Chapter 372: The Scavenging Squirrel and the Angry Sick Wolf

Chapter 372: Chapter 372: The Scavenging Squirrel and the Angry Sick Wolf

Sheep Leader refused to go back, so Xiaqing didn’t press him. She said hello to Guan Tong and Chen Zheng, then checked on the construction team’s progress before picking some vegetables and heading home.

Back home, Xiaqing found Sick Wolf, who was supposed to be guarding the corn and chasing away birds in the yard, looking a bit listless. She put her things down and asked, "Second, are you not feeling well?"

By now, Xiaqing was practically half a veterinarian. After checking that Sick Wolf’s temperature and droppings were normal, she went to cook. She let the meat congee cool before serving it to him and found his appetite was normal.

’Looks like it isn’t a physical issue, but an emotional one.’ After eating and washing the dishes, Xiaqing didn’t rush off to the fields or the construction site. Instead, she sat down beside Sick Wolf.

Sick Wolf rested his head on Xiaqing’s lap, visibly unhappy.

Xiaqing stroked the wolf’s fur and asked softly, "Second, you’ve been home guarding the corn for the past few days. You must be tired, right? You’ve worked hard. I’ll watch the corn this afternoon. Why don’t you go find Sheep Leader? He’s on the High Slope watching the construction team."

Sick Wolf kept his head on Xiaqing’s lap, not moving.

’That’s not it?’ Xiaqing asked again, "Second, do you miss the Queen and the broken leg wolf’s sister? Do you want to move to the Wolf Cave and live with your packmates?"

Sick Wolf looked up at Xiaqing again, but still didn’t seem happy.

Xiaqing couldn’t figure out what would make a wolf unhappy, so she decided to stop thinking about it. She let Sick Wolf go out to play with Sheep Leader while she stayed home to clean up the corncobs left after threshing, hull the dried mung beans, and chase away birds.

The mung beans were already dry. After hulling, they weighed a total of 208 jin. For her second crop, Xiaqing had planted one mu of Yellow Light Mung Beans and one terraced field of Green Light Mung Beans. Before the Natural Disasters, this yield would have been completely unremarkable.

But now, during the Disaster Years, Xiaqing was very content to achieve such a yield under the influence of the Harmful Element and Harmful Rain.

Through this second planting, Xiaqing discovered that breeding high-quality food seeds without increasing their Harmful Element content was a truly difficult task.

From the six jin of Yellow Light Mung Bean seeds she had brought from the Safe Zone in the spring, she had ultimately harvested over 4,000 mung bean plants, only 27 of which were Green Light.

For the second crop, Xiaqing continued to plant mung beans, doing her best to follow the cultivation methods and fertilizer amounts outlined in Li Si’s *Mung Bean Cultivation Guide*.

However, the planting conditions in Xiaqing’s territory were far from what Li Si’s guide required, so the germination rate and yield of the mung beans didn’t improve much.

Take the terraced field of Green Light Mung Beans she planted for the second crop, for example. The seed germination rate was 66%, the loss rate during the Harmful Rain was 20%, and 60% of the surviving plants had a Harmful Element content exceeding five-thousandths, causing them to turn from Green Light plants to Yellow Light plants.

So, although Xiaqing planted half a jin of Green Light Mung Bean seeds and harvested 75 jin of mung beans, only 30 jin were Green Light.

Blue Star had already evolved, and the atmospheric environment was different from before. The "near-zero Harmful Element" cultivation environment mentioned in Li Si’s cultivation guide was impossible to build on a large scale within the territory due to cost and technical reasons.

To increase the cultivation area and boost grain production, Xiaqing believed it was necessary to quickly cultivate Yi Evolution Seeds that were highly resistant to the Harmful Element.

She sincerely hoped that technicians and experts like Li Si would spend less time on crooked schemes and focus their efforts on researching food seeds to benefit all of humanity.

A little after four in the afternoon, Xiaqing received a notification from Eryong: the construction team had almost finished enclosing the area with the wire mesh fence. The project could only be considered complete after being inspected and approved by the Lord.

Lord Xiaqing packed the cleaned mung beans into bags, wrapped up the semi-dried corn, and brought it all inside so the birds in the trees couldn’t see or eat it. Only then did she go to meet with the construction team leader, Lu Yuhui.

She hadn’t taken more than a few steps from her house when she heard her phone emit a BEEPING alarm. She turned around and couldn’t help but smile.

