Chapter 1072: The Scent of Food Autonomy

"..."

"..."

The Proprietor's plans and requirements came one after another—at least twenty-seven or twenty-eight of them—without a hint of hesitation. Everyone was busy scribbling away with pens and notebooks, not even having the time to ask questions.

It had been a long time since He Lingchuan had been this high-spirited; pointing at the sand table was like pointing at the rivers and mountains of the world.

He had been dirt-poor before, forced to keep his many ideas bottled up, but today, he finally got to let them all out.

This feeling of throwing money around, this feeling of wielding power, this feeling of unbridled satisfaction—this was how a Great Lord should feel! Lei Ni looked up halfway through and saw the intense, blazing light in her master's eyes, which scared her into quickly lowering her head again.

Once a person had money to back them up, their entire demeanor changed.

"Min Tianxi, the watchtowers, beacon towers, barracks, and armories on these reefs must all be built." He Lingchuan pointed to seventeen or eighteen small reefs in a row. These islands were uninhabited and uncultivated, but their distribution on the periphery of the archipelago gave them significant military value.

Min Tianxi hurriedly agreed.

"Qiu Hu." He Lingchuan turned to Qiu Hu. "Recruit people, recruit many people. Before late spring, the guard force must expand to over three thousand five hundred men, and we will hold a full-scale military exercise then. If you need weapons or armor, coordinate with Songyang Prefecture."

Maintaining an army was the most expensive endeavor. Food, pay, armaments, medicine, and all sorts of consumables—even a gluttonous beast couldn't eat that much. That was why the Yangshan Guard force had previously only been able to maintain a scale of fourteen or fifteen hundred men.

Spending money didn't necessarily guarantee an invincible army, but an invincible army certainly couldn't exist without money.

Now, He Lingchuan had the confidence to expand his forces.

"Understood."

He Lingchuan rubbed his hands together and smiled at his subordinates. "The tasks have been assigned. I have only one requirement for everyone—"

"Go big—and do it fast!"

￥￥￥￥￥

In the blink of an eye, it was late spring and early summer.

Six months had passed, and the Yangshan Archipelago had undergone a massive transformation.

The Yangshan Archipelago had entered the busy farming season once again.

From Baili to the Yangshan Archipelago, the main event of late spring was the palm oil harvest. Oil palms were harvested twice a year, during the spring and autumn seasons.

In previous years, half a month after the palm forests were draped in red silk and the harvest ceremony was held, merchant caravans and large ships would arrive, lining up to dock at Blade Harbor.

However, the situation had changed this year; some merchant ships chose to dock directly at the Yangshan Archipelago instead of Blade Harbor for direct, fixed-point purchases.

The archipelago offered docking discounts to palm oil buyers. Because they were offshore and avoided taxes, there was no need to go through customs at Blade Harbor, and merchant caravans enjoyed lower prices on various local specialties purchased in the Yangshan Archipelago.

Blade Harbor was naturally displeased, but there was nothing they could do.

This year, the palm oil harvest was bountiful once again.

Compared to the chaotic first palm harvest last autumn, the Yangshan Archipelago was much more composed this spring, with personnel organization, tool allocation, and logistics all running like clockwork.

Several months had passed, and the archipelago had built seven medium-sized cargo ships on its own, while also purchasing five medium ships and twenty-seven small boats to alleviate the shortage of transport capacity.

As for large cargo ships, they could only be built slowly due to the long time and complex labor required.

Following the palm harvest, the early summer winter wheat harvest was right on its heels! Thus, the harvest season in this region was one crop after another; April and May were a continuous cycle, and everyone had work to do.

The Yangshan Archipelago had first sown wheat seeds last autumn. Although the planting methods were crude and the fields lacked planning—what Dou Wuhang called "wasting the land's potential"—the soil was undeniably fertile, and the yield per mu reached nearly three hundred and fifty jin.

