CTF 0049

Xu Mancang and Xu Tiejun’s families, naturally, thought that Xu Yin’s suggestion was a good idea. Being an apprentice had its conveniences, and working as a helper had its benefits. Regardless of Father Xu’s intentions, they all wanted to send their children to him. As long as they could stay by his side, they believed they would eventually learn his watermelon-growing techniques.

However, Father Xu didn’t feel at ease with this suggestion. “Yinyin, you shouldn’t plant so much at once. What if we can’t sell them?” 

“It won’t happen. The watermelons we grow are so good that even a research institute thinks they are. We won’t have any problem selling them.”

Xu Yin had absolute trust in the watermelon seeds that the system had produced.

They’d got a good number of watermelon seeds for this year’s two seasons of planting. Even if she couldn’t return in time from university in the future, the watermelon seeds that they’d collected would still be enough for her father to use. 

The system wouldn’t disappoint her.

A year from now, the twenty mus of dry land that her family would rent, which nobody wanted, would yield top-quality watermelons. Since they were used as a case study by a research institute and had been advertised in advance, they were sold out in no time to many buyers, who had rushed to buy them upon hearing the news. This would earn Xu Yin’s family a considerable profit. 

Although, that was a story for another time. 

At the moment, they’d only just rented the dry fields.

In the Xu family’s village, there were around twenty mus of barren, dry land that nobody wanted to cultivate. They’d lie fallow for a long time.

Before the land had been distributed to individual households, it had been collective farmland and people had earned work points by working on the land. Some of them would be assigned to cultivate sweet potatoes there. The yield there wasn’t high, but it was still better than letting the land go to waste.

However, when it came time to divide the lands, no one wanted this land. No one wanted to draw lots and receive this land. They’d all rather have the muddy land beside the river, where they could grow some taro, water chestnuts, and mushrooms, which can be used as both staple food and vegetables. If they took it to the city, these yields would be much easier to sell than sweet potatoes. 

The village ended up leaving the land unused.

Hearing that Xu Yin’s family wanted to rent these dry lands, the old village secretary came over to their house excitedly. “Guoshun, do you really want to rent those dry lands?”

“My daughter is the one who wants to do that, not me. She’s addicted to studying those watermelons, that girl. She insisted that good watermelons come from dry fields. She asked me to rent the dry fields and give it a try,” Father Xu said. He took the old village secretary’s pipe and filled it with some tobacco.

“My daughter bought this tobacco from Tongcheng. Give it a try.”

The old village secretary took a puff. His eyes lit up. “This tobacco is good. It must be expensive, right?”

“I don’t know if it’s expensive or not. What I know is that it’s all I’ve got. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. My daughter won’t let me smoke anymore. She says it damages my lungs.”

The old village secretary glanced at Father Xu, then thought to himself: this guy was showing off, but he’ll pretend he couldn’t tell!

The old village secretary took another puff with satisfaction and returned to the main topic. “So, your family is contracting these dry lands to grow watermelons? It’s over twenty mus in size, can you handle it all?”

“My daughter asked me to rent it first and see. If we can’t handle it, then we’ll hire someone.”

“But do you have to rent the fields now? It’s still early. You could rent it next spring and save half a year of rent.”

“That won’t work. Yinyin says dry soil is best for tasty melons, especially if you mix in some pond mud. Since there isn’t much work in the fields right now, I want to gather some pond mud for fertilisation. Could you help me find out which strong young man has time to help me carry it? I’ll pay two dimes for every hundred pounds of pond mud.”

Two dimes was a big amount to offer. Many young men signed up for the job after hearing about it. 

They were tasked with carrying mud from the pond. Meanwhile, Father Xu and his two new disciples fertilised the pond. Mother Xu would wear a straw hat and sit under the shade of a tree as she watched them. She was only responsible for paying the workers.

Xu Yin exchanged five bags of watermelon seeds in one go, spending all the energy points she had accumulated earlier. In return, she obtained 10,000 system-branded watermelon seeds and a manual titled “Techniques for Growing Watermelons in Dry Soil.”

