BXBX NOVEL Chapter 68 - 68 Rise! Salted Fish Elder_1
A quick calculation would reveal that Zhuwei Lake isn’t that big and covers about ten thousand acres of area. Dredging to an average depth of one meter would yield six or seven million cubic meters of sediment.
Wang Shouzhe had seen dredging boats in this world.
They operated manually, using dredging forks to scrape sediment onto the boat. Each boat can only hold about ten cubic meters of this muck.
Ordinary cleaned sediment is inherently rich in organic matter and makes excellent farmland fertilizer, replenishing soil fertility, once composted and mixed with other substances.
After all, in this era, the silt at the bottom of rivers and lakes doesn’t contain any heavy metal accumulation.
However, the challenge lies in the quantity, as six or seven million cubic meters means six or seven hundred thousand boatloads! If ten dredging boats work without interruption throughout the year, each cleaning and transporting three boatloads daily, it will take approximately twenty thousand days or sixty to seventy years!
After drying, the volume of the sediment substantially reduces. Considering that the marshland is primarily soft mud, it’s estimated that at most it could provide two to three thousand acres of fertile farmland. The entire project is expected to cost more than ten thousand Qian Gold.
Given the extensive investment in human and material resources along with the time spent, earning only three to four Qian Gold per cultivated acre seems uneconomical.
If one were to dredge two meters deep into Zhuwei Lake, the costs would more than double and cleaning would become increasingly difficult. Even if one were to buy fertile land, it would only cost two to three Qian Gold per acre.
However, the actual calculations are not so simple. With large-scale sediment removal, Zhuwei Lake’s water storage capacity will increase, allowing for fish farming, even including spirit fish. Relying solely on wild fishing is not a long-term solution as the income source is unstable when considered over the long term from the perspective of the family.
If it is possible to cultivate commercial fish species, or even Spirit Fish species on a large scale, this would be the correct way to benefit the family’s long-term basic industries. Although such an investment would be massive and time-consuming, once successfully implemented, it would provide a steady stream of financial resources for the family.
Moreover, to encourage the Xuanwu Family to open up new fields, the government has made the first ten years of new farmland reclamation exempt from grain tax. This would result in significant savings.
Of course, given Wang Shouzhe’s temperament, even if he were to undertake this extensive dredging and land reclamation project, he wouldn’t commit to a sixty to seventy-year timeline. By that time, even his great-grandsons would have come of age…
This plan had been brewing in his mind for a long time.
He initially thought of implementing a small-scale version of it next year, gradually scaling up the project, striving to deepen Zhuwei Lake by two meters in ten years and transform the marshland into four to five thousand acres of fertile land, gradually establishing the family’s next major farm, with tens of thousands of acres for fish farming and several thousand acres for crops.
The annual output value would certainly be significant, and the total project cost should be under thirty thousand Qian Gold.
But now, the plan has slightly changed!
Standing on the awning boat, Wang Shouzhe looked at the wilderness along the shores with his hands clasped behind him, appearing as though he was overseeing his territory and devising a long-term plan for the family’s future.
Seventh among the ‘Defender’ generation males, Wang Shouye, was sitting inside the cabin and feeling less anxious. Seeing his eldest brother standing tall and majestic, a sense of admiration and respect surged within him.
I, Wang Shouye.
In the future, I will be just like Big Brother, a towering and magnificent man.
The boat docked at the Prosperous Farm’s small pier. Led by the anxious manager of the Wang’s remote branch of the family living here, Wang Shouzhe and Wang Shouye found Wang Xiaohan.
At this point, Wang Xiaohan was tending to the precious twenty acres of Spirit Field, carefully removing weeds that sprouted in the fields. He removed them as soon as they sprouted, not giving them any additional opportunity to absorb nutrients and spiritual energy.
Even for the same Spirit Field, if one were to farm it meticulously, even an extra half-percent yield would be a substantial resource.
Wang Shouzhe didn’t interrupt him but waited patiently.
This ‘Prosperous Farm’ was the second farm established by the Old Ancestor, Zhou Xuan. It contained two thousand mu of fertile land, a small livestock farm, a small field specifically for planting fruits and vegetables, and most importantly, the farm opened up twenty mu of Spirit Fields.
The terrain here was surrounded by a small branch of the remnant Six Flat Mountain Range. The original land had a lot of boulders and was not ideally suited for farming at first glance.
However, Zhou Xuan chose this place for farming and was determined to introduce a water source and open a farm here, because there was a Spiritual Spring here among the ravines and mountain streams.
Having a Spiritual Spring indicates there’s a small Spiritual Vein here.
Building a Spirit Gathering Array around this Spiritual Vein would allow the spiritual energy from the vein to condense and not dissipate, nourishing the land. Following this, one could use the spring to irrigate the land, combine it with various farming techniques to enrich the soil, and gradually open up a Spirit Field suitable for the cultivation of various spiritual things.
With their own Spirit Field, they would have their own yield of Spirit Rice. That’s when a Xuanwu Family can truly consider having its own foundation.
