Chapter 769: Shelter from the Storm

After finishing her rounds in the buffer forest Xia Qing stood near the northern iron mesh wall, scanning the area for a while longer. Not spotting Flathead anywhere finally put her at ease and she left, hurrying to Greenhouse Six.

During periods of Devastation Rain, all normal animals know to find somewhere safe to hide. Xia Qing hadn’t seen Flathead while patrolling Section Three earlier, and now she was in the northern part of Section Three with no sign of him—that pretty much meant he was safe.

It’s not hard for a honey badger to disappear in Section Three, what with all those cliffs, valleys, rivers and even mountain fissures.

Greenhouse Six was top priority this round because it held Yellow Lantern Potatoes and Yellow Lantern Sunflowers—the two most dangerous plants in Section Three.

Just a moment ago, Liangzi had reported over the walkie-talkie that aggressive Devastation-Evolved ‘Dancing Potato Vines’ had appeared in Greenhouse Six. Er Yong and Xiao Jiang were inside already dealing with them.

By the time Xia Qing entered, Er Yong and Xiao Jiang had finished clearing out the Dancing Potato Vines. Now the two were sweeping the greenhouse with guns at the ready, pulling up any standard Devastation-Evolved plants they found.

Xia Qing worked alongside them, tearing out potato vines that stuck out above the regular plants. At the same time, she used her Magnetic Sense to detect any potato vines that hadn’t yet mutated but where the Devastation Element inside was starting to stir, radiating a strange magnetic field.

When she removed those vines with odd magnetic fields, Xia Qing kept her back to the camera and the others in the greenhouse. Neither they, nor Liangzi monitoring the greenhouse on the surveillance screens, realized that while she was uprooting the Devastation-Evolved plants, she was also pulling up six perfectly ‘normal’ potato vines.

The very last vine with the abnormal magnetic field started to mutate right as Xia Qing watched, trembling in place.

A year had passed since she’d last seen these things, and Xia Qing felt a strange kind of nostalgia.

Last year, her aim wasn’t as steady and both she and Old Goat had gotten smacked around and aching from this plant.

This year, Xia Qing bent down and yanked it out the second it started to twitch, sealing it in a bag before it could begin ‘dancing.’ She tossed the whole thing straight into a bamboo basket.

Afterward, carrying the basket, she walked to the eastern side of Greenhouse Six, where the Yellow Lantern Sunflowers grew. She pulled out more than ten sunflowers but only one was giving off an odd magnetic field.

Since they hadn’t yet had any Red Lantern-level Devastation Rain, the number of Devastation-Evolved plants in the greenhouse stayed manageable.

After leaving Greenhouse Six, Xia Qing took Old Goat for a ride—he needed to get out—and headed into Greenhouse Seven.

Greenhouse Seven held the Yellow Lantern Wheat, M-14 variety, sown just before last winter. Now, after surviving both last winter’s Devastation Snow and the first bout of this year’s Devastation Rain, a little over half the crop was left.

They managed to keep that much only because M-14 came from Territory Seven, a premium wheat breed bred to resist Devastation Element a bit better. Crops of Yellow Lantern Wheat from other territories had fared much worse, some left with barely a quarter after the first Devastation Rain—if that much after the second downpour.

The remaining overwintered wheat in Xia Qing’s greenhouse had already made it through flowering and was ripening. These were late-stage plants, pretty tough by now, so even during Devastation Rain, mass mutations were unlikely.

What made Greenhouse Seven a focus for inspection was that in the bald patches of wheat field, over fifty stalks of Y-3 Green Lantern Corn and more than thirty Green Lantern Soybeans had been planted.

In Greenhouse Three, Xia Qing had a half-acre of Y-3 Green Lantern Corn, and in Greenhouse Four, a half-acre of Green Lantern Soybeans. Both greenhouses were protected with Yi Stone, making sure these vital crops stayed safe throughout Devastation Rain.

But in Greenhouse Seven, she’d planted a few dozen of each on purpose—just to see how these two types of Green Lantern crops would cope in open conditions during Devastation Rain.