Perhaps because the system marketplace was feeling generous because she’d spent so many energy points, it also presented her with a limited-time free offer of the “Techniques for Growing Fruit Trees on the Mountains”. 

Seeing this, Xu Yin couldn’t help but think of her uncle’s house and promptly purchased it.

A guide to getting rich for free—was there anything more cost-effective than this?!

The method of using pond mud as fertiliser was explained in the “Techniques for Growing Watermelons in Dry Soil” book. Xu Yin copied it down and narrated it to her father. 

Father Xu was surprisingly well-versed in agricultural knowledge. Whether it was the pond mud fertilisation or the formulation of nutrient soil, he, along with his two disciples, carried them out quite skillfully. Xu Yin didn’t need to stay by the watermelon fields guiding them every step of the way.

With her father handling the watermelon fields, Xu Yin took some time to visit her uncle’s house. She explained the techniques of growing fruit trees on the mountains, breaking them down for him.

Uncle Geng was troubled by the poor growth of the peach trees on his self-owned mountain. Upon seeing others planting apricot trees, he considered uprooting the peach trees for apricot trees. 

After hearing his niece’s method, though, he decided against uprooting them and opted to continue growing peaches. After all, he had spent a considerable amount of money buying those peach saplings. If he had a way to salvage them, why would he squander them?

Wouldn’t he just need to put a bit more effort into fertilising, pruning, and carefully tending to them? Mountain farmers like him weren’t afraid of putting in some work. Besides, he wouldn’t know if the methods would really work without trying them out first. This attempt would result in his household being the first household in Da’ao to have an income of over ten thousand yuan.

Xu Yin returned from her grandmother’s house and continued making clothes for the villagers to earn some pocket money. In addition to next semester’s school fees and living expenses, she also wanted to save some money to buy some materials in the capital to enrich her small private store.

Amidst the hustle and bustle, the days passed, and it was now the end of August. 

The remaining one-mu late-maturing watermelons were ripe. The landscaping of the twenty mus of sandy land had entered the right track.

Xu Yin, on the other hand, was about to embark on her journey of seeking knowledge and heading to the capital.

This month, she received two letters from Fu Lingling. One had been delivered to her home by the postman, while the other had recently been brought back by Xu Jianjun since he’d passed by the post office. 

“Who is this girl? She lives in the county town, right? Why does she write to you?”

“We’re former classmates.”

“So you know each other in real life, then? I thought you guys were pen pals. Since you know each other, why doesn’t she just come to your house? It takes at least two or three days for a letter to go from the county town’s mailbox to our village’s post office. Riding a bike here would take a couple of hours at most. Is writing a letter necessary?”

Xu Yin gave him a disdainful look. “You don’t understand anything!”

Xu Jianjun rolled his eyes. “Fine! I don’t understand. You girls, always into writing letters and the romance of it.”

“How do you even know it’s a girl?”

“Look at the handwriting. If a guy wrote like this, you can have me shovelling manure for three days.” Xu Jianjun pointed to the envelope.

“…”

Xu Yin couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to him. 

She still had something to trouble him with, so she didn’t retort.

“When you go to the county, let me know.”

“Why? Are you going too? I’m going tomorrow. Some evening school teachers pitched in to buy 500 pounds of rice, and I need to deliver it to them.”

“That’s great. Help me bring some things to my classmate then.”

For Feng Lingling, Xu Yin prepared several sets of children’s clothes, newly harvested rice, a carefully arranged set of college entrance exam materials, and a few collections of prose and poetry books that her sister-in-law had bought from a bookstore in Tongcheng.

Feng Lingling shared some good news in the letter she sent. This month, the provincial newspaper opened a column and invited her to write some essays for them. The payment was significantly higher than before. With this income, she could stay at home to take care of her twins.

She also mentioned that her new sister-in-law was pregnant. Sometimes her sister-in-law would give the twins a sinister look, and she worried that after having her own child, her sister-in-law might not treat the twins well, so she moved out with the twins to live in their grandparents’ old house recently. The house was a bit old, but it was quiet and free from the many troubles at home, making it a suitable environment for a writer like her.