Chapter 21: 21. Chapter 21: Was Her Face White or Purplish-Red?

Chapter 21: Was Her Face White or Purplish-Red?

Xia Qing didn't expect Old Man Yang to remember how to open the door on the first try given his straightforward, simple-minded nature. She simply propped the door open with a support, sprayed plenty of insect repellent at the entrance, put on her protective mask, and said, "We're out of water. I'm going to continue clearing the path. Are you coming with me, or staying home?"

Old Man Yang naturally remained silent, and Xia Qing didn't expect him to speak anyway. She shouldered her insect sprayer and set off once more. As for the courtyard wall and the sheepfold destroyed during her fight with Old Man Yang, she would deal with them when she had time.

After leaving the village, Xia Qing was pleasantly surprised to find that Captain Tan and his team had entered the village through the buffer forest on the northern slope, using handheld brush cutters to clear a path over a meter wide. Xia Qing eyed the military's complete equipment with envy for a moment. After spraying insect repellent along the way and heading up the mountain, she finally pulled out her sickle to clear the path toward the mountain spring stone cave.

After prying away the two large boulders blocking the cave, Xia Qing collected some spring water to test its quality. She found that the water had not been contaminated by the lethal rain. Happily, she filled a flask, hung it at her waist, and began clearing the path to the perilla growing area. After confirming that the perilla and the Toona sinensis (Chinese mahogany) had not undergone lethal evolution, Xia Qing happily harvested the perilla and picked some freshly grown Toona shoots before returning home. She found Old Man Yang lying by the door, basking in the sun.

Xia Qing placed the perilla in front of him. "Eat up. You're not the boss; you're my ancestor."

Old Man Yang was not polite at all; he stood up and continued his meal.

Xia Qing put the sprayer in the tool room, shouldered four water buckets, and carried a large water tank to fetch water. During the three-day rainy period, she and Old Man Yang hadn't been sparing with water; the tank and buckets were nearly empty.

She hadn't expected that this time, Old Man Yang would actually follow her out.

Xia Qing shot him a sidelong glance. "Thirsty?"

If one ignored his eyes, the snow-white Old Man Yang, with a piece of purple grass dangling from his mouth, actually looked quite pleasant to the eye. Xia Qing turned and continued walking out of the village.

She first went to the reservoir, where both the water level and surface area had risen significantly. She took a piece of red light snake meat out of her leather bag and hooked it onto the water surface, letting it dangle for a while. Finding that no evolved aquatic creatures jumped out to eat the meat, she filled a large crate with water and left it by the reservoir before heading up the mountain with her buckets to collect spring water.

Old Man Yang was faster than her; by now, he had already drunk his fill and was grazing near the stone cave.

After placing the buckets in the cave to collect water, Xia Qing pulled up two stalks of the palm-sized green leafy grass that Old Man Yang was munching on and tested them. Sure enough, they were Green Light safe food.

Just as Xia Qing was about to praise Old Man Yang's ability to find food, she saw an evolved leech wriggling on a tree trunk above the sheep's head. Being sucked by such a large leech would be trouble, but Xia Qing didn't move; she wanted to see how Old Man Yang would handle it.

Sheep are covered in wool, making it hard for a leech to find a place to latch on, so the leech chose Old Man Yang's head and lunged toward it. Just as the leech was about to land on his head, he shifted to the side, and then... with a single hoof, he kicked the leech flying.

It was an expected move; having taken several kicks herself, Xia Qing knew exactly how powerful those sheep hooves were. She stepped forward and killed the thirty-centimeter-long leech with a knife, then dug a hole to bury it.

Evolved leeches also had Green Light edible parts, and even if they weren't Green Light, they could be used as medicine. However, Xia Qing found the things disgusting; she would rather eat grass than this, and she had no desire to put it in her leather bag. Besides, a single leech wasn't worth many points.

Now that Xia Qing had a "large estate" to manage, she no longer wanted to endure nausea just to earn a few points.

Once the four water buckets were full, Xia Qing tightened the lids, stuffed them all into her large backpack, and gave Old Man Yang a nod before heading down the mountain. She picked up the large water tank by the reservoir, brought it home, set it down, and began cleaning the courtyard.

It wasn't that she didn't want to clear the farmland to plant crops immediately, but the fields were too wet and inaccessible these past few days, so she decided to clean the house first.

