Agricultural School

Biodata

Feature	Value
Name	Agricultural School (农家)
Alias(es)	Agrarian School; Agrarianism
Type	School of thought and agricultural research organization 51 52
Affiliation	Hundred Schools of Thought 1 80
Occupation/Role	Crop improvement, agricultural divine-ability research, education, and granary inspection 51 60 132
Local Base	Agrarian Villa in the western suburbs of Changfeng City, Great Gan 51 52 75
First Appearance	Mentioned among the subjects taught at Qingshan Academy; chosen by Lu Mingyuan as his intended school 1

Organization and Membership

Changfeng City Branch

Feature	Details
Formal membership	About 2,000 members 52
Research personnel	About 500 members formally participate in research 52
Support personnel	More than half of the membership consists of guards and service personnel 52
Teaching duties	A considerable portion of researchers also teach at academies 52
Facilities	Canteen, library, research grounds, and Hall of Inheritance 52 62
Advanced education	Dize Academy specializes in agronomy 60

Admission and Benefits

• Entry requirements: Applicants can qualify by improving a farming tool or creating an agricultural divine ability. Beneficial agricultural inventions also provide a route into the school 28 50.
• Ownership verification: The school verifies an invention’s originality and ownership before recruitment to avoid disputes that could damage its reputation 52.
• Recommendations: Lecturers can recommend successful applicants and receive Contribution Points for doing so 50.
• Technical inheritance: Members can learn advanced-material construction methods and access agricultural knowledge and divine-ability rune inheritances 50 62.
• Protection: Manager Wang promises institutional protection to Lu Mingyuan as a member and a key person the school is cultivating 52.
• Academy access: Lu Mingyuan receives a free enrollment place at Dize Academy because he joined through farm-tool improvement 75.

Research Directions

Su Jin divides the school’s work into three principal fields 51.

Direction	Focus	Documented Examples
Increasing crop yield per mu	Improving productivity while maintaining soil fertility	Yields of 1,000 jin per mu require sufficient compost; otherwise, crop rotation is needed before the yield can be repeated 51.
Agricultural divine abilities	Creating new abilities and expanding existing ones	Extending Autumn Harvest beyond wheat and rice; researching soil turning, weeding, watering, fertilizing, and breeding 51.
Non-crop plant improvement	Developing other plants and new fruit varieties	Flowering-tree varieties, experimental peaches, and multi-grafted fruit trees 51 77 78.

Ordinary farm-tool improvement receives less attention because further gains are difficult and often require Mohist assistance. The Mohists prioritize weapons, armor, and flying boats, while the Agricultural School pursues divine abilities that could replace conventional tools 51.

Agricultural Achievements

• Greenhouses: A Great Wei team invents glass greenhouses that allow fruit and vegetable cultivation in winter. The Changfeng branch tests the design before deciding whether to promote it locally 78.
• Grafting and hybridization: The school possesses a complete set of grafting techniques and substantial hybridization knowledge. Its research grounds include a tree bearing multiple grafted fruits 78.
• Space breeding: Researchers investigate space-induced mutations. The experimental Fragrant Sweet Number One peach is highly addictive, preventing large-scale promotion; reducing that effect is difficult because the mutations are random 77.
• Alfalfa fertilizer: The school discovers that alfalfa enriches soil several times more effectively than ordinary straw, especially during flowering and fruiting. Dried alfalfa from reclaimed desert grasslands is transported to cities for livestock feed and compost 121.
• Heredity research: Huang Shaoqin studies pea flower colors and develops two laws of genetics. Agricultural researchers subsequently seek rare wild plants to broaden the genetic factors available for crop improvement 170 171 179.

Divine Abilities and Inheritances

Responding to Heaven’s Time

An agricultural information ability combining local timekeeping, weather forecasting, and farming guidance 67.

• Reports temporal and solar-term information and forecasts the next few days’ weather.
• Advises on cultivation, watering, pest control, and harvesting.
• Uses real-time information maintained by local agricultural disciples and other Hundred Schools scholars 67.

Four Seasons Farming

The school’s seasonal abilities are Spring Planting, Summer Growth, Autumn Harvest, and Winter Storage. Lu Mingyuan learns all four through the Hall of Inheritance 63.

• Summer Growth: Lu Mingyuan matures wheat from seed within minutes, but the accelerated harvest leaves the land unusable. He regards the ability as more suitable for plant cultivation than mass food production 65.
• Autumn Harvest: Initially harvests wheat and rice without spilling grain. The school aims to extend it to other crops and eventually the fruits of all plants 51.
• Autumn Harvest’s experimental expansion: Researchers can pick visible fruit without damage, but fruit hidden among leaves or lodged between branches remains a problem 78.
• Distributed research: More than 100 teams across different cities work on Autumn Harvest, including Quan Tianhong’s Changfeng team 126.

