"Fourth Brother, you don't believe me?" Wang Luojing's little face fell.
"Fourth Brother, I suggest you listen to the girl." The older Wang Luotong also came over. "Though Luojing is young, she has loved playing with bugs since childhood. She knows bugs very well, and bugs seem especially drawn to her."
"Interesting." Wang Shouzhe immediately perked up, his gaze blazing. "Tell Fourth Brother first—how are you going to deal with the Honey Insects? Don't rush. Take your time. We have plenty of it."
"In recent years, I've always heard Grandfather complain that there are too many Honey Insects and the grain harvest isn't as good as before." Wang Luojing spoke weakly. "So I thought that if I could solve the Honey Insect problem for Grandfather, he would definitely be happy. Then I could beg him not to marry Sister off. I don't want Sister to leave."
Wang Luotong's face suddenly turned somewhat pale. She lowered her head, not daring to speak. Such matters were not hers to decide.
"If you really can solve the Honey Insect disaster, Fourth Brother promises to protect you two." Wang Shouzhe made the promise firmly. "As long as you don't want to marry, then you won't."
"Thank you, Fourth Brother." Wang Luojing beamed. "Actually, I saw it in the Insect Classic long ago. The ancients once used Lacewing Insects to control Honey Insects, but Lacewing Insects have become fewer and fewer in recent years. Last year, I raised some Honey Insects and Lacewing Insects, and it really worked. So this year, I asked Brother to catch two Lacewing Insect Kings in the mountains. I spent some effort taming them..."
"Wait..." Wang Shouzhe's expression changed. "What is the Insect Classic? And you can actually tame Lacewing Insect Kings?"
"The Insect Classic is the Insect Classic. It's an ancient book I found in the clan's Library Pavilion." Wang Luojing looked utterly innocent. "The Insect Classic explains how to tame bugs. It isn't very difficult. If Fourth Brother wants to learn, I can teach you."
Not very difficult!?
Wang Shouzhe's face darkened. He had merged with the memories of his former self and knew the Profound Martial World fairly well. In this world, there was a small group of people who liked controlling spirit insects for production or battle. They were usually called Spirit Insect Masters.
However, Spirit Insect Masters were a rather obscure path, and the threshold for talent was extremely high—higher even than the threshold for Alchemists. The reason was simple. Ordinary people only needed to be a little clever to barely learn alchemy. At most, the consumption would be enormous and their achievements limited.
But for a profession like Spirit Insect Master, if one lacked the rare talent to communicate with spirit insects, one could not even touch the door.
Thus, Spirit Insect Masters were exceedingly obscure. Ordinary scions of aristocratic families had never even heard of them. As far as Wang Shouzhe knew, only the Changning Xu Clan and the Shanyin Liu Clan had secretly cultivated two Spirit Insect Masters.
If Wang Luojing possessed the talent of a Spirit Insect Master...
For a moment, Wang Shouzhe's heart pounded wildly.
"Fourth Brother, Fourth Brother, what's wrong?" Wang Luojing waved a hand before his eyes, pouting angrily. "Does Fourth Brother not believe me too?"
"I believe you, I believe you." Wang Shouzhe nodded fiercely. "Our Luojing is the smartest. Fourth Brother is very interested. Let's go somewhere farther away, and you can demonstrate it for Fourth Brother."
"Mm-hmm. Those two Lacewing Insect Kings are both in Fourth Brother's carriage." Wang Luojing was delighted to be acknowledged. "Sister and I will go get them."
Wang Shouzhe immediately recalled that when he had met the sisters that morning, he had noticed each of them carrying a strange large box. At the time, he had assumed they were personal belongings. It was not appropriate to casually inquire about a girl's private things, so he had merely told them to put the boxes in the carriage.
Now that he thought about it, they must have already planned to come to the farm and give it a try.
"Let the family guards get them." Wang Shouzhe waved a hand.
The family guard waiting in the distance immediately ran over at top speed and respectfully said, "Clan Leader, what are your orders?"
"Wang Wu, Wang Yong. Go to the carriage and bring Miss Luojing's two boxes."
"Yes, Clan Leader."
The two family guards sprinted away, moving with astonishing speed. Before a quarter of an hour had passed, they came sprinting back, each carrying a box.
"Wang Gui, Wang Wu, the rest of you, go to Fourth Grand-Uncle's side and see whether he needs any help." Wang Shouzhe sent them all away. From the looks of it, Wang Xiaozhi's side was also trying to use methods such as plant ash water to control the aphids. They were probably short on hands.
