Excluding the newly cleared land set aside for growing purple vetch, the remaining land totaled one hundred mu.

Tong Zhanyan had previously set aside three mu for green manure, and there was about one mu of land that had been continuously used to grow cherry radishes and bok choy.

The corn, pumpkins, and sweet potatoes had already been started from seedlings, and they remained the main crops this time; Tong Zhanyan planted ten mu of each.

All told, that left about sixty-five mu of land.

Tong Zhanyan had already mapped out a plan for these sixty-five mu.

First up are radishes and Chinese cabbage.

More accurately, he plans to replace the cherry radishes and baby bok choy with radishes and Chinese cabbage.

Because cherry radishes and baby bok choy have short growth cycles, they were the crops he grew most frequently and in the largest quantities, which also caused their infection rate to be permanently stuck at 20%.

They were fine for feeding chickens and pigs, but the people who came through the back door via the lottery could no longer eat them.

Tong Zhanyan considered buying seeds with a high infection rate or creating a batch himself, but ultimately chose to switch to growing radishes and Chinese cabbage.

Cherry radishes and baby bok choy have a growth cycle of about twenty to forty days, while radishes and Chinese cabbage take fifty to sixty days—nearly a month longer.

But they are also significantly larger in size, so as long as the timing is properly staggered, they can completely replace the cherry radishes and baby bok choy.

Because their growth cycles are longer, they require more land.

Tong Zhanyan planned to allocate five mu of land directly for them, dividing it into four smaller plots for staggered rotation.

Following the radishes and Chinese cabbage comes rapeseed.

From the perspective of suppressing frenzy, rapeseed offers extremely poor value for money. First, its yield is lower than that of other crops, and second, the oil extraction rate from rapeseed is only around 35%.

Tong Zhanyan planted five mu in the previous batch; the rapeseed currently drying is estimated to yield only about 1,200 jin, which translates to roughly 420 jin of oil.

On the same amount of land, eggplants and cucumbers can easily yield three or four thousand jin.

However, Tong Zhanyan plans to plant even more this time—ten mu in total.

The reason is simple: to prepare for the next batch of crops covering a full 200 mu.

Rapeseed offers poor cost-effectiveness in suppressing the frenzy, but it has an advantage other crops lack: based on a 35% oil yield, the remaining 65% is rapeseed cake.

Rapeseed cake can be used as fertilizer, and its fertility is second only to orange peel water.

This time, he had cleared a hundred acres in one go. Even with plants like the purple vetch, the fertilizer shortfall was no longer something he could simply make up by scrimping and saving.

Ten acres would yield 2,400 catties of rapeseed and over 1,500 catties of rapeseed cake.

If all of it were turned into fertilizer, that would amount to nearly 10,000 catties of fertilizer solution—a considerable amount.

However, this left him with only fifty mu of land remaining.

This batch of crops he’d planted for sale covered nearly fifty mu, and the next batch would still be limited to fifty mu.

Previously, he’d cleared twenty or fifty mu at a time; though this time it appeared he’d cleared a hundred mu, the actual amount of land dedicated to growing crops for sale hadn’t increased.

The viewers in the livestream are probably going to be disappointed.

It’s not that they don’t understand what he’s doing now, but understanding is one thing; watching their loved ones, partners, and friends gradually get devoured by the frenzy is quite another.

But this is an inevitable path, and Tong Zhanyan has no intention of backing down.

Aside from radishes, Chinese cabbage, and rapeseed, Tong Zhanyan was much more casual about the rest.

He planned to plant all the remaining seeds for cucumbers and eggplants, and once planted, he would collect the seeds just as he had done with the cherry tomatoes.

There were plenty of seeds for these two crops; he estimated each would yield about five mu.

As for the remaining crops like carrots and string beans, he would simply plant a little of each, dividing the seeds evenly.

After gathering everyone together, Tong Zhanyan assigned tasks to the group: some would soak seeds and tend to the seedlings, while others would accompany him to the fields to harvest and collect crop seedlings.

Many crops had already been harvested earlier, and their seedlings had been pulled up and composted at the time.

What Tong Zhanyan intended to harvest this time were crops with few remaining fruits or those that were no longer worth keeping.

Once they began harvesting, they no longer had time to prune flowers and leaves, so quite a few new fruits grew over the following period.

While Old Xu and his group were always reluctant to part with them, he had no hesitation whatsoever.

