Reform Steps

Though he had decided to carry out reforms, Shen Changchuan did not rush to begin at once.

In his previous life, as a chosen corporate drone, he understood all too well the consequences of amateurs leading experts.

Some things might have started with good intentions, but in actual implementation, they could gradually stray from their original purpose and become even worse instead.

He had only transmigrated two and a half years ago, and his main understanding of this world still came from the original owner.

And the original owner's life experience had no connection to cultivating spiritual fields.

If he simply followed his own ideas, he would definitely end up divorced from reality.

If he messed around blindly and those twelve mu of spiritual fields were ruined until not a single grain could be harvested, where was he supposed to produce one hundred Spirit Stones to cover the clan's required tribute?

Shen Changchuan's temperament was fairly steady, so naturally, he would not act rashly.

He decided he had to get a clear grasp of the specific situation.

Thus, over the course of several days, after personally moving about throughout all of Dawan Village, and with the help of his maternal grandfather Han Qinhu and others, he gathered a large amount of information related to Dawan Village.

Afterward, combining it with his own life experience from that high-efficiency society in his previous life, Shen Changchuan racked his brains, considered every aspect, and finally came up with several reform steps and plans.

First, the first step of the reform was to grasp and adjust the personnel situation in Dawan Village.

Shen Shiying and the others' grasp of Dawan Village had been far too crude. They had not even managed to determine the population. If this part was not straightened out, there was no point thinking about the changes that came after.

So, with the help of Han Qinhu and the servants and attendants he had brought with him, Shen Changchuan spent a day organizing and compiling the population of all Dawan Village into records.

A total of two thousand three hundred men, women, old, and young were counted.

Next, these two thousand three hundred people were divided according to households, with old and young matched together, into twelve teams.

Each team had close to two hundred people.

Within each team, the team members themselves publicly recommended and selected one of their own as the main team leader, while members of the Han Clan brought over by his maternal grandfather Han Qinhu, who had come together with Shen Changchuan, served as supervisory deputy team leaders.

After that, Shen Changchuan planned to divide all twelve mu of spiritual fields into twelve portions, one mu per portion, with each team ultimately responsible for one mu of spiritual field.

In this way, detailed management could be carried out.

Because if they followed Dawan Village's previous method, whenever the spiritual fields needed to be cultivated, the entire village of more than two thousand people would swarm into the fields to work.

In that case, there was no need to think about it—there would certainly be large numbers of people pretending to work while putting in no effort, slippery fellows loafing around in the crowd.

"Although after subdivision, a team of two hundred people still seems bloated, at the very least, efficiency should improve quite a bit compared to two thousand people working together."

"At the very least, each team's responsibilities will be extremely clear, and the team members can supervise one another. Without doubt, this can reduce quite a lot of shirking, trickery, and the like, and improve labor efficiency."

This was Shen Changchuan's idea for reforming Dawan Village's personnel arrangements.

At the same time, however, he also clearly understood another matter.

"It's just that while doing this can improve labor efficiency and greatly reduce wasted manpower, in the end, it won't have much effect on increasing Spirit Grain production!"

An increase in labor efficiency could bring an increase in output—but the premise was having more spiritual fields to cultivate.

Only when there were enough spiritual fields would labor efficiency bring a positive increase to the output of Spirit Grain.

But the problem was that all of Dawan Village had only twelve mu of spiritual fields!

Even if labor efficiency improved, at most they would merely finish the work a few days earlier than before.

However much Spirit Grain those twelve mu of spiritual fields were meant to produce, that was still how much Spirit Grain they would harvest.

It would not change because he worked quickly or slowly.

"Spiritual fields are limited, and if we want to cultivate new spiritual fields capable of growing Spirit Grain, it simply can't be done without three to five years of hard labor."

"Then if we want to increase production, the only method is to improve the existing planting techniques and raise yield per mu!"

And this, was precisely the second step of Shen Changchuan's reform, as well as its most important content.

The first step, dividing the personnel into twelve groups, was merely preparation for better completing the second step.

"Although I've never planted spiritual rice, the methods for increasing yield in farming within a short period of time are nothing more than deep plowing, seed selection, seedling cultivation and transplanting, and fertilization."

