[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"origin-the-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re":3,"chapter-the-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-the-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-chapter-1":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","The Vegetable-Growing Skeleton's Foreign Land Reclamation",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":18,"prevChapterSlug":19,"totalChapters":20,"novelImage":21},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":12,"translator":16,"content_hash":17},2351482,4600,"Chapter 1: Silent and Still","the-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-chapter-1",1,"\u003Cp>Ang was awakened by the pecking sound; his soul slowly ignited, its ripples radiating from his hollow eye sockets, sensing whatever it touched—this was how a skeleton perceived the outside world.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The soul extended outward, landing on Ang’s ribcage, where the pecking originated—a small bird was pecking at the damaged spot, pulling out and eating the embedded grass seeds.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ang remained motionless in his original posture, letting the bird clean his body; it was beneficial to him, for the embedded seeds, once moistened, would sprout and swell, cracking his bones.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After the bird flew away, Ang rose from the ground and inspected his body.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So many more parts are broken—I need to replace them…\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After a winter’s slumber, Ang’s skeleton had deteriorated further compared to last year; if not replaced, it would likely hinder his movement.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the moment he thought of this problem, Ang sighed and turned his head toward the palace behind him, towering like a mountain peak—after all these years, only the King’s palace held intact skeletons; replacing bones required entering it, a task that troubled him deeply.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Though the Undead King had vanished a thousand years ago, the lingering aura within Ang’s soul still made him reluctant to approach the palace.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>I’ll make do with what I have this year, and worry about next year… Ang abandoned the idea of searching the palace for replacement bones and walked toward the nearby fields.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The place where he rose was a haystack—the home where Ang slept and sheltered from the sun; in the past, when daytime sunlight was fierce, he could not endure its glare and would retreat into the haystack to rest, emerging only as the sun neared setting, working until the next dawn—nocturnal activity was the norm for undead creatures.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When he still had companions, they would burrow deep into the haystacks, crawling out at dusk, covered in dry straw.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ang found this unhealthy—the damp, dark interior bred insects and corroded bones.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So Ang bundled the straw stalks into tight bundles, stacking them to form a semi-enclosed hollow, then crawled inside—this kept him dry and shielded from sunlight, preserving his bones far better than his companions’.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In recent years, he no longer minded the sunlight, but his old habit persisted—he still rose at sunrise and worked at sunset; now, it was evening, the time for hard labor once more.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ang was a lowly vegetable-growing skeleton near the Palace of Rest, responsible for cultivating fifty mu of farmland—for eleven hundred years now.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the past, the entire farm had over sixty vegetable-growing skeletons like Ang, each tending fifty mu; Ang was just one among them, ordinary in every way—perhaps the only distinction was that he had outlived the others.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Most skeletons never maintained their bones; they chased away birds and loved burrowing into haystacks, so their skeletons would rot and collapse after only a decade or so.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Occasionally, higher undead would fly overhead, notice a field left fallow, and deduce the responsible skeleton had decayed; they would report it, and after a dozen days, a new skeleton would be assigned.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Of course, a field left fallow for a time would yield no harvest this year—but it didn’t matter; undead didn’t need to eat. The crops grown here were stored for future use, to serve visiting human envoys.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet given the hostile relations between the Undead Empire and humans, a human visit might not occur for centuries.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But what did it matter? The cost was negligible—just over sixty skeletons. Maintaining this farm required no effort, until eventually, even the Undead Empire’s high command forgot its existence, preserving it purely by inertia.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In this farm sustained only by inertia, no one ever noticed Ang—the skeleton who had lived unusually long. Higher undead with intelligence rarely came here; since he hadn’t decayed, no one came to discard him—and he had even discovered a method to extend his lifespan.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Some skeletons decayed, losing mobility, but not entirely—some lost only an arm, others a damaged lumbar vertebra, but most had ruined footplates.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>While those skeletons lay helpless on the ground, Ang would dismantle their still-intact parts and replace his own decayed bones.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>For over a hundred years, his companions had been replaced more than ten times, yet Ang still limped along, broken and patched—until the 139th year, when he awoke again from winter’s long slumber and realized the world had changed.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Everything had become utterly silent—no wailing wraiths, no shrieking malevolent spirits, no higher undead flying overhead, not even his farm companions remained.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ang didn’t comprehend what had happened; he mechanically repeated his hundred-year routine—weeding, tilling, sowing—for a week before noticing that only his own plot remained cultivated; everywhere else was barren.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Had another skeleton decayed?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Following protocol, he immediately set out to find replacement bones, scouring every abandoned plot—he found fifty-nine skeletons with only minor decay, their soul-fires long extinguished.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At last, Ang sensed something was wrong—but he was merely a lowly vegetable-growing skeleton; he couldn’t fathom what had happened. Still, the discovery of over fifty intact skeletons filled him with joy.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Using his own method, Ang stacked haystacks into hollows to store these skeletons; for the next two hundred years, he survived safely by replacing his bones with them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Throughout those two centuries, Ang continued his work—sowing, harvesting; he kept the seeds, and dragged the surplus to a massive cavern at the farm’s edge, sliding them down a chute.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The cavern was lined with rest-soil, which preserved crops for an extraordinarily long time; its interior was vast—if Ang worked alone, it would take a thousand years to fill it.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Days passed, and eventually, the spare skeletons ran out, especially as the stored bones in the hollows slowly decayed over time.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When his final reserve bones were exhausted, one of Ang’s feet broke, forcing him to limp out of the farm—he hadn’t left it in three hundred years.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The entire Undead Empire was silent—no soul could be seen; the ground, however, was littered with broken, weathered skeletons, their decay suggesting they had been dead for at least two hundred years.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Why had this happened? Ang wandered this lifeless land, searching for replacement bones, until he finally reached the palace.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The Palace of Rest was the supreme entity of the Undead Empire, the resting place of the Undead King, ruler of souls and immortality—it naturally exerted oppressive pressure on lowly undead.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ang lingered nearby for days before adapting to the pressure, then stepped into the palace grounds—here, the aura of death was thick, the rest-soil dense; rest-soil drained all life and moisture, preserving things far longer.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Within the rest-soil, Ang found stronger, more durable skeletons; if Ang was a lowly withered skeleton, these robust bones had once belonged to higher-grade ash skeletons or white skeletons.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Unfortunately, these once-superior skeletons now lacked souls, reduced to mere bone piles; had they not been buried in rest-soil, they would have rotted like their counterparts outside.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ang gathered a pile of bones, assembled them into a complete skeleton, transferred his soul into it, and transformed into a higher-grade ash skeleton.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Though he wished to assemble an even higher silver skeleton, he found his soul too weak to control it, and abandoned the attempt.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Thus, Ang returned to the farm, continuing his life of rising at sunrise and working at sunset, until his bones decayed once more.\u003C\u002Fp>",1220,"2026-06-21T03:18:43.177Z","Qwen3-Next 80B","64511a7303ecc014730d73493cb407d142a981af0a097f2258f1b6c6f70990c2","the-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-chapter-2",null,1000,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-cover.jpg"]