Not only did he have no hesitation, but whenever he came across a large plot where only a few plants remained—even if those few were growing normally—he would pull them out without a second thought.

Don’t get in the way of him planting the next batch.

After clearing away a third of the seedlings in one go and harvesting a huge pile of unripe, substandard produce, Tong Zhanyan felt refreshed and invigorated.

Old Xu, Gu Yunyang, and the rest, however, looked as though their hearts were breaking.

The same was true in the livestream chat.

“He’s a devil—he’s definitely a devil.”

“That’s gotta be over a hundred pounds, right…?”

“Every time I watch Senior’s livestream, it feels like we’re living in two different worlds.”

“If I hadn’t just bought crops at the store today, I’d really think crops had become this worthless.”

……

Heartache aside, once the field was cleared, Ning Langdong and his group still hauled that shredder out of the warehouse and began shredding the crop seedlings.

Tong Zhanyan took this opportunity to go check on the septic tank.

He had intended to see if the septic tank was big enough; if not, he’d expand it, since the next crop would be even larger.

But when he arrived, he found the tank filled to the brim with crop seedlings and mud.

There were quite a few remnants from the previous batch of crops being composted.

Tong Zhanyan decided to call over a few people to take advantage of the situation and clean out the septic tank while they were at it.

It wasn’t a pleasant task; the group’s faces were grim with effort.

As usual, Tong Zhanyan had the removed soil and mud transported to his three green manure plots, intending to mix it into the soil later, and to take the opportunity to expand the green manure area.

Because of this extra step, by the time they had dumped all the new seedlings into the septic tank, it was already noon.

Tong Zhanyan had the group go back to take a shower.

In the afternoon, everyone got back to work.

This time, the focus was on sowing seeds.

Old Xu led most of the people to the front of the small building to start seedlings for cucumbers and eggplants, while Tong Zhanyan led about fifty people to plant rapeseed.

This was only the second time rapeseed had been planted on a large scale, so they used the same plot of land as before.

They had previously only had about five mu of land, but now they needed to expand. After taking a look, Tong Zhanyan ordered them to pull up the remaining chili plants from the adjacent field.

The chili harvest had already begun; Tong Zhanyan had just pulled up another batch that wasn’t producing much fruit, so there were only about a hundred plants left in the field.

Tong Zhanyan didn’t mind, but the group sent to pull them looked as if the sky had fallen.

Since they had no fertilizer, even the best chili plants on their own plot didn’t grow this large.

While they were busy, Tong Zhanyan had a few of them go and till the soil.

With five small tillers available, five people working together could finish tilling all the land in just over an hour.

Once the soil was turned, the next step was digging furrows.

This had to be done by hand, so the pace slowed considerably.

They dug from 2:00 PM until around 5:00 PM before finally finishing.

Rapeseed seeds are difficult to spread once soaked in water, so Tong Zhanyan instructed them to scatter them directly.

Sowing the seeds was easy enough, but the real challenge was covering them with soil.

Covering the soil looks simple, but it actually requires some skill. Too little soil won’t retain water, and the emerging roots will easily dry out; too much will suffocate the seeds.

The group worked with extra care.

That also took more time.

As night fell and the streetlights came on, they had only just finished covering one-fifth of the area.

Since there were no seed-eating insects or birds at the base, Tong Zhanyan called a halt.

That night, Tong Zhanyan went online to check on the situation at the front lines.

Things didn’t feel quite right this year, so the four major families were all preparing early. While there hadn’t been any large-scale attacks yet, there was already a tense sense of impending doom.

The next day, Tong Zhanyan led the group to continue.

It took them over two more hours to cover all the seeds.

Next came watering.

Since the area was so vast, they brought in several irrigation systems.

It took some time to set up the sprinkler heads.

Being able to draw water and electricity from nearby sources was indeed much more convenient.

Since the seeds weren’t buried very deep, Tong Zhanyan didn’t set the sprinklers’ water pressure too high to prevent the water from washing the seeds out again.

With the water flow reduced, it took longer for the seeds and soil to be thoroughly saturated. After confirming everything was in order, Tong Zhanyan led his group back to the small building.

After an entire afternoon and the morning, Old Xu and the others had only just finished sowing the eggplants.

After letting his group rest briefly, Tong Zhanyan led them back to the fields to plant the radishes and Chinese cabbage.

The plot directly in front of the small house was planted with corn, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, and Tong Zhanyan’s three mu of green manure fields; cherry radishes and bok choy were planted further to the left of those.

