtight protective suit. Clearly, this gas affected her too.

Xia Qing wanted to ask Yan Long and Zhang He if they’d dreamed last night, but didn’t dare.

For one thing, she was wearing her airtight suit, which made conversation awkward. More importantly, she worried Yan Long would be grumpy and drag her off for a spar. After spending days clearing land and building the greenhouse, getting beaten up would only slow her down.

Zhang He, wrapped in her airtight suit, carefully broke off a bundle of bagged toon sprouts, cinched up the bag, and tucked it into a bigger sack. Then she brought out the Air Toxin Detector, checked the branch where she’d picked the sprouts to be sure no Evolutionary Synthetic Element had leaked, then started collecting the rest.

For the higher up toon sprouts, they had to use a stepladder. Xia Qing didn’t let Zhang He climb; she took the ladder herself.

With Xia Qing’s help, they quickly harvested all 150 bundles of bagged toon sprouts and packed them up safely. Zhang He then handed Xia Qing a new detector and showed her a line of text on her phone:

“This is an Evolutionary Synthetic Element Detector. Third Brother said to trade it for your toon sprouts.”

Xia Qing nodded at once and took it. She’d already planned to head into the Evolved Forest for more evolved plants and really needed a tool like this.

After Yan Long and Zhang He left and Xia Qing finished her evening run, she got a call from her Idol. “Once this gas reaches a certain concentration, the effect on strength-based evolvers becomes pronounced. You could say the Toon Tree and these animals have a symbiotic relationship.”

The Toon Tree relies on strength evolvers ramming into it to drive off evolved insect moths and keep them from laying eggs on its trunk. The animals, meanwhile, munch on high-quality Green Lantern toon sprouts for energy. But really, both sides get more harm than good from this deal.

Standing in the evening breeze, Xia Qing asked quietly, “Third Brother, how come it doesn’t attract birds?”

Zhang San answered calmly, “Just like people can’t control how they evolve, neither can plants. That it’s survived is a miracle. Your dumb sheep attacking you during last year’s first Devastation Rain wasn’t because the excess Devastation Element messed up its brain, but because it got hyper from too much toon tree gas. The rain just pushed it over the edge.”

Xia Qing got it now. “So Old Goat must’ve been born after the first Devastation Rain the year before last.”