CHAPTER 408: CHAPTER 104: YANQING FARM’S BUMPER HARVEST (PART 2)

He had miscalculated things.

But when he suggested Xiao Xian go to Changbai Mountain to find spiritual energy supplies, she did not show any signs of desperation or seeking help. This led Zhou Ziang to mistakenly think that she could find someone to help her.

A girl all alone in this world, without father or mother, who could she possibly ask for help?

"Damn, she’s alone." Zhou Ziang gloomily realized this fact. He had to find her, but where should he start looking? Setting off from Beijing to Changbai Mountain, he could travel by land, sea, or air, with flying being the most convenient method; however, Xiao Xian was just a middle school student, and it was unlikely for her to directly take a flight.

Even if she went straight to Changbai Mountain, compared to the mountains around Beijing, those in the northeast are vast and their vegetation is more complex. With different sources of spiritual energy distributed everywhere, where could he possibly find her?

While Zhou Ziang was racking his brains, Xiao Xian had already boarded the suburban bus back to Yanqing, traveling from the urban area into the rural locale of Yanqing. Along the way, she could clearly see traces of spring transitioning into the more radiant summer light, with varying shades and intensities of green coming alive before her eyes.

To prevent Zhuo Feng from probing too much about her thinning appearance, Xiao Xian attempted to use spiritual energy to alter her looks, a method she had tested four years ago with good results; however, since the depletion of the spiritual energy, the effectiveness had declined.

Fortunately, summer is naturally a time when people tend to lose weight. Although Zhuo Feng was taken aback when she first saw Xiao Xian, she blurted out without restraint, wondering how her delicate little niece from a spry green cucumber had turned into a shriveled pickled cucumber that seemed to have been taken out from a pickling jar.

Luckily, knowing Zhuo Feng’s personality of never thinking for more than three seconds about everything, Xiao Xian brushes it off by mentioning the tough training in school combined with the immense pressure at Holy Heart, managing to gloss over the subject with dual excuses.

However, Feng Xing was listening on the side, his face twisted in indecision, his thoughts unknown.

From this incident, Xiao Xian was even more convinced of one idea: when she looks for someone to marry in the future, she definitely needs complementary personalities, just like her aunt and uncle, one firm and the other gentle, one twisted and the other carefree, so that life could be as well-rounded and harmonious as a perfectly seasoned dish.

Zhuo Feng talked about the earliest-maturing sweet potatoes that were actually just three acres in size.

When Xiao Xian first came back, she saw the few acres of sweet potatoes at the entrance of the farm and didn’t think it was time to harvest them yet, thinking perhaps Zhuo Feng had misjudged. But when she got to the acres Zhuo Feng mentioned, she realized it was indeed just three acres, and there was a clear difference.

"Aunt, did you prune this acre?" Before starting to dig, Xiao Xian took a moment to observe the leaves of the early-maturing sweet potato vines in one of the acres.

The three acres on the farm, after being irrigated with the water from her Silver-grade Space Lake, would have a significantly reduced harvesting period, although part of the lake’s medicinal effect was used to purify the herbicides. Thus, even if the maturity was accelerated, it could only be advanced by about two months, normally to be harvested in June or July. Yet now, in May, the sweet potato plants were already lush with leaves.

Moreover, the spacing between the vines and the growth state of the leaves in one acre were stronger than the other two acres.

"Yes, I’ve pruned it. I regret not doing it earlier now. If I had known that topping and splitting the vines would have such good effects, I wouldn’t have been lazy and would have pruned all the sweet potato vines in the three acres," Zhuo Feng said. After listening to Zhou Ziang’s advice that day, she started taking it seriously and personally began topping the sweet potato vines, gathering a large pile of sweet potato leaves.

After finding it too troublesome, they only cultivated one acre of land. In the initial days, the growth of sweet potato vines with trimmed leaves and those without seemed similar. But after about a week, the growth between the two started to become uneven. By last week, a look revealed that the acre with trimmed leaves was growing much better than the others.

Frustration is one thing, but there’s no medicine for regret. Zhuo Feng learned from this experience and decided that next year, he would thoroughly prepare each acre of land.

However, the precondition must be a good harvest of sweet potatoes this year, and with a good harvest, there must also be good income. Otherwise, just the lost wages from this year when the couple "neglected their proper jobs," along with future expenses and costs for the farm, would be hard to sustain.

The three unharvested acres of sweet potatoes looked lush and vibrant as you lowered your head, the green fat leaves swaying gracefully under the sunlight, making it genuinely hard to start cutting.

But since sweet potatoes grow underground, to properly dig them up, you first have to cut off the leaves above and clean up the sweet potato vines, then you can excavate the delicious sweet potatoes hidden underneath.

Taking advantage of the weaker evening sun, the three people at the farm rolled up their sleeves, employing various tools like sickles and hoes. However, dealing with the well-grown old sweet potato vines was not easy; it took considerable effort from the three to clean it all up.

The previous dense foliage that obscured the view was gone, exposing the soil. Xiao Xian, after being in the sun for a while, felt his strength waning and stood resting for a while, his hoe still not struck down.

Zhuo Feng had already started digging, her long arms and legs managing the hoe quite skillfully, hoisting it with a dantian breath, plunging it into the soil and producing a crisp breaking sound.

With a pull back of the hoe, half a red-skin sweet potato was exposed while the other half lay safely beneath the soil.

"Damn," Zhuo Feng screamed, realizing that not only is planting sweet potatoes a science, but even digging them up requires skill.

"Aunt, you better switch to a smaller hoe and dig slowly," Xiao Xian said with a wide grin on his face, Feng Xing dug out the two pieces of sweet potato, washed them clean with water, peeled them, took a bite, and smiled with satisfaction: just one word, sweet.

By six in the evening, they had dug up about half of the sweet potatoes in the field. Calculating by percentage, this acre should yield over six thousand jins of sweet potatoes. This number thrilled Zhuo Feng.

"Oh my, at this rate, the farm will be filled with nothing but stockpiled sweet potatoes," Zhuo Feng felt joy initially, but then she worried—let’s not mention that only a small portion of the sweet potatoes was dug up, just dealing with the sweet potato vines cut before digging was already headache-inducing enough.

"Then just sell them," Xiao Xian thought. Isn’t that simple? It’s just like that White Pear Tree behind the house in Ge Village; when too many pears grew to be eaten, they brought them down the mountain to sell. Same idea, right?

Sell sweet potatoes? How to sell them? Zhuo Feng was baffled.

**

Thank you, Youzi, for your pink encouragement~ What a good child you are to roll in with the new story~

Fu Zi, having recovered her sense of taste, is asking for encouragement~

**(To be continued. If you like this novel, please come to Qidian (qidian.com) to vote with recommendation tickets and monthly tickets. Your support is my greatest motivation.)