Chapter 404: Peanuts

Chapter 404: Chapter 404: Peanuts

Tomorrow morning, Xiaqing had to leave her territory. She needed to deliver medicine to the sister of the broken leg wolf living in the Wolf Cave.

This trip wouldn’t be dangerous, though. The Wolf Cave was in Zone Three of Mountain 49. All she had to do was exit her territory’s North Gate and cross a fifty-meter isolation belt.

No matter how arrogant the people from the Second Territory were, or how much they wanted to cause trouble, they wouldn’t dare make a move on Mountain No. 49 during the day.

If they dared set foot inside Mountain No. 49, Yang Jin would chop it off. He’d then make the Su Feng Team pay the fine for trespassing on the training ground, plus ten times the cost of the Green Dragon Team’s blade that got chipped in the process.

An Iron Rooster, indeed, and he was the one doing the plucking.

The next morning, Xiaqing was surprisingly woken up by the sound of the Red Squirrel coming over for a drink of water.

The chickens had been moved to the greenhouse, so their morning crowing hadn’t disturbed her sleep, which was an unexpected bonus.

Xiaqing quietly pulled back a corner of the curtain and looked at the Red Squirrel on her windowsill, which was wearing a locator. Her eyes suddenly widened.

She’d been so busy digging earth and building the greenhouse lately that she’d actually forgotten something important—to periodically check the Red Squirrel’s storerooms!

Xiaqing immediately threw off her warm, new cotton quilt and started to get dressed.

Startled, the Red Squirrel zipped up to the roof to hide. It then cautiously peeked down, and after seeing that the human inside hadn’t opened the window, it snuck back onto the windowsill to continue drinking.

By now, the sky was already faintly light.

Xiaqing first went to check on the greenhouse, then hurried to the High Slope’s Buffer Forest.

After standing still in the Buffer Forest for two minutes to confirm there was no one within a three-hundred-meter radius, Xiaqing used facial recognition to exit the territory’s North Gate. She then ran into Zone 3 of Mountain No. 49 and made her way to the Red Squirrel’s food storage area.

On the camera feed, Xiaqing saw the Red Squirrel under the eaves of her own house, using its little paws to pick at the cracks in the concrete, searching for any corn kernels or melon seeds that might have fallen.

Perfect.

While Xiaqing was away, the Red Squirrel was raiding her home. And while the squirrel was away, Xiaqing was going to raid its six food storerooms.

Xiaqing quickly climbed the Big Pine Tree and turned on her flashlight to inspect the Red Squirrel’s first storeroom.

Chestnuts, corn, hazelnuts, pine nuts, seeds from some unknown plant... but no peanuts.

Xiaqing climbed down the tree and quickly made her way to a stone hollow two hundred meters away to check the Red Squirrel’s second storeroom, then the third and fourth.

In the squirrel’s fifth food storeroom, Xiaqing actually found a small handful of peanuts mixed in with grass seeds!

She immediately took out a long-handled clamp from her backpack and picked out two peanuts. After spraying Deodorant around the hollow to mask the scent of her "home invasion," Xiaqing hurried towards Zone 3 of Mountain No. 49 to deliver the Anti-inflammatory medicine and spring water to the sister of the broken leg wolf.

The Head Wolf still hadn’t appeared, and the Broken Waist Wolf was nowhere to be seen either. They couldn’t have been gone long, though, because the sister of the broken leg wolf was lying in the valley, gnawing on a wild boar.

Both of her hind legs were injured, making it impossible for her to hunt on her own. This wild boar must have been caught by the broken leg wolf or the Head Wolf, who had eaten their fill before leaving it for her.

A single wolf definitely couldn’t finish a half-grown wild boar weighing over sixty pounds. Xiaqing sat on the hillside, took out her Harmful Element Detector, and began to test the quality of the peanuts. She would wait for the she-wolf to eat her fill, then take the leftover boar meat back to cook for the Sick Wolf.

The test results made Xiaqing sigh in relief: both peanuts were Red Light.

