BXBX NOVEL Chapter 67: Hundred-Year Plant
As the clan leader, Wang Shouzhe spends much of his time orchestrating everything from the center, thus he doesn’t need to involve himself in every step of the plan.
So during this period, he has spent his time mainly in the main residence, practicing cultivation every day or ‘teasing’ a younger brother or sister.
With abundant resources, his cultivation has progressed rapidly and has reached the peak state of the sixth level. He needs only a few more days of refinement and he will be able to try advancing to the seventh level of Qi Refinement realm.
However, he needs to take action today.
After arranging with Wang Gui, he summoned a child from the family.
Not a moment later.
A graceful woman in her thirties, leading a boy of about ten, entered Wang Shouzhe’s side hall.
“Madam Chen pays respect to the family head,” the woman politely saluted. The boy, however, seemed a bit fearful and hid behind his mother.
“No need to be so formal, Auntie Six, just call me Shouzhe,” Wang Shouzhe returned the salute, inviting her to sit down, “Please, sit.”
This Madam Chen was the wife of Sixth Uncle Wang Dinghai and she is descended from the Chen Clan of Donggang, directly related by blood.
In the sixth generation of the Wang family directly related lines, marriages with Chen Clan had been very frequent. Two of the Ding line men have married Donggang Chen Clan women, and two ladies of the Liu line got married into the Donggang Chen Clan.
Nowadays, both families have started intermarriage between their direct heirs, which shows how intimate their relationship is.
After Wang Gui served tea and fruits, he recoiled to one side.
Wang Shouzhe then had a small chat with Madam Chen. After exchanging courtesies, he turned his eyes towards the young boy and said with a smile: ” Shouye, how have you been doing with your studies recently?”
This boy, Wang Shouye, is currently the youngest male of the seventh Shou line generation. He is just ten years old and the seventh elder in birth order.
The reason I said ‘currently’ is because some of the older Ding-line predecessors from the sixth generation are still young and strong. For example, Third Uncle Wang Dingzu and Sixth Uncle Wang Dinghai. It’s possible they might have more, younger children.
There are precedents. Just consider our eldest uncle, Wang Dingchuan, who fathered Shou-line fifth child, Wang Shou Yong, when he was fifty. It’s true that age gets stronger.
Of course, credit also has to be given to the elder sister-in-law who could still have a baby in her forties – and she is an excellent child-bearer at that.
Let’s not digress.
Wang Shouye was evidently somewhat shy and fearful of Wang Shouzhe. As soon as he heard him, his face turned pale, tightly gripping Madam Chen’s clothes and stuttering, “Fo… Fourth bro… I’m… I’m okay.”
“Shouzhe, please don’t blame him. He’s been timid since childhood,” Madam Chen explained with a hint of embarrassment, “But he has been studying harder recently…”
While she was speaking, she stole a glance at Wang Shouzhe.
Wang Shouzhe understood that Little Seven had heard about the fearsome reputation of the Examination Demon King and was so afraid of getting grilled that he began studying harder in advance.
This is a good thing.
Drinking his tea, Wang Shouzhe was more and more satisfied with the reputation of the Exam Demon King. It was like the Sword of Damocles, constantly hanging over the heads of his younger siblings and the younger generations.
Alright, let’s just go along and grill him a little.
Wang Shouzhe began to examine Wang Shouye’s performance, from basic literature and calculation skills to understanding of movement techniques and fighting techniques.
At first, Wang Shouye was terrified, stuttering and tripping over his responses. After a short while under Wang Shouzhe’s encouragements, his answers started flowing smoothly – his basic skills were indeed solid and he had really been studying hard recently.
“Very good, very good.” Wang Shouzhe gave a satisfied smile and said, “Shouye, you’ve done well. This is your reward.” Wang Shouzhe directly rewarded him with ten whole Qian Gold as an encouragement for the first child to successfully pass his examination.
“Thankyou, Fourth Brother.” Wang Shouye’s small face reddened with excitement, and his gaze and speech grew much more confident.
The pressure from the recent Exam Demon King had been making the young generation and the juniors restive. Now, rewarding the excellent ones will certainly attract envious gazes.
Wang Shouzhe believes that the carrot-and-stick policy will make the young children in the family improve progressively.
Wang Shouye’s good performance also made Madam Chen very pleased. After all, which mother wouldn’t hope her son would turn out to be outstanding?
After the examination was over, Wang Shouzhe turned to the main topic, saying, “Later, I will have Shouye accompany me to the Prosperous Farm to visit Sixth Grandfather.” The implication was that she didn’t need to come along.
