Chapter 147: A Bumpy Harvest
At the end of August, the wheat in the valley began to mature, and the patch of emerald green gradually turned golden.
【Wheat】（Rare-89）: Growth condition is excellent, and it seems there is potential for further advancement.
Standing in front of the wheat field, Xilutiya raised her hand, extending her perception to cover the entire wheat field, where the growth of the plants, the nutrients and moisture in the soil, and so on all appeared in her mind.
Having nurtured the wheat to this stage, it had reached a critical point. If she could help it break through, these wheat plants could successfully condense their nature, reaching perfection.
Such a task would be effortless if she were tending to just dozens of wheat plants on her own, but now she faced nearly 100 mu of fields, with an uncountable number of plants. In this situation, she could only rely on the ability of the branch combing method to improve the wheat along her path as much as possible, and as for how many could ultimately break through, it would depend on luck.
Time passed slowly.
Two days later, wheat plants successively succeeded in condensing their nature. The golden ears of wheat unfurled in the wind, plump grain by grain, flawless and perfect, with an aura of abundance spreading through the valley.
【Wheat】（Perfect-91）: Under your meticulous nurturing, this wheat plant achieved perfect growth and, under the law of emerald honey, condensed its nature.
【Ear of Wheat】（First Order·Emerald Honey）: Wheat grains containing the plant’s essence, with nutrients ten times that of ordinary wheat, and possessing effects of quick stamina restoration and slight physique enhancement.（If used by a professional baker, the nutrients can be fully activated, reaching thirty times that of ordinary wheat）
In another 2-3 days, it could be harvested, Xilutiya thought, a faint sense of joy rising in her heart.
As if confirming some invisible law or pattern, after one night passed and on the next day when Xilutiya had not yet woken up, a toad came to the small house where she lived and called out.
“Croak, boss.”
“Bad news, croak, there are bugs.”
“Bugs eating the wheat, so many bugs croak.”
Xilutiya opened her eyes and quickly woke up. She changed her clothes and hurriedly went downstairs.
She then saw many toads busy driving away insects in the fields down the mountain slope. Some were directly swallowing them, while others used their abilities to burn or spray water streams to knock them down.
Xilutiya hurried over and found that many wheat plants in the field were being gnawed by dark red small insects. They had a pair of wings, resembled mosquitoes in appearance, and had slender proboscises that directly pierced into the ears of wheat to suck out the wheat grains.
【Dark Blood Sap-Sucking Insect】（First Order·Insect Moth）: A special insect species that can sense auras of abundance. They grow by sucking on plants that have condensed their nature and are a great enemy of emerald honey.
Although they are first order, a first order insect cannot be judged individually. Often, the nature power of a swarm of insects can match that of an ordinary first order creature. This makes individual insects not particularly strong, but their ability to gather and disperse at will makes their attacks hard to defend against.
The dark blood sap-sucking insects currently fluttering in the wheat field numbered unknown, probably hundreds of thousands. In the abundant wheat field, they rose and fell, occasionally selecting plump wheat grains to suck.
Looking at this scene, Xilutiya’s mood plummeted, but she quickly picked up the lantern to counterattack.
Under her full urging, drops of high-concentration emerald dew water dripped into the flower stamen of the fire cloud orchid. Invisible fire waves repeatedly swept through, and large numbers of dark blood sap-sucking insects burned into black ashes in the fire waves.
Under such high-temperature fire waves, even though Xilutiya tried to control it, large patches of wheat straw were still ignited, but at this point, there was no time to worry about that.
Holding the lantern in her hand, she swiftly shuttled through the wheat field. Orange-yellow fire circles continuously expanded, burning the dark red flying insects in the sky into fireballs that spread and rapidly extinguished one by one, while large patches of ears of wheat turned charred black.
After multiple back-and-forth passes like this, the situation was finally brought under control. Now, even though there were still dark blood sap-sucking insects, they were no longer in large-scale swarms.
Afterward, she reined in the firepower to reduce damage to the wheat field, then dealt with the remaining insects and had the toads start putting out the fires.
Making pass after pass, Xilutiya’s footsteps continuously shuttled through the fields, dealing with those dark blood sap-sucking insects hiding in tiny corners, striving to leave no hidden dangers. However, she still discovered many barely visible insect eggs in the soil.
Even after sweeping them with fire waves, some remained deep in the soil, hard to burn to death.
At this point, increasing the firepower further would only damage the wheat field more. With no other choice, Xilutiya could only temporarily let those insect eggs be and focus on dealing with the adult insects.
After a whole day of busyness, the remaining insects in the field were all cleared out. This was thanks to the maiden’s extremely strong perception and observation skills; no tiny insect could escape her detection.
In the evening, standing in front of the wheat field and looking at the charred expanse and the wheat plants toppled east and west, Xilutiya sighed, able only to accept this outcome.
Sure enough, she still lacked experience. Relying solely on her own talent to fumble around made it easy to fall into traps. Things in the extraordinary world could not be presumed with common sense.
According to later investigations and reference materials, she found that these dark blood sap-sucking insects had probably flown in from a distant place, likely from the unstable and dangerous shadow world beyond the border of the outpost. They were attracted by the abundant aura of the emerald honey condensation in the valley and came over.
【Emerald Honey】 and 【Insect Moth】 wars trace back to the Second Epoch Sky Sea Epoch, when the primal mycelium nature was gnawed by centipedes, its juices spilled into the primordial soup sea, turning into fish that in turn devoured the centipede insects.
In the end, the mycelium was completely eaten by the centipedes, its lingering essence turned into tides, and the fish pursued the insect beasts to become overlords. They grew enormous, roaming the heavenly sea, and condensed the true fish nature.
As for how emerald honey was reborn, after the centipedes went extinct, insect moths inherited their wings and flew high. This would have to wait until the Fourth Epoch, the era of species explosion.
Clearing the ashes and residues from the fields, along with various insect corpses and insect eggs, took until the next day.
In the following three days, Xilutiya would get up once every night to patrol and ensure no accidents occurred, then during the day have the toads watch over things, calling her immediately if anything happened.
Finally, the remaining wheat in the field perfectly matured, ushering in an abundant harvest.
After experiencing twists and turns and hardships, these heavy ears of wheat seemed to carry extra weight, making Xilutiya sigh with emotion at the difficulty of grain planting and harvesting.
Several days later, all the wheat was harvested and underwent drying and threshing.
100 mu of fields yielded about 20,000 jin of wheat, of which rare quality wheat was about 17,000 jin, and perfect quality wheat around 3,000 jin.
The wheat fields tended by other students and gardeners averaged 120 jin of grain per mu, which was the result after using fertilizer. The fields in the valley, due to the powerful fattening effect of alfalfa, achieved a yield limit of 300 jin per mu. To go further, improving the wheat seed would probably be necessary.
If there had been no insect disaster, the total yield from 100 mu would have reached around 30,000 jin, which was currently Xilutiya’s peak achievement.
Under the combined effects of clear spring washing away the twisted, alfalfa fattening, prayer dew, branch combing, emerald pupil, natural perception, discernment eyes, and more, this was the limit of final quality and yield achieved.
If production were to expand further, it should be possible to mass-produce rare quality wheat, but perfect quality wheat, due to limits of personal energy and time, would max out at around 3,000 jin.
Although there had been some twists and turns, such a harvest could shock the entire Ashes Plain. After all, the perfect quality wheat from wheat fields tended by all the other third order gardeners in the city added up to only about 6,000 jin, and a single gardener’s fields yielded less than 1,000 jin.
Now, the harvested wheat grains were fully piled in the granary, but how to handle this golden harvest became a headache for Xilutiya.
How should she explain that a gardener apprentice who had just advanced not long ago had, in a few months, achieved results far surpassing those of third order gardeners.
Was she really going to become famous overnight, turning into the shining new star of the entire Golden Plain outpost, and be the center of attention wherever she went?
That would be far from the relaxed pastoral life she yearned for.