The courtyard walls had been knocked down by her and Old Man Yang, so she decided to simply clear the debris and enclose a larger area, bringing in the scaffolding building on the east and the vegetable garden on the west. Xia Qing went to the west courtyard first. Fortunately, although the west courtyard had also been smashed into a mess, her small rain-shielded greenhouse was still intact, and the ginger and garlic sprouts inside were fine.

Xia Qing pulled back the rain tarp, cleared away the small weeds growing beneath the ginger and garlic sprouts, and then pulled up all the overgrown grass and small saplings in the second courtyard.

The five Toona saplings transplanted from the new territory? Sorry, they had all been smashed to pieces. In the heat of the struggle later, Xia Qing couldn't remember if it was her or Old Man Yang who had smashed them.

The two Toona saplings transplanted near the spring? She had forgotten just now; she would go check them this afternoon.

After a flurry of activity until past noon, Xia Qing finally had her large courtyard looking bright and tidy, even having laid down a small red brick path. It looked comfortable no matter how she viewed it. The morning's work was perfectly complete; it was time for lunch.

Xia Qing rinsed the mud off her protective suit, stripped off her soaked clothes to take a bath, and then went to the kitchen to cook. A small pot of rice porridge, a side of cold tossed perilla leaves, and compressed rations as the staple—that was the whole meal.

Just as Xia Qing had finished cooking and set the food on the newly made dining table, Old Man Yang trotted into the courtyard, stepping on her newly laid brick path.

"Stop!" Xia Qing blocked Old Man Yang from entering the house, gesturing for him to rinse his dirty hooves in the water basin by the door. Old Man Yang stared at the dining table and cooperated very well, letting Xia Qing scrub his hooves before heading straight for the food.

Xia Qing was long used to his eating mannerisms. She placed a bowl of perilla grass mixed with a small piece of compressed ration on the ground. "This is yours. Eating too much compressed ration causes bloating; eat a little less."

Having eaten until his belly was round outside, Old Man Yang put his head down and ate. By the time Xia Qing finished her meal, Old Man Yang had already licked the bowl clean and was lying on his tatami mat with his eyes closed, resting.

Xia Qing lay down on the newly made bamboo bed opposite the fire; she was exhausted from the morning's work.

Meanwhile, in the military camp dormitory ten kilometers northwest of Territory No. 3, Su Ming lay on his bed, laughing so hard it looked like a seizure, making the bed shake along with him.

Hu Zi, in the bottom bunk, kicked the bed frame upward. "How long are you going to keep acting like this?"

As the bed frame bounced up and down, Su Ming poked his head out at Hu Zi and chuckled. "Hehe, hehehe... I can't help it when I think about it. I haven't encountered anything this funny in ten years."

Thinking of the scene of Xia Qing and the sheep lying in the completely destroyed courtyard, Hu Zi was also struggling to hold back his laughter, but he forced himself to maintain a serious expression to lecture Su Ming. "The Captain said we aren't allowed to talk about this outside. Mingzi, keep your mouth shut. Xia Qing is a girl; she has her dignity."

Cao Xianyun, in the next bed, narrowed his eyes. "Mingzi, did you see Xia Qing's face clearly today? Her face was white, right?"

Su Ming, a visual evolver, recalled while laughing, "It was white at first, but then the sheep kicked a layer of mud onto her protective visor, and she wiped it again, so it turned the color of mud... Hahaha!"

Hu Zi sensed something was off. "White? Not purplish-red?"

In the ten years of the Great Catastrophe, many people had been disabled or disfigured due to acid rain, poisoning, or combat. Therefore, when Cao Xianyun saw Xia Qing's purplish-red skin, he also assumed it was a lingering effect of poisoning. But now it seemed, "She is very smart."

Hu Zi, a strength evolver, agreed. "Strength evolution is the least valuable of all evolutions. The fact that she has lived safely until now without relying on a man means she must be very smart, and she must have endured a lot of hardship."

Cao Xianyun hummed in agreement. "I just remember Zhong Tao saying she worked for the construction team in the Safe Zone."

A female evolver doing the hardest and dirtiest manual labor. Su Ming stopped laughing. "She came out to farm alone; her whole family must have been reduced to just her."

Cao Xianyun concluded, "She doesn't want to attract attention; she just wants to live well on her own."

"Old Cao is right," Su Ming nodded immediately. "Don't worry, I won't tell anyone."

"She's not alone now; she's raising a rather interesting evolved sheep. This morning, that sheep stood in front of Xia Qing as if guarding her—it treated Xia Qing as one of its own." Hu Zi, who had spent the morning scouting the buffer forest, let out a large yawn and closed his eyes to sleep.