Chapter 158: Busy and Fulfilling
Yuan Ye and Inu-hime had gotten engaged, but when they would officially marry was uncertain. He didn’t understand the marriage customs of the Japanese Medieval Period, nor did his territory have any personnel specializing in “etiquette,” so he planned to do whatever Oda Nobunaga said and wait for notification.
He wasn’t in a hurry to get married; a wife of eleven years would only cause him trouble. With the alliance secured, his focus was mainly on resuming production and developing Xin Wanjin.
The workshops needed to be rebuilt, the residences needed to be rebuilt, and the small laboratory also needed to be rebuilt. However, through the marriage alliance, everything that had been seized in Wanjin was returned. He could directly send people back to move many of the machines and containers, and Xin Wanjin only needed to build factory buildings and the like, so it didn’t require too much of his worry.
Especially since the new round of construction could use volcanic ash cement. This building material was both cheap and very suitable for rapid construction, and could also be used to construct large buildings. Once the factory buildings and other structures were completed, they should be more imposing and functional than before.
At the same time, the soil quality in Xin Wanjin was quite good. He organized personnel by the riverside, reclaimed the first paddy field in Wanjin’s history, and also made all the necessary plans to build a small irrigation system in the future, to continue expanding the cultivated land area, in order to achieve self-sufficiency in grain in the future, and also to grow some cash crops to meet the needs of industry and commerce.
The successful appearance of the fields boosted the morale of Xin Wanjin. After many elders collectively petitioned and received approval, they chiseled a long, giant stone from the mountain and dragged it all the way to the riverside. They then planted it there, and asked Yuan Ye to personally use a file to file the first line on this giant stone.
This thing was called an “arashi” (wild stone) and was used to record the water level. It was said that as long as one lived in the area long enough and consistently recorded the water level according to the seasons, farmers could use the arashi to determine whether the next year would bring a bountiful harvest or if they needed to start preparing for famine and storing grain early. There were even many myths and legends about the “arashi” among the common people.
After all, Japan, strictly speaking, was not a maritime civilization. Even though its main territory was entirely composed of islands, it was actually a riverine civilization—a peculiar phenomenon caused by the profound influence of China since the Sui and Tang Dynasties, completely different from most island nations. The situation of living off the sea was not severe, which was very rare in world history.
This led to most villages in Japan at this time being located by rivers, and the “arashi” became a landmark in most villages. Now Xin Wanjin finally had its “arashi,” and in a sense, these villagers truly accepted this place, were truly willing to settle here, and began to regard it as their home.
The situation in Xin Wanjin was even better than in old Wanjin. At least after a great battle and with a bright future, the collective identity of the villagers was growing stronger. The number of people who called themselves “Wanjin people” was also increasing, no longer distinguishing between “old Wanjin” and “new immigrants,” and gradually merging into one entity.
Also due to the appearance of fields, fertilizing had become something many people did voluntarily. The residential area attached to the workshop was not yet completed, but the large public toilets （ which were called manure fields ） in the residential area were completed first. Even though it was already summer and not long until the typhoon season, and cultivation could not begin, households that believed they could lease land were still scrambling to fertilize. Japan already had a tradition of fertilizing at this time, which was introduced from the Song Dynasty. For example, in the picture book of Master Honen 》, there are illustrations of Master Honen chanting scriptures while squatting in an outhouse, and carrying young monks to collect excrement and urine into buckets for fertilizing.
The people were voluntarily fertilizing, preparing to plant a crop of beans to enrich the soil as soon as the typhoon season passed. Yuan Ye, naturally, hoped for the territory to improve and was not idle. He prioritized transporting all the guano he had accumulated back. After appropriate crushing and processing, he applied it to the fields.
Guano is slow-release. After being applied to the soil, its nutrients are not released rapidly but dissolve gradually over time, continuously providing nutrients to the plants. This characteristic can reduce the frequency of fertilization, lower labor costs, and also prevent waste caused by rapid nutrient release, meeting the plants’ nutritional needs for a longer period.
At the same time, guano is also an excellent natural fertilizer, rich in essential nutrients for crops such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and magnesium. Anyone who uses it knows its value. For example, in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the states of Wu and Yue relied on guano, processed bird droppings, and flocks of migratory birds that came to defecate regularly to cultivate vast amounts of land, achieving extremely high grain yields and greatly increasing their national strength. They could train large numbers of swordsmen and, with the power of a small state, defeat hegemons like Chu and Qi, even nearly destroying them.
