Chapter 911: Harvest and Hopes

“If this was before the disaster, one round of herbicide would keep weeds down for six months. Not a single blade of grass would survive,” Zhao Ze griped as he weeded in Territory Four, calling out on the Lords’ channel. “Brother Yue, you there?”

Over in Territory Fifteen, Yue Haiying straightened up from his one-handed weeding and pressed the button. “I’m here.”

“Brother Yue, did you guys get the price for the myoelectric prosthetics yesterday?” Zhao Ze asked, extra concerned since his mother had lost an arm as well. He was focused on the prosthetic benefit being offered to veterans at Hui Three Hospital.

All the lords working nearby perked up their ears, listening closely.

Yue Haiying explained, “There are two types in this batch. One is made with new materials and does a great job picking up even faint electrical signals from the residual muscles, so it’s more flexible. The price depends on how much of the new material is used. For my situation, the full price is 450,000 credits. The other is standard carbon fiber and titanium alloy, not as flexible, and costs 280,000 credits.”

“So my mom needs over 500,000 credits for the new one, and just over 300,000 for the carbon fiber prosthetic. At least now I have a target. Thanks, Brother Yue.” Since Yue Haiying still had his right elbow, but Zhao Ze’s mom was missing most of her left arm, she needed more material and a pricier prosthetic.

Three hundred thousand credits was astronomical for ordinary folks, but with the Hidden Valley, X-2, and red-leaved bamboo, Zhao Ze figured with frugal living and hard work for five or six years, he could finally get his mom a prosthetic. With a goal in mind, he worked even harder.

Qi Fu asked, “Old Kuang, can you get some of that Scar Cleanse from this batch? How much is it per bottle?”

Yuan Yan had waited half the day at Hui Three Pharmaceutical yesterday, but still hadn’t gotten a chance to buy medicine at the original price.

Kuang Qingwei replied, “Anyone who got a number from the Safe Zone is offering 5,800 credits per bottle. Qi, maybe we should hold off a bit? I heard the pharmaceutical factory is expanding production. Next month for sure, prices will drop.”

Even though everyone in Territory Alliance was technically in the same group as Hui Three Pharmaceutical’s chairman Zhou Zhaoping and chief researcher Zhang San, nobody ever contacted them for cheap medicine through back channels. That’s because one of the basic rules of the Alliance was all help and trades between members had to go by market price.

Now that Huo Zhun was done with his service and exams, he was living it up. “Yeah, the price is sky-high. Brother Yue, Dazhi, once farm season slows, how about we form a team of disaster gold hunters and hit the Ruins Continent? If we get lucky, we’ll be set for the rest of our lives.”

Yue Haiying was completely unmoved. “And if our luck runs out, there won’t be any ‘rest of our lives.’”

Everyone fell silent…

Tang Huai burst out laughing. “Brother Yue, you’re in such a good mood since fitting your prosthetic. Look at you, cracking jokes. Huo, count me in for gold-hunting. Sister Qing, want to join?”

Summer Qing, hard at work, never joined these chats, but suddenly Hu Zifeng chimed in. “If you’re going to the Ruins Continent, you’ll need titanium-alloy shoes. The rocks there are way tougher than we’ve got here.”

Last mission, Tang Huai had broken his toes tripping on a rock, and it had become the embarrassment of his life. He instantly snapped. “You maniac, get out here and say that to my face!”

Hearing the two of them bicker again, Summer Qing just switched off her walkie-talkie and focused on harvesting sunflowers.

A while back, Summer Qing had already harvested over twenty early-blooming sunflowers. Today, she planned to clear out half an acre of Yellow Lantern sunflowers from Greenhouse Six, plus a whole terrace of sunflowers from Breeding Greenhouse One on the high slope.

After the sunflower heads were cut, they needed to be dried. If she brought them home, someone—or a wolf—would have to guard them, so Summer Qing decided to dry them inside the greenhouse.

Using her right hand to grab a sunflower head, she wielded her black blade in her left, sliced off the stalk below the head, then trimmed about ten more centimeters off the stem. Finally, she stuck each sunflower head upright on a hollow stalk, about a meter tall.

This method of drying she’d picked up from a farming manual she’d collected.

Standing amid the sunflowers, she grabbed a head with her right hand, and with two swift chops from her left, snipped it free, then pressed it back onto a stalk for sun-drying—all in less than a second. With each smooth motion, another head was done. The more she worked, the faster and more efficient she became.

From one end of the row to the other, all the sunflower heads that had been drooping moments before stood perfectly in line, propped on stems and basking in full sunlight. Summer Qing looked back and felt an inexplicable sense of satisfaction.

On days with good weather, six or seven days under the sun would dry the heads enough so she could harvest the seeds.

Although Summer Qing was the only person working in the greenhouse, she had plenty of animal helpers.

Old Goat munched on sunflower leaves, with Summer Qing’s permission. Little Fei Mao hopped from head to head, digging out top-quality seeds and stuffing them into Summer Qing’s pocket. Er trailed behind, picking up the ten-centimeter stalk bits Summer Qing had lopped off and carrying them to the basket.

Both Er and Little Fei Mao had taken to these tasks on their own—they simply loved doing them.

What about Monkey?

Crippled Wolf had tossed him back to Wolf Valley, but forbade him from hanging out in the den. That morning, when Summer Qing had come to give him his medicine, she found him hiding in a patch of thorny, poisonous bushes.

After dosing him, Summer Qing ignored Monkey’s pitiful calls for her to come back. She was still furious—he’d dug up one of her sweet potatoes, and that plant’s Devastation Element content was only 3.6‰. He’d destroyed a seedling with real potential!

Once Tang Huai and Hu Zifeng finally stopped arguing, Wen Nengjie seized the chance to make himself known. “Sister Qing, got a lot of weeds in your field? Need a hand?”

Of course, Summer Qing didn’t answer. She was too busy recording detailed data on this round of sunflowers. Wen Nengjie thought she was weeding just as she’d told her allies before. She hadn’t shared her secret: she was cultivating sunflowers inside her own territory.

Last year, the Territory Management Department distributed sunflower seeds, but in Devastation Rain, there was a 2% chance they’d undergo aggressive Devastation Evolution. That meant the heads would grow fast, ripen the seeds instantly, then fire them off like a machine gun.

The kinetic energy from an aggressive Devastation-evolved sunflower’s seed launch was many times greater than the blasts from mature X-2 spinach seeds.

You could block the flying spinach seeds with thick transparent ground cover, but stopping the seeds from an aggressive sunflower required iron plates or reinforced wooden boards. Otherwise, the greenhouse’s wooden frame and rain cover would get shredded, and people could even get injured.

Last year during the third Devastation Rain, a worker in Territory Six was killed by sunflower bullets after wearing improper protective gear.

After everyone got spooked by the machine gun sunflowers and those manic dancing potato vines, no one but Summer Qing risked planting these two dangerous crops in their territories.

Even Yuan Yan in Territory Five, though she had Magnetic Sense Evolution and could weed out aggressive plants in advance, dared not reveal her powers and only grew a small patch of sunflowers and potatoes in the Hidden Valley like everyone else.

That was because the Yi Stone in the valley shielded those plants from excess Devastation Element during the Devastation Rain, meaning they’d never undergo that kind of aggressive evolution.