The Red Squirrel had darted out from some nook or cranny and was now scavenging in the spot where Xiaqing had just been working. Xiaqing had just been handling several hundred jin of grain there, so it was inevitable that a few stray mung beans or corn kernels had bounced into places she couldn’t see.

Now she finally understood where that small handful of corn kernels in the Red Squirrel’s nest had come from.

Xiaqing didn’t mind the Red Squirrel scavenging. When she reached the High Slope, she found Sick Wolf and Sheep Leader lying together under the Big Chuntun Tree, staring through the gaps in the grass wall and bushes at the inspection team busy in the Northern Isolation Zone.

The usually docile Sick Wolf now looked like the mother of the broken leg wolf and his sister—full of wildness and aggression. Even when Xiaqing walked right up to him, his hostility toward the construction team didn’t lessen.

’Was he unhappy today because of the construction team?’ The construction team had never entered the surveillance range of the camera at her house, so they shouldn’t have had any contact with Sick Wolf.

Xiaqing rubbed Sick Wolf’s head and went to meet up with Lu Yuhui.

Over twelve days, the twenty-person construction team used three excavators and two cement mixers to finally finish installing the wire mesh that had been transported in by a helicopter over three round trips.

A sturdy wire mesh fence, nine thousand meters long and 4.3 meters high, now enclosed Xiaqing’s entire territory, including her farmland, reservoir, the West Buffer Forest, and the North Buffer Forest.

Xiaqing inspected the section of the wire mesh fence installed today. After confirming there were no quality issues, she gave Lu Yuhui two heads of napa cabbage to express her gratitude. "You’ve all worked hard during this time."

Receiving edible food during the Disaster Years was the most delightful thing. Lu Yuhui happily accepted the napa cabbage and placed it in the construction vehicle. "I’ll be working in No. 8 Territory for the next little while. Sister Qing, if you find any quality issues with the fence, feel free to contact me anytime."

Xiaqing nodded and watched as the construction team’s vehicles drove slowly along the Northern Isolation Zone toward No. 8 Territory.

The North Isolation Zone of No.3 Territory was on a hillside. Although it was fifty meters wide, it wasn’t flat. To make it easier for the construction vehicles to go up and down the slope, the construction team had graded the entire surface of the Northern Isolation Zone with excavators, and now it looked very much like a road.

Xiaqing was incredibly excited to have the fence. She walked slowly west along the flat surface of the isolation zone, following the fence line until she reached the main gate of her territory. She took out her key, unlocked the large padlock on the wire mesh gate, pushed it open, and stepped into her domain, a smile never leaving her face.

Although the wire mesh fence of her territory wasn’t as sturdy or tall as the walls of the Safe Zone, it was more than enough for her. Standing within her newly fenced territory, Xiaqing felt a profound sense of security.

With the fence and surveillance system, she could sleep more soundly at night. When she went to train in Zone Three of Mountain 49, she would no longer need Hu Zifeng’s team to come and help guard her territory.

Xiaqing locked the iron gate and returned to the terraced fields in the High Slope cultivation area to carefully check on the High Yi Element Spinach.

The spinach seeds in the farmland’s vegetable greenhouse had been ripe for several days. The harvested spinach roots, stems, and leaves had already been sent to Territory Land No. 7 in exchange for a batch of Special Level Nutrient Liquid. However, the spinach in the High Slope’s terraced fields had yet to ripen.

This terraced field was one Xiaqing had cultivated according to the *Spinach Cultivation Guide* from Zhang San. She had hung Yi Stones to repel the Harmful Element and used Pollution-free Spring Water for irrigation. Its quality was certain to be higher than the spinach from the farmland greenhouse.

’Does ripening later mean higher quality?’ Xiaqing was full of anticipation.

Leaving the High Slope cultivation greenhouse, Xiaqing went up to the High Slope and found that both Sick Wolf and Sheep Leader had gone to the wire mesh fence at the northern edge of the territory. Sheep Leader was leisurely nibbling on grass, while Sick Wolf slowly approached the fence, baring his sharp fangs.

Seeing Sick Wolf’s reaction to the wire mesh fence, Xiaqing finally understood the reason for his unhappiness today and his hostility toward the construction team.

Unlike Sheep Leader, a herbivorous Evolutionary Animal, the carnivorous beast raised in the Evolution Forest—Wolf Dog Second—hated the wire mesh fence that enclosed him.