The Y-3 Green Lantern Corn is a prized crop of Red Eleven, but the climate and soil here at Hui Three are different. She needed to see if the corn would go aggressive with the mutation here.

The Green Lantern Soybeans came from the Blazing Fire Squad—which made them doubly important to observe.

Now it was almost one in the afternoon. The soybeans and corn in Greenhouse Seven seemed perfectly healthy. That wasn’t surprising: Green Lantern plants naturally resist Devastation Element way better than their Yellow Lantern counterparts.

Xia Qing made a loop around, pulling just a handful of Devastation-Evolved Yellow Lantern Wheat. Each time she uprooted one of the late-stage overwintered wheat, she felt a real twinge, but even with her store of Yi Stone, she couldn’t bring herself to break it up just for the sake of protecting the few remaining plants.

With a fistful of mutant wheat, she left Greenhouse Seven with Old Goat and checked on the other greenhouses, including the seven key ones protected by Yi Stone.

Because they’d reinforced the greenhouses ahead of time and installed lightning rods, and the Devastation Element was shielding the crops, every plant in those key seven greenhouses sailed through the second barrage of Devastation Rain unharmed. Watching the seedlings thriving under the grow lights, Xia Qing finally felt her breath come easier and the ache in her chest fade.

When she wrapped up the greenhouse rounds, it was time for the five-person team—Liangzi, her four teammates, and Xia Qing herself—to take their rest shift. Hu Zifeng and his squad took over patrolling, keeping the crops safe.

At this point, the odds of any more aggressive wild tung tree saplings popping up in the territory dropped, and with help from the surveillance cameras, the patrols were pretty relaxing. Hu Zifeng’s squad of five had it all well in hand.

Xia Qing headed home with Old Goat, riding the rotary tiller and harvesting Devastation Grass as they went, ready for lunch and a break.

In six hours, the Devastation Grass in the yard had only grown to knee height—still not enough to warrant a full cutting. Xia Qing rolled the rotary tiller into the garage first, put rice on to steam, and then mixed the feed for the chickens.

The evolved chickens Xia Qing was raising weren’t exactly brave creatures. Knowing there’d be thunderstorms during Devastation Rain, she’d prepared early. Using bamboo slats and vines, she’d built four chicken coops based on the designs she found in her poultry books.

Each coop was 1.6 meters long, 0.4 meters wide, and 0.4 meters high, split into four equal square sections. Every coop had an attached feed trough and a small water bowl.

During Devastation Rain, there were eighty-five chickens of all sizes in the chicken house. Xia Qing had woven six coops, so she fit all the chickens inside. The Black-Feathered Rooster, White-Feathered Hen, and three brooding hens each got a solo space; the rest cozied up, two or three to a compartment.

She stacked the coops in two layers, keeping the lower level half a meter off the ground for easy cleaning. The top coops were set further in, so droppings wouldn’t fall onto the chickens below. Wooden poles kept the stacks steady against the wall.

None of the coops sat perfectly flat—they had a five-degree tilt to the ground. That way, eggs laid inside would roll conveniently into the collection slot, away from trampling feet and easy to gather.

To protect her flock, Xia Qing installed Yi Stone on the coops and sealed the windows with rain covers. Still, for ventilation, she left two small air holes on the front and back.

This might explain why, during the thunderstorms, three chicks still got struck.

The second Xia Qing walked in, the big and little chickens, all cooped up, started clucking and chirping for food. She poured feed into the troughs, picked six fresh eggs from the collection slots, then slipped back home under her umbrella to share the good news. “Old Goat, our chickens just laid six eggs!”

Old Goat, still lying on the hammock chair in his protective suit, wasn’t interested, just kept chewing the cud.

Grinning, Xia Qing went to the kitchen, washed the green onion she’d just harvested, and decided: lunch would be scrambled eggs with scallions and chili pepper stir-fried with meat. She’d been running around for six hours since morning, but hadn’t touched any premium nutrient shake—not because she was hoarding those spinach leaves, but because she’d had plenty of fresh Green Lantern food and wasn’t tired enough to need a supplement.

“Ding.”

At the sound of her phone, Xia Qing turned. As she read the message on screen, the smile slipped from her face.