Chapter 99: A Taste of Harvest and New Beginnings

In mid-February, when Xia Qing took her territory out of the Safe Zone, she picked up six catties of mung beans from the task hall. Due to the low sprouting rate and losses from Xiang Rain, she’s now left with 4,250 edible mung bean plants. Most of them have the Yellowlight trait, with only twenty-seven sporting the rare Greenlight.

The first batch of mung bean pods finally matured. It was time to savor the fruits of her labor. It wasn’t just Zhang San who longed for mung bean pudding—Xia Qing wanted some too.

She grabbed a generous handful of Yellowlight mung beans and started boiling them. Once the soup changed color, she poured half into a bowl for Boss Sheep to cool, dropped in rock sugar, then left it to simmer on low. Stirring constantly, she kept at it until the beans broke down into a thick, sandy pudding.

Life in her territory had taken Xia Qing’s quality of living up a notch compared to her days in the Safe Zone. And now, with over ten thousand acres of her own private training ground, things had just leveled up again.

Of course, every trip to the training ground left her with some new bruises. The marks on her body never faded, but she always returned with something from her hunt.

She kept the edible game for herself and used the rest to trade with Zhong Tao or the Azure Dragon Unit to improve her living conditions.

The rock sugar, clay pot and fancy smokeless stove—all swapped for hunted goods. Xia Qing had been busy.

Next month, her lifestyle would climb another rung. That’s when she’d finally get to eat flour ground from the wheat she’d grown herself.

“Boss, come taste the fruit of our hard work.” Once the mung bean pudding and soup cooled, Xia Qing called Boss Sheep over to enjoy.

“Baa—!”

When it came to food, Boss Sheep was always enthusiastic. He bleated in his high-pitched voice and dashed over.

The mung bean soup was delicious—Boss Sheep loved it. The pudding was so sweet it made Xia Qing’s heart melt.

As they enjoyed their homemade treats, Xia Qing gave thanks. “These are the very beans you water every day by treading the waterwheel, Boss. Thank you for making this delicious mung bean pudding possible.”

Boss Sheep slurped up the soup, clearly pleased, his eyes narrowing into happy slits.

Food this tasty deserved a permanent spot on the menu.

According to Li Si’s guide, these evolved mung beans had developed cold resistance and could grow anywhere between 10 to 35 degrees Celsius. Their growth cycle was about 95 days. In Hui San Base, temperatures didn’t drop below 10 degrees until late October, so she could easily plant another round.

She had over two thousand acres of farmland. With mung beans being so easy to grow, she could plant as much as she wanted.

After carefully counting, Xia Qing found that each mung bean plant had three to nine bearing stalks, each holding one to five pods, and inside each pod, six to fourteen beans. These results came thanks to the Encyclopedia of Cultivation, public broadcasts and advice from Qi Fu.

Li Si’s Evolved Mung Bean Cultivation Guide claimed that with her techniques, every plant could grow at least thirty pods and every pod would have at least ten beans.

While she might not hit the guide’s max standards on every plant, Xia Qing was confident she’d manage most of it. Her second mung bean harvest was pretty much guaranteed to be bigger.

And that was just too tempting for Xia Qing to resist.

If she replanted all twenty-seven Greenlight mung bean plants in the terraced fields up the hillside, three months from now she wouldn’t just have enough mung bean pudding for herself, but could even share it with her idol.

As for the Yellowlight mung beans, one standard greenhouse would be enough. Sure, empty fields were a waste, but there was no point chaining herself to endless planting just to keep the ground full. Training to improve her skills was way more important—without real strength to protect her land, any food she grew would just end up in someone else’s belly.

After finishing her pudding, Xia Qing headed to the fields to pick out which mung beans she’d use for seed stock.

The guide warned her not to replant in the same soil the beans had just come from. That’s called repeat cropping, and it raised the risk of fungal diseases while cutting yields. She needed to pick a new patch.