There were still some plants left unharvested in those two plots, and Tong Zhanyan had no intention of touching them—the chickens and pigs still needed to eat them.

He led his group further to the left.

That area had originally been planted with eggplants.

The eggplants had been planted earlier and were now nearly gone, leaving only a sparse patch as far as the eye could see.

This worked out well for Tong Zhanyan.

After roughly marking out a five-mu area, Tong Zhanyan chose the most open corner and cleared nearly one mu of space.

Bok choy and cherry radishes are small, so even if they’re crowded together, it’s not a big problem; Tong Zhanyan had always broadcast-sown them before.

But radishes and Chinese cabbage are a different story.

They’re too large; if they’re really crammed together, not only will they deform each other, but they might even push each other right out of the ground.

In his previous world, some greenhouse growers would first sow a row of seeds and then, once they sprouted, simply pull out all the weak and inferior seedlings.

Although that method increased the cost of seeds slightly, it saved a lot of time.

In his previous world, seeds for these two crops were quite cheap; the cost per mu was estimated to be only about ten to twenty yuan higher.

He wasn’t short on money now, but he certainly wasn’t that flush with seeds.

Tong Zhanyan watched as the others used a tiller to prepare the acre of land. They then selected an area of about ten square meters, scattered the seeds, watered them, and covered the area with plastic sheeting.

He planned to transplant the seedlings once they had sprouted.

The seedlings would be large enough once grown, making them far easier to handle than counting and planting seeds one by one.

This method of sowing was certainly a far cry from using seedling trays; it didn’t promote growth, serving merely as a convenience.

He had too much land to manage, and since these two crops were intended primarily to feed the pigs, chickens, and the group of people in the back, there was no need to be overly particular.

Once the work was done, the others turned off the sprinklers and went back to help with the sowing, while Tong Zhanyan went to attend to other tasks.

With the residue and soil from those septic tanks, the green manure plot could be expanded, and wheat could be planted again.

The former was simple enough, but for the latter, he still needed to figure out how to proceed.

The last time they sowed, the infection rate didn’t go down, and he ended up losing an entire greenhouse’s worth of soil—it was a complete and utter failure.

The only noteworthy observation was that the wheat temporarily stopped growing after being fertilized.

Tong Zhanyan had initially thought this was because the fertilizer solution might have been “toxic” to the wheat, but upon reflection, he wasn’t so sure.

He was able to lower the infection rate of the crops because he had boosted their inherent vitality and condition.

Could the wheat, whose infection rate was so high that its growth rate became abnormal, also be considered highly active and in good condition in a different sense?

But was the “highly active, good condition” part actually the problematic one?

Judging by the fact that the crops were able to lower their own infection rates, they must possess a self-purification ability. What if he were to boost the activity of the healthy parts of that wheat?

Could the earlier halt in growth have been caused by those momentarily healthy parts overpowering the unhealthy ones?

Tong Zhanyan didn’t think it was impossible, but he also felt that to truly understand it, he would have to conduct an experiment.

The question was: how to conduct the experiment?

Continuous fertilization was definitely out of the question; after a few more applications, the wheat would develop resistance.

But without fertilizer, how could he possibly boost the crops’ vitality?

Pondering this, Tong Zhanyan drove out a rotary tiller and plowed an additional acre of land next to the three acres of green manure.

After finishing, Tong Zhanyan went to the area where the corn stalks were drying.

They had been cut some time ago, and the leaves and stalks were nearly dry.

The crop residues from composting and the soil from the septic tank were already quite fertile, but since the field was so large, Tong Zhanyan decided to add some fiber and plant ash.

Tong Zhanyan pushed aside a patch of the pile, dragged the materials together, and summoned his Spirit Beast.

“Light it.”

The moment Tong Zhanyan’s words fell, the chicken pounced.

After a brief scuffle, Tong Zhanyan grabbed one of the chicken’s wings with one hand and held it high above his head.

He felt they needed to have a serious talk.

“I admit, I was wrong before. You’re not a chicken—you’re a phoenix,” Tong Zhanyan said solemnly.

The chicken was filled with doubt.

“I don’t think this is entirely my fault. Don’t you know what you looked like before?” Tong Zhanyan had actually been suspicious himself; after all, it didn’t really look much like a chicken—chickens aren’t as scruffy as it was.

