Chapter 935: Guardians in the Summer Night

Xia Qing was completely drained, but the Handsome Huge Wolf only halfheartedly resisted for a few seconds before letting her push his big head down into the medicinal bath.

“You’re amazing, Handsome Wolf. Hang in there!” Xia Qing gave him some encouragement then slowly shuffled out with Little Fei Mao at her side. She was so tired her eyelids felt like they weighed a ton. Rest couldn’t come soon enough.

“Splash—”

Water sloshed in the bath barrel as a massive wolf head broke the surface. He blinked at Xia Qing before slowly submerging again, leaving just his nose peeking out for air.

This wolf wasn’t just smart, his will to grow stronger was fierce too. Using the doorframe for support, Xia Qing smiled as she stumbled out of the bathroom, landing on the sofa. “Your Majesty, I’m going to sleep now.”

She pulled the light summer quilt over her stomach. It was sweltering outside but with the air conditioner running the house was perfectly comfortable. In no time, Xia Qing drifted off, her soft snores blending with Old Goat’s from the floor.

Alpha, still a little weak, left his spot on the straw mat and curled up beside Xia Qing.

“Beep beep, beep beep—”

An alarm flashed on her phone screen. After hesitating a second, Crippled Wolf tapped the red box on the display with a stylus and turned the alarm off.

Alpha headed into the bathroom and barked at the Handsome Huge Wolf, who was still pretending to be clueless in the bath, until he finally came out. Then Alpha went to the yard and let out two soft howls toward the sky.

It took just a blink for three Evolved Wolves from Section Three of Hill Forty-Nine to sprint over to Xia Qing’s house. One leapt onto the roof, one took guard over the soaked Handsome Huge Wolf, and the last one hid up in the thick grass on the south side ruins.

The moment the alert popped up on the surveillance, Xia Qing woke up. She rolled over to grab her phone—hardly any battery left after Crippled Wolf’s games—opened the feed, and saw three ridiculously fierce Evolved Wolves. She instantly understood Alpha’s intentions. Alpha and Handsome Huge Wolf still hadn’t fully recovered, Black Wolf and Crippled Wolf were busy soaking, and Er alone couldn’t watch the whole pack. So Alpha had called in backup—three personal bodyguards.

Bringing so many wolves along had to be because today, a ton of raptors were circling above the territory. Made Alpha even more wary than usual.

Xia Qing logged the two new wolves into the monitoring system, plugged her phone in to charge, then asked Alpha as he came back to the living room, “Your Majesty, those three out there—are they last year’s pups grown up, or new recruits? What about the one with the bad leg and the big guy?”

Alpha bumped Xia Qing’s head with his own, telling her to relax and get some sleep. She yawned, shut her eyes again, and tugged the quilt up.

At four in the morning, once Er finished his soak and was back on his feet, Alpha rose and stretched.

Crippled Wolf, who’d spent more than an hour playing on his phone, put the laptop back upstairs in his room. He paused, staring at Xia Qing’s phone for a while, then followed Alpha out of Section Three.

By five, the noisy calls of birds and the crowing of chickens had Xia Qing awake. After a long stretch, she got up to check on the fig cuttings she’d set to soak the night before.

You could see the effect of the sterilizing, pest-killing rooting solution with your own eyes.

After a night of soaking, the submerged parts of the cuttings grew tiny white spots—these were clusters of new cells, the sprouting points that would become roots.

Cuttings fell into three categories by woodiness: soft young shoots, semi-woody twigs, and hardened woody branches.

The juiciest shoots grew the most white spots, but they’d rot quickly. Most hardwood cuttings had no white spots yet; they’d need another day or two to soak. The longer they sat, the more likely they’d get moldy. Ever since the Great Evolution of Blue Star, microbes were way more active.

So the half-woody cuttings with a few white spots were actually the best option.

As for why Xia Qing had trimmed all the branches into cuttings in the first place? Green Lantern figs were rare and precious. Even one extra plant meant hundreds more credits down the line.

Of course, wrapping the twigs with Yi Stone could reduce mold, but that stone was even more valuable than the figs themselves. Xia Qing couldn’t bring herself to use it.

All in all, she was happy with how the soaking turned out. After breakfast, she started prepping the field and planting the figs.

She dusted off her hands and moved on to tidying the house.

The water stains on the floor had already dried. Xia Qing vacuumed up the hair in the living room, then set out the air purifier she got from her Idol. Morning light poured in.

Next, she put porridge on the stove, made her rounds in the territory, and picked fresh veggies. Now that her greenhouse had plenty of vegetables, Xia Qing would stroll through before every meal and just pick whatever looked good.

First thing after heading out, Xia Qing slid out the wooden tray from under the swallow’s nest, dumped the straw covered in bird droppings into Alpha, Er, and Monkey’s toilet, laid down fresh straw, and slid the tray back. She made a habit of cleaning out the toilets regularly, mixing compost starter with the waste so it’d ferment and turn into fertilizer for the crops.

Then she went into the Chicken House and scooped out the droppings from under the chicken coops. With over ninety chickens, she harvested nearly a hundred pounds of manure per month. After fermenting, this became top-quality Green Lantern fertilizer—prime stuff for the No. 1 and No. 2 greenhouses up on the terraced slopes.

As the saying goes, good harvests depend on good fertilizer.

Before the Blue Star evolution, fields ran mainly on chemical fertilizer. Afterward, those fast-acting chemical nutrients became the main reason crops mutated out of control. But animal manure and fermented green manure became the new main fertilizers.

Green manure, which you could make from plants’ roots, stems, and leaves, was a lot easier to come by than animal manure. There were just too few animals in the territory. That’s why, everywhere but Section Three, even the outhouses had their waste collected and turned into fertilizer.

When Xia Qing moved in, she had the pipes under her bathroom toilet reconnected to the old underground cesspit. She was the only human here, so in a year and a half, it only needed pumping out once—this past spring, Territory Eight sent a tanker to clean it. Naturally, all that sludge went back to their compost yard.

With a hundred chickens and a whole valley of wild boars, Xia Qing was never short on fertilizer.

After cleaning the Chicken House and feeding the flock, Xia Qing left the village to check the rest of her territory. To her surprise, she spotted Monkey—dressed in green shorts and a pink hat—toting a basket and trailing after Er with surprising focus, helping catch insects.

Er set down the basket he’d been carrying in his mouth and shot Xia Qing a bright, proud grin.

Monkey looked up at her, too. He still had that goofy face, but Xia Qing could tell his recovery—after nearly being ruined by an overdose of sedative—was picking up speed.

Once he was fully well, Monkey would surely leave her land. Xia Qing had to hurry with his training, so when he returned home, he’d remember to hunt for Red Vein Stone and pay back his debt.