Chapter 18: A Sheep’s Throne and Three Stormy Days

Xia Qing scratched her short hair in resignation. “Boss Sheep, eating grass should be second nature for you, right?”

“Clop, clop, clop.”

Hearing the sound of Boss Sheep’s hooves, Xia Qing turned and saw it heading straight for the chair she’d just finished making. She rushed over and picked up the chair. “Hey, don’t! This chair won’t last even a single stomp from you—I worked hard to put it together.”

Seeing Boss Sheep raise its head and stare at the bamboo chair, Xia Qing suddenly realized what it wanted. “Oh, you want one too? Sure, there’s plenty of bamboo—I’ll whip one up for you right now.”

Toting the bamboo chair, Xia Qing made her way to the tool room north of the kitchen and started rummaging through supplies and tools.

From the outside, this small building seemed to have three rooms per floor, but in fact there were five. The rooms on the east and west sides were divided north to south. Both north rooms had rear windows, letting in ample sunlight.

The kitchen was in the southwest corner of the first floor. Both the northeast corners of the first and second floors housed the bathrooms and showers. Xia Qing had turned the northwest room upstairs—the one just north of the kitchen—into her tool room, filling it with all the tools she’d brought from the Safe Zone along with supplies scavenged on her land over the past days.

Since she’d been planning to make new furniture, she’d chopped plenty of bamboo.

Xia Qing hauled out a few bamboo poles. After some serious work with a saw and drill, she made Boss Sheep a legless tatami-style bamboo bed. Setting it where the sheep liked to lounge, she sat down to test it. “Here you go—this one’s yours. It won’t get damp or chilly. Go on, give it a try, Boss.”

Boss Sheep seemed to understand it was for him. He eyed the new tatami for a while before finally climbing up and settling as far from Xia Qing as possible.

Xia Qing wanted to get closer and pet the sheep, but she didn’t want to risk annoying it and having her house trashed. So she went back to the tool room and brought out a big bundle of long, thin, half-dried grass and started weaving a seat cushion. After the disasters, with supplies scarce, pretty much everyone had been forced to learn how to make these practical household items without spending precious points.

She quickly finished off a round seat cushion and placed it atop the bamboo tatami. But when she came back with her sheep-raising book, she found Boss Sheep had already claimed the cushion.

He was squinting and kneading the cushion with his hooves, as if daring Xia Qing to challenge him to a fight.

Xia Qing was at a loss…

“You really don’t mind how tiny and lumpy that thing is?”

“Alright then, I’ll make you another one.”

Xia Qing put the book away, brought out two more bundles of grass, and quickly wove a rough mat to lay over the bamboo tatami. Predictably, Boss Sheep took over the mat and stopped fighting her for the cushion.

Settling onto her own cushion, Xia Qing listened to the rain and read a bit, but soon enough her stomach started rumbling—it was time for lunch. With nothing new to eat today, she was reluctant to touch her rice or noodles, so she just took out two pieces of compressed rations and chased them down with hot water.

After just two days of eating real meals, the rations now felt scratchy going down, but she didn’t waste a crumb—stuffing every last bit in her mouth and gulping down some warm spring water. That’s when Boss Sheep ambled over and sniffed her with an inquisitive nose.

Even when standing, Boss Sheep’s head was higher than Xia Qing sitting on her little bamboo chair. Not wanting to be looked down on by a sheep, she scooted her chair back a bit. “Are you full already?”

Boss Sheep sniffed at her again, head leaning closer to her hand.

That made Xia Qing chuckle. “You like the smell of compressed rations?”

Made sense, actually. The disaster had shattered Blue Star’s agricultural system. Now, anything edible—tree leaves, grass roots—got made into human food. Most of the rations were root, stem, and leaf, with a bit of salt mixed in. Of course a sheep would be interested.

Xia Qing headed to the kitchen, chopped up some evolved perilla, then opened up a sealed block of compressed rations, crumbled it into the grass, and carried it over to Boss Sheep. “Here you go, your specialty feed.”

Boss Sheep sniffed, then dove right in, munching away with gusto.

