Barren Land of Peanut Hamlet

The jujube-red Fire Dragon Horse carried Earth Knight Liszt across the muddy ground and into Peanut Hamlet. Peanut Hamlet was a settlement much smaller than a village, with only seven or eight thatched huts scattered about.

"What are you standing around for? The lord has arrived—get on your knees and pay your respects!" The town clerks, quick on their feet, knocked on the doors of every peasant household.

Everyone living here was a serf.

They emerged from their drafty homes with the numb expressions of people crushed by life, standing blankly in their doorways at a loss. Only under the clerks' loud scolding did they kneel one by one and bow toward Liszt.

The adults all moved with the same numbness.

Only a few bare-bottomed children occasionally raised their heads, studying Liszt with dirty yet bright eyes. Then the adults would slap their heads back down, forcing them to kneel like everyone else, their foreheads nearly touching the ground.

"Who's in charge of Peanut Hamlet?" Liszt asked.

Gortai sat atop his own horse with an air of complete indifference. He had no idea who managed Peanut Hamlet. One of the clerks spoke up. "In answer to Your Lordship, it's Old George, the lame man."

"Bring him here."

The clerk quickly dragged over an old man with a crippled leg and an unsteady gait. His clothes were patched all over, and his withered body looked as though the flame of his life could go out at any moment.

"Lord, Old George is here."

The clerk shoved the old man, apparently wanting him to bow quickly. But Old George was so nervous that he only stood there stiffly, at a complete loss.

Liszt waved the clerk away and said gently, "Old George, don't be nervous. I'm Baron Liszt Tulip, lord of Flower Town. I heard there's a problem with the peanuts in Peanut Hamlet. Take us to the fields and let's see if it can be solved."

"Ah, oh, Baron... Lord..." Old George stammered nervously. "I'll lead the way... Thank the heavens... Peanut Hamlet is saved... The lord has come to save us!"

Once Old George grew excited, even his walk seemed to carry a breeze.

Liszt had inspected farmland before, but he had only stood outside and swept his gaze over it. This was the first time he had truly studied it closely. Since all the fields belonged to serfs, there were no ridges separating them. Each long strip of farmland was divided only by a ditch, with different serfs cultivating different plots.

Nearly ninety percent of the farmland's output belonged to the nobles—namely, Liszt.

The remaining ten percent was their food ration.

At this moment.

The peanut fields, which should have been lush green, were mottled with green and yellow. Every peanut plant had wilted, half-dead and sprawled across the ground. The soil was damp, clearly showing that the serfs had watered often, but watering could not bring the peanuts back to life.

Old George wiped away tears and said excitedly, "Lord, we haven't been lazy at all. We fetch water and irrigate three times a day, but the peanuts are still dying. Only the plot Archie planted hasn't wilted yet, but it won't hold on much longer either. Some of its leaves have started turning yellow."

Following the direction of Old George's finger, Liszt saw a long field located in the center of Peanut Hamlet's farmland.

The middle portion of that field was green, far more vigorous than the wilted yellow-green peanut plants around it.

Liszt dismounted and walked into the field. He bent down and pulled up a yellowing peanut seedling, preparing to inspect it closely, when Gortai suddenly said, "Liszt, you shouldn't be touching this sort of dirty work. If you need anything done, just have these serfs do it." Though he was only a down-and-out Baronet Knight, he looked down on commoners even more than ordinary nobles did.

Liszt ignored him.

Instead, he repeatedly examined the peanut seedling in his hand, trying to determine the cause.

He wasn't an agronomist, but he had worked the land as a child and wasn't unfamiliar with farming. Peanuts in the two worlds were similar in some ways and unfamiliar in others. Still, he could basically tell that the peanut seedling in his hand had reached this state due to malnutrition.

"Have you used plant ash or manure to fertilize the fields?"

"What?" Old George looked confused. "Lord, we watered them three times a day!"

Liszt asked, "You don't use fertilizer?"

Old George froze, then asked in return, "What's fertilizer?"

They didn't even know what fertilizer was... Liszt was speechless. "Then how do you grow peanuts?"

Old George rambled on at length. Basically, they burned the weeds that grew during autumn and winter when the next year came, then planted peanuts. After planting, they watered and weeded. Generation after generation had farmed this way, and the harvest was terribly poor. Only nobles could use elves to influence plant growth and achieve abundant yields.

Once Liszt understood, he couldn't help shaking his head.

Without fertilizer, even the best soil would become barren after being planted a few times. These vast fields before him had nearly been cultivated into yellow earth. No wonder the peanuts were dying—they had starved to death.

But then Liszt became doubtful. "Why hadn't they starved to death before? Why were the peanuts dying now?"

According to Old George, they planted this way every year. Aside from droughts and floods, nothing like this had ever happened. So there was likely another reason for the peanut fields' lack of nutrients.

"What could be causing it?"

His gaze fell upon the patch of green in the center of the field as he pondered seriously.

Then inspiration struck. He remembered the reward for the mission—the mission required him to save the peanut fields, and its reward was an Elf Bug. Based on how he had received the reward for his first mission, Liszt felt that an Elf Bug wouldn't simply appear out of thin air. He would probably stumble across one somewhere along the way.

"An Elf Bug as my reward... the peanut fields are malnourished..." Liszt rose to his feet, already having an answer in his heart. "I'm afraid the Elf Bug I'm meant to receive is what caused the peanut fields' malnutrition. Elf Bugs are born from plants. This Elf Bug of mine should be a Peanut Elf Bug."

He waved to the others. "Let's take a look at the center of the field."

Everyone walked on tiptoe as they made their way to the center of the peanut field, where the seedlings were still fairly lush. Liszt searched through his memories. He had watched people collect Elf Bugs as a child. Generally, an Elf Bug, warm and smooth as jade and resembling a silkworm, would hide inside a flower or fresh shoot of a plant.

Different Elf Bugs had different patterns.

At present, he owned four Elf Bugs: a Tulip Elf Bug, a Thorn Elf Bug, a Millet Elf Bug, and an Alfalfa Elf Bug. Raising Elf Bugs had to be combined with farming, and Gortai was currently helping him find suitable farmland for breeding Elf Bugs.

After searching for a while, Liszt still failed to find a peanut seedling nurturing an Elf Bug.

"Perhaps the time hasn't come yet. The nutrients aren't keeping up, so this Peanut Bug may miscarry." Liszt clenched his hand tightly. Elf Bugs represented productivity. He could not fail this mission.

With that thought.

He said to everyone, "I roughly understand the cause now. Old George, follow my instructions and save these peanut fields."

"Praise the lord!" Old George cried with joy.

Gortai asked in surprise, "Liszt, you really found the problem? You even know how to grow peanuts? What's causing them to die?"

"I can't say yet. We'll know in a few days." To be safe, Liszt did not reveal the reason. He was worried that he might be wrong. What if there was no Little Elf at all? Wouldn't that make him look ridiculous?

So he would save the peanut seedlings first.