Chapter 324: A Hunch That the Ancestral Graves Will Smoke Again
The moment Wen Xiuyi returned home from the yamen that day, he dragged Wen Yao into the study with an air of mysterious secrecy, taking a cautious glance around the house to check for anyone else before shutting the door.
Seeing his guilty, thief-like posture, Wen Yao couldn’t help teasing, “Dad, do you really have to act like a thief in your own house?”
Wen Xiuyi spat a few times and scolded her in a low voice, “What nonsense are you talking about? Yao Yao, give your dad a hand, will you?”
Only when it pertained to matters regarding their past lives would Wen Xiuyi act with such extreme caution. Copying his low voice, Wen Yao said, “Go on, I’m listening.”
Only then did Wen Xiuyi pull out a small sack and open it on the desk. Looking at it, Wen Yao was stunned—it was a full sack of rice seeds.
“What’s this? Are these the rice seeds you found earlier?” Wen Yao asked. She couldn’t tell good seeds from bad ones, nor did she understand agriculture, but these grains appeared much plumper than the ones she had seen at the old compound before. Compared to the rice seeds at the Academy of Agricultural Sciences in her memory, however, they seemed somewhat lacking.
Wen Xiuyi nodded: “There are no instruments here, nor any way to conduct research, so I can only use the most primitive methods to cultivate them. I originally planned to take things step by step without appearing too extraordinary, which was why I traveled all over and asked your Uncle Chen to help search for rice seeds too. The ones in this bag are the absolute best seeds I managed to pick out.”
Rummaging through them slightly, Wen Yao sighed with emotion: “They fall far short of the ones in your old office, though.”
Sighing, Wen Xiuyi nodded: “Tell me about it! Your dad is just one man—I don’t have three heads and six arms. This production team initiative sounds easy in theory, but it’s hard to put into practice. Old Chen and I are at the county yamen every single day handling all sorts of issues reported by the villages. Look at my hair—I’m practically going bald.”
Wen Yao laughed: “It’s fine, I’ll buy you a bottle of anti-hair loss shampoo, hahahaha!”
Wen Xiuyi raised a hand and poked Wen Yao’s head: “Be serious.”
“Oh.” Wen Yao straightened up obediently and said, “Then what do you mean by bringing these rice seeds to me now? Are you asking me to buy some good rice seeds from the spatial storage to pull off a secret swap for you?”
“Not quite, though that’s not impossible either,” Wen Xiuyi continued. “Take a look at your spatial storage—can things be grown in there?”
Wen Yao wore a look of utter shock: “You don’t expect me to plant these rice seeds inside my spatial storage, do you? Dad, I don’t know the first thing about farming!”
“Can they be planted in there or not?” Wen Xiuyi grew a little anxious with this girl.
Wen Yao shook her head: “I don’t know! You said yourself that we shouldn’t rely too heavily on this spatial storage out of fear that it might vanish one day, and that we needed to forge ahead steadily on our own. So I never really studied it—I just used it for everyday shopping and treated it as a mobile warehouse.”
Wen Xiuyi: “…”
So after all this time, aside from buying a few items, this girl has never actually examined her spatial storage in detail?
“Are you truly not afraid that the moment the female lead is born, the spatial storage will disappear?” Wen Xiuyi poked her head again.
Dodging to protect her head, Wen Yao spoke up: “Stop poking me! If you poke me again, I’ll tell on you when my brother gets back!
“What is there to be afraid of? Counting the time, the female lead should have been born long ago. The spatial storage is still with me, which means she’s gone! Though it’s hard to say—if the original setting still stands, maybe she has a spatial storage of her own too.”
At this point, Wen Yao suddenly snapped back to reality: “Oh no, Dad! Do you think there could be two spatial storages?”
Wen Xiuyi rolled his eyes at her without ceremony: “What do you think this is, cabbages that everyone gets one? Still… it’s not entirely impossible.”
“Then what do we do?” Wen Yao grew anxious. If the female lead’s spatial storage still existed, wouldn’t that mean trouble lay ahead?