But he certainly hadn’t considered the possibility of a phoenix, since that was a divine beast, whereas Spirit Beasts were all real, ferocious birds and beasts.

At the time, he’d actually suspected it was some unknown bird—or a chicken.

“Cluck, cluck…”

Tong Zhanyan was just sloppy.

A Spirit Beast’s state reflects its master’s mental state. Given how it looked, did Tong Zhanyan bear no responsibility at all?

Hearing that familiar clucking, Tong Zhanyan nearly lost his composure for a moment.

Tong Zhanyan took a deep breath. “I apologize.”

The chicken-eyed Tong Zhanyan suspiciously eyed, clearly unconvinced.

Still, Tong Zhanyan’s attitude was genuinely sincere.

Tong Zhanyan carefully set the chicken back on the ground. “So, are we even?”

He had always believed that, no matter what, he shouldn’t give up training and should maintain a certain level of combat readiness.

But after moving to the base, he hadn’t had a moment to think about it.

Now he was even more determined; no matter what, he would make time for training from now on.

The chicken stared at Tong Zhanyan for a moment longer, then shook out the feathers Tong Zhanyan had ruffled, and looked away.

“Let’s light the fire,” Tong Zhanyan said.

Veins immediately throbbed on the chicken’s head; it was becoming increasingly convinced that Tong Zhanyan was just stringing it along.

“Your ability is very useful,” Tong Zhanyan stated matter-of-factly.

The chicken stared at Tong Zhanyan for a moment before reluctantly walking toward the cornstalks.

Blue flames shot up silently.

The cornstalks ignited instantly, and the fire slowly spread, the blue flames gradually transforming into normal yellow-red flames.

Tong Zhanyan let out a sigh of relief.

As long as we can communicate, that’s good.

He just has to be careful not to slip up and say too much in the future, or it’ll be really hard to placate it.

Tong Zhanyan suddenly thought of Qing Jiyue’s little tiger.

That little tiger was still the cutest.

The stalks burned out quickly, so Tong Zhanyan went straight back to start the excavator and dug up the ashes and soil together.

After scattering the ashes into the ground, Tong Zhanyan went to the neighboring plot to pull up some cherry radishes and bok choy, then shredded them along with some of the corn stalks using a shredder.

Finally, Tong Zhanyan spread the mixture with the excavator, mixed it into the soil with a tiller, watered it, and then covered it with plastic sheeting.

The decomposition process would take about a month.

By the time he finished, it was already noon.

After lunch, he drove his tricycle over to the watermelon field.

The watermelons were ripe as well.

Although the field covered more than an acre, the total yield wasn’t particularly large.

This was because both the seeds with a high infection rate purchased from Mr. Bai and the seeds with a low infection rate obtained from the Alliance were only the second planting.

The entire field likely yielded no more than two hundred or so.

Tong Zhanyan had already picked some earlier, so only about a hundred remained.

Tong Zhanyan picked over fifty at once.

On the way back, he stopped by the back gate and left ten there for them to share among themselves.

Tong Zhanyan transported the rest back to the small building for Ning Langdong, Gu Yunyang, and the others to eat.

Since the watermelon seeds are inside the fruit, and he’s still waiting to collect them, he naturally couldn’t sell them.

Counting those who joined through the later raffles, the base now has a total population of around 350 people. Fifty watermelons are barely enough.

In the live Stream.

“Senior, aren’t you treating them a little too well? Corn the other day, watermelon today…”

“What happened to studying? All you do is eat, eat, eat.”

“I’ve never seen such a red watermelon before. It must be super sweet.”

“Waaah… I really want to go to the base.”

……

Some watermelons have a low infection rate, so Tong Zhanyan can actually eat them.

The temperature in that watermelon field fluctuates drastically between day and night, and since he controls the rainfall himself, the sugar content has fully developed. The flesh has become sandy-textured, making it incredibly sweet.

As he ate, Tong Zhanyan pondered the possibility of buying a refrigerator; chilled watermelon is a whole different experience from fresh watermelon.

With so many people and so little watermelon, Tong Zhanyan only got two small slices.

After finishing, Tong Zhanyan was just about to start thinking about the wheat when his terminal buzzed.

The dust separator had arrived.

Tong Zhanyan hurried to the door to meet the delivery person.

The rapeseed and corn were still drying, though they were nearly done.

Once the machine was brought inside, Tong Zhanyan immediately had someone fetch some rapeseed from the drying area to test it out.