The family guards were all Profound Warriors. Used properly, they were far more efficient than ordinary tenant farmers.
Most importantly, the matter had not yet been confirmed. He did not want everyone under the sun to know about it.
After Wang Gui and the other four family guards had left, Wang Shouzhe personally carried the two large boxes and led Wang Luotong and Wang Luojing all the way to a secluded wheat field.
More than three thousand mu of land stretched out like a vast ocean. It was open and deserted here, perfect for a demonstration.
Wang Shouzhe parted the wheat stalks and found that there were indeed some green aphids in this wheat field as well. Those tiny insects made his scalp crawl.
"Luojing, let Fourth Brother see what you can do."
"Mm... The signs of this Honey Insect outbreak came even earlier than I expected." Wang Luojing's expression was also grave and uneasy as she carefully opened one of the boxes.
Wang Shouzhe curiously glanced inside and immediately suffered a bout of trypophobia, every hair on his body standing on end. The box was packed full of leaves, and each leaf sprouted threadlike strands covered in densely packed little dots.
"Fourth Brother, Sister, help me." Wang Luojing took out leaf after leaf. "Place one leaf for every square zhang."
Wang Shouzhe's mouth twitched. This little girl was truly bold, casually ordering around even the Clan Leader. Yet his hands and feet were very honest as he followed Wang Luojing's instructions. His cultivation was formidable. Pinching a "leaf" between his fingers, he casually tossed it, and it landed steadily in place.
Following Wang Luojing's "orders," each mu of wheat field required several dozen leaves. Yet they had only opened one of her two large boxes, which contained merely several hundred "leaves," enough to cover barely ten mu of land. Against thousands of mu of wheat fields, it was but a single hair from nine oxen.
After spending a quarter of an hour placing them all, Wang Shouzhe and Wang Luotong stood near Wang Luojing and patiently waited at her instruction.
"Fourth Brother, these Lacewing Insect eggs are three days old," Wang Luojing explained. "They hatch more slowly inside the dark box, but once they see sunlight, they will hatch very quickly."
All right. You were the technical expert in this field. Whatever you said went.
When it came to gaps in his own knowledge, Wang Shouzhe had always been very obedient and never overstepped. Time passed bit by bit. Before half an hour had passed, several of the first leaves they had placed began to change. One strange-looking little bug after another struggled free from its shell.
The leaves were right before their eyes, allowing them to clearly observe the little bugs. They were less than two millimeters long, resembling elongated beetles, but each had two large pincers growing from its head, making it look exceptionally ugly.
After being born, they did not move. They simply hung quietly from the threadlike strands.
After another while, they finally began to move. Sliding down the strands onto the leaves, they slowly spread in all directions. They seemed born able to sense where food was, leisurely climbing up the wheat stalks.
Suddenly!
One of them encountered an aphid. It pounced fiercely, clamping the aphid with its pincers. Its mouthparts pierced into the aphid's body as it began to suck. In barely a quarter of an hour, the poor aphid had been sucked into an empty husk, which scattered away with a gust of wind.
Afterward, the Lacewing Insect larva continued climbing ahead in search of its next prey.
"Impressive!" Wang Shouzhe exclaimed. "This little bug is truly fierce."
"Fourth Brother, when I raised Lacewing Insect larvae before, I calculated that they only need ten days to pupate. During that time, each can eat nearly a thousand Honey Insects. When they are first born, they are still quite small and can only eat a dozen or so each day for the first two days." Wang Luojing had always played with such things, so she was no longer surprised by them.
"If that is truly the case, then these ten-odd mu of wheat fields, which have only just begun filling out, may suffer some reduction in yield, but they can still be saved." Even as Wang Shouzhe praised her, worry filled his heart. "But Fenggu Farm alone has thousands of mu of wheat."
"Don't worry, Fourth Brother. That was only a test just now." Wang Luojing opened the other box. Inside were no longer densely packed Lacewing Insect larvae, but small beetles with brilliant colors.
"Isn't this..." Wang Shouzhe found the beetles familiar and could not help being startled. "Seven-spotted ladybugs?"
"Fourth Brother knows them too? But the Insect Classic says they are Nine-Spotted Bugs, not seven-spotted." Wang Luojing took out a giant beetle the size of a fist, with nine spots on its body, and lovingly stroked it with delight. "From now on, you'll be called the Nine-Star Insect King."
Before you continue