“Thank you,” I said to Shuye in a distracted manner. I was reading the System information while he told me the details.
“It costs a gold coin for one invite, and I took the liberty of buying a slot for everyone on your farm, plus me, Prince Baiyu, and Scholar Wu.”
“That’s perfect! You’ve worked hard. I appreciate it.”
[Booyah Cooking Festival:
Willow Bend Village’s Shang family owns an ancient artifact, the mysterious Jade Cauldron, which activates every eight to ten years. Though the item is only the size of a regular cauldron, great quantities of raw ingredients, enough for three thousand people, may be poured into it once it is activated. When it’s full, it cooks the food and disgorges what some call “an edible legend.”
Rewards:
Low-grade stew - Fruit Jelly Set
Mid-grade stew - Spice Rack
High-grade stew - Premium Ingredient Basket and Cooking Exp]
Shuye was still talking. “All participants must bring their weight in ingredients, which will be put inside the cauldron, and they will be allowed to eat two bowls of the resulting stew. They say it's normally quite good.”
I finished reading the event information and snapped back to attention. “Huh? If we only eat two bowls, what happens to the rest of the food?”
“It’s distributed to the villagers during the festival, and some of it stays inside the cauldron where it stays fresh for up to one year. They have weekly feasts for the villagers.”
“Oh, that must be nice.”
“They often sell tickets for the weekly feasts, too.”
“Nice. I might want to buy some if the stew turns out to be good.”
Shuye held up a piece of paper. “I have a list of suggested ingredients here. It’s different every time. This year it will be a meaty one.”
I read it together with Prince Baiyu and Scholar Wu.
“The meat is easy enough for me to get. Darling, I’ll have to go on a hunting trip before the event,” said Prince Baiyu to me.
“Obviously I’ll provide the vegetables,” I said. The meat should form the bulk of the required weight of food, but a stew should have plenty of veggies. “Have you ever been to the cooking festival?”
“I have,” said Prince Baiyu. “They normally invite my mother, and she brings me and my father along with her.”
“How good was the food?” I asked.
“It varies. The stew quality depends on the ingredients that are put in. One time they made an almost inedible fish stew. Most of the time, it’s just okay.”
“I have to make sure our ingredients are of the highest quality then.”
That Cooking exp should be mine!
We talked a little more about it, and I asked one of the maids to send the list to Fengying.
“Okay, that’s very exciting, but let’s finish harvesting and get that exp!” I said to my apprentices.
The tea plants stood in neat rows, shoulder-high, and their leaves a vibrant green. Collecting the leaves for processing was a wasteful matter since only the newly sprouted fresh leaves were plucked. The rest of the tea plant wasn’t used and would wilt away into organic matter that was incorporated into the soil.
Using the System, we gathered the tea leaves, and it wasn’t long before I leveled up.
[Congratulations, you just advanced a Farming level!]
[Your Farming level is now 35.]
“Yeeees!” I ran around the kids screaming. “Level up!”
I hadn’t leveled up in a while since it was harder the higher the level, so I was extra pumped.
“There’s nothing like the thrill of leveling,” I said to the others when I was done celebrating. “I hope I will level up again this harvest time.”
“Congratulations,” said Prince Baiyu.
“Congratulations.”
“Congratulations.”
“Congratulations.”
There was a chorus of people congratulating me. I thanked everyone and we continued working until the entire tea field was harvested. I lifted the basket full of green leaves to my face and inhaled the rich aroma. “I feel like this season’s harvest is mid-grade.”
Like everyone, my eyes turned to Deming. He casually inspected a basket and turned to lock eyes with his wife. After a minute, Fengying said, “He says the leaves have to be sorted since some of them are low-grade while a few are mid-grade.”
While my apprentices and I were cheering and congratulating each other, Deming sorted a basket to show us all the difference.
However, try as I might, I could only see the slightest difference between the two. One set was a little more vibrantly colored and perhaps plumper, but I would have been hard-pressed to sort them myself.
Seeing my confusion, Scholar Wu explained. She pointed at the mid-grade ones and said, “Their qi is denser.”
“Ah, no wonder I couldn’t see it.” I turned to my apprentices. “Energy level, report.”
All of them only had a sliver of their energy bar left.
“Then you three must rest and recover for tomorrow’s work. I still have a bit left, so I’ll harvest some of the [Three Sisters] plots.”
[Companion Planting: The Three Sisters
The Three Sisters is a Native American method of planting corn, beans, and squash together in the same mound. The corn grows tall and provides a support for the beans to climb. The squash spreads along the ground, providing ground cover and preventing weeds from growing. This method of planting results in a bountiful harvest of all three crops.]
This was one of our favorites since this way of planting resulted in twenty to thirty percent higher yields compared to sowing the three seeds separately.
I walked to that part of the farm, followed by my apprentices, Shuye, Prince Baiyu, and Scholar Wu, along with my household staff.
At the [Three Sisters] mounds, the corn stalks were particularly tall this year, reaching well above my head with their dry tassels rustling in the slight breeze. Each stalk had several ears of corn, their husks a pale green. The bean vines wove their way around the corn, their dark green seed pods hanging in clusters. Below them, the broad leaves of the squash plants formed a dense, sprawling carpet across the soil. Hidden underneath them were the squash, their skins ranging in color from deep orange to mottled green and yellow.
I hit my spade against the mounds and the System helpfully extracted the [Beans], [Squash] and [Corn] for me until I ran out of energy.
“That’s it for today,” I announced to everyone. “Time to weigh the produce.”
We returned to the main house where large worktables had been placed in the outer courtyard as well as large and small weighing scales.
In the past, I had been quite cavalier about the money I made from the harvests since I didn’t really need it, but now that I had adjusted to life in this world, I had no more excuse to take things easy. It was time for me to take things more seriously, and not leave everything to Shuye and Fengying. I needed to become much more professional about learning the business side of spirit farming.
Since Deming had indicated there were two different grades of tea, they had to be sorted by Deming and weighed separately by the staff. Each batch was labeled by Fengying, and the data was entered in our account books, and written down in duplicate by Lari and Kharli while Mo and I checked the records.
That was done first since they were to be sold.
We also weighed the other items though this was just for our internal records. This task was somewhat tedious, but it was great to see the tables practically groaning under the weight of all the vegetables.
“Wow, your calligraphy has improved a lot,” I said to Kharli. “Well done!”
“Thank you, Teacher.” She smirked at Lari, whose messy writing had to be redone twice.
“His writing is fine,” I said to her. “He’s making mistakes because he’s overexcited today.”
One of Lady Diya’s letters to Lari had arrived this morning.
Lari blushed. “No…”
Mo and Kharli giggled and elbowed each other, but they refrained from teasing him.
“Let me see.” I perused Kharli’s report and smiled when I read the bottom line where the estimated sell price was written down. Using the System calculator, I double-checked it. “Well, it looks like I’m rich!”
Everybody laughed.