The results weren’t great; it could separate the larger seeds, but the smaller ones weren’t separated very clearly.

Separators in this world are all industrial-grade; they had never separated rapeseed before, and with this equipment, even a slight discrepancy in the settings could lead to significant variations in results.

Tong Zhanyan didn’t rush to send the machine back for further adjustments.

Since the rapeseed was nearly dry, he decided to use it to separate a portion first; they could handle the rest themselves later, which would save a lot of trouble.

That night, Tong Zhanyan bought some oil cans.

This batch of rapeseed weighed over 1,200 jin, yielding about 420 jin of oil. Even if he bought 10-jin cans, he’d need more than forty of them.

After buying the oil jars, Tong Zhanyan contacted the construction crew again and asked them to come over to repair the septic tanks.

Excluding the one beneath the pigsty, he currently had only eight septic tanks in total, and the previous crop seedlings had already taken up most of the space.

With over a thousand jin of rapeseed cake this time, repairs were essential.

Early the next morning, the construction crew arrived.

This was the third time they’d built septic tanks. After Tong Zhanyan told them where to place them, the group got straight to work.

Building septic tanks is a simple task; the twelve new ones were completed almost in a single day.

After this crop, the next batch would cover a full 200 mu—a few septic tanks simply wouldn’t be enough.

Tong Zhanyan had them build a few more.

But with a full twenty septic tanks, if they were all filled to capacity, the smell in this area would likely be impossible to contain.

Three days later, the oil press arrived.

The very next day, Tong Zhanyan led a team to harvest the rapeseed for pressing.

With over 1,200 catties of seed, the truck made three trips.

Machinery is indeed more efficient than manual labor; even if the separation wasn’t perfect, after three passes, the result looked quite clean.

And the whole process took only half an hour.

If done by hand, that would be at least a day’s work—and it would require twenty or thirty people working together.

After another pass, Tong Zhanyan had his men sift through the seeds by hand, then washed them directly with water.

It takes over a month for the rapeseed cake to decompose into fertilizer, so preparations need to start as soon as possible.

The oil-pressing process itself was simple—just pour the seeds directly into the machine.

The aroma of oil was quite intense, drawing the attention of Ning Langdong and his group, who were in the middle of sowing and couldn’t resist coming over to see the commotion.

With a large batch of rapeseed this time, the yield of oil was substantial.

By the time the re-pressing was finished, the warehouse floor was already filled with oil drums.

There was simply too much oil for Ning Langdong and his group to consume on their own, so Tong Zhanyan contacted Mr. Bai.

With the crops in the fields still being harvested, Mr. Bai was busy with those tasks but came over quickly upon hearing the news.

Tong Zhanyan had him take away over thirty barrels.

Since the rapeseed and pumpkins were from the same batch and both had infection rates below 20%, Tong Zhanyan chose not to eat them.

As for the rest, Tong Zhanyan still had them sent to the canteen by the back door.

After the oil was pressed, that same afternoon, Tong Zhanyan had the fertilizer composted.

The ratio of rapeseed cake to water for composting was one to seven; over a thousand pounds of rapeseed cake filled six septic tanks.

The rapeseed cake was fragrant, but mixed with the other odors from the septic tanks, it produced a strange, nauseating smell that was both sweet and foul.

Once the group finished, they hurried away.

That night, after instructing his research team to take the separator back for further testing, Tong Zhanyan checked the situation on the front lines online.

The Xu family had suffered a massive, widespread attack today.

Although the battle didn’t last long, it caused a huge commotion.

Outside the protective shield, food was scarce at this time. Once a disturbance broke out anywhere, all the beasts in the surrounding area would be drawn to it.

That was one of the troublesome aspects of the beast tide.

Many online believed this was just the beginning—that the beast tide had officially begun.

Tong Zhanyan glanced at the comments section for a moment before switching pages. He’d considered asking Qing Jiyue about it, but decided against it.

Whether it was true or not, Qing Jiyue was likely already on edge; he didn’t need to add to the chaos.

The next day, as soon as Tong Zhanyan came downstairs, he saw Tian Xinqing talking with others.

The Xu family had been attacked again last night—on a massive scale. The fighting hadn’t stopped yet and was showing signs of spreading toward the Lin and Qing Families on either side.

The beast tide has truly begun.

The fighting continued unabated, while Tian Xinqing and his group kept an eye on the situation as they sowed seeds.