"The planting of spirit rice should be roughly the same."

This was Shen Changchuan's idea for how to increase the per-mu yield of Spirit Grain.

As the saying went, even if you'd never seen a pig run, you had still eaten pork.

The biology and history he had studied in high school in his previous life had both touched on relevant points of knowledge.

The principles should be universal.

The bits of knowledge from his previous life that he had not forgotten should be of some use, more or less.

Of course, it was still the same old saying:

professional matters should be left to professionals. One must absolutely avoid laymen leading experts.

So, even though he had ideas for improving the yield per mu, Shen Changchuan would not simply slap his forehead and order people to follow his own ideas directly.

After all, who knew whether the methods might fail to suit the local soil and water?

Or whether the planting of Spirit Grain was completely different from the rice planting of his previous life?

Without truly putting it into practice, no one dared thump their chest and guarantee it one hundred percent.

Thus, he continued his investigation.

Through the previous population information census of Dawan Village, he found many people in the village who had experience planting Spirit Grain.

He went to them one by one for advice and questions.

He recorded every answer they gave, then compared and revised them one by one against his own ideas.

During this period, he spent another several days

organizing everything into two plans related to planting Spirit Grain.

One of them was primarily based on the scientific experience of his previous life, while absorbing local experience in planting Spirit Grain.

The other was primarily based on local experience in planting Spirit Grain, while also absorbing some methods and experience from his previous life that suited the local conditions.

"After spending all this effort, it's finally done."

"Next, I hope these experiences can have some effect!"

Next, Shen Changchuan took these two summaries of Spirit Grain planting experience and handed them to the Eleventh and Twelfth Teams.

Shen Changchuan planned to use the Eleventh and Twelfth Teams as trial points.

He would test the effects of these two summaries of planting experience on the per-mu yield of Spirit Grain.

As for the other First through Tenth Teams, Shen Changchuan did not intend to make any changes, but instead let them continue farming according to the previous planting methods, following Xiao's rules and Cao's practices—everything according to past experience.

Clearly, even after personally going down to investigate, Shen Changchuan still decided to implement a conservative plan.

The purpose was also very simple:

to prevent the worst possible outcome of losing everything because something went wrong with the improvements.

Because Shen Changchuan knew very well that the production-improvement experience he had organized might not necessarily be correct.

If he changed things rashly and caused a major problem in Spirit Grain production, leaving him unable to hand over the fixed quota, then he would be in deep trouble.

"Reform cannot be rushed. Everything must put stability first!"

When it came to things concerning his life and livelihood, Shen Changchuan could not have been more steady.

With the harvest from ten mu of spirit fields as a safety net, the worst result would merely be that the additional two mu of spirit fields produced not a single grain, and in the end, he would still be able to meet the Shen Clan's hand-in quota.

There would be no major problem.

Of course, since there was a safety net, and only the Eleventh and Twelfth Teams were being used as control experiment groups, Shen Changchuan did not mind letting them be a little more aggressive.

For example, in order to have the Eleventh and Twelfth Teams follow the planting experiences he had summarized as much as possible, to stimulate their enthusiasm and initiative, and to achieve results as far as possible, Shen Changchuan promised the Eleventh and Twelfth Teams that if the new planting techniques failed, they would bear no responsibility.

On the contrary, If the yield from each of the two mu of spirit fields they cultivated exceeded one hundred jin of Spirit Grain, then the excess portion would be split thirty-seventy, with thirty percent handed to them as a reward.

As a food containing faint spiritual energy, regular consumption of Spirit Grain gave Xiantian martial artists a certain chance of successfully inducing qi, stepping into the Qi Induction Realm and onto the path of immortal cultivation.

For mortal warriors, the preciousness of Spirit Grain went without saying!

But during the six years Shen Shiying had guarded Dawan Village, not a single martial artist in all of Dawan Village, from top to bottom, had ever received even one grain of Spirit Grain!

Splitting the portion harvested beyond one hundred jin thirty-seventy seemed, on the surface, a little too exploitative.

But compared to Shen Shiying, by allowing them the chance to obtain Spirit Grain, he, Shen Changchuan, was already an exceedingly benevolent great master.