Chapter 38: Marine Evolutionary Creatures Come Ashore

Chapter 38: Marine Evolved Creatures Come Ashore

Wei Chengdong invited Xia Qing into the living room to teach her how to disassemble, maintain, and use a handgun. "This is a fully automatic pistol specifically for special forces; in our squad, only core members are allowed to use it. Its shooting stability and precision are top-tier among handguns. This one has a detachable stock, which can be attached for shoulder-fired bursts..."

An hour later, Xia Qing left the village carrying a heavy backpack and a heavy basket. To prevent being watched, she first circled through an empty, deserted village in the southeast corner before returning home with a large bundle of dry firewood.

After locking the door tightly, Xia Qing quickly stripped off her protective suit. She spent a good while playing with the cool new submachine gun before she began inspecting the three sets of protective suits she had acquired.

The heaviest set was a fully enclosed, airtight suit with a mask, including clothing, gloves, boots, and an isolated respiratory protection device. It was suitable for high-risk, unknown environments where both respiratory and skin hazards existed simultaneously. It was standard equipment for researchers with weak self-defense capabilities when leaving safety zones; it wasn't sold publicly and couldn't be bought even with points. Although wearing a fully enclosed airtight suit would limit vision and hearing, it was genuine life-saving gear in unknown dangerous environments.

The second set was a two-piece suit, which also included boots, gloves, a protective mask, and night-vision goggles. The style and color of this suit were the same as the one Tang Huai had given her, but one touch revealed a significant difference. Xia Qing could assert that the protective power of this suit was at least three times stronger than what was on the market.

Xia Qing put on this slim-fit camouflage protective suit and moved her arms and legs to test it out, confirming that the set Tang Huai had swapped for her was garbage compared to this one.

Of course, the patched-up jumpsuit Xia Qing had just taken off was even more garbage in comparison.

She tucked the handgun into the front pocket of her protective vest, only to realize that this pocket wasn't for rations, but was specifically designed for a gun. The design was incredibly thoughtful.

Next time she went to the Evolution Forest, she would wear this.

Xia Qing happily put away the protective suit and finally checked Boss Sheep's gear. In addition to night-vision goggles, goggles, body armor, and a gas mask, Boss Sheep actually had an infrared camera, a natural light camera, and a walkie-talkie.

As she laid out the equipment one by one, Xia Qing felt a bit reluctant to give such good gear to her rough man, Sheep. She truly wanted to catch an evolved canine to serve as an assistant.

Just as she thought of Boss Sheep, she heard the rhythmic *da-da-da* of footsteps coming from the courtyard.

Just as she hid the gun, the doorknob was turned by Boss Sheep's hoof.

*Bang!* The door was pushed open heavily. Boss Sheep walked in looking irritated, squinting at Xia Qing.

Having lived here for over a month, Xia Qing had already figured out this fellow's temperament—he responded to kindness but not to force. She pitched her voice high and asked, "I went to chop wood and just got back. It must be hard work for the Boss to patrol the territory."

Boss Sheep scraped his hoof and lowered his head slightly, revealing his large spiral horns.

Fine, the "sweet talk" didn't work. Xia Qing switched to "hard" tactics. "You want rations or not?"

"Mee~"

Boss Sheep immediately retracted his hoof, raised his head, and switched to a high-pitched, cute voice.

Xia Qing briskly entered the kitchen, chopped some Chinese artichoke sprouts and grass, then opened the tin cabinet to take out two pieces of compressed rations. She crushed a small portion and mixed it into the grass, placing it on Boss Sheep's dining table.

Boss Sheep began eating intently. Xia Qing sat cross-legged beside him, eating her rations with spring water while sharing her joy with him. "Boss, we made a profit on this deal. We have a gun, and three sets of top-tier protective suits—the kind you can't buy even with points. These three suits mean we have three extra lives. Of course, I get two and you get one, and only I can use the gun, hehe..."

Xia Qing took a large gulp of spring water to swallow the throat-scraping compressed ration, smiling like an idiot.

After Boss Sheep quickly finished his bowl, he set his sights on the rations in Xia Qing's hand.

Xia Qing immediately stuffed all the rations into her mouth and swallowed them. She stood up, washed Boss Sheep's bowl, put it away, secured the handgun holster to her thigh, and turned to say goodbye to Boss Sheep. "You rest, I'm going to check the vegetable garden."

After she left, Boss Sheep trotted into the kitchen with a *da-da-da* sound. He scraped at the tin ration cabinet with his hoof several times, and upon confirming it couldn't be opened, he returned to the living room. He dug through the wardrobe and sniffed the protective suits Xia Qing had brought back; finding they weren't edible, he kicked the cabinet door with a hoof and lay down on the tatami, continuing to stare at the tin cabinet in the kitchen while chewing cud with squinted eyes.

In the vegetable garden, Xia Qing heard the movement in the house and grinned.

The vegetable seeds planted in the garden half a month ago had already sprouted. Because she had soaked them in spring water, the germination rate was twenty percent higher than that of the three Lords (Four, Five, and Six).

Were they from plots one, two, or seven? The others hadn't said, so Xia Qing wasn't sure.

The garlic sprouts and ginger shoots in the adjacent plot were already palm-sized. As long as there was no high-concentration toxic rain during the next two months of the seedling stage, she would have a harvest. Especially the ginger; there were only these six plants in her territory, and she had to protect them well. She had later discovered over thirty more garlic sprouts, making forty-four in total. Optimistically, she could eat garlic stalks by May.

Images of fragrant braised garlic stalks with meat and garlic stalk dumplings flashed through her mind—but she needed meat for that. Following the technical instructions taught by Wei Chengdong, Xia Qing aimed at a large elm tree a hundred and fifty meters away. Held in the hands of an evolved strength user, the four-pound submachine gun felt like a toy.

Her excellent visual evolution allowed Xia Qing to see clearly that the large magpie perched on the elm branch had its eyes closed. After aiming at the magpie's plump body for five minutes, she eventually put the gun away.

Firstly, she was afraid the sound would attract attention from surrounding territories; secondly, she only had three hundred rounds of ammunition and couldn't bear to waste a single one. She would practice target shooting when Luo Pei taught her, as the bullets used for training wouldn't count toward the three hundred.

In the evening, Xia Qing and Boss Sheep ate dinner while listening to the radio.

The news broadcast, which usually only reported good news, actually spent five minutes today introducing the grim situation facing the southern Guicheng Base due to the evolution of marine life, causing Xia Qing's nerves to tighten again.

The great evolution of land creatures on Blue Star was mainly influenced by the two elements, Qi and Yi, while the great evolution of marine life was caused by the combined influence of nuclear-contaminated water and the two elements. Therefore, the danger and unpredictability of marine evolution far exceeded that of land creatures. This was also the main reason why several coastal cities in China had completely fallen into ruin and been abandoned by humanity.

Who could have imagined that in the tenth year of the natural disaster, marine evolved creatures would actually come ashore, continuously expanding their territory and posing a threat to the Guicheng Base.

The news mentioned nothing about the key questions: how they came ashore, what species they were, and what their primary method of attack was, which was truly frustrating. After listening to the news, Xia Qing immediately turned on her walkie-talkie and tuned to the Lord frequency, only to hear Kuang Qingwei muttering about the issue of marine life coming ashore.

"There are only six bases in southern Guicheng, and three are already under threat. If the safety zones of these three bases fall, there will definitely be a massive influx of refugees fleeing north. Tell me, will they flee toward us?"

This was exactly what Xia Qing feared most.