Chapter 69: Precision and Perseverance

After sending Zhong Tao off, Xia Qing and Boss Sheep hauled the earthworm castings straight to the terraced plots reserved for planting.

Xia Qing loved eating sweet potatoes, so the land she set aside for cuttings was always the thickest terraced soil—one plot up on the highland, another down on the low slope.

Following the method Tan Junjie shared, Xia Qing fertilized the terraced fields first, turned the soil, and built up long ridges. Once the prep was done, she snipped the long vines from green-light sweet potatoes into twenty-centimeter sections and planted two hundred cuttings.

Once the cuttings were in, Xia Qing felt equal parts happy and nervous.

She was thrilled to have two hundred new sweet potatoes, but worried. Not only might none of the cuttings survive, but stripping sixteen sweet potato plants to just two or three vines each could wreck their internal balance, downgrading them from green-light to yellow-light quality.

If that happened, it’d be a complete loss.

For this cutting method, Xia Qing even double-checked the details with Qi Fu. Since the method was sound and she still had spring water, even if only half these two hundred lived—and each only grew three sweet potatoes—that’s still a harvest of three hundred. Three hundred sweet potatoes!

With a big grin, Xia Qing watered the sweet potato cuttings using filtered water mixed with spring water—not pure spring water, since the seedlings were so many there simply wasn’t enough.

Then, she used the remaining earthworm castings to fertilize other plots.

The vegetables blooming and fruiting all needed extra fertilizer; wheat, mung beans and cotton were about to bloom and needed a boost too; even the jujube tree was flowering and needed an extra feed.

The original green-light sweet potato and yellow-light potato fields had already gone through lots of fermented sheep manure, so those didn’t need any more. And pumpkins—all vine, no flowers—weren’t getting any extra at all.

She’d thought four hundred pounds of earthworm castings would be plenty, but as soon as she started spreading it, she realized it wasn’t even enough for a single round. So Xia Qing messaged Sun Zhe and ordered another eight hundred pounds, set to arrive in twenty days.

For this deal, Xia Qing traded nearly-ripe spinach seeds. By the time Zhong Tao delivered the earthworm castings again, her spinach seeds would be ready for harvest.

In other words, Sun Zhe could produce at least eight hundred pounds of earthworm castings in twenty days—that’s four hundred points’ worth. Breeding earthworms and gathering castings was a far better gig than construction team work, but it was also much riskier. Since he’d left his territory, Sun Zhe clearly came prepared to take chances.

Xia Qing took the last few pounds of earthworm castings home and mixed them into four giant clay pots. These pots were in preparation for strawberries. According to the Encyclopedia of Cultivation, strawberry plants produce runners, which grow new young plants along their length.

Looking at the diagrams in the encyclopedia, Xia Qing couldn’t believe it was real.

But sure enough, her two strawberry plants had each grown a runner. The stems were still short with no new saplings yet, but with runners already out, those little strawberry plants couldn’t be far behind.

She had dirt and pots ready, eager to welcome the new sprouts.

Just like before, the day after planting, the cut sweet potato vines wilted under the sun. But only the leaves drooped. The stems stayed upright. Thanks to experience, Xia Qing didn’t panic like the last time she transplanted veggies.

Let them droop—they’ll perk right back up when they’re done. Xia Qing just stuck to her routines, unfazed.

Over these past days, she’d dropped by for a couple more lessons with Luo Pei. Each night, she practiced dismantling and reassembling firearms until now, even blindfolded, Xia Qing could do it quickly.

Today, she was training on shooting fundamentals.

Clad in her protective suit, Xia Qing lay hidden in the tall grass. Following Luo Pei’s instructions, she pressed the rifle stock snug to her shoulder, moved her eye slowly behind the scope to find the perfect eye relief, steadied her breath and gently squeezed the trigger.

To shoot accurately, you need steady aim—and a steady gun. To keep the gun steady, your whole body must be steady. That means a calm mind, controlled strength, and carefully regulated breathing. Xia Qing’s mindset and strength were fine—what she needed to work on was breath control, trigger discipline, and follow-through after every shot. If you take too long to reacquire your sight after each shot, an opponent could cut you down ten times over.

