Chapter Thirty-Four: Three Kinds in a Year

The matter of the vital aperture was still a blur; for now it existed only as a notion in his mind, and there was probably no chance of making it real anytime soon.

By comparison, embryonic breathing was far more cooperative.

It was only the way it devoured his mental strength that made him feel somewhat miserable.

“First, let’s try to shape a little figure.”

Chen Yu decided to test how well he could command his psychic power, and at the same time lay a bit of groundwork for what was to come, gathering experience along the way.

Yet he failed at the very first step.

“Why can’t this mental force come together at all?”

Dazed, he felt that this thing of his might well be fake psychic power.

Still, he quickly recovered and comforted himself inwardly: a mental force unique in all the world was bound to differ from what ordinary people imagined. That was perfectly normal.

But when his attention returned to the upper cinnabar field, he sighed again. If it could not be bound together, then mere piling up was useless.

The faintly silver mental force was more like a gas.

Once stacked together, unless the outer layer was wrapped in a firm, compact restraint, it would collapse and disperse in an instant, like a snowman melting away under the sun.

It would return once more to its scattered state.

“Control is still lacking.”

In truth, this was the simplest method of all, but he simply could not maintain a layer of psychic restraint day and night without interruption.

Chen Yu was still human. He had all the ordinary needs of eating, drinking, and relieving himself. Just like the Deity-Calling Art, it could not operate passively while he slept.

“Take it slowly.”

He had plenty of time, after all. Life on the mountain had far fewer disturbances and trivial annoyances, and he had enough energy to devote himself to it. He believed that sooner or later he would find a solution.

Where there is a will, there is a way.

After that, he rose, dusted off his backside, picked up the dirt sack and hoe, and left the courtyard for the field behind the mountain.

...

The spring millet had grown lush and green across the fields, vibrant with life. One glance at it was enough to stir thoughts of nature’s vigor and wonder.

Not long ago, this place had been nothing but hard, barren soil.

Now Chen Yu bent low and swung his hoe, uprooting the weeds along the edges of the field by the roots.

Then he crouched down, gathered them into the dirt sack, and when it was full, carried it over to the chicken coop and dumped it there.

He wanted to change the chicks’ taste a little, to let them try some different grass seeds.

...

Come to think of it, he had originally bought the chicks to solve the problem of meat. Now they had grown quite a bit, but still not enough. Time had been too short; it was probably best to wait until the twelfth lunar month before expecting to eat them.

In truth, with his current skill, and with the organ-refining art that could stun wild game, he need not worry about finding food in the mountains.

But that old saying still held: Chen Yu was not a hunter, and he had little interest in hunting.

Besides, the temple was not short on grain, and with the spiritual liquid at hand, though his appetite had grown somewhat, it was more than enough to support his martial training. His need for meat was nowhere near as urgent as it had been at the beginning.

There was still half a wild boar hanging in the temple kitchen, and even now they had barely eaten any of it.

It was kept there purely to enrich the table, so that when he felt like having meat, there would be another dish to go with the meal.

Ha!

The hoe came down and dug out a few worms. Chen Yu brushed them aside, then grabbed a handful of the long, slender grass blades and tossed them into the sack.

Weeding was no easy job, but he was not an ordinary farmer from the foot of the mountain. Besides, this patch of land was only half an acre or so.

It did not take long before everything was neatly tended.

Five mu of land, in the eyes of most common folk nowadays, was scarcely anything at all. It was not that they looked down on it; rather, the yield was too small. Even spring millet, which produced relatively well, would not bring in much from a single acre over the course of a season.

He had heard that millet was also sown in the Central Plains, with even higher yields, but for one reason or another those grain strains were confined to certain places and had not spread far.

At present, farmers still depended chiefly on heaven and on the quality of their fields.

Of the three grades of farmland, everyone hoped to own vast stretches of the finest fertile soil.

Unfortunately, the reality was that most rich land was held in the hands of the gentry. As for the barefoot poor who wanted it? They could wash up and go to sleep.

The field beneath Chen Yu’s feet was no exception. Its fertility was sparse and could only be counted as inferior. It was far worse than the medicinal field behind the courtyard, and by his estimate it would only yield a little over a hundred catties, not even close to two hundred.

Seen in this light, the spring millet in the medicinal field was clearly more promising. He had checked it yesterday and already had a rough idea in mind.

By his estimate, that little more than one mu of land could easily produce over a hundred catties.

It was almost catching up to the mountain field before him.

And that was only one crop. At the current growth rate, there was at least room for two more plantings before the summer solstice.

Three harvests a year.

The spiritual liquid could not change the spring millet’s nature; it could only be sown in spring, and it required a great deal of spiritual liquid as fertilizer. The cost was high, but even so, after multiple harvests, if everything went smoothly, he could still wring twenty to thirty times as much grain from the earth for nothing.

There was nothing more worthwhile.

Of course, that was on the condition that the spring millet, once cultivated, could be sown again and again.

What Chen Yu worried about now was that the seeds from the second planting might fail to sprout and grow.

If that happened, then it could only be planted twice, and the yield would drop sharply.

Shaking his head, he knew these matters would have to wait and be seen. Even the spring millet in the medicinal field would still need nearly a month before it matured.

“Ordinary spring millet is watered once a month. The cultivated spring millet has to rely on spiritual liquid, but I still don’t know what interval would be best.”

Farming was a craft in itself. Without anyone to guide him, and with no accumulated experience to lean on, Chen Yu could only grope his way forward by himself.

The crop had not been watered for ten days before and had still grown well. From here on, should he simply follow a ten-day cycle? One watering every ten days?

...

He lifted a soft cloth and wiped the water from his face.

Chen Yu had just rinsed himself off, and now he felt clearheaded and refreshed. It was time to go see his medicinal field.

He had been back on the mountain for two days, and all that time he had been pondering which plants to cultivate in the fourth batch. Very few of the medicinal herbs and grain strains he had planted before had survived; only the spring millet had grown tall and sturdy.

The herbs in the two jars had withered and died as well. Whether it was due to insects, disease, or something else, there was no saving them now.

The ginseng root, however, still had lush green leaves and sat in the shade of a corner, thriving quite well.

“Ah, the scallions and celery are gone.”

Though he had never admitted it, the leaves of the wild onion really did taste somewhat like scallions. As for the wild celery, it had been one of the few things on the mountain that could truly lift the flavor of his cooking.

This time when he went down the mountain, he had forgotten to buy any soy sauce, vinegar, oil, salt, or even ginger.

That had not been his original plan. But on his return to the mountain, his mind had been occupied with storing the books and Taoist scrolls in the bundle, and he had not lingered long in Stone Tooth County. Let alone those miscellaneous odds and ends, he had even forgotten to buy noodles. The temple had a stone mill, so if it came to it, he might have to grind his own flour to eat.

“Will it turn?”

He gave it a try.

It did, in fact, turn.

At last, all those martial skills of his had found a use.

“There’s not much in the way of vegetables left these past few days, either.”

The medicinal field was filled with spring millet, and the third batch planted earlier had long since been pulled up. There was no need to mention the vegetable patch; it had nearly been stripped bare. Anything worthwhile had already been transplanted to the medicinal field in previous rounds to test its affinity for spiritual vitality.

That was another matter troubling him. He had to think carefully about what belonged on the list for the fourth batch.

The Azure Spirit Root and the Orchid Pavilion Divine Fruit were indispensable, but now that the medicinal field had been expanded, there was much more land available. When the spring millet was harvested, there would be far more places to plant than before.

“What should I grow...?”

Chen Yu rested his chin in his hand, and one by one, a few targets slowly began to surface in his mind.