Watching him eat with such enthusiasm, an idea flashed through Xia Qing’s mind. “You know, if you eat my rations, you’ve gotta earn your keep. Once the weather clears you’re pulling the plow and working the fields.”

After polishing off every scrap in his bowl, Boss Sheep wandered over to the sheep pen for a drink, then came back to lounge on the grass mat—this time, a little closer to Xia Qing than before the rations.

Finding the tatami quite comfy, Xia Qing lay back and kept reading up on sheep care. After flipping through the book, she glanced over to see Boss Sheep had already fallen sound asleep.

Her fingers itched to pet him. But the moment she reached out and touched his wool, Boss Sheep sprang up, startling both of them. They locked eyes for a second before Xia Qing decided not to fight a sheep. She gave in, breaking the tension. “The rain’s stopped. Want to go outside with me?”

She quickly pulled on her protective suit and stepped out. The grass in the yard had only grown up to ankle height, much slower than last night. That was because the Xiang Element in this morning’s rain was weaker than yesterday’s.

That was a good sign.

Heading to the West Yard to check on the transplanted ginger and garlic, Xia Qing kept an eye out for any grass that might have thorns, toxins, or animal traits that could snag or bite her. With all the weeding she had to do with every step, it took her more than ten minutes to walk just a few dozen paces.

Even without direct rain, last night’s red-level Xiang rain had pushed the airborne Xiang Element through the roof, spurring evolution in many plants. Lifting the rainproof tarp, Xia Qing found one ginger and two garlic plants had mutated—much taller than before, their leaves entirely changed in color and shape. She pulled up the mutated sprouts, but instead of being disappointed, she was thrilled. After two Xiang rains, most of her ginger and garlic actually survived.

She covered everything with the tarp again and quickly weeded more of the mutated grass in the West Yard, not giving them a chance to evolve more dangerous traits. But she hadn’t finished when another shower started up, forcing her back inside.

The rain came and went for three days—one red-level, the highest danger, two orange, and one yellow. The rest were blue-level. By the end of three days, her territory was buried under plants. The yard and paths she’d weeded repeatedly fared best, the grass only reaching her shins; elsewhere, the unweeded grass towered over two meters, completely swallowing her up.

With the sun finally out, the Xiang Element in the air dropped fast while the Yi Element rose. That meant the mutated plants slowed their growth, giving a boost to plants and creatures powered by the Vitality Element.

Basking in the warm sunlight, Xia Qing stroked the single patch of white in the endless expanse of mutated green—Boss Sheep—and felt her spirits soar. “Alright Boss, let’s get to work!”

Luring Boss Sheep with compressed rations, she finally managed to pet his wool. That, as far as Xia Qing was concerned, was the biggest achievement after three days of Xiang rain. “Let’s go! We need to clear a path, fetch water, and collect perilla leaves and Chinese toon shoots.”

As for post-rain mushrooms? Xia Qing had no wish to end up poisoned.

Boss Sheep clearly had no desire to set his dry hoofs into the saturated yard, standing unmoving under the overhang. Xia Qing, in full protective gear, didn’t blame him—she wasn’t thrilled either. “Once I’ve got some spare points, I’ll get you a set of evolved dog armor. If I get really rich, maybe a custom sheep version just for you.”

Xia Qing strapped on her sprayer, tucked her sickle and machete at her side, and set out.

The yard had already been cleared over and over, nothing dangerous there, but once she was outside, all bets were off. With the grass too tall to see past, Xia Qing relied on her evolved sharp hearing to catch any subtle movement within a two-hundred-meter radius. She sprayed repellent and pulled weeds as she went, and before she’d even left the village, her phone rang—it was Zhong Tao.

Before Xia Qing could even hear Zhong Tao’s voice after answering, a sharp wail burst through the speaker.

Xia Qing recognized that cry instantly—it was Feng Wen, her roommate of more than four years.

With Feng Wen crying this hard, was it because something had happened to her brother Feng Teng, or was it about her crush—Azure Dragon Unit’s captain Yang Jin?