After holding her position with the rifle for a solid thirty minutes, Xia Qing fired the first bullet since she’d gotten her gun. An eagle’s sharp cry rang through the air. Hidden by both the birdcall and her suppressor, the shot didn’t startle anyone in the nearby territories.

Zhao Ze was still leading his squad to fetch water and irrigate the wheat in Plot Four. Over at Plot Two, Tang Huai was still hunched in the fields, digging for bugs. In Plot One, Hu Zifeng led his patrol, making rounds between Mountain 49 and the Barrier.

Looking through her scope, Xia Qing confirmed a perfect hit—a fist-sized clod of earth a whole thousand meters away. She walked over, set another dirt clod of the same size at the same spot, and returned to her starting position to keep practicing.

After thirty more minutes of aiming, Xia Qing removed the scope from her sniper rifle but kept her aiming form, now staring at the dirt clod unaided.

Using the scope was only to get her muscle memory down for proper aiming form. Xia Qing was a nine-fold Vision Evolver—she could lock onto a target the size of a chicken at 1,500 meters with the naked eye. At under a hundred meters, nothing larger than a mung bean could escape her sight.

That was an ability only second to Luo Pei, who was a ten-fold Vision Evolver.

When Luo Pei used standard test equipment in his underground lab to measure Xia Qing’s vision at nine times normal, he wasn’t the only one stunned—Xia Qing was floored, too.

She knew her sight was high-level, but never imagined she’d hit a nine-fold evolution.

Even more shocking, her hearing had hit an incredible level six evolution—one tier above Luo Pei!

After the tests, Luo Pei—thirty-four, always serious and dignified—could barely get a word out, so excited he just kept slapping Xia Qing on the shoulder. Then, recovering, he said with rare solemnity, “With your physical abilities, as long as you put in the work, you could absolutely knock Nie Hong off the throne!”

No wonder Yang Jin had so much hope for Xia Qing. No wonder!

Smack, smack, smack—Luo Pei got more and more hyped, unable to stop himself from hitting Xia Qing on the back again and again.

Getting a real sense of her abilities had gone to Xia Qing’s head, but Luo Pei dragged her back down to earth with his slaps. Humbly, she asked, “Luo Ge, who’s Nie Hong?”

Luo Pei, eyes nearly brimming with tears from happiness…

“…He’s the top sharpshooter in Hua Nation.”

Xia Qing couldn’t care less about knocking Hua Nation’s number one sharpshooter off his pedestal and taking his place. She just wanted to be an ordinary Strength Evolver, keeping her head down and farming her plot.

Since that lead wolf broke into the wild boar breeding center, it hadn’t shown itself again and things at the Breeding Center stayed quiet. Xia Qing patrolled her territory every day, using scent-blockers to get rid of the sheep smell. Boss Sheep gave up on staring out at the world behind the wire fence, and stuck close to Xia Qing—eating grass or just trailing behind her.

When Xia Qing was busy, Boss Sheep watched from a distance or, when praised by Xia Qing, stepped in to help.

When Xia Qing rested, Boss Sheep always came over and flopped down nearby.

Now, Xia Qing was lying on the ground practicing her shooting while Boss Sheep lounged beside her, leisurely chewing his cud.

When an eagle’s call rang out across the sky again, Xia Qing fired her second shot.

This time the bullet strayed more than ten meters off, thudding into a tree trunk nearby. The big tree shuddered and sent a handful of yellow leaves fluttering down.

Shooting with the naked eye is a whole different ballgame than with a scope, so missing was totally reasonable. Xia Qing picked up the spent cartridge, dug the bullet out of the tree trunk, tossed both into her pocket, and returned to aiming practice.

Under the blazing sun, Xia Qing remained motionless.

Once Boss Sheep finished chewing, his half-closed eyes drifted shut and his head eased down, coming to rest right on Xia Qing’s back. The sudden weight made Xia Qing grin, but she didn’t shift her grip on the rifle at all.

In three hours, Xia Qing fired a total of ten bullets—two hit the mark. She was plenty satisfied with that. Time to pack up and go home for a good meal.