The Cost of Growing Wheat

Sally soon brought Levin over.

Levin was delighted to see Duke, but also a little embarrassed. He scratched the back of his head, not knowing what to say.

"You were fired, weren't you?"

"Yes, boss."

"Then come work for me. You'll get the same wages as at the shop—six silver dragons a month, plus a bonus at the end of the year if your performance is outstanding."

"Mm!" Levin nodded vigorously.

Duke smiled and asked, "Sally said you aren't living at home anymore. Is that right?"

"They rented out my room," Levin replied. His parents had never treated him well, and after he came of age, they had kept trying to drive him out.

Now that they had even rented out his room, Levin couldn't go back. On top of that, he had been fired and didn't even have a place to live.

Fortunately, Aunt Abby had taken him in and let him stay at her home for a few days.

"Go to Aunt Abby's house and move all your things here. You'll live here from now on. There's a storage room next door. You can clean it up yourself, right?"

"Mm!"

After Levin had finished moving his things, Duke took him out for lunch.

Now that he had a little money in his hands, Duke didn't want to be stingy with himself. When it was time to eat at a restaurant, he ate at a restaurant. After all, food didn't cost that much—what really cost him money was secretly buying spirit-beast meat to cultivate the Blood Refinement Method.

After lunch,

he took Levin to Little Duke Farm.

The civilian construction crew he had hired with money had no puppets to assist them. Everything depended on the workers' own hands and feet.

Still, construction wasn't slow.

After just a few days, the foundations had been dug out and the wall frames put up. They had even begun pouring reinforced concrete. Of course, the steel bars were ordinary ones, without any spirit metal added. Spirit metal was simply too expensive. The parts for casting the Sand Eagle alone required several gold dragons' worth of spirit metal. Using it to build a house would cost a fortune.

"Boss, what am I supposed to do at the farm?"

"You're the farm's permanent worker, so you'll have to handle all kinds of odd jobs. But our top priority right now is hiring a group of farmers to complete the autumn sowing on these hundred mu of land."

"What are we planting?"

"Wheat."

Duke supervised the construction crew with Levin for a while, then hurried off once more to hire farmers. There were plenty of farms outside Snakehead Town, and quite a few established farming teams. As long as one paid, they could be hired at any time.

After negotiating a price of fifty silver dragons, he contracted the entire hundred mu of Little Duke Farm to a farming team.

The team leader was Old Sef, a big man with a full beard who smoked a pipe wherever he went.

"Leave it to us with peace of mind. My reputation, Old Sef's, is just like this giant crab—solid and dependable!" Old Sef patted the crab-shaped puppet behind him and called out to Duke.

This farming team had three battered "Crab-Type Puppets." They were civilian puppets specially developed by the Tower of Erudition for farms, combining plowing, sowing, fertilizing, and harvesting in one. Relying on the three Crab-Type Puppets, the farming team could sow fifty mu of land in a day.

The hundred mu at Little Duke Farm would only take two days.

"So when can you come to my farm?" Duke asked.

Old Sef took a puff from his pipe and blew out a huge cloud of smoke. "About a week from now. We're booked up for the next few days. You're specifically planting wheat, right? There's no need to hurry. A week from now will be plenty of time... You need to buy the wheat seeds now. One mu of land requires twenty jin of wheat seeds!"

Twenty jin of wheat seeds per mu meant two thousand jin for a hundred mu.

Duke noted that down and asked, "I want to mix in spirit-plant wheat. How much spirit-plant wheat seed would be appropriate?"

"For that, you'd best hire a Spirit Plant Master to help you arrange it. But when we plant wheat on other farms, we usually mix one jin of spirit-plant wheat seed into every ten mu of land. You can buy ten jin. Five jin would work too, if you want to use less. Any lower than that and it won't have much effect."

"I understand." Duke nodded.

"You'll need to buy fertilizer too. I've looked at the land around Little River Bay. The soil isn't fertile enough, so you'll need quite a lot of fertilizer."

"How much?"

"For sowing and fertilizing, you need about twenty jin of specialized fertilizer per mu. After that, you'll need to add fertilizer twice more. All told, you'll need at least fifty jin per mu."

Spirit plants could produce breathing resonance not only with the qi seas of Spirit Plant Masters, but also with plants of the same species.

That was why most farms growing spirit-plant wheat did not scatter spirit-plant wheat seeds across an entire mu. The cost would be far too high. On the market, one jin of spirit-plant wheat seed cost thirty silver dragons, and planting an entire mu required twenty jin of seed. No farm owner could afford that.

Relying on the breathing resonance of spirit plants, they could simply mix a little spirit-plant wheat in with ordinary wheat.

Then, with a Spirit Plant Master guiding it through breathing techniques, the quality of ordinary wheat could be improved. It might even evolve into a new spirit plant.

After settling the agreement with the farming team, Duke paid a deposit of twenty silver dragons.

Duke went to the seed shop in town.

The shop only sold ordinary seeds. A jin of wheat seed cost about four or five copper dragons. He bought two thousand jin of wheat seed in one go, and the owner ultimately sold it to him at four copper dragons per jin, for a total of eighty silver dragons.

Next, he went to the fertilizer shop.

Fertilizer was barely any cheaper than seeds. Two jin of specialized fertilizer cost one copper dragon. Duke did the math, but couldn't bring himself to buy the full fifty jin per mu. He first bought the fertilizer needed for sowing—ten thousand jin in all—for a total price of fifty silver dragons.

Afterward, Duke went to Chen Jiao City and visited the spirit-plant shop he had browsed before.

"Come and have a look, young man." The owner was still just as enthusiastic.

"I'm here to buy spirit-plant wheat seed. Five jin."

"That'll be one hundred and fifty silver dragons."

"Give me a cheaper price, boss. I have a farm of my own, and I'll definitely be coming to buy seeds from your shop often in the future."

"Oh, it's a small business... And you're already a farm owner at such a young age. Do look after my business in the future. This little packet of Energy-Boosting Fertilizer will be my gift to you." The owner added a packet of three-silver-dragon Spiritual Plant Energy-Boosting Fertilizer, counting it as a discount.

Once everything he needed had been prepared,

Duke calculated the accounts.

The fertilizer cost fifty silver dragons, and another two gold dragons would be needed later. The wheat seeds cost eighty silver dragons, and the spirit-plant wheat seed cost one hundred and fifty silver dragons. Hiring the farming team to sow the fields cost fifty silver dragons.

"I'll need to hire people to care for the Wheat Seedling, and later I'll have to hire the farming team to harvest it... Adding everything up, growing one crop of wheat will cost at least seven gold dragons!"

If he apportioned the ten-year rent of twenty gold dragons, then, calculating two wheat crops a year, the cost of one crop would increase by another gold dragon.

"A cost of eight gold dragons. I wonder whether I can sell the harvest for twenty gold dragons next year... If I can, that would be fine. I'd make a net profit of twelve gold dragons in half a year, which comes to an income of two gold dragons a month. That wouldn't be less profitable than Little Sam's Card Shop."

However, twenty gold dragons was an idealized profit. Agriculture was heavily affected by the climate. In a year of disasters, he might even end up losing money.

"I'd better not think about making money yet. Breaking even will be enough."

Duke wasn't determined to rely on the farm to make money. He was a Card Master, after all. Refurbishing secondhand cards was his main source of income for now.

And so,

when early October arrived, Old Sef brought the farming team to sow the fields. The house at Little Duke Farm had also been roofed, and only the interior renovations remained.