After helping out for a while, Tong Zhanyan led a group of over twenty people to the greenhouses to replant the wheat.

The greenhouses were currently devoid of soil, so Tong Zhanyan first led them to gather some.

He had no shortage of humus, plant ash, or eggshell powder.

The only problem was transportation.

When bringing soil out of the greenhouse with Qing Jiyue’s help, everything went smoothly; but getting it back in—with the excavator unable to enter—proved to be a time-consuming and labor-intensive task.

After countless trips back and forth, it wasn’t until past 3:00 PM that they finally managed to fill the entire greenhouse.

Tong Zhanyan let the others rest while he continued working.

With the experience from before, he planned to plant fewer seeds this time, ensuring at least enough space for people to walk through.

In addition, Tong Zhanyan individually tested the infection rate of every seed and kept detailed records.

It wasn’t just the seeds; this time, he intended to record the infection rate at every stage.

With fewer seeds, larger seeds, and no need for seedling cultivation, Tong Zhanyan finished his work quickly.

The next day, Ning Langdong and the others went to harvest.

Tong Zhanyan went to help as well.

This harvest was nearing its end, and after finishing, they gathered another batch of crop seedlings.

The following day, Ning Langdong and his group continued sowing, while Tong Zhanyan went to the greenhouse to inspect the wheat.

Their vitality remained terrifyingly robust; in just two days, many had already pushed through the soil.

Tong Zhanyan selected a few visible plants, cut off a small section with a blade, and took them for testing.

The infection rate remained unchanged.

Those seedlings weren’t as fragile as ordinary crops; even after being cut, they remained perfectly fine.

Two days later, when Tong Zhanyan returned, all the wheat had sprouted. The earliest ones had even grown nearly to his ankles.

Tong Zhanyan took photos, recorded the number of leaves and the height, and conducted another analysis.

The infection rate remained unchanged.

After making his notes, Tong Zhanyan mixed some fertilizer solution and watered all the wheat plants.

Once he was done, he returned to the small building to help out and took the opportunity to open the Green Shade to check on things.

The fighting had spread from the Xu family’s estate all the way to the Lin and Qing Families; now, only the Gu Family, located directly across from the Xu family, had managed to escape unscathed.

The beasts themselves weren’t particularly vicious, and so far, the defenses hadn’t been breached; they were even preying on one another.

But the thought that things would continue like this for the next two or three months made Tong Zhanyan’s stomach churn.

During the last beast tide, he had just moved into the base and hadn’t paid any attention to these things at all.

Qing Jiyue had been patrolling with the patrol team at the time and had even been injured, but he downplayed it, so Tong Zhanyan didn’t think much of it.

Now that Qing Jiyue was on the front lines, Tong Zhanyan couldn’t help but worry about him.

That night, Tong Zhanyan asked about Qing Jiyue’s situation.

Qing Jiyue’s reply was, as always, matter-of-fact.

The next day, the first thing Tong Zhanyan did after waking up was go to the greenhouse to check on the wheat.

Just like last time, the plants, having been watered with the nutrient solution, had stopped growing.

Tong Zhanyan hurriedly took samples for testing.

This time, he had planted only about forty plants in total, and the infection rate remained unchanged across all of them.

After thinking it over, Tong Zhanyan mixed another batch of fertilizer solution and watered them again.

At noon, he conducted another test.

The infection rate remained unchanged.

That night, Tong Zhanyan conducted a third test.

The infection rate was the same as before.

The next day, Tong Zhanyan tested the plants once in the morning, once at noon, and once in the evening, but the infection rate remained unchanged.

Since it was the first time he had applied the fertilizer solution, it worked quite well—the wheat plants simply refused to grow.

While Tong Zhanyan made no progress, Ning Langdong and his team were making rapid headway.

After the eggplants and cucumbers, they began sowing string beans and carrots, and even managed to harvest once during that period.

Tong Zhanyan decided to take his mind off things and went out to the fields to have a look.

The rapeseed had already sprouted, appearing as a patchwork of green dots through the plastic sheeting.

The Chinese cabbage and radishes were the same.

The corn and pumpkins had been planted earlier and were now over ten centimeters tall. Tong Zhanyan removed the plastic sheeting from them and watered them again.

This time, Tong Zhanyan decided not to transplant them, but they could still stay in the seedling trays for a while longer to let their roots grow a bit more.

Compared to the rapeseed and the other two crops, these two were much more lush.