For growing evolved mung beans, the guide said to pick higher ground with at least thirty centimeters of sandy soil.

By now, Xia Qing wasn’t a total farming newbie—she knew most of her territory’s soil was sandy loam, with some sandy patches. That rich loam was why her crops always turned out well.

She settled on an empty area south of the reservoir, close to the sweet potato and potato fields. Keeping crops clustered made them easier to watch, irrigate and keep pest-free.

With her land chosen, Xia Qing dived straight into weeding and smoothing the field.

It wasn’t until she started farming that Xia Qing realized just how tenacious wild weeds were. Their seeds flourished and survived almost anywhere—wind, water, animals, all could scatter them far and wide. Give them a bit of soil and damp, and boom—instant sprouts.

After the second Xiang Rain, she’d cleared and plowed this spot and burned the land to kill off old roots and seeds. Still, within two weeks, a fresh green carpet of weeds had sprung up.

Xia Qing didn’t have the time to check every weed’s Xiang element content. She just yanked them all out, left them dry at the edge of the field, then burned them down into plant ash for fertilizer.

Thanks to Li Si’s guide, she now knew plant ash was loaded with potassium for healthy crops, then phosphorus and calcium. The makeup changed depending on what you burned, but all ashes weren’t created equal.

For evolved mung beans, she could use rotted animal manure, plant ash, and soil from heated pits as fertilizer. The recommended amount? A whopping two thousand catties per acre!

Right now, all she had was plant ash, earthworm castings and some crab shell fertilizer. Put together, it wasn’t close to two thousand catties.

Farming had really hammered home how critical fertilizer was. Xia Qing tried everything she could to make more organic compost.

Boss Sheep’s manure was fermented for Greenlight plants. The dried weeds were burned into plant ash, and the clean, bug-free grass from the greenhouse was mixed with mushroom spores for leaf mold fertilizer.

She regretted not bartering for more compost starter with Li Si back when Assistant Liu at Plot Nine was still online—now that shrewd Liu was in charge, the price of supplies from Plot Nine had shot up.

She’d been feeding her cotton with crab shell fertilizer for over ten days. The plants hadn’t changed much, but they weren’t yellow or scorched, so she ordered two thousand catties more from Zhong Tao.

Her evolved White-hairy Chicken Manure Vine was nearly stripped bare. This time, she used almost-ripe Yellowlight mung beans to trade. Besides the crab shell fertilizer, she arranged a third deal with Sun Zhe—more earthworm castings, this time to sow corn, rice and all sorts of vegetables.

Come July, her little kitten and chicks would be ready for pickup. That’d add fresh supplies of fermented, organic manure.

Wait, there’s a problem—free-roaming evolved cats buried their droppings, so it’d be impossible to collect for fertilizer.

Pulling out her phone, Xia Qing checked her notepad and realized her little kitten was already nineteen days old—almost ready to be brought home.

She wondered what an evolved kitten looked like at just over two weeks. Her hands were itchy, her heart restless—she really wanted to ask her idol for a picture.

So far, all Xia Qing knew was that Zhang San’s evolved cat had birthed two kittens. Breed, color, gender—she had no clue.

But trust Zhang San to be the ultimate idol, always thinking what fans think, worrying what fans worry.

As soon as Xia Qing finished plowing and leveling her mung bean field and putting up the insect netting, Zhang San reached out on his own. He told her and Hu Zifeng to meet at the north barrier of Territory Seven at ten the next morning to pick their kittens.

The news had Xia Qing buzzing all night. She barely slept, dreaming of picking kittens, chasing them, getting pounced on and bitten by playful furballs.

It was the classic routine—she chased, they ran, even if they tried to fly, they wouldn’t escape her.

By half past nine the next morning, Xia Qing, carrying the little dried fish she’d prepared the day before, met with an equally excited Hu Zifeng at the north barrier of Territory Three. Together, they set off for Territory Seven.