Chapter 207: Evolving Iron Soybeans

Chapter 207: Chapter 207: Evolving Iron Soybeans

After inspecting her territory, Xiaqing returned home to the aroma of stewed pig’s trotters. She eagerly changed out of her Protective Suit and washed her hands. She first set out the Sick Wolf’s boiled entrails and the Sheep Leader’s special feed before bringing the clay pot to her own table and lifting the lid.

The soup was a milky white, its flavor a little bland. She poured in a dash of vinegar and garnished it with a Green Light scallion. ’Perfect.’

Xiaqing stirred it a few times with her spoon. After scooping out the Soybeans from the soup, she fell silent.

’Even if she hadn’t eaten Soybeans or soy milk in ten years, she still had some basic common sense. When cooked, Soybeans were supposed to swell up, even if they didn’t burst open like mung beans. Why were these still the same size as when she’d put them in?’

Xiaqing picked one up, put it in her mouth, and carefully took a bite. Then she discovered...

She couldn’t bite through it!

’These were the Soybeans she’d worked half a year to harvest, and she couldn’t even bite through them.’

Xiaqing finished off the chewy pig’s trotter and all the soup. Then she stared at the Soybeans—not a single one missing—arranged on a napkin and fell into deep thought.

’Had these Soybeans undergone some kind of hardness evolution, or were they another species that just looked a lot like Soybeans?’

She had encountered Soybeans before while on collection missions with the team. After harvesting them, they’d use their campfire pot to pop them with oil. Although they didn’t look great, they tasted pretty good.

Ten years into the Natural Disaster, Xiaqing was unwilling to waste a single grain of food. She washed the Soybeans she’d boiled for over an hour, put them into a hot pan, and slowly heated them, planning to pop them like popcorn.

But in the end, even when the pan got hot enough to smoke, the Soybeans remained unchanged. Xiaqing had no choice but to scoop out the scalding hot beans and set them aside.

’This hard, it was impossible to squeeze out any juice for testing.’ Xiaqing stopped wrestling with the beans and went to take care of her fields.

While she was weeding the terraced fields on the High Slope, Hu Zifeng arrived with a basket to pick up the day’s spinach juice and Green Light vegetables. Although Xiaqing had told Yang Jin that Luo Pei could have whatever he wanted, Luo Pei never made any specific requests. So, he simply ate whatever Xiaqing happened to pick.

Xiaqing picked two tomatoes, three cucumbers, and a squash, filling the basket Hu Zifeng carried. "Wait here for a bit, Captain Hu. I’m going home to juice the spinach."

Although his boss hadn’t said it explicitly, Hu Zifeng knew perfectly well what could be extracted from spinach juice. But his boss had issued a gag order, so even if he guessed, he wouldn’t ask. He just wanted to help conceal it as best he could. "Go on," he said. "I’ll do some weeding for a bit."

After three days of work, only the weeds in three peanut plots remained. Xiaqing reminded him, "Be careful not to touch the ones with red strings tied to them."

Green Light Peanuts would sense the touch of any animal, including humans, and attack with the needles on their leaf veins. Hu Zifeng cheerfully agreed.

When Xiaqing returned, she was carrying not only the smallest size of sealed bag filled with spinach juice, but also a few of the Iron Soybeans. "Captain Hu, could you please take these beans back to Brother Luo for me?"

Xiaqing was asking Captain Luo to have the planting team at No.1 Territory test these "iron beans" to see what they were.

「In the afternoon,」 Luo Pei called. "The beans you sent over are indeed a type of evolved Soybean," he said. "This variety becomes extremely hard after evolving. They need to be soaked for thirty-six hours to soften the skin before they can be processed. Because this type of evolved Soybean is so hard, has a poor texture, and contains few nutrients, even when they’re collected and brought back to the Safe Zone, they’re just processed into feed for poultry and livestock."

’So she had worked for half a year just to make some extra feed for the Sheep Leader?’

Hearing no response from Xiaqing, Luo Pei could sense her frustration. He chuckled a few times. "When we were clearing the Evolution Forest in the Third Territory’s area last year, did you see any evolved Soybeans?"

"No," Xiaqing answered with absolute certainty.