Heaven was kind, and the weather remained fair for half a month straight.

Under the sunlight, the islands were golden and brilliant, with yellow wheat fields and threshing grounds everywhere. Farmers were busy in the fields, and the hired raptors drove away the thieving birds from the threshing grounds.

The yellow dog and the little marten were everywhere on the field ridges, digging holes to catch mice.

When the first bag of wheat was delivered to He Lingchuan, and the first handful of wheat grains flowed through his fingers, he looked up, closed his eyes, and let out a heavy breath.

His islands were finally producing food!

Counting from the time He Lingchuan bought the Yangshan Archipelago, for these long nine months, all the food consumed on the islands had basically relied on external purchases. Buying from Blade Harbor, buying from foreign merchants, buying through every channel that could be found in the Yangshan Archipelago—even Fang Canran had helped him bridge connections with major grain merchants.

To ensure that all those mouths on the islands had food to eat every day, the Yangshan Archipelago had fought countless battles of wits against unscrupulous merchants who hoarded goods and drove up grain prices, and had gone back and forth countless times against Blade Harbor and Baili, who stabbed them in the back and played dirty tricks.

All of this occurred against the backdrop of the ongoing war between Beijia and the Mou Nation, with grain prices in the Mou Nation's rear remaining stubbornly high.

He Lingchuan knew exactly how much silver had been spent and how much of a price had been paid.

The hardships involved were truly not something to be told to outsiders.

Having finally made it to this point, the Yangshan Archipelago was producing its own food!

Everyone scooped up the husked wheat grains, brought them to their noses, and took a deep breath, their faces filled with a look of intoxication.

It smelled so good.

This was the scent of satisfaction; this was the scent of a bountiful harvest.

This was the scent of food autonomy! He Lingchuan almost wanted to laugh wildly at the sky:

From today on, the Yangshan Archipelago would also join the ranks of the unscrupulous merchants! But before He Lingchuan could finish laughing, Dou Wuhang came over to remind him: "Your wheat fields were planted in a complete mess, yet you still managed a yield of over three hundred jin per mu. That's mostly because the Emperor's Dew has fallen several times, making the spiritual energy of heaven and earth extremely abundant, and plants are the first to be affected. It's not just the Yangshan Archipelago; other places have seen increased yields as well."

That was right. In just the past year, the Emperor's Dew had descended three times; in the two years before that, it had descended twice.

The Emperor's Dew seeped into the soil, and the first to benefit were the crops, followed by the recovery of spiritual energy between heaven and earth.

Practitioners like He Lingchuan could clearly feel the increase in the concentration of spiritual energy in the surroundings.

"We cannot continue with extensive farming in the future, lest we squander heaven's gifts!" Dou Wuhang continued. "The wheat harvest must be expedited; the good weather will last at most one month, and then we will enter the flood season. We still need to re-plan the fields, dig and build irrigation ditches, and fill the soil with wheat straw in preparation for switching to rice. Time is precious; don't waste a single moment!"

The intensive cultivation of the Yangshan Archipelago would begin with the summer rice crop, and Dou Wuhang had been raring to go for a long time.

"..." You're the boss." Now that manpower was abundant, He Lingchuan had also equipped Dou Wuhang with a team to monitor and guide the astronomy, water conservancy, and farming affairs of the Yangshan Archipelago.

After the Yangshan Archipelago made a name for itself, it also attracted many people to come and join.

The cultivation of talent had to be expedited; this was also one of He Lingchuan's insights.

After the full-scale development of the Yangshan Archipelago, the area of farmland expanded, and Lei Ni couldn't manage it all by herself. He Lingchuan took back the organizational production rights for farming from her, divided the island's agriculture into several regions, and assigned specific people to be responsible for each.

The Yangshan Archipelago was like a machine with an increasingly tight structure; after the last expansion, it had run with hitches, but now it was finally becoming smoother day by day.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 1073 =====