Without the Gale Falcon's harassment, the twelve mu of Spirit Fields were soon harvested, thanks to the efforts of the village's able-bodied laborers.
Of the twelve mu of Spirit Fields,
the ten mu cultivated using the old methods yielded a total of 1,131 jin,
of which about twelve jin had been lost during the fight with the Gale Falcon. Otherwise, the harvest would have been even greater.
As for the improved experimental plots managed by Groups Eleven and Twelve,
one mu yielded 136 jin, while the other yielded 148 jin.
The yield per mu had undoubtedly increased by a tremendous amount.
That seemed a little exaggerated,
but after Shen Changchuan took into account the increased yields from the ten mu of Spirit Fields that had been cultivated without any changes to the farming methods, he roughly understood the reason.
It was nothing strange.
There was no other reason for it.
The only reason was that they had put their hearts into it.
In the past, when the Spirit Fields were cultivated, men and women, old and young alike, were all driven out to work.
And after all their hard work,
the harvest had nothing to do with them at all.
In those circumstances, the villagers' attitude had probably been to do just enough to get by. They had no incentive whatsoever to take the initiative and make improvements.
After all, doing a good job brought no reward, while doing a poor one would only get them in trouble. Anyone with common sense knew which to choose.
But after he, Shen Changchuan, arrived,
he began trying out new reforms.
The output of the Spirit Fields was now closely tied to nearly every villager.
As a result,
the villagers put more care into cultivating Spirit Grain, and tended the Spirit Grain Crops more attentively.
That alone
had increased the fields' yields by ten percent.
By comparison,
it was easy to understand how the yields from Groups Eleven and Twelve had risen by thirty or forty percent.
Shen Changchuan was very satisfied with the figures he had obtained.
When spring plowing came next year, he could spread the planting methods of Groups Eleven and Twelve. By then, the increase in yield would be even greater!
Furthermore,
Shen Changchuan could clearly sense
that there was still room to dig deeper and improve things further.
"There should still be room to improve the Spirit Grain Cultivation Manual."
"And now that I've killed the Crocodile Demon in Dawan River, next year I can dig up the sediment formed from the combination of Water Vein Essence and Earth Vein Essence from the riverbed and use it as fertilizer. My harvest will be even greater then!"
As he took stock of the harvest after the Spirit Grain had been reaped,
Shen Changchuan felt refreshed.
Even the fatigue he had accumulated from his earlier battle with the Gale Falcon had eased considerably.
It had to be said,
though Dawan Village was his main base, he also had other sources of income outside it.
For example, the two mu of Spirit Fields in Zhao Family Village belonged entirely to him.
And the allegiance of the six other surrounding villages also brought in a substantial amount.
Shen Changchuan did some quick calculations.
After subtracting the thousand jin he had to hand over to the Shen Clan, then adding the yield from the two mu of Spirit Fields in Zhao Family Village and the six or seven tenths of the yield from the four mu of Spirit Fields in the other six villages,
his harvest for this season would already be over eight or nine hundred jin!
Converted into Spirit Stones, that came to nearly eighty or ninety!
Of course, he would still have to cover some expenses.
For example, bonuses and compensation for his subordinates, as well as the wages of his maternal grandfather and eldest maternal uncle, who had now become cultivators.
But those were only minor expenses.
Even after deducting everything, Shen Changchuan's final income would still be no less than seventy or eighty Spirit Stones!
The figure left him breathless for a moment.
He might have come into over a hundred Spirit Stones after killing the Four Evils of He Mountain, but that didn't mean a harvest of seventy or eighty Spirit Stones was insignificant.
The former,
after all, had been a one-time deal.
And it had required risking his life to fight enemies above his level. One careless mistake, and he would have died on the spot.
But cultivating Spirit Fields was a stable source of income that came around every year!
And it brought in two harvests a year.
This steady, continuous income far surpassed the former in both safety and practical value!
Such a tremendous harvest
was something he never would have dared to imagine back when he was at the Shen Family Estate!
"I wonder how the internal power struggles in the Shen Family have progressed."
"But no matter how fiercely they're fighting, leaving the Shen Family Estate and coming to this remote region was the right decision."
"If I'd stayed at the Shen Family Estate, how could I have earned seventy or eighty Spirit Stones in just half a year?!"
Shen Changchuan was delighted.
He couldn't help feeling very pleased with the decision he had made back then.
With such a large income in Spirit Stones,
he would naturally spend it on increasing his cultivation.
But how should he use it?
Shen Changchuan began considering his options.
He wondered what the merchant caravan at Wu Family Market had to offer.
But his first priority should be pills that could increase his cultivation speed.
Having taken a Qi-Inducing Pill and risen from the middle of the fourth level of Qi Induction Realm to the fifth level in just two months, Shen Changchuan had personally experienced the benefits pills could bring to his cultivation speed.
As for the pill toxins mentioned by novelists,
that was like talking about a medicine's properties without discussing its dosage—it was just quibbling.
As long as he didn't eat pills every day as if they were food, but took one every few days, a cultivator's body could naturally break down and expel the minute traces of pill toxins during cultivation. There was no need to worry too much.
Apart from pills,
he also needed to look into other means of strengthening himself, such as spells, magical artifacts, and arrays. In particular, he had to pay close attention to anything that could deal with the Gale Falcon.
After all, that Gale Falcon was a major threat to Dawan Village.
If he was lucky enough to find the inheritance of an alchemist, artificer, or Array Master, he could consider that too.
Of course,
that last thought was a bit of wishful thinking.