During clearing missions, main team members like Luo Pei would clear out dangerous creatures at the front, while Xiaqing, as an affiliated Strength-type member, was responsible for transport tasks. Any materials the team members harvested or collected would be sealed and handed over to the Strength-type members.

Because a spring had been discovered there, Xiaqing paid very close attention to that area of the Third Territory. She was certain they hadn’t collected any Soybeans or peanuts there.

"We cleared the Third Territory in late November. If the Soybeans had been growing nearby last year, even if we couldn’t see the beans themselves, we should have seen the leafless stalks," Luo Pei speculated with a smile. "So, these evolved Soybeans were probably carried over by a small animal."

Xiaqing agreed with Luo Pei’s deduction. "Rodents and ants both have a habit of storing food for the winter. An ant’s range is small, so it must have been rodents."

The thought that the Soybeans she had painstakingly tended for half a year might have been hauled from somewhere else by a small animal—a mouse, hamster, or squirrel—hidden in a burrow, and then discarded when the creature found it couldn’t be eaten, made Xiaqing so frustrated she wanted to pick a fight.

But Xiaqing wasn’t one to pick a fight for no reason.

After hanging up, she checked the Red Squirrel’s location. The little guy was back. The small red dot was stationary in one spot in Zone Three of Mountain 49, probably resting.

Xiaqing went to the High Slope. After spotting which pine tree the Red Squirrel was in, she casually plucked a handful of toon leaves on her way home. She shouldered the sheep plow and called out to the Sheep Leader, "Boss, ready to go plow?"

The Sheep Leader must have been bored out of its wool, because it immediately charged over at Xiaqing’s call. Xiaqing fitted it with the plow’s yoke. The woman and the sheep—one pulling, one guiding—began to turn the soil at the entrance to her territory.

Xiaqing channeled all her frustration into strength. After plowing more than four mu of land, she still wasn’t satisfied, so she grabbed her machete and chopped down over forty Wild Phoenix Trees that were more than three meters tall.

The Wild Phoenix Tree was a deciduous tree that had evolved from some unknown species after the Natural Disaster. Although its leaves weren’t high in Harmful Elements, they contained several other elements detrimental to humans, making them inedible.

In the spring, this tree would be covered in small, fragrant flowers that attracted bees and butterflies for pollination. In the summer, it produced soft, bright red, mulberry-like fruits that attracted birds. The birds would then spread its seeds far and wide through their droppings.

A Wild Phoenix Tree seed would sprout less than a week after landing on the ground. It grew rapidly, shooting up to three or four meters in just two months and quickly invading the growing space of other plants. Because it grew so fast, its wood was of very poor quality, unsuitable for furniture and only good for firewood.

When the mission team cleared the Third Territory last winter, they had chopped down all the Wild Phoenix Trees and even dug up and burned the roots. But leftover roots in the soil and new Wild Phoenix Tree seeds brought by birds still produced wave after wave of new Wild Phoenix Tree Seedlings, which Xiaqing had to clear out regularly.

If she didn’t clear them, the flat farmland in her territory would soon turn into a Wild Phoenix Tree Forest.

However, the Wild Phoenix Tree was not entirely useless. Xiaqing deliberately left over a mu of Wild Phoenix Tree Seedlings to grow in an area with poor soil. When these seedlings grew to be three or four meters tall, Xiaqing would cut them all down, saving the straight main trunks to use as poles.

These poles could be used in place of bamboo to build climbing frames for cucumbers and beans, serve as small support stakes inside greenhouses, and now, they could also be used to build a chicken fence.

Xiaqing’s reason for chopping down Wild Phoenix Trees and plowing the land today was to build a new chicken coop and move the flock from her backyard.

She buried wooden stakes to mark out the area for the new coop. Later, when the chickens and goslings went into their cages for the evening, she would move the netting and nests from the old coop and install them in the new location. Then, the new coop would be ready to use.

Xiaqing clapped the dirt off her gloves, startling a few small birds that were searching for insects in the freshly turned soil.

After finishing with the chicken coop, Xiaqing went to the planting shed on the High Slope. She squatted beside the peanut terrace she had painstakingly tended for nearly half a year, worrying.