Wen Xiuyi asked, “Think back carefully to the plot—what exactly was the situation with the female lead’s spatial storage?”
Pondering deeply, Wen Yao tried hard to recall the original novel’s plot—one she had long since forgotten in some obscure corner of her mind. After a moment, she said, “In the original book, the female lead wasn’t a transmigrator or a reincarnator; the author simply gave her the setting of being a darling of Heaven.
“I don’t know what the author was thinking either—pairing a native ancient person with a modern system, wasn’t that completely out of their mind? It wasn’t until she was around ten years old that the female lead began learning those modern concepts from the spatial storage, after which her life went full cheat-mode.”
Pushing the rice seeds in front of her, Wen Xiuyi said, “Don’t worry about that for now. Hurry and give it a try.”
“No, wait, Dad—I don’t know how to plant things! Besides, doesn’t rice require raising seedlings, transplanting them, and all that? Inside my spatial storage, it’s all dry ground without even a single puddle—how am I supposed to plant it?” Only now did Wen Yao realize that inside her spatial storage, aside from that warehouse, there was only a hundred-square-meter vacant plot of land. To put it plainly, it was a floorless room existing solely in her consciousness, lacking even a water source—how could anything be planted there?
That old fox of a creator was far too stingy! Since he gave her a spatial storage, why didn’t he throw in a spiritual spring that could revive the dead like in other books?
“Dryland rice, dryland rice! Try it first before saying anything else,” Wen Xiuyi urged.
Scratching her hair, Wen Yao gritted her teeth, grabbed a handful of rice from the bag, and said, “Treating a dead horse like a live one then! I’ll just scatter them like this and see if they grow on their own like the female leads in other books.”
With that, Wen Yao vanished on the spot.
“Hey, take some water with you!” Before Wen Xiuyi could finish his sentence, she was already gone.
Inside the spatial storage, Wen Yao busied herself loosening the dirt and tilling the soil, spending quite some time before finally scattering the rice seeds down.
When she emerged, Wen Xiuyi had taken advantage of the moment to fetch a bucket of water from outside. Wen Yao could only carry the bucket back into the spatial storage and water the ground.
Emerging with the empty bucket, Wen Yao collapsed straight onto a chair, exhausted to her limit.
“Dad, I just wasn’t born to be a farmer.”
Wen Xiuyi stepped forward to knead her shoulders, saying with a smile, “Thank you for your hard work, daughter.”
After catching her breath, Wen Yao waved her hand, and two massive sacks appeared before them—each weighing roughly two hundred catties.
“Lindan No. 1 and Nanging 9108—two hundred catties per bag. Is that enough? If not, I can buy more,” Wen Yao said, pointing at the two sacks.
Wen Xiuyi’s eyes lit up instantly. She had procured both dryland rice and paddy rice for him! Ah, it seems that compared to stepping through life one footprint at a time, taking a shortcut is truly so much sweeter!
“Good daughter, Dad loves you.”
With that, he ignored Wen Yao and squatted down to inspect the rice seeds on his own.
Sitting in the chair, Wen Yao rubbed her own shoulders, merely watching Wen Xiuyi crouched over there with a gentle smile on her lips, her eyes filled with admiration and warmth.
This was her father—a father who made her proud, whether in the past or the present.
That very evening, Wen Xiuyi asked Old Man Wen for land.
“Eldest Son, what have you researched this time?” Hearing that he wanted land as an experimental plot, Old Man Wen’s eyes lit up.
Wen Xiuyi didn’t hide it either, saying, “Dad, it’s still about the rice I mentioned to you before. Look…”
The moment Old Man Wen heard this, he made the call on the spot: “Take it! That stretch of land by the river was bought by your family to begin with—fence it all off for your use! Second Son, Third Son, from now on, you two listen to your elder brother! Do whatever your brother tells you to do.”
Old Man Wen had a hunch that the ancestral graves of their Wen family were about to emit blue smoke once again.