Growth Technique

A recently developed ability that accelerates plant growth. The school withholds it from the Heavenly Dao Virtual Net because uncontrolled use can destroy soil fertility 51.

• Excessive acceleration or dense planting can rapidly exhaust the land and turn it into barren sandy soil.
• The school restricts its use to small-scale research until control methods or rapid fertility restoration become available.
• Adding manure delays the damage but does not solve the underlying problem 51 99.

Agricultural Tool Encyclopedia

Lu Mingyuan’s tool-summoning ability becomes a major commercial project supported by the school 49 52.

• Summons farming implements including sickles, rakes, hoes, shovels, and an improved hand-pulled plow 47 48 49.
• Allows only one tool to be summoned at a time; completed tools can leave the user’s direct influence range 47.
• Produces simulated materials whose properties differ from those of physical tools 48.
• Receives 10,000 Earth Luck Points from the school for an upgrade using Mysterious Iron; roughly 500 points remain afterward 53.

Shennong Cave Heaven

An illusion realm containing agricultural classics, research data, and divine-ability rune inheritances. Access to its resources uses Contribution Points 62.

• Provides Lu Mingyuan with a route to systematic rune study.
• Complements the Hall of Inheritance, which holds agricultural abilities alongside abilities from other schools 62 63.

Rune-Based Development

The school develops Autumn Harvest through divine-ability runes rather than paying Luck Points to force a completed upgrade. Switching methods near completion would not necessarily reduce the cost and could make the previous research effort economically pointless 78.

• Rune-based development analyzes existing abilities and reconstructs their workings step by step.
• The process itself does not require Luck Points.
• Limited understanding of rune patterns can leave difficult final problems unresolved 78.

History and Story Role

Desert Reclamation

About 500 years before the main story, agricultural Grandmaster Xia Jie proposes transforming deserts into cultivable land. The resulting project lasts several centuries and involves Grandmasters from the Hundred Schools, Masters, and farmers 121.

Grandmasters transport ocean water and produce rainfall, while Masters crush and stabilize surface sand. Farmers plant drought-tolerant vegetation, including sea buckthorn, cactus, red willow, and sand artemisia. After roughly three years, plants stabilize most deserts sufficiently to replace the fixing abilities, though continued rainfall remains necessary. Soil improvement later allows other plants to be introduced 121.

Lu Mingyuan’s Recruitment and Commercial Partnership

Lu Mingyuan chooses the Agricultural School before awakening his divine ability. His farming background gives him a plausible basis for agricultural invention, and he later uses that public identity to conceal his work as Anonymous 1 21 43.

After researching and testing an improved hand-pulled plow, he presents it to lecturer Su Jin, who takes him to the school’s local base. Manager Wang verifies his invention and offers either basic protection or extensive support with profit-sharing. Lu chooses the second arrangement 50 52.

The school promotes Agricultural Tool Encyclopedia through academies and supports a short protection period, estimating ten days as the maximum acceptable window before competitors enter the market. Early projections suggest sales could reach ten million copies, but expectations later fall after Anonymous’s actions 52 60 62 75.

Public Duties

• Granary inspection: Agricultural disciples inspect Changfeng City’s grain stores as an official duty 132.
• Reporting: Lu Mingyuan’s first assignment examines Granary Number 102, finds no problems, and reports the results to both the school and the government 133.
• Mathematics education: Dize Academy introduces an arithmetic course even though its main specialization is agriculture 79.

Notable Members

• Lu Mingyuan — Disciple, creator of Agricultural Tool Encyclopedia, and beneficiary of the school’s commercial support and protection 50 52.
• Su Jin — Qingshan Academy lecturer who advises Lu Mingyuan on plow improvement, recommends him for admission, and explains the school’s research 50 51.
• Manager Wang — Handles recruitment verification, commercial negotiations, promotion, and access to institutional benefits 52 62 75.
• Quan Tianhong — Master who guides Lu Mingyuan’s rune studies and leads a Changfeng team researching Autumn Harvest 75 76 126.
• Gu Chuanyi — Lu Mingyuan’s senior brother; introduces experimental crops and agricultural achievements, teaches at Dize Academy, and organizes granary inspection work 77 78 79 132 133.
• Huang Shaoqin — Senior sister and heredity researcher whose pea experiments lead to two laws of genetics 78 170 171 179.
• Xia Jie — Grandmaster whose proposal initiates the centuries-long desert reclamation project 121.