Chapter 65: The Harvest Season

After agreeing on the carriage frame, Tong Chuxue asked the boss to deliver it together once it was completed for easier use, and the boss readily agreed.

In addition, although the frame was considered a gift from the boss to Tong Chuxue, the cost of the horse still had to be paid. Tong Chuxue handed over one tael of silver as a deposit and took the receipt.

Bidding farewell to Gu Ming and the shop owner, Tong Chuxue, Luo Huian, and the others drove the ox cart back to Qingshan Village.

They had only spent a single night in the county town, yet the news had already spread throughout Qingshan Village. Word was that relying on the mooncakes sold during the Mid-Autumn Festival, Tong Chuxue and her companions had made an untold fortune and were actually staying at an inn in the county town.

What must an inn in the county town look like? The people of Qingshan Village did not even dare to imagine.

When Tong Chuxue entered the village sitting on the ox cart, she sensitively noticed that almost all the villagers along the way were involuntarily paying attention to this cartload of people.

Xu Jinniang felt uncomfortable all over. "What is going on? Why is everyone looking at us?"

"Mother, you will get used to it." Tong Chuxue was extremely calm. They would have plenty of opportunities to make money in the future, and gazes like these would only increase.

Upon arriving home, Tong Chuxue ran straight to her room to check on the growth of the dendrobium officinale.

Previously, due to the business involving the ganoderma, she had paid almost no attention to the dendrobium. Fortunately, aided by her supernatural ability, all the dendrobium plants were growing exceptionally well despite being left unattended.

The leaves of the dendrobium officinale had completely unfurled and were in a mature stage. Stroking the leaves, Tong Chuxue felt immense joy, as if she could already see white silver flowing toward her in a torrent.

"Chuxue."

Hearing Xu Jinniang calling her from outside the room, Tong Chuxue tidied up the dendrobium inside and walked out. "Mother, are you looking for me?"

"Nothing much. Your mother just wanted to ask how the ganoderma planted in that greenhouse is doing." Xu Jinniang did not know much about what Tong Chuxue was growing in the house; her daily focus was the ganoderma in the greenhouse. Having been busy making mooncakes lately, she had no idea how things were growing inside the shed.

"I'll go take a look."

Tong Chuxue walked toward the greenhouse.

Inside the shed, across ridge after ridge of soil, the ganoderma had already sprouted white fleshy buds.

"In a few more days, the ganoderma will start unfolding," Tong Chuxue said.

Luo Changhua's face lit up with joy. "Soon? Are they about to grow fully?"

Seeing his anxious expression, Tong Chuxue could not help laughing out loud. "Uncle, don't worry. We need to do some work during this period so that the ganoderma can continue to grow."

To ensure the ganoderma entered the unfolding stage smoothly, they first had to find a way to increase the humidity inside the shed. This required everyone to fetch water every day and pour it into the sunken trenches. However, moisture would constantly evaporate with the temperature, so the water inside the shed had to be replenished at regular intervals. This was purely hard labor, and Luo Changhua agreed to take it on without a second thought.

In addition to watering, it was necessary to ensure sufficient air circulation within the shed, so someone had to lift the tarp every day to keep the air flowing. The workload for this task was relatively much smaller, and Luo Huian shouldered it all by himself.

They were not the only ones busy; everyone else in the village had also sprung into action.

Since the rice planted earlier was now ready for harvest, the young and strong laborers in every household were busy cutting rice.

However, ever since Luo Changhua and the others decided to follow Tong Chuxue, they had sold all their land and now found themselves relatively at ease. As for Tong Chuxue's family, they only had one mu of land. With everyone pitching in, the harvest was completely gathered in just two hours.

To be honest, the process of harvesting rice brought a tremendous shock to the Luo family and Liu Fen.

In the territory of Qingshan Village, harvesting nearly four hundred catties from a mu of land was already considered the absolute maximum, and it took exceptionally good weather to have such luck. After deducting taxes from the harvested rice, what actually ended up in hand was barely enough for household consumption. If a family had many mouths to feed and little land, it was hard to tell how much would be left. They were usually very frugal when eating rice, often mixing it with pumpkins, taros, and other crops.

Yet Tong Chuxue's family, with merely that single mu of land, had actually produced six hundred and fifty catties of grain—a full six hundred and fifty catties, which was fifty percent more than in the best harvest years.

Liu Fen's head was spinning from these six hundred and fifty catties of rice. For the past few days, she had followed closely behind Tong Chuxue wherever she went, asking her what secret recipe she had for farming.

Actually, Tong Chuxue had no secret recipe at all; she had merely used her wood-element supernatural ability to modify the rice seeds. Moreover, to avoid drawing too much attention, she had deliberately lowered the yield; otherwise, under normal circumstances, a harvest of one thousand catties would have been her standard level.

However, Liu Fen cared nothing about that. Ever since she learned that Tong Chuxue possessed the technique to grow ganoderma, Tong Chuxue had become omnipotent in her eyes.

"Chuxue, if you teach me, I won't take it for free. How about I come and help you farm next year?" Liu Fen proposed.

Tong Chuxue found it a bit strange. "Auntie, you don't have any land at home, and the ganoderma business can make a huge fortune. Why bother studying farming?"

In her view, it was completely unnecessary for Liu Fen to go to such lengths to figure out the trick to growing rice. In the future, selling just a single ganoderma would bring in no small income.

"To tell you the truth, I'm not doing this for myself; I'm doing it for my daughter." Liu Fen pulled Tong Chuxue aside. "Didn't my daughter get married to the neighboring village? I was thinking that if she could master this technique, she could teach it to my daughter, and then my daughter's status in her husband's family would be different."

Liu Fen spoke with deep sincerity, but Tong Chuxue still could not understand the connection between her daughter's status and growing rice.

"When a girl gets married, she has to make a living under her mother-in-law. Whether she lives well or poorly is entirely up to the mother-in-law. But if my daughter knows this skill, then her contribution to the household harvest will count, and others won't dare to bully her easily."

"Taking a step back, even if my daughter can't get along with them in the future, with this skill, she can still find a good man."

Tong Chuxue had not expected that Liu Fen would have thought so far ahead. "Auntie, you have even planned out the retreat for your daughter."

Liu Fen sighed and grabbed Tong Chuxue's hand, her warm palm covering Tong Chuxue's delicate skin. "What mother doesn't consider her children? Living a lifetime, you can never predict what will happen. Her husband treats her okay right now, but what if there's some accident? No one can say for sure. Back then, I also thought I could spend my whole life with my husband."

When all was said and done, it was entirely out of a mother's love for her child.

Since Liu Fen had put it this way, logically speaking, if Tong Chuxue were to refuse heartlessly, it would truly be hateful.

Yet Tong Chuxue was also quite helpless. In reality, ever since the rice seedlings were planted, she had not cared for that plot of land at all. The rice in the field had always grown vigorously, free of weeds and pests, which meant the cultivation secret Liu Fen imagined simply did not exist.

Caught in a difficult dilemma and pondering for a long time, Tong Chuxue finally thought of a compromise.