Hence, Ancestor Zhou Xuan named this farm [Prosperous Farm], implying his hope for the prosperity of the family.
This spiritual spring, coupled with a small spirit vein, can maximally support about sixty acres of spirit field. However, at that time, the Wang family was not quite familiar with the techniques of planting spirit rice, so to avoid unnecessary consumption of the spirit veins, they temporarily built only one spirit gathering array, and developed twenty acres of spirit field.
The Wang family originally planned to develop the remaining forty acres of the spirit field after the cultivation techniques of spirit rice became matured. Yet, before that plan could be enacted, the Wang family encountered a major disaster.
Afterwards, the family was both fretful and short on resources.
Investing in the spirit field was indeed a project requiring a large investment with slow return. The family primarily thought about cultivating an old ancestor at the spirit platform level first, then slowly saving up the money to develop the spirit field and gradually accumulate the foundation of the family.
Unexpectedly, the eldest son of the family, Wang Dingtian, who was first meant to be trained, either suffered from psychological trauma due to the huge disaster he experienced at the age of five, or was too anxious due to the high pressure from the elder family members, he unfortunately lost his mind and died in cultivation at the age of twenty.
It should be noted that the Wang family’s “Xuan Yuan Jue” is known for its calmness. Even if calculated from the Longzuo Wang family a thousand years ago, there are only a few who have lost their minds in cultivation.
After mourning, the family shifted their focus to the second son of the Wang family, Wang Dingyue, and the sixth son Wang Xiaohan. The older generation who had learned their lesson, didn’t put too much pressure on Wang Dingyue, but rather cultivated him in a methodical way.
More pressure was actually on Wang Xiaohan, who had extraordinary talent among the direct descendants. However, it was a bit late when he walked on the path of the spiritual platform. Until nearly twenty years ago, Wang Xiaohan, in a confidential manner, took the [Heavenly Spirit Pill] which was obtained after the family sold many assets in secret.
He failed to promote to the higher level of cultivation!
Later, Wang Dingyue died in a foreign region.
Speaking of this, it’s quite strange. Originally, Wang Shouzhe thought that the family had truly run out of resources and could no longer afford the Heavenly Spirit Pill for Wang Dingyue. But after thinking it over carefully recently, Wang Shouzhe felt that something was not quite right.
The Old Ancestor Longyan could sell her personal spiritual treasure [Turtle Scale Treasure Shield] to raise resources for him, Wang Shouzhe. Why didn’t she buy the pill for his father, Wang Dingyue?
Moreover, after the former head of the household’s death, Old Ancestor Longyan didn’t even show up. Did she fear that someone would see something wrong? There is a high possibility that she forcibly took action during this period.
If the Old Ancestor took an action, who did she act with? Could it be that the one who went to the foreign region was not only my father Wang Dingyue, but also the Old Ancestor?
If the speculation matches the actual situation, why would the Old Ancestor and former head Wang Dingyue go to the foreign region at such a critical moment? Was it really just to raise resources to seek opportunities, as it was propagated outside?
It certainly was not.
Wang Shouzhe had reasons to believe that the Old Ancestor and the seniors of the clan concealed a great secret from him. And that secret should be very important to the Wang family! Maybe, there was also an opportunity to promote to the Spirit Platform stage in the foreign region, but it was because my father Wang Dingyue failed?
The more he thought about it, the more he felt so. Otherwise, the Old Ancestor Longyan would definitely choose to sell the Turtle Scale Treasure Shield to buy a Heavenly Spirit Pill for his father Wang Dingyue, rather than both of them risking going to the foreign regions to seek some broken opportunity.
If there was an opportunity, he would try to pry some information from the Old Ancestor’s mouth.
As Wang Shouzhe was pondering, the Sixth grand elder emerged from the spirit field after weeding out the miscellaneous grasses. Seeing Wang Shouzhe and Wang Shouye waiting outside, he couldn’t help but smile: “Shouzhe, how come you are here? Have you been waiting for a long time? Why didn’t you call me earlier?”
Although Wang Shouzhe couldn’t see his cultivation base, he could feel a sense of lingering sadness from his mental state. Clearly, he had not yet come out of the failure of his huge expenditure and the attempt to reach the Spirit Platform stage. He was only sixty-five years old, but he appeared older than the Fourth Grand Elder Wang Xiaozhi, and looked like a real old farmer.
“Greetings to you, Sixth Grand Elder.” Wang Shouzhe saluted him.
“Grandfather.” Wang Shouye then pounced on him.
“Alt, you little guy, why did you come to visit your grandfather with Fourth Brother?” After Wang Xiaohan held Wang Shouye and teased him for a while, he let the person in charge of the side branch take him elsewhere to play.
Afterwards, Wang Xiaohan invited Wang Shouzhe to drink a cup of ordinary tea in front of his humble thatched cottage, “Shouzhe, did you come here to urge me to walk the path of the Spirit Platform again