Chapter 80: Threads of Survival: The Price of Progress

Hu Zifeng fired back with all he’s got. “Of course they sprouted! That’s why I have every right to scold you! If it weren’t for the hundreds of evolved rats from your Territory Two, my potato sprouts wouldn’t have been chewed up!”

A notification came through—Yellowlight Snake detected. Xia Qing couldn’t help but feel delighted as she pressed the walkie-talkie button. “Eighty-six evolved rats crossed from Territory Two into Territory Three. They chewed up a solar panel and damaged the wiring. To get rid of them, I had to spend 700 points hiring help and use 150 rounds of ammo. Territory Two needs to compensate me for my losses.”

Hu Zifeng snapped right back. “And you owe me for what I lost in my own territory! If you don’t pay up, I’m going straight to the Safe Zone’s admin hall to report you!”

Tang Huai ignored Hu Zifeng and angrily questioned Xia Qing. “Eighty-six rats, but you used 150 bullets?”

Xia Qing pressed the button. “Bad aim.”

Two people in the territory had died from evolved rat bites. Tang Huai, who’d been whipped three times himself, cursed under his breath, shut off his walkie-talkie and attempted to climb out of bed through gritted teeth.

Tang Heng rushed in with a cup of water and hurried to help him. “Bro, do you really need the bathroom?”

“No, not in a rush.” Tang Huai brushed his brother’s arm aside and gritted his teeth. “I’m going to dig out those rats!”

Tang Heng tried to persuade him quietly. “Bro, Captain Xu hasn’t left yet.”

Tang Huai cursed in anger. “Like I care if he leaves or not! If he didn’t come to my territory and release the rats, would I be in this state?”

“Bro, this territory belongs to the young miss.”

Tang Huai froze.

In Territory Four, Zhao Ze leaned on his crutch and stepped outside, ordering people to cut vegetables and switch out his medicine.

In Territory Six, Kuang Qingwei lounged around eating elm leaf pancakes, listening as his young, pretty wife snickered about how much of a fool Xia Qing was.

Meanwhile, in Plot Five, Qi Fu had his arm in a sling hanging from his neck. With a sigh, he said, “Back when Xia Qing was in the Construction Crew, she was ruthless. No matter how heavy the work or how nasty the injury, she never once complained. Now she’s working for herself outside the Safe Zone—she’s even tougher.”

Qi Fu’s wife, Yuan Yan, guessed, “Did Xia Qing’s endurance get an upgrade too?”

“Nope,” Qi Fu was sure. “You’d see her drenched in sweat in the Crew, arms and legs trembling.”

Yuan Yan paused in surprise. “For a woman to push herself like that—it’s really something. I respect her for it.”

Ever since the great evolution on Blue Star, any single woman who’s managed to survive the ten years of calamity without depending on a man deserves a measure of respect.

“How many people have had it easy to make it this far anyway?” Qi Fu took one last drag of his Evolver Smoke and stood up. “Come on, let’s head to the fields and prop up any toppled sprouts we can save.”

Xia Qing turned off the walkie-talkie, chopped up the Redlight Snake to feed the fish, stuffed two edible snakes into a sack, then pulled up clusters of Xiang Grass on her way to check on the Xiang-evolved cotton transplanted in the open farmland.

All the cotton had shot up over two meters tall, buds crowding the thick branches—enough to make anyone envious.

She poked around with a stick to make sure the cotton hadn’t developed any offensive abilities before deciding to monitor them for a while longer.

According to the Encyclopedia of Cultivation, after Xiangification, cotton still has a ten percent chance of blooming and producing cotton. Xia Qing was betting everything on that slim ten percent.

Back home, Xia Qing tossed her newly caught snakes into the wooden snake box, then added the bugs she’d captured for feed. There were already over a dozen edible snakes inside, big and small.

To stay healthy and encourage her own evolution, Xia Qing always made sure to eat as well as she could. Now that she had snake meat and bamboo rat meat, she had every intention of keeping a balanced diet.

That time she told Zhong Tao she didn’t eat snake meat? She’d just been polite, not wanting to start a fuss with him over a single snake.

After breakfast, Xia Qing started pulling Xiang Grass out of the courtyard.

The roots of Xiang Grass ran deep. Pulling them out brought up huge clumps of soil. Any broken roots left behind would regrow after another Xiang Rain, so not only the grass but the root-laden soil all had to be burned.

Her body still ached, but Xia Qing quickly pulled all the Xiang Grass from the courtyard, set them on a bamboo rack to dry, then opened the garage and rolled out the rotary tiller—equipped with a homemade stone cylinder roller.

Next step: even out the courtyard, now riddled with potholes from clearing the grass.

Boss Sheep rode shotgun while Xia Qing steered. Together, they used the rotary tiller to haul the heavy roller—hundreds of pounds of rock—leveling and pressing the yard. Once the job was done, she parked the tiller back in the warehouse.

With the courtyard leveled, Xia Qing headed upstairs to the second-floor living room. She poured herself a cup of hot tea, finished it, and hummed a little tune while she sat by the floor-to-ceiling windows, picking spinach seeds one by one.

Spinach seeds were about the size of mung beans, but instead of round, they had flat sides and a sharp tip, with an incredibly hard shell. The spinach stalks could fire these seeds like bullets, packing a fierce punch thanks to that toughness. If she hadn’t been wearing a high-quality protective suit, she would’ve been riddled with holes.

How could such a weak-looking spinach stalk hit so hard? That’s just life on post-evolution Blue Star—nothing is too weird to happen.

These Greenlight spinach kept surviving through ten years of catastrophe, all thanks to their explosive power and rock-hard shells.

Picking seeds out of gritty, stone-mixed soil was delicate work, but for patient Xia Qing, it was the perfect way to relax and take a break.

After more than two hours sorting through the dirt, Xia Qing collected a total of 2,830 spinach seeds.

In the terraced fields, she had fifty-two Greenlight spinach plants, fourteen of which were males that only flowered, leaving thirty-eight female plants that both flowered and seeded. She’d counted before—each female could yield eighty to one hundred twenty seeds, so she should have brought in three to four and a half thousand. Over a thousand seeds must have been smashed on impact or were still hiding in the dirt somewhere.

She figured she could recover at least a few more by searching around.

Xia Qing soaked all the spinach seeds in pure spring water for over an hour, then set them out again to dry, washing away any effects from Xiang Rain.

Once the area was cleaned up, Xia Qing found herself staring at the spotless pile of spinach seeds on the balcony. She zoned out for a good two minutes before remembering she’d killed two big fish with Xiang Rain earlier.

She pulled out some vacuum bags and, after checking, found both fish had turned Redlight. Xia Qing cleaned, sliced, and dried the fish to save for her second companion—the little kitten.

By noon, when the Inspection Team came by on patrol, Xia Qing handed over some still-thriving Xiang-evolved sticky pumpkin vines and the toxin-releasing potato vines, asking them to pass these to Zhang San. In exchange, Zhang San gave her a hundred large-size vacuum bags.

Xia Qing turned to Tan Junjie for advice. “Captain Tan, these potato seeds not only have red-tinged leaves and slow growth, but the chance of aggressive Xiang evolution is high. Could you please report this to The Base?”

Tan Junjie nodded. “We’ve already reported it. Are you sure your injuries aren’t serious?”

“I’ve had medicine, so I can hold on,” Xia Qing replied, then asked, “Captain Tan, any numbers on the casualties caused by the Xiang-evolved aggressive potatoes?”