Chapter 18: Feng Wen's Crying

Chapter 18: Feng Wen's Crying

Xia Qing helplessly scratched her short hair. "Boss Sheep, eating grass should be your specialty, right?"

"Da da da."

Hearing the sound of Boss Sheep walking, Xia Qing turned around to find it actually heading straight for the chair she had just made. She hurriedly ran over and lifted the chair. "Don't, this really won't withstand one of your kicks. I worked so hard to finish it."

Seeing Boss Sheep staring blankly at the bamboo chair with its head tilted up, Xia Qing suddenly got its point. "You want one too? Fine, there's plenty of bamboo. I'll make one for you right now."

Xia Qing carried the bamboo chair to the tool room north of the kitchen to rummage through materials and tools.

Looking at the exterior of this small building, each floor appeared to have three rooms, but there were actually five. The rooms on the east and west sides were separated north to south, and the two northern rooms both had rear windows, providing good natural light.

The southwest room on the first floor was the kitchen, and the northeast rooms on both the first and second floors were bathrooms and washrooms. Xia Qing used the northwest room—the one north of the kitchen—as a tool room, filled with various tools she had brought from the Safe Zone and useful supplies she had collected in her territory over the past few days.

Because she planned to make new furniture, she had cut quite a lot of bamboo.

Xia Qing carried out several bamboo poles and, after a flurry of work with a saw and a drill, made a legless tatami-style bamboo platform bed for Boss Sheep. She placed it in its sleeping area and sat on it herself to test it. "This is yours. Sleeping on this won't be too cold or damp. Boss, come try it?"

Boss Sheep seemed to understand it was for him. It squinted for a moment before stepping onto the tatami and lying down on the side furthest from Xia Qing.

Xia Qing wanted to lean over and pet the sheep, but she was afraid of provoking it and having it destroy the house. Instead, she went back to the tool room to fetch a large bundle of long, thin, semi-dried grass to begin weaving seat cushions. Since living supplies were scarce after the catastrophe, most people had been forced to learn how to make these kinds of household items without needing to exchange points.

Xia Qing quickly wove a circular cushion and placed it on the tatami. However, by the time she went to retrieve her book on sheep farming, she found that the cushion had already been claimed by Boss Sheep.

It squinted, pressing the cushion down with its hoof, looking as if it intended to fight a battle for dominance if anyone dared to disobey.

Xia Qing...

"Such a small cushion, don't you find it uncomfortable?"

"Fine, I'll make one for you too."

Xia Qing put the book back and brought out two more bundles of grass. She quickly wove a coarse straw mat and spread it over the bamboo tatami. As expected, Boss Sheep occupied the straw mat and stopped fighting her for the cushion.

Xia Qing sat on the cushion and read for a while while listening to the rain, until her stomach began to growl. It was time for lunch. Having made no gains today, Xia Qing was reluctant to eat rice or flour, so she only took out two pieces of compressed ration to eat with hot water.

After eating real food for only two days, Xia Qing felt that the compressed rations were getting scratchy in her throat. However, she didn't waste a single bit, even stuffing the crumbs into her mouth. After taking several large gulps of warm spring water to wash it down, she noticed Boss Sheep walking up to her and sniffing.

Standing up, the sheep's head was even higher than Xia Qing was while sitting on her small bamboo chair. Not wanting to be looked down upon by a sheep, Xia Qing pulled her chair back a bit. "Are you full too?"

Boss Sheep sniffed again, bringing its head closer to Xia Qing's hand.

Xia Qing chuckled. "Do you like the smell of the compressed rations?"

It made sense. The catastrophe had caused the collapse of Earth's agricultural system. Now, whether it was leaves or grass roots, as long as it was an edible organism, humans would process it into food. A large portion of compressed rations consisted of plant roots, stems, and leaves, plus a bit of necessary salt; of course a sheep would like it.

Xia Qing went to the kitchen to chop a handful of evolved perilla, then opened a sealed piece of compressed ration, crushed it, mixed it into the grass, and handed it to Boss Sheep. "Eat up, your high-quality feed."

Boss Sheep lowered its head to sniff and indeed began to eat heartily.

Seeing how much it enjoyed the food, a brilliant idea suddenly popped into Xia Qing's head. "Since you ate my rations, you have to work for me. Once the weather clears, you'll pull the plow to till the fields."

