The matter finally ended with Ye Shi being sent back to her family home to reflect on her mistakes.
But Ye Shi's thoughts were entirely occupied by Yun Shuang, who returned to the Ye family with her. As for whether she would ever be allowed back into her husband's household, she did not care in the slightest.
Yun Shuang, however, was still snarling vicious threats as she was escorted into the carriage.
"I, Yun Shuang, will make every last one of you regret this!"
Unfortunately, before she could finish, the driver lashed the horse's rump, and her voice faded as the carriage rolled away.
What remained was the Yun Residence's private family business, so I could hardly stay any longer. I said goodbye to Madam Yun.
Yunjian brought Yun Fei along as she left the Yun Residence with me. In Yunjian's words, the potatoes she had planted in the prince's garden still needed tending.
As for Yun Fei, she seemed to have imprinted on Yunjian like a baby bird. Ever since Yunjian had told her to stay with her from now on, Yun Fei had loved following her around.
The three of them climbed into the carriage and headed toward the prince's residence together. Yun Fei had initially sat quietly, but Yunjian and I could not sit idle, so we roped her into a word-chain game.
After learning that she had never attended school, they played using the names of things she knew.
For example: what animals were there outside-
Whoever broke the chain would get a flick on the forehead from each of the two winners.
The three had just stepped through the residence's main gate when they ran into the steward hurrying toward them.
"Little Commandery Princess, Lord Yun, you're finally back! His Majesty and the Eldest Princess are in the back garden watching the potato harvest!"
Before going to bed yesterday, Wenren Luoshui and Yunjian had calculated that the potatoes in the back garden would be ready to harvest today. They had thrown on their outer robes, summoned the steward, and told him to arrange for some workers to harvest the potatoes today.
They had never expected the emperor and the Eldest Princess to come too. Wenren Qiao had probably been secretly showing off to the emperor, asking whether he had ever seen potatoes being harvested.
Whenever those two got together, even the emperor's intelligence suffered under Wenren Qiao's influence.
Wenren Qiao had probably goaded him into slapping his forehead and deciding to visit the residence to experience digging up potatoes for himself.
As it turned out, Wenren Luoshui understood the emperor quite well. When we reached the back garden, we saw him holding a hoe alongside Wenren Qiao and Prince Heng. The three grown men were competing to see who could dig up all the potatoes in his plot first.
The Eldest Princess helped bag the potatoes nearby, while several people weighed them in an open space beside her.
The back garden was a sea of people. Besides the emperor, Wenren Qiao, Prince Heng, and the Eldest Princess, even the guards originally assigned to protect the potatoes had joined the potato-digging army.
More than half the residence's servants had also been summoned to help.
Even after over a hundred people worked for an entire day, only half the potatoes in the back garden had been harvested.
The Prince of Beiping's Residence occupied the largest grounds of all the princes' residences, and its back garden had been expanded later on.
Planting the potatoes had gone so quickly mainly because they had not needed to worry about damaging any potatoes with their hoes. Without that concern, they naturally worked much faster than they did during the harvest.
Besides, none of these people regularly did farmwork, so they naturally could not match the speed of actual farmers.
Wenren Luoshui and Yunjian had the servants gather a basin of potatoes and carry it to the kitchen.
They decided to make a potato feast that very day.
The dishes included stir-fried potatoes, dry-pot potatoes, dry-fried potatoes, mashed potatoes stir-fried with greens, hot-and-sour shredded potatoes, potatoes stir-fried with meat, twice-cooked pork with potatoes, potatoes braised with green beans, minced-meat-stuffed potato sandwiches, potato and bean sprout soup, potato and egg soup, braised chicken drumsticks with potatoes, and red-braised pork stewed with potatoes.
The emperor and the Eldest Princess stayed for dinner that evening. At the sight of a whole table laden with potato dishes, they were so delighted they could barely close their mouths.
Potatoes really were wonderful. Whether simply stir-fried or red-braised, they tasted good.
In his delight, the emperor ate until he was stuffed.
He was still hiccupping nonstop on his way back to the palace.
After three days of tireless work, all the potatoes in the back garden were finally dug up.
The final figure nearly made the emperor choke to death on his own saliva.
The back garden of the Prince of Beiping's Residence covered roughly six mu, and the potatoes grown on those six mu weighed sixty thousand jin.
That meant a yield of ten thousand jin per mu!
The figure left every civil and military official at court with their jaws on the floor. While everyone else was as happy as if it were New Year, one person's mood remained shrouded in storm clouds.
The emperor looked at Yunjian, who seemed as wilted as a frostbitten eggplant, and was utterly puzzled.
But with that girl Luoshui around, he could find out why this meritorious contributor was unhappy without even asking.
[Little Yun, perk up. As the saying goes, failure is the mother of success. Look, you've become a mother at such a young age, and painlessly at that. Isn't that wonderful?]
[Yunjian: No! There's definitely nothing wrong with my stuff. This yield has to be a problem with your soil. My seeds should clearly yield three times as much as ordinary seeds, so why did they only yield twice as much in your garden?!!!!!]
[Stop, stop, stop! Quit howling! There could also have been a problem with how you managed them.]
The emperor: ...
So Lord Yun was unhappy because the potato yield had fallen short of her expectations?
That was fine. He would let Little Lord Yun keep researching. What if she managed to develop seeds with an even higher yield?
The ministers: !!!!
A yield of ten thousand jin per mu still fell short of Little Lord Yun's expectations?
Just how much confidence did Little Lord Yun have in her seeds?
[Oh, right. Have you told the emperor about the precautions?]
[Yunjian: Huh?]
Yunjian could not follow the sudden change. Hadn't her friend just been comforting her?
What precautions?
What did they need to watch out for?
[Don't drink and drive, and don't drive after drinking?]
At the mention of precautions, that once universally familiar slogan was the first thing that popped into Yunjian's mind.
[Get lost, get lost, get lost! Snap out of it! The ants have been racewalking for ten years!]
[All right, all right. Let's stop tormenting each other.]
The emperor, seated at the head: ...
Seriously, could these two girls get to the point first when they were together?
What precautions?
Would the two of you please explain yourselves first!
If they had not needed to conceal what they knew, the others would probably have charged over and pulled the two girls apart long ago, given all their joking around.
[Oh, I meant the precautions for potatoes. Like, what was it again? Right, you can't eat potatoes that have turned green.]
With Wenren Luoshui's reminder, Yunjian's crashed brain finally remembered the business at hand.
[Yunjian: Oh, right. Once court is dismissed, I'll go back and write up a list of precautions, including that sprouted or green potatoes mustn't be eaten.]
The emperor inwardly let out a small sigh of relief. So those were the precautions that girl Luoshui meant.
Some potatoes could not be eaten?
He had thought this food came without any special requirements.
Now, whenever potatoes were mentioned, the emperor remembered the potato feast he had enjoyed at the Prince of Beiping's Residence that day. The flavor had been absolutely sublime.
He declared that, from that day forward, he was a potato brain.
At that morning's court session, after discussion among the ministers, it was decided that potato cultivation methods would be promoted in the areas around Capital City.
Remarkably, while they discussed promoting potato cultivation methods that day, not a single civil or military official objected.
[What's gotten into these people today? Usually, they'll argue up a storm over the smallest thing, yet today they haven't fought over something this important?]
[Yunjian: They probably ruined their throats arguing every day.]
The ministers: ...
Our throats are perfectly fine!