It wasn’t that Wang Shouzhe objected to Madam Chen accompanying them. He simply thought Shouye, as a male in the family, seemed overly dependent on his mother.
Look at Wang Luoqiu, who’s only one year older than Wang Shouye, she has already started challenging the heavens, the earth and the air, loudly proclaiming her intention to kill gods and Buddha, shouldering the heavy responsibility of the family’s rise alone.
Although Wang Shouzhe couldn’t understand the inevitable connection between family rise and killing gods and Buddhas … in addition, the thick naive, childish sentiment emanating from her so-called “lonely girl” carrying the fate of the family… also left him with an uncontrollable urge to smack someone, was she treating the entire family as a bunch of incoherent teammates?
But that didn’t stop Wang Shouzhe from admiring Wang Luoqiu’s full-on, aggressive spirit.
Therefore, Wang Shouzhe still wants to make the seventh youngster leave his mother’s bosom earlier and quickly grow into a young man.
“Everything is up to Shouzhe.” Although Aunt Chen, the sixth’s wife, felt a little sorry for the seventh kid, she did as she was told.
Right after that.
Wang Shouzhe took Wang Shouye with him, using the waterway in the backyard to head for the Prosperous Farm. He was becoming more and more fond of taking the water route: it’s peaceful and natural, with an open view, and it allowed him ample time to plan his family’s future.
For example, on the waterway leading to the Prosperous Farm, both sides of the path were low-lying swamps; filled with reeds at this time of the year. Some of the farmers from nearby villages, took advantage of the mud and came to harvest the reeds.
Reeds, although cheap, have many uses. They could be used to roof houses or weave reed mats to cool off in the coming summer, or dried for firewood.
However, reed catkins were not very useful. They looked like cotton but provided no warmth. Back on Earth, reeds could also be used to make paper.
Some information that had settled in the brain was triggered by this scene and began to emerge.
Wait a minute?
Cotton, papermaking?
Cotton has been planted in the Great Qian Land for a long time, with some prominent families making their livelihood by growing cotton. Stepping into this field was not an easy task for Wang Shouzhe, as these families are highly skilled at cotton farming.
But what about papermaking?
Of course there’s paper in this world, used extensively for books, letters, everywhere. The quality of paper ranges from high to low, and they are mostly quite expensive. The reason being — the paper-making technique is monopolized by a few powerful factions.
He searched through his memory and couldn’t recall any prominent family in Changning who had mastered the paper-making technique.
The paper everyone used was shipped in by the Qian Trading Company from afar.
The principle of making paper is very simple, much easier than producing mono sodium glutamate or a Jenny Loom. Wang Shouzhe even had a rough idea of the steps involved in papermaking.
There’s potential in this.
Wang Shouzhe quietly recorded this idea and incorporated it into his future plans. In the meantime, he also had some thoughts about the vast swamps on both sides of the riverbank.
The ancestors used to choose the easier areas when opening up new farmland. For example, they looked for regions that were rich in water sources, flat in terrain, fertile in soil, and adaptable. This was done to reduce the cost of land development.
As generations of pioneers occupied and expanded these advantageous zones, the remaining undeveloped territories were disadvantaged for some reasons or others.
For instance, these swamps on both sides of the riverbank were of low-lying terrain. Whenever it rained, extensive swamps were created. Even during the dry season, the area was pockmarked with muddy patches.
If you wanted to turn it into farmland, you would have to fill it up with soil to raise the overall terrain. This would be a massive project even in an era of mechanization, let alone in a world with underdeveloped productivity.
But now it’s hard to find large, easily reclaimable areas of land in the secure territories of Ping’an Town. The only options were to annex the lands of the individual farmers, or to encroach upon the living space of rival families.
Therefore, whenever Wang Shouzhe passed by these two large wastelands, he would think about how to exploit them.
If he were to employ the fill-up strategy, where would the soil come from? How would it be transported?
In addition, once the two large swamps were filled up, their water storage capacity would disappear during the rainy season. With the total volume of water remaining constant, this water would flow into rivers and lakes such as Zhuwei Lake.
If the rainfall were heavy enough, the water levels of the rivers and Zhuwei Lake could overflow, leading to flooding.
The best option would be to undertake large-scale dredging of Zhuwei Lake, filling the swamp with silt. In this way, not only would the water storage capacity of Zhuwei Lake increase during the rainy season, but it would gradually turn the swamp into arable land.
Additionally, the deepened Zhuwei Lake could be used for the artificial breeding of large fish. It would truly be killing several birds with one stone, brilliant beyond words.
But there’s one problem!
This project was too big, requiring more manpower, resources, and time than the initial efforts to develop Fenggu Farm by their ancestors.