She had picked these two peanuts at random. At this rate, all the peanuts the Red Squirrel had collected were likely Red Light Peanuts.

It hadn’t collected any Green Light or Yellow Light Peanuts, probably because even though the leaves on the Green Light Peanut vines had withered and fallen, the vines or roots still had their offensive capabilities. With the Red Squirrel’s strength, it wouldn’t have been able to break through the Green Light Peanuts’ defenses to collect the nuts.

In the coming days, Xiaqing would have to keep a close eye on the Red Squirrel. The moment it left Zone 3, she would follow it to see where it was digging up the Red Light Peanuts.

’The refugees from the Second Territory?’

Xiaqing was unwilling to leave her territory and run into them. It wasn’t that she was scared; it was just too much trouble. Right now, precious Green Light food was beckoning to her from the Evolution Forest, and nothing was going to stand in her way!

On her camera feed, she saw that the Red Squirrel had actually managed to pick out two melon seeds from the cracks in her concrete and was now hugging them, hopping up and down with joy.

Xiaqing casually tossed the Red Light Peanuts to a wild boar that was digging up and eating grass roots in the valley pond, then leaped effortlessly to the entrance of the Wolf Cave.

"AWOOO—"

Having just eaten its fill, the sister of the broken leg wolf immediately took a defensive stance and let out a low growl at Xiaqing.

"Changing your water." Xiaqing took a water bottle and the medicine from her backpack and set them down for the she-wolf. Then, before the raptors circling overhead could swoop down to snatch the meal, she stuffed the boar, its belly now eaten out, into a packaging bag, sealed it, and packed it in her backpack to take back to her territory.

Back home, after detecting that the wild boar was Red Light, Xiaqing skinned and deboned it directly. She then sealed the meat in packaging bags and froze it to be used as rations for the Sick Wolf.

The meat from this boar, supplemented with a certain amount of vegetables, would be enough to feed the Sick Wolf for ten days.

After breakfast, while Xiaqing was cutting sweet potato vines on the terraces, she heard the roar of a helicopter from the south and immediately let out a sharp whistle.

Hearing the whistle, the Sheep Leader, who had been pawing at the sweet potato vines, and Wolf the Second, who had been catching insects, immediately found nearby places to hide. This was a skill Xiaqing had taught them through hundreds of training sessions.

Once the helicopter slowly landed in the Second Territory, Xiaqing whistled again, letting her two companions resume their activities. She also went back to cutting sweet potato vines.

After cutting down the sweet potato vines with a sickle and bundling them up to the side, Xiaqing said to the approaching Sheep Leader, "This is all food for you. You can decide whether to leave it here or take it home."

The Sheep Leader did neither. It just stood motionless in front of Xiaqing, eyes narrowed, looking ready for a fight at any moment.

"Alright, I get it."

Xiaqing took a block of compressed rations from the pocket of her Protective Suit, stuffed it into the Sheep Leader’s saddlebag, and praised it in a soft, gentle voice, "When I whistled, you hid right away, Sheep Leader. I couldn’t even find where you went, you’re amazing! How are you getting so smart? You’re going to outshine the leader of the Green Dragon Team soon..."

Only after it had its fill of praise, listening with narrowed eyes and a slightly raised head, did the Sheep Leader turn and start pawing at the sweet potato vines with its hoof.

Xiaqing picked up a pickaxe and started digging for sweet potatoes.

With her experience digging up potatoes and peanuts, Xiaqing’s accuracy at unearthing root vegetables had improved. She no longer needed to shovel the dirt away bit by bit. One swing of the pickaxe down and a lift up, and she pulled an entire sweet potato plant out of the ground.

Then, she bent over, gently shook the dirt off the sweet potatoes with her hands, and the harvest was complete.

The first plant was Yellow Light, bearing seven sweet potatoes of various sizes. It was a decent number, but they didn’t look very good; three of them had cracks.

Xiaqing picked them up for a closer look and saw that the cracks weren’t from insect bites or other external damage, but had formed naturally during their growth.

As for why sweet potatoes would crack while growing, Xiaqing didn’t know. She would have to consult an expert.