The next morning, Xia Qing ate two pieces of rations for breakfast and went straight to the potato and sweet potato fields. He squatted by the edge of the field, listened for a while, and accurately located the pests in the soil. With a swift motion of his small shovel, he unearthed the most damaging pest to plant roots—the evolved grub.
Xia Qing scooped up the evolved grub, which was desperately trying to burrow back into the soil, and tossed it into the air.
Four evolved magpies, circling in the air, streaked across the ground and rushed over to snatch the grub. A few feathers drifted down and landed at Xia Qing's feet. These four magpies were the apex predators of Xia Qing's territory. Fortunately, their diet hadn't changed after their evolution, and they didn't target Xia Qing with their sharp beaks and claws, so Xia Qing coexisted peacefully with them.
Grubs are the larvae of scarab beetles. The more beautiful the scarab beetle's colors become after evolution, the stronger its bite becomes. A level-three evolved scarab beetle, with its powerful bite, can snap a finger-thick electrical wire or plastic pipe in one bite. If the taproot of a seedling is bitten by its evolved grub larva, it's doomed.
The evolved grubs have developed resistance to the insecticides and pesticides Xia Qing received, so they must be eradicated manually. Therefore, after hearing the broadcast, Xia Qing added a new task to her daily routine: removing grubs.
Every sweet potato seedling and every sprouting potato in the field is Xia Qing's treasure, so this is her first stop for pest control every day. If a grub dares to target her treasures, she'll kill it.
The evolved grubs have increased bite power, but they don't move quickly in the soil. After clearing 100 square meters of land around the sweet potato and potato fields, ensuring they can't burrow under the sweet potato seedlings before tomorrow morning, Xia Qing moves on to the grain fields.
After the cleanup, all four evolved magpies had eaten their fill and flown away, leaving only two great egrets waiting to eat the insects. These two egrets had flown into her territory a few days ago and settled in a small grove of dawn redwoods near the reservoir.
Last winter, during the clearing of the evolved forest, the tallest dawn redwood in that grove evolved a terrifying attack power; when provoked, it would spray extremely hard leaf needles in all directions. If Luo Pei hadn't noticed the dawn redwood's abnormality in time, Xia Qing would have been a pincushion. If these two great egrets had come last winter, there wouldn't have been even bones left.
After inspecting the farmland, Xia Qing began testing the toxic element content of the seedlings in her fields. She discovered that seedlings soaked in filtered water but irrigated with mountain spring water had slightly more than one-thousandth lower toxic element content than those irrigated with reservoir water.
The lower the toxic element content in plants, the lower the likelihood of them being damaged by rain. The lower the degradation rate, the more grain she can harvest!
The fact that spring water might reduce the degradation element content of seeds and seedlings delighted Xia Qing. Unfortunately, her spring was too small to irrigate all her farmland.
Xia Qing strolled to the hillside north of the reservoir to check on her newly discovered soybean sprouts, garlic sprouts, and spinach. The soybean sprouts and garlic sprouts were inedible, but the spinach leaves could be picked and eaten.
Edible plants with a green light were always targeted by the sheep. After coaxing the sheep to the north hillside to eat perilla, Xia Qing sprayed the spinach area with evolved camphor leaf water and then began testing the degradation element content of the plants.
Most of the grass around the soybean sprouts and garlic sprouts showed a yellow light; most of the grass around the spinach sprouts showed a green light.
Xia Qing used sticks of varying lengths to mark the ground, then tested up the hillside, examining everything from a few centimeters of grass to a tree over ten meters tall.
Persistence pays off. After a thorough search, she discovered a gently sloping area, winding upwards, over five meters wide and 130 meters long, leading directly to the spring. While most plants in this area weren't on the human diet, many displayed a yellow light, and the red-light plants had relatively low levels of harmful elements, generally between 15% and 25% per thousand. If other food options were unavailable, these plants would be edible and wouldn't kill anyone in the short term.
Near the spring, green-light plants increased significantly, which explained why the sheep preferred grazing there. However, the area upwards from the spring didn't conform to these characteristics; it was dominated by red-light plants with high harmful content. Even the steeper slope, over five meters wide and 120 meters long, extending from the area of the evolved perilla to the ailanthus on the higher slope, also featured predominantly yellow-light plants, followed by red-light plants, with green-light plants being the least common.
The plant testing took two days, and the harvest filled Xia Qing with excitement: she now possessed two sloping plots totaling nearly two acres, which she named the Planting Zones.
After clearing away all inedible plants from the two Planting Zones, she planned to terrace them entirely. The vegetable seedlings currently being cultivated, the seedlings to be exchanged, and the sweet potato vines suitable for future cuttings would all be planted in these two zones.
Besides these, Xia Qing's gaze turned to the sweet potato seedlings and potato fields.
She really wanted to dig up the sweet potatoes and potatoes and transplant them here…
She'd heard that moving plants could make people thrive, but moving trees could kill them. What if digging them up and disturbing them killed the sweet potato seedlings or made the potatoes too upset to sprout?
Lacking planting experience, Xia Qing didn't dare act rashly. She abandoned the idea of transplanting the sweet potatoes and potatoes and began excitedly clearing the Planting Zones.
Weeds? Pull them up, dry them, and burn them.
Red lantern shrubs? Cut them down, dig up the roots, dry them, and burn them.
Red-lighted tree? Saw it down, dig up the roots, dry it, and burn it.
Various harmful evolved insects? Exterminate them.
Evolved snakes, evolved frogs, evolved centipedes? Capture them alive, wait for Zhong Tao to come and replace the testing reagents; her testing equipment is empty.
Clear away the large and small stones. What if the planting soil layer isn't thick enough? Dig up more soil to fill it.
While Xia Qing was busy in her territory, she received a call from Zhong Tao, "Hey girl, are you there? Tiger and I are coming over to install the waterwheel for you."
"Yes." Xia Qing nodded. Tiger, the evolved human, not only installs solar panels but also waterwheels; he's a technician, while she's a laborer.
Xia Qing poured the soil from her basket into the newly cleared terraces in the planting area. She carried the captured evolved animals to the reservoir. Not long after, Tiger and Zhong Tao arrived.
Xia Qing was stunned when she saw the old bicycle Tiger was carrying.
So, the human-powered waterwheel Tan Junjie mentioned was a modified bicycle? How could these two things be connected? She's going to ride a bicycle by the reservoir?
The reservoir area is relatively safe, and none of them were wearing protective masks, so Zhong Tao and Hu Zi clearly saw the surprise on Xia Qing's face, and they couldn't help but laugh.
Zhong Tao chuckled and asked, "Can't you imagine what a waterwheel looks like, little sister?"
Unlike her usual calm and sharp demeanor, Xia Qing was genuinely bewildered. "I really can't think of anything."