The wise men of China had already used up natural fertilizers like guano in advance, so later generations had none to use, and historical records are extremely scarce. Japan, starting from the Sui and Tang Dynasties, copied their homework but completely missed this. This was fortunate for Yuan Ye, allowing him to pay tribute to the wise men and use guano in Japan in advance, enriching himself as well. Whether crops use fertilizer or not makes a world of difference. In modern times, it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that over 60% of the world’s population is sustained by chemical fertilizers.
Xin Wanjin was thriving and recovering extremely quickly. New buildings were completed every day, and the scale of the fields expanded daily. Yuan Ye roughly estimated that this rapid recovery and development would last until early next year. By then, he would likely be short of personnel again and would be forced to maintain the status quo, unable to develop further.
This caused him to have a headache again. His strength improvement was intermittent, which greatly affected his ultimate plan. However, there was nothing he could do to prepare for this in advance. Now, looking around, there was no longer anyone he could forcibly immigrate. He could only hold back for now and see if he could think of another way to gather more population later.
Of course, he had not forgotten the islanders in Ise Bay.
Having interacted for so long, their trust had greatly increased compared to before. Therefore, he sent A Man and Yu Da to hire islanders again to help transport goods, continuing to offer them favorable terms to entice them to move here. This had already shown initial success, with about thirty households gathered. However, his territory was now larger, more than five times the area of old Wanjin （ including the Oya Family’s territory that he could occupy but hadn’t yet ）. Throwing a hundred people into it would barely make a ripple; they could only be considered an additional group of fishermen to be managed.
The development of the territory was still a long and arduous journey. He was still just a local lord, at most a local lord who mastered advanced production technology and was good at making money. To truly become a “Minor Daimyo” and possess the power to influence the situation at critical moments, he needed to fill his territory with a large population first, otherwise, it would be no different from before.
As the workshops gradually resumed production and the construction projects for fields, water conservancy facilities, and residences were planned, he also tried using volcanic ash cement on the seaside mudflats to build a small salt field, to ensure a stable supply of salt for the territory. At the same time, it was to accumulate technology, craftsmanship, and management personnel for large-scale production expansion, and to squeeze out competitors in the salt selling business.
Of course, he couldn’t achieve this in the short term. He had already lost hundreds of young and strong men for this piece of land. Restoring the original workshop production was already a struggle. It was difficult for him to allocate more personnel for large-scale salt production and salting, but it was promising for the future.
He also attempted sugar production, trying to use microorganisms to ferment rice to produce white sugar. Before his transmigration, he had read a relevant paper and vaguely remembered some operational steps and data. But unfortunately, the fermentation conditions for this were extremely harsh in ancient times, with very limited success even in laboratories, and the cost was unbearably high, making workshop-style production impossible.
It seemed that to obtain a high-profit product like white sugar, he would need to find and improve ancient sugar-making methods. However, Yuan Ye sent A Man to inquire extensively but couldn’t find sugarcane or sugar beets （ while restoring the Owari intelligence network, he also looked for them ）. It was likely that they had not yet been introduced to Japan at this time.
Or, like domestic pigs, they were introduced to Japan several times from China or the Korean Peninsula since the Tang Dynasty, but for various reasons, they all died out. In any case, they couldn’t be found now.
It was probably truly absent. He vaguely remembered that modern Japanese people did not have the habit of eating sugarcane, and it was not found in fruit shops or supermarkets. Sugar beets were also a vegetable eaten for their leaves and roots, and were not very common. At least in the Guanzhong region where he lived before, this item was rarely eaten.
Fortunately, A Man did not return empty-handed. After searching extensively, she managed to get a packet of watermelon seeds from Atsuta Port, which was an unexpected joy. And there was still time to plant a fall crop of watermelons. Yuan Ye quickly germinated them in seedling trays and planted them, hoping to eat a watermelon in the autumn and recall his modern life. Living in ancient times was truly arduous, like suddenly moving from a big city to a remote African tribe, where there was truly nothing. He worked hard every day and wanted to eat some good food to lift his spirits.
As for the sugar production endeavor, it had to be put on hold for now, unless he could find sugarcane seedlings to restart it. However, he occasionally tried fermenting a vat of rice in the laboratory to see if he could gamble on producing some white sugar, which could be used for medicine and explosives.
“A pound of gunpowder and a pound of sugar, nicknamed ‘Big Ivan’,” and “A mouthful of sugar, a lifetime,” these are common sayings. If one suffered a serious injury, drinking a bowl of sugar water or licking sugar crystals could significantly increase the chances of survival. Therefore, these sugars were strategic materials, and strategic materials never needed to consider cost. It was better to have more on hand.
The simple construction and life were very suitable for an engineering-minded person like him. As the watermelons began to grow and mature, his life became increasingly busy and fulfilling.
In fact, if he didn’t consider his ultimate plan, he wouldn’t have too many objections to living his life like this.
