[{"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-152":6},{"origin":4,"title":5},"chinese","The Vegetable-Growing Skeleton's Foreign Land Reclamation",{"chapter":7,"nextChapterSlug":19,"prevChapterSlug":20,"totalChapters":21,"novelImage":22},{"id":8,"novel_id":9,"title":10,"slug":11,"index":12,"content":13,"wordcount":14,"created_at":15,"updated_at":15,"volume":16,"translator":17,"content_hash":18},2351633,4600,"Chapter 152","the-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-chapter-152",152,"\u003Cp>“Do you know locusts?” Anthony asked.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“...Of course I know,” Bai Yin said flatly, as if insulted—he wasn’t some noble brat who couldn’t tell grain from weeds; why would Anthony ask such a thing?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Habit, habit... Sigh, you don’t know what kind of life I’ve been living lately,” Anthony muttered bitterly.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Centuries ago, there was a boy who grew up carefree in his village until one year, when locusts devoured the crops, famine struck, and his parents starved to death. Desperate with hunger, he grabbed locusts and roasted them to eat—and survived.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The boy who survived was Hemer; “Tos” meant “Supreme” in the Divine Tongue—Hemer Tos meant “The Supreme Hemer.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>After losing his family and seeing most of his village friends starve to death, Hemer not only saved himself by eating roasted locusts, but also saved the remaining villagers, carrying them through the worst phase until the Church of Light arrived with aid.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But the Church’s arrival did not save Hemer. Soon, the clergy learned he had eaten locusts and saved some villagers. How could this be allowed?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“We worked tirelessly to collect grain and coins, lost ninety percent on the way, and brought the remaining ten percent to save you—yet you don’t thank the Light, but instead thank a farmer who roasted locusts?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“How can this stand? And this method of surviving by eating locusts must not spread—if everyone starts roasting locusts, where will our faith come from?”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>So they found an excuse—claiming eating locusts was blasphemy—and had the villagers drive the blasphemer out of their home.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Under these circumstances, the villagers naturally chose to expel Hemer, forgetting entirely who had saved them in their darkest hour, even convincing themselves: “Hemer knew eating locusts was blasphemy—he tricked us into eating them! Drive him away!”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Where could an ordinary boy go after being cast out from a disaster zone? Hundreds of miles around had been stripped bare by locusts—no grass, no tree bark left—what could he eat?\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>In the end, he survived again by eating locusts—not just eating them, but raising them, in a remote cave.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As he raised them, Hemer learned their ways, mastering techniques to accelerate egg-laying and fattening. In a normal world, he might have built a fortune in livestock farming.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But this was no normal world—where even those with common sense could become gods. A man who raised millions of locusts suddenly felt a mysterious, intuitive connection.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Raising millions of locusts in a single cave was unthinkable—feeding them consumed Hemer’s every moment and energy. Once their numbers grew too large, they began killing each other.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Hemer threw everything he could find into the cave—first plants and minerals, then, on a whim, animal carcasses—and discovered the locusts ate them too.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At first he merely fed them, but years later, he could command them—simple control, like directing them to move somewhere.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>From then on, his feeding became free-range—he drove them out to eat whatever they found.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The locust population exploded, reaching over ten million, and wild food sources began to run out again.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>When food grew scarce, locusts turned on each other, cannibalizing their own kind—this caused Hemer immense pain, for these were his “children,” bred with his own hands.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This torment wore on him for a long time, until one day he drove the swarm back to his old village, watching as they devoured the crops beyond the village, the cattle and sheep, the villagers...\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Everything edible was stripped bare. Only then did Hemer finally escape his torment—and from that moment on, he no longer saw humans as kin, but as food for locusts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With abundant food, the swarm multiplied rapidly—from ten million to hundreds of millions—another locust plague was forming.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At first, no one paid attention—it was just another locust plague. When the Church of Light’s priests heard the news, they filed routine reports and requested relief funds, already thinking how to divert the aid money for their own gain.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Only when the locusts, swarming across the sky, devoured entire villages and advanced toward cities, did people realize: these locusts were different—they ate meat.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Faced with this unprecedented change, humans, elves, dwarves, and dragonkind united as never before, swiftly crushing the plague. But no one knew Hemer had returned to his old cave with a new batch of locusts.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Decades later, a man appeared in a small village hundreds of kilometers away, calling himself Hemer Tos, demanding the villagers worship him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Naturally, no one believed this stranger who came from nowhere—they drove him away.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>But within days, strange insects appeared near the village, devouring all crops and biting people.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As the villagers were at their wits’ end, Hemer Tos reappeared—casually driving off the insects, then demanding again that they worship him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“What are the odds? He leaves, and the insects appear?” someone questioned whether Hemer Tos controlled them.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Hemer Tos simply commanded the insects to bite the doubter to death—now no one dared question him; trembling, they swore their devotion.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Then Hemer Tos revealed another miracle—he sprinkled a substance called “Gan” onto fields stripped bare by the insects, and within two or three hours, the scorched stalks sprouted anew.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>With these two feats, Hemer Tos’s Temple of Chaos grew quietly, taking root and flourishing where the Light of Heaven never reached.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Decades later, by pure accident, Anthony discovered this religion.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>At that time, Anthony had not yet been called Anthony—he had another name and was merely a High Priest—but he still retained his acute sensitivity to the scent of death. He noticed scattered traces of death in certain places, dug them up, and found piles of the insects’ corpses.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Later, he learned Hemer Tos fermented these insect corpses to produce “Gan.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Anthony reported his findings to the Church, and once again, all races united to crush Hemer Tos.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This time, the Gods of Light, rarely seen, descended—manifesting upon the Pope, who spoke only one sentence: “Where the Light shines, I see you. I do not wish to see you.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Simple as that—and the vast, sky-covering swarm of insects began to turn to ash.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Because of this miracle, Anthony could never believe the Gods of Light had vanished—by then, the Emperor had already disappeared, and Anthony had infiltrated the Church of Light for decades.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Yet Hemer Tos had not vanished entirely—he may have hidden where the Light could not reach, emerging every few decades to cause trouble.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To guard against him, all races established a system to monitor his appearances across the entire plane.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was not difficult—because the insects’ proliferation required vast food sources. If a region suddenly showed massive disappearances of plants and animals, they simply sent scouts to investigate.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“Did Lord Ang suddenly issue a divine decree to kill him—does that mean the bastard has reappeared?” Anthony frowned, troubled.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This was a major matter—ideally, he should notify everyone. But if he reported it, Lord Ang would be dragged back into this plane-level conflict again, since Ang was the first to discover him.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>“The best solution is for us to quietly kill Hemer Tos. Well—not kill him, exactly. Every few decades he reappears. We just erase the traces of this appearance.” Anthony rubbed his chin, muttering to himself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>\"The best way is for us to quietly kill Himeros, uh, not exactly kill—he pops up every few decades anyway—just erase the traces of this appearance.\" Anthony stroked his cheek, muttering to himself.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Ang burned the two beetles to ash, then stormed back to the village, furious.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>As a vegetable-growing skeleton, he knew better than anyone how terrifying it was when these two insects multiplied—they’d devour every plant in sight, something Ang could never accept.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>The thought of the oasis’s jujube trees, the desert yams, the World Tree, the newly planted saltwater magic rice by the Fallen Dragon Lake—all being devoured—made Ang’s head burn with rage.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>This rare loss of control made everyone tremble in fear—even the most rowdy little angel now hung his head, walking silently behind Ang.\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>Nageleis only realized it much later, muttering to himself: “Is this divine aura? Divine aura? Even a vegetable-growing skeleton has awakened divine aura? Kua Bada.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To snap Ang out of this emotional spiral, Nageleis’s eyes darted around, then suddenly pointed at the ash where the insects had been burned: “Ang, look.”\u003C\u002Fp>\n\u003Cp>To get Ang out of this out-of-control emotion quickly, Negrilis rolled his eyes, then suddenly pointed at the ashes of the insects burned on the ground: “Ang, look.”\u003C\u002Fp>",1401,"2026-06-21T03:18:43.177Z",1,"Qwen3-Next 80B","08fc42f0e7611c99632c3df23bcb006617b9f4f1f7cb2d35842b36c5fba7aa3e","the-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-chapter-153","the-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-chapter-151",1000,"https:\u002F\u002Fnovelzhen.com\u002Fimages\u002Fcovers\u002Fthe-vegetable-growing-skeleton-s-foreign-land-re-cover.jpg"]