Especially the corn—its finger-wide leaves were packed tightly together, making one want to reach out and stroke them.

After checking on them, Tong Zhanyan made a trip to the newly cleared fields planted with purple vetch.

Because of the distance, Tong Zhanyan hadn’t been there even once since sowing.

Upon arriving this time, he discovered that they had all already sprouted.

Since they had been broadcast-sown, they looked somewhat haphazard and untidy, which made them resemble weeds even more.

When planting the peanuts and soybeans, Tong Zhanyan had dug small holes, placing two seeds in each. As they sprouted, they grew in neat, sparse rows.

The only consolation was that the germination rate was decent.

A little later, Tong Zhanyan made another trip to the watermelon patch.

He harvested all the remaining watermelons and composted the vines.

He still distributed the watermelons to the people at the base.

He washed the watermelon seeds thoroughly, then laid them out to dry, preparing to plant them again.

In the midst of his busy work, he took a quick look at the peas, sorghum, and cassava he had bought at a high price, as well as the seeds from the “Top-Top-Top” and “Top-Top” batches that had arrived at the same time.

The seeds from the very first and second batches, along with the peas and sorghum, had long since been planted in the ground. Although they didn’t look entirely satisfactory, they were, after all, growing normally.

Especially the fast-growing lettuce, which looked ready to eat.

The cassava was likely spoiled. When Tong Zhanyan lifted the cloth covering it, a strong, musty odor wafted out.

Tong Zhanyan went back inside to grab a knife and cut it open.

The inside was indeed rotten—two-thirds of it had already decayed, and the remaining third of the core had turned black.

Tong Zhanyan let out a silent sigh and tossed it into the trash can in the corner.

That was over ten million of his money.

After finishing up here, seeing that it was already noon, Tong Zhanyan made another trip to the greenhouse.

Each time he conducted a test, he had to cut off a small piece. Over the past few days, he’d been testing three times a day, so those wheat plants had all had half a leaf cut off.

They didn’t seem to mind, but Tong Zhanyan felt a bit guilty watching them.

After taking the samples, Tong Zhanyan returned to the small building.

The machine could test fifty samples at a time. After loading them in, Tong Zhanyan went to fetch his notebook to record the results.

The results came back quickly. The moment he saw them, Tong Zhanyan couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow.

The infection rate for the first sample didn’t match—it was lower.

Tong Zhanyan immediately put down his pen and went back to the greenhouse to take another sample.

The test results came back quickly. It wasn’t that he had mixed up the order; the infection rate had indeed decreased, though only by 1% in total.

Tong Zhanyan’s heart began to race, and his mind started working at full speed.

So his hypothesis was correct—as long as he boosted the activity of the healthy portion, they would still be able to self-purify?

With that in mind, Tong Zhanyan immediately mixed another batch of fertilizer solution and applied it to the crops.

Last time, he had started applying fertilizer from the middle of the field, when the wheat plants were already waist-high, but now they were still seedlings—perhaps the effect would be even better.

That night, Tong Zhanyan conducted another inspection; this time, the infection rate remained unchanged.

Tong Zhanyan was not disappointed.

The next day, Tong Zhanyan inspected the plants once in the morning, once at noon, and once in the evening; the infection rate showed no change.

The day after that, Tong Zhanyan conducted three more tests.

During the nighttime test, the infection rate had dropped again in two of the plants, though the combined reduction from both tests amounted to only 2%.

Seeing a glimmer of hope, Tong Zhanyan rushed to fertilize them again as soon as he woke up, hoping to maintain the current status.

The next morning, as soon as Tong Zhanyan entered the greenhouse, he saw that the wheat plants had shot up a bit.

Tong Zhanyan’s initially elated heart instantly grew cold.

He conducted the tests, and the results were exactly as he had anticipated: the infection rate had risen again.

The two plants where the infection rate had dropped the most—perhaps out of spite—now showed an even higher rate than before.

Back at his small house, Tong Zhanyan tossed aside his notebook, pulled up a stool, and sat under the eaves, just as he was about to give up in frustration, when he caught a glimpse of green out of the corner of his eye.

In the trash can in the corner where he tossed his odds and ends, atop the cassava root he’d previously cut down to a third of its size, a tiny green sprout had appeared at the top—he didn’t know when.

Tong Zhanyan sighed in exasperation. So it had to get a good whacking before it would behave, did it?