Chapter 145: Fisherman
“You’ve got ambition.” Shang Wan pinched his cheek.
Chu Xu turned his head away and muttered, “Don’t casually pinch this young master’s face.”
Shang Wan secretly tsked to herself. What a tsundere kid.
“Mom!” Yuan Yuan crawled over and looked up at Shang Wan with her fair and tender little face.
Shang Wan leaned down and kissed her little face. The little one laughed until her eyes curved into arcs. She put down the turtle and hugged Shang Wan softly, rubbing against her.
Chu Xu watched from the side, thinking that as long as this little girl didn’t let the turtle crawl on him, he wouldn’t mind playing with her.
After coaxing the child, Shang Wan went to the kitchen and grabbed a small bag of dried meat. She ate it as she walked to the field.
Ever since harvesting the bok choy, the five mu of wasteland hadn’t been planted with anything yet. She had originally planned to plant wheat, but Shang Wan thought about it and decided against it.
Grain could be planted in the space, which took less time and was easier to harvest.
She planned to use her own land for vegetables and herbs.
Gathering herbs from the mountain was fine in small quantities, but if she really wanted to do business with medicinal herbs, she’d need to rely on artificial planting.
However, each herb had different growth habits, with varying requirements for soil pH, environmental humidity, weather temperature, soil fertility, and so on.
Some herbs could grow in the mountain forest, but when planted artificially in the field, they might not survive. Even if they did, their medicinal properties would be greatly reduced.
The mountain forest environment couldn’t be replicated with just a few mu of land.
Besides, ordinary land was not like the spiritual field in the space. In the spiritual field, you just scattered the seeds and waited for harvest; you didn’t even need to water them. Ordinary land required much more attention.
Shang Wan believed there was always a way. She had been pondering this matter lately and planned to start from seeds and soil.
Seeds weren’t hard to handle. From the experiment of planting bok choy in the field, seeds produced by the space had fundamentally changed—not only did they germinate 100%, but they also grew faster than ordinary bok choy. The same should apply to herb seeds.
Now, it was just the soil that was lacking.
Shang Wan had an idea: since spiritual spring water could improve people’s constitutions, could it improve soil too?
Of course, the current stock of spiritual spring water in the space wasn’t enough for her to lavish on the field, and she wasn’t one to waste heavenly resources.
However, pure spiritual spring water wasn’t enough, but diluted spiritual spring water could be tried.
These past two days, she had been mixing several buckets of diluted spiritual spring water each day, having Shi Tou water only two mu of land as a control group compared to the other three mu.
When Shang Wan arrived at the field, Shi Tou had already finished watering, strictly following her instructions to water only two mu.
“Sis, these bok choy plants should be ready to harvest for seeds.” Shi Tou pointed to the dozen or so bok choy plants specially kept for seeding.
Shang Wan walked over, squatted down, and harvested one stalk into the space.
She wanted to see if the space could automatically collect the seeds for her.
The result was no.
The space only automatically collected seeds from spiritual field crops.
The seeded bok choy stalk she had just harvested was exactly the same inside the space as it was outside.
Shi Tou squatted down to pull weeds. “Sis, are we really not planting any wheat? I see everyone in the village planting it.”
“The villagers planting is their business. We won’t plant it at home.”
Shi Tou worried, “Then how will we pay the grain tax?”
“I can plant it in the space or just buy it.” Shang Wan said, “With money, are you afraid we can’t buy grain?”
Shi Tou nodded then, with the weeds beside him piling higher and higher. “Sis, ever since watering, these weeds have grown so fast—they can reach ankle height overnight.”
Shang Wan thought this was a good thing. The better the soil, the better the weeds grew, though it meant Shi Tou had to pull weeds more often.
“Not hard work. Yuan Yuan can help me.” Shi Tou grinned. “Yesterday Yuan Yuan even had the monkey help me pull weeds from two mu of land. Later when we plant the herbs, I have to teach them to distinguish weeds from herbs so they don’t pull out the ones we plant.”
Shang Wan started to sympathize with that group of monkeys. She harvested all the seed-saving bok choy into the space, then helped Shi Tou pull weeds together.
The newly grown weeds had shallow roots and were quick to pull. The two chatted as they worked, and in less than half an hour, they had cleared all the weeds from the field.
Shi Tou spread out the weeds, picked out those that could feed cows and sheep, and left the rest. Once dried, they could be taken back for kindling.
Two days later, Shang Wan took Shi Tou to the mountains to gather some herb branches suitable for cuttings. She cut them into uniform short segments, soaked them in spiritual spring water first, then planted them in the field to increase survival rate.
The two had no experience. Shang Wan’s were still decent, but Shi Tou’s were crooked and twisted like earthworms, enough to trigger any obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“This will do.” Shang Wan wiped the mud from her hands with grass leaves, then washed them clean in the bucket.
She said to Shi Tou, “Xiao Huan said she’d make pickled grass carp tonight. I’ll go to the riverside to catch two grass carp. You take the things back first.”
Shi Tou: “Okay.”
Arriving at the riverside, the water rippled, and the river breeze was gentle, lightly brushing her face comfortably.
Shang Wan clasped her hands behind her back, gazing at the distant mountain range. Dressed in a green robe standing tall like bamboo, her black hair tied simply with a red silk ribbon at the back of her head. The river breeze lifted her skirt hem, dancing like floating waves.
There were still quite a few people by the river: washing clothes, fishing, playing, washing pots, bowls, ladles, and basins.
The children ran barefoot on the riverbank, picking stones, competing for odd stones, skipping stones, their crisp laughter ringing out.
Shang Wan bent down to pick up two small stones, holding them in her hand. She slowly approached the playing children, flicked her wrist, and one stone skipped over twenty times on the water surface before sinking.
“Wow!” The children exclaimed in awe, looking at Shang Wan with eyes full of admiration, clamoring to learn.
“Simple, follow me.” Shang Wan demonstrated in slow motion. “When throwing, use your arm strength, not just your wrist. Arm strength makes it go farther.”
With that, she flicked the stone from her hand again, skipping over thirty times, so far it was almost invisible before dropping into the water.
The children got excited, their little faces flushed red. They all followed Shang Wan to learn, and suddenly stones plopped into the water one after another.
The fishing person seemed disturbed and lost interest. He pulled down the brim of his bamboo hat, picked up his fishing rod and fish basket, and left.
Shang Wan glanced at the direction he left, then asked the child closest to her, “Is that fishing person from the village?”
The child was Er Pang. Hearing Shang Wan ask, he looked up toward where the man had been fishing, pursed his lips thoughtfully, then shook his head. “He was wearing a bamboo hat; I didn’t see his face.”
Shang Wan asked a few more children. Some said they didn’t see, some said they didn’t know, and some hadn’t even noticed the person there.
Shang Wan: “Do you usually play here?”
“We come often.”
“I come when my mom comes.”
“You can catch crabs here, and after rain, you can net small fish.”
“I come to pick stones.”
The children chattered in response.
From their answers, it was clear that as long as there was no flood or heavy rain, the children often came to the riverside to play.
Shang Wan smiled and distributed dried meat to the children—not much, one strip each, but it still made them cheer.
Some stuffed them straight into their mouths, some shared with adults, and some were reluctant to eat and secretly put them away.
