Chapter 741: Spring Growth and Fresh Ambitions

The chicks are now over a month old. Their down feathers are gone, they’ve grown tails and combs, so you can finally tell the males from the females by looking.

Xia Qing used 180 eggs and hatched 92 chicks. Now she has 33 roosters and 36 hens left—69 in total.

These chicks are the same size as the ones Xia Qing traded for from Territory Seven last spring. Chicks at a month old have much stronger immunity and are less likely to die from being stepped on or from illness.

Still, Xia Qing worries about unexpected losses that might stop her from giving Idol the 50 chickens she promised last year. So when she saw another hen go broody two days ago, she let it incubate 20 more eggs.

Of course, when picking eggs for hatching, Xia Qing always chooses eggs from her high-tier evolved White-Feathered Hen first. Chicks from evolved hens are hardier and have a much better chance of surviving.

She did the same when picking hatching eggs last time, but she still doesn’t know how many of these 69 surviving chicks are actually descendants of the evolved White-Feathered Hen.

That’s because chick feather color isn’t just about genetics. Light, altitude, and diet all play a part. So the white chicks could be the White-Feathered Hen’s offspring, or maybe they came from the Luhua Chicken.

To really confirm how many evolved chicks she has, she’ll need to test them for Devastation and Evolution Elements. Any chick with Devastation Element below 0.5% and Evolution Element above 0.5% counts as a high-tier evolved chicken.

There’s no rush. She’ll test them when she gives the last round of vaccines next month. If there end up being a few high-tier evolved hens, Xia Qing can look forward to eating only top-quality eggs from now on.

Feeling pleased, Xia Qing mixed Green Lantern leaves, wheat bran, breadworms, and pure spring water to make the chick feed. She swapped in clean water, saw all the chicks pecking happily with no droopy or sickly ones, and then moved on to feed the rabbits.

But at the rabbit hutch, Xia Qing froze. Her rare, promising little breeding rabbit lay there dead, stretched out stiff inside the hutch. The only other baby rabbit was huddled miserably in the corner, not moving at all.

Xia Qing’s heart twisted with pain. She lifted the wire mesh, quickly pulled out both baby rabbits, and checked them over—no injuries, no bloodsucking pests. That left just one grim guess in her mind.

She rushed the dead baby rabbit to Territory Seven and after Zhang Song performed a ‘post-mortem,’ it turned out the rabbit had died of fright.

So what scared it to death?

Most likely, it was the evolved wolf Xia Qing caught peering into the hutch last night. At dusk when she fed them, both rabbits had been just fine.

After dosing the surviving rabbit with medicine from Zhang Song, Xia Qing sent it to Territory Four for Zhao Ze’s mother to care for. After all, tonight it’s not just Crippled Wolf; the Handsome Huge Wolf might show up too and scare this last baby rabbit to death.

Since it was school hours in the morning, Zhao Ze came to pick up the rabbit.

Seeing how listless the little rabbit looked, Zhao Ze didn’t say much to Xia Qing. He just hurried the little thing back home and put it together with the two adult rabbits.

The number of students Madam Zhao is teaching has gone from one to three. The two newcomers are Jiang Ying and Zhu Li.

Nineteen-year-old Jiang Ying recognizes common characters but can only write a few, and her math isn’t great. When the disaster started, she was only in second grade. After Hui Three Safe Zone built its elementary school, she and Jiang Hu never went back. Their mother’s earnings in credits were barely enough to keep up with daily expenses, let alone buy supplies for school.

Since arriving on the territory, Jiang Ying hasn’t once tried to run back to the Safe Zone, even though work is tough. She’s either helping Yue Haiying’s crew or clearing her own plot of land.

Seeing she’s committed, Tan Junjie asked if she’d like to go with Tan Qi to Territory Four for lessons. That way, Jiang Ying could improve her literacy and his ten-year-old daughter would have a study buddy.

Jiang Ying agreed right away and politely refused Tan Junjie’s offer to pay her tuition. Instead, she paid her own way and had Zhong Tao and Zheng Kui buy her books and supplies. She headed off to class with Tan Qi, happy as could be.

Watching Jiang Ying go back to school at nineteen, Zhu Li decided to join her and Tan Qi too. Zhu Li never finished elementary school before the disaster, so she needed further lessons as well.

But Zhu Li’s reason for studying is bigger than just reading and arithmetic—she has ambitions.

Their territory keeps thriving and the Lords’ Alliance is growing ever more powerful. As the Alliance expands, there’ll be more positions than just chairman, secretary, and commerce minister. Zhu Li wants to study hard now so she’ll have the confidence to compete with Zhao Ze, Shi Du, Tang Heng, and even the people of Territory Fifteen for future leadership roles.

Kuang Qingwei absolutely supports his wife. Besides buying the necessary books and supplies, he plans to get her a secondhand laptop when he saves up enough so she can study even more at home.

To help people learn to read and write, Huaguo has rolled out all sorts of online courses over the years—including primary, middle, university, and all kinds of vocational skills classes.

Self-learners can take standard exams and earn degrees. With these, they can apply for jobs offered by the Safe Zone through open recruitment.

So even though Tan Qi left the Safe Zone and doesn’t go to elementary school anymore, she can still take school exams at semester’s end. As long as she passes every subject, she’ll rise to the next grade level.

Zhu Li only completed elementary school. When the disaster hit, she had just started middle school. She’s planning to take the junior high graduation exam next June, so she’s working extra hard.

Sometimes, Zhu Li, Jiang Ying, and Tan Qi will ask Madam Zhao for help with reading and math in the Lords’ channel. Other lords listen in while they work.

Once Shi Du’s mother heard Zhu Li planned to get her junior high certificate, she told her own son to study and get his too.

Huo Lei felt the pressure after hearing all these young folks were studying. He called his son Huo Zhun, scolding him to buckle down. If he didn’t, in another year, he’d be the only person in the territory without a nine-year compulsory education certificate.

Between being asked to work hard and to show up in Section Three from time to time, Huo Zhun honestly told his dad, “Dad, now that I’m in Sister Qing’s combat team, nobody cares about degrees.”

Core members of the team—Alpha, Crippled Wolf, Handsome Huge Wolf, and the gassy Yellow Weasel—don’t have a single diploma among them.

Of course, his dad chewed his ear off for that: “You say the team doesn’t care about diplomas and you think farming doesn’t need one either. Then why are Shi Du and Zhu Li studying? Does that make them idiots? Xia Qing is only two years older than you, and she speaks so scientifically—about this or that proportion, all those terms. If you keep slacking off, you won’t even understand what she’s saying. How will you keep up with them?”

Xia Qing had no idea about the Huo family’s father-and-son talk. If she heard it, she’d tell Huo Zhun: Wolves might not chase degrees, but even they’re snatching up time to learn. If he and Crippled Wolf had to take a test on medicine or evolution skills now, Crippled Wolf might just score higher.