After licking its bowl clean, Boss Sheep ran to the sheep pen to drink some water, then returned to lie on the straw mat. The distance between it and Xia Qing was a tiny bit closer than before it ate.

Xia Qing found the tatami quite comfortable, so she simply rolled over and continued reading about how to raise sheep. After flipping through the book, she turned her head to find that Boss Sheep had already closed its eyes and fallen asleep.

Her hands itched to pet the sheep, but just as she reached out to touch the wool, Boss Sheep jumped up, startling Xia Qing as well. After the human and sheep stared at each other for a moment, Xia Qing decided not to argue with an animal and yielded first. "The rain has stopped. Want to go out and look?"

With that, Xia Qing put on her protective suit. Stepping out of the house, she found that the grass in the courtyard had only grown to ankle height; the growth rate was noticeably slower than last night. This was because the concentration of "Corruptive Elements" in this morning's rain was lower than last night's.

This was a good thing.

Xia Qing went to the west courtyard to check on the transplanted ginger and garlic. Fearing that any blade of grass might have thorns, poison, or have evolved animalistic traits that might entangle or bite her, Xia Qing cleared these annoying weeds as she walked. A distance of just a few dozen steps took her over ten minutes.

Although they hadn't been directly drenched by the rain, the surge in Corruptive Elements in the air during last night's Red-level Corruptive Rain would still trigger biological corruption. Xia Qing pulled back the waterproof tarp and indeed found that one ginger plant and two garlic plants had corrupted. Not only had they grown significantly taller, but the color and shape of their leaves had also changed. Xia Qing pulled out the corrupted seedlings; she wasn't disappointed but was actually very happy, because after two rounds of Corruptive Rain, most of the ginger and garlic had survived.

After covering the tarp back up, she took the opportunity to clear the corrupted grass in the west courtyard to prevent them from evolving dangerous offensive capabilities. But before she could finish, it started raining again, forcing Xia Qing to return indoors to hunker down.

The rain fell intermittently for three days: one Red-level (the highest danger), two Orange-level, one Yellow-level, and the rest were Blue-level. After the three days of Corruptive Rain, Xia Qing's territory was completely covered in plants. The best-maintained areas were the courtyard and paths she had repeatedly cleared, where the grass only reached her shins; in the uncleared areas, the grass had grown over two meters tall, completely submerging her.

Once the sun came out, the concentration of Corruptive Elements in the air dropped, and the concentration of "Prosperity Elements" rose. Correspondingly, the growth of corrupted organisms slowed down, while the growth and activity of Prosperity-evolved organisms increased.

Bathed in the warm sunlight, Xia Qing felt a surge of spirit as she touched the only speck of white amidst the boundless, multicolored corrupted plants—Boss Sheep. "Boss, let's get to work."

Using compressed rations as bait, she was finally able to touch the sheep's wool. This was the most joyful thing for her during the three days of Corruptive Rain. "Let's go! First, we'll clear a path. We need to fetch water and collect perilla and toonia shoots."

Mushrooms after the rain? Xia Qing had no desire to be poisoned to death.

Boss Sheep clearly had no interest in stepping its dry hooves into the wet, soft grass and remained motionless under the front porch. Xia Qing, wearing her protective suit, didn't force him—she didn't have that kind of ability anyway. "Once I have plenty of points, I'll exchange a protective suit for you like the evolved dogs wear; when I'm even richer, I'll custom-make one in a sheep style."

Xia Qing put on her sprayer, strapped on her sickle and machete, and set off.

The courtyard had been cleared six or seven times already, so there was no danger there, but it was hard to say once she left the yard. Because the grass was so high that it obstructed her vision, Xia Qing relied entirely on her evolved, excellent hearing to perceive the slightest movements within a two-hundred-meter radius. As she sprayed insect repellent and pulled weeds, she received a call from Zhong Tao before she even left the village.

After picking up, before Xia Qing could even hear Zhong Tao speak, a piercing cry came through the line.

The voice was too familiar to Xia Qing; it was Feng Wen, who had lived in the same dormitory with her for over four years.

With Feng Wen crying like this, it was very likely that something had happened to her brother, Feng Teng.