The autumn sky was crisp and clear, not a cloud in sight — the finest season for the harvest.
All eight hundred or so souls of the Zhao household had come to work the fields at the canyon's edge, digging up sweet potatoes.
A man brushed away the soil and uncovered a sweet potato roughly the size of his fist. A wide grin of excitement spread across his face.
These sweet potatoes all belonged to Master Zhao, of course, and had nothing to do with the workers themselves — yet a farmer's instinctive joy at the sight of food is simply impossible to suppress.
"Now that's a big one. One of these would feed me on its own. The master said after we finish today, everyone gets to have a taste. Supposedly they're quite good."
"Wait — there's another one beside it?" The man pulled up the first and found another next to it, then kept digging. One led to another, and then another still, and the more he dug, the more there were. His expression gradually shifted from excitement to something close to dread. In broad daylight like this, surely he wasn't seeing things?
How could this much food possibly grow in a single patch of earth?
Not far away, an elderly man was digging too, his face tracing the same journey — from elation to disbelief.
"Is it fake? Is it all fake? Is this stuff really food?" The old man was nearly out of his mind. He seized one of the sweet potatoes, dirt and all, and sank his teeth straight into it.
"It's real — it really is something you can eat!"
"Ha ha ha — oh, oh oh oh..." His laughter broke into sobs. "If only we'd had this years ago, my third boy wouldn't have starved to death. Oh — Third Son, Third Son, your father misses you so!"
Zhao Baihui sat at the head of the fields in a comfortable armchair, sipping tea and taking in the scene.
He had half a mind to compose a verse in honor of the moment, but lacking the literary cultivation to do so, he quietly drank his tea instead.
The four senior maids had gathered nearby, seated together discussing the household's various business affairs.
Jinwen's father came sprinting over, drenched in sweat, his face caught somewhere between excitement and terror. "Master, Master! Everyone's gone mad out there! Half of them are gnawing on raw sweet potatoes — chewing and crying and laughing all at once. It's frightening to watch!"
Zhao Baihui rose and looked out over the fields for a moment. "Nothing to worry about," he said. "Everyone is simply overjoyed."
"Here's what you do: have some people take the freshly dug sweet potatoes and cook up a proper meal — several dishes, make a variety of things."
"Once everyone has eaten and settled down, we'll get back to work."
All four senior maids had run off into the fields to see for themselves. After a while Jinwen came racing back, flushed with excitement. "Master, Master! You didn't deceive us at all — there's so much! From the look of it, it's well over two thousand catties per mu!"
"Then find some people and measure out one mu in several different spots and take a proper count of the yield per mu."
"Yes! I'll go right now."
Before long, Jinwen had gathered a number of workers who still had their wits about them and set them to measuring and digging.
"It's done — the first plot is finished! Bring it to the scale!"
"Three thousand seven hundred catties? Are you sure there's no mistake? Do it again."
"What about the second plot? Three thousand nine hundred and twenty catties? Just shy of four thousand?"
"Quick — get the third plot dug up!"
Five plots measured at different locations. The average yield: three thousand eight hundred catties per mu.
When the numbers came in, everyone was struck speechless.
In those days, rice and wheat yielded perhaps a hundred and eighty catties per mu; coarser grains, being more generous, came in at two or three hundred. Yet this thing nobody had ever heard of was producing forty times what rice could manage, and nearly twenty times the yield of coarse grain.
No wonder everyone had lost their minds.
If all two hundred and some odd mu were dug up, the total would exceed eight hundred thousand catties.
A poor family could survive a day on a single catty of coarse grain stretched with wild vegetables boiled into porridge. Four hundred catties a year was enough to keep starvation at bay.
Eight hundred thousand catties — enough to keep two thousand impoverished households alive. Two thousand households: ten thousand souls.
That, of course, was merely the threshold of survival.
To eat heartily — no wild vegetables mixed in, bowls filled to the brim at every meal — required several times as much grain.
And yet, with just over two hundred mu, two thousand people could live the way wealthy households did. That was something no one had dared imagine before.
Coarse grain without wild vegetables, a full stomach at every meal — that was the standard of a prosperous family.
"Second Girl, go fetch your father a jin of liquor. After we eat, I'm going to give everything I've got to help the master bring in this harvest, even if it kills me."
"With a master like this, we'll never have to worry about hardship or poverty again. Spend money when it's there to spend!"
Many others sent family members off for liquor as well, bracing themselves to dedicate body and soul to the sweet potato harvest.
Zhao Baihui, naturally, would not hear of it. When workers were still at it after dark and refused to stop, he sent people to chase them home.
Did they think their bodies belonged to themselves? Those bodies belonged to the master! If they wouldn't look after themselves, the master would feel the loss. Living well for a few more years and earning the master a few more years of subsidies — that was the proper thing to do.
Once the sweet potatoes were all out of the ground, the four senior maids went around distributing money again.
The days of labor were of course to be paid — at a generous rate — and the wages would come with the regular ten-day payment in due course.
What was being handed out now was a bonus. The sweet potato harvest had been tallied by household, with each family's rough total recorded.
For every ten catties dug, one wen. A family of five or six who had dug five or six thousand catties walked away with five or six hundred wen — nearly half a tael of silver.
An ordinary laboring family earned only ten-odd wen a day for the whole household.
Over these three days, the daily rate had come out to over a hundred wen. This wasn't helping the master work — this was the master handing out a windfall!
Those who had slacked off even a little beat their chests in regret. A bit of laziness had cost them a hundred, maybe two hundred wen. The pain of it was enough to take their breath away!
"Serves them right. Let those who shirked and cut corners sit with their regret!"
The maids laughed among themselves as they talked it over.
"Master, now that the sweet potatoes are all in, what do we do next?"
"Sweet potatoes are coarse grain at heart, but for now only we have them. Rare things command a high price. We develop them into all manner of dishes, make some money while the novelty lasts — and it doubles as promotion."
"If anyone wants to buy sweet potatoes for seed, sell to them, and pass along the growing methods without holding anything back."
"And what price should we set?"
"For seed, twenty-odd wen per catty, or even thirty to forty — no one else has them yet, so selling them dearer than rice is perfectly natural."
"For prepared food, the price goes higher still."
"Understood. We'll put our heads together, come up with a few dishes and ways to serve them, and go test the waters in Qingniu Town."
Zhao Baihui had expected it would take a long while to reach the thousand-person threshold for village-level status. What he had not foreseen was that a single bountiful sweet potato harvest would set off something close to a frenzy.
A great many of the eight hundred local residents went off to find brothers, sisters, and old friends, telling them of the wonders here — the staggering yield of the sweet potatoes, the handsome wages. Before a month had passed, more than two hundred new arrivals had come.
Once the probationary period was up, the voice Zhao Baihui had long been waiting for finally rang in his ear.
【Congratulations — upgrade conditions met. System upgraded to Village-Level System.】
【Village-Level Purchase List unlocked.】
【Authority to establish and configure various functional units unlocked.】
【Currency rights granted.】
【To advance to the next level — Town Level — 50,000 residents required, along with...】