A craft could form the very foundation on which a cultivation family stood.
A mere hundred or so Spirit Stones probably wouldn't even be enough to catch a whiff of one.
"So I'm still just a pauper?"
He needed to spend Spirit Stones here and spend Spirit Stones there.
He had barely finished working it out when his entire budget was gone.
Shen Changchuan couldn't help giving a bitter laugh.
It made him realize all too clearly that he was still a pauper!
Absolutely miserable!
Just as Shen Changchuan was taking stock of his assets and lamenting his lot,
Han Qinhu walked in with several pages of records in his hand.
"Changchuan, there's something I think you ought to know."
Han Qinhu looked at Shen Changchuan. He hesitated for a moment, but in the end, he still spoke up.
"What is it, Grandfather?"
"You're the person I trust most. Just tell me what's on your mind."
Seeing Han Qinhu's reaction, Shen Changchuan felt a little puzzled.
Han Qinhu didn't answer.
He handed the sheets of paper to Shen Changchuan.
Shen Changchuan took them curiously.
They listed several people's names, followed by detailed household registration information, including their ages and family sizes.
At first, Shen Changchuan was a little confused.
But as he read, his eyes suddenly narrowed. He quickly flipped through the next two pages as well,
and his brow furrowed.
"The first four of these five people on the first page were villagers who rushed into battle in the Spirit Fields yesterday and were killed by the Gale Falcon. The last one died this morning while harvesting the remaining Spirit Grain. He literally worked himself to death in the fields."
Han Qinhu's voice was solemn.
"The few people on the second page were among the six who died when the Crocodile Demon came ashore and we ambushed it."
"Among them, some were over fifty, while others were disabled or sickly invalids who'd been bedridden for a long time. I checked the old records, and nothing like this has happened before."
Han Qinhu explained in a low voice.
He didn't spell out what he meant.
The air
fell silent for a moment.
"So someone's committing insurance fraud?"
It was a long while before Shen Changchuan spoke, his voice low.
"Insurance fraud?"
"Oh, you mean swindling the compensation?"
"That's exactly what they're doing."
Han Qinhu didn't know how the "insurance" in Shen Changchuan's phrase was connected to compensation,
but that didn't stop him from following the other man's lead.
"Changchuan, I've actually wanted to bring this up with you for a long time. The compensation you set for the two villagers killed by the Crocodile Demon was too generous."
"Ten jin of Spirit Grain, if things went well, would be enough to put someone on the path of cultivation. That was enough to make someone sell their life!"
"It was only because you announced your reforms back then and said that a portion of the increased yield per mu would be given to them as a reward, giving them hope of getting Spirit Grain, that no one started throwing their lives away on a large scale."
"But even so, those who feel they have no purpose left in life, and that they're a burden on their families, don't mind trading their broken bodies for wealth for their descendants."
As he spoke of those elderly, weak, and sick people who had thrown their lives away to swindle compensation, Han Qinhu's voice turned murderous.
"These lowlifes are taking advantage of your youth and kind heart."
"In my view, we should kill a chicken to scare the monkeys and revoke the original decision. We absolutely cannot give these fraudsters even half a grain of Spirit Grain!"
Shen Changchuan didn't speak.
He fell silent.
Back then, he had decided to give the two villagers who died in the Crocodile Demon's jaws ten jin of Spirit Grain in compensation
because he had been the one to propose using riverbed silt as fertilizer to improve the yields of the Spirit Fields.
They had carried out his proposal, only to die in an accident.
In a sense,
they could be considered to have died because of a mistake he, Shen Changchuan, had made.
He had only been transmigrated for two and a half years, and the humanistic values shaped by the industrial civilization of his previous life still lingered in his heart.
He felt guilty,
so he had decided to give them compensation that was extremely generous by mortal standards.
But he hadn't anticipated what happened afterward.
After all, before transmigrating, Shen Changchuan had been nothing more than an ordinary person.
He wasn't a sage who could plan for every eventuality. He couldn't foresee every possible outcome.
"No. Keep the compensation for the families of those who die at this standard."
Shen Changchuan closed his eyes and thought for a long time.
After a quarter of an hour, he opened his eyes and spoke with a resolute gaze.
Hearing that, Han Qinhu grew anxious and was about to say something.
But Shen Changchuan raised a hand to stop him,
and explained, as if speaking to himself:
"I didn't think the matter of compensation through. That was my mistake."
"Though these people may have been trying to swindle compensation, they still went to their deaths because of the compensation I offered and lost their lives. And in the battle, they weren't completely useless."
"Let this be the price I pay for my mistake."
"Of course, starting today, if anyone dies while carrying out official business for the village, their family will receive one jin of Spirit Grain in compensation."
Compensation of one jin of Spirit Grain
was already very little.
Besides, if next year's reforms went into effect and the portion of the harvest exceeding one hundred jin per mu was split thirty-seventy, then probably no one would give their life for this little settlement money anymore.
As for the dozen or so Spirit Stones he'd spent, he could treat them as the price of a lesson for his mistake.
All right,
it did hurt to pay so much for that lesson,
after all, a dozen or so Spirit Stones was no small expense.
But he'd always believed
that making a mistake wasn't frightening; what mattered was correcting it.
What was truly frightening was not knowing you'd made a mistake,
or knowing it and refusing to change.
So although Shen Changchuan felt some regret,
he simply etched the lesson into his heart instead of getting angry or taking it out on anyone.
He could treat the dozen or so Spirit Stones he'd spent as a warning to himself,
a reminder to learn from this and think things through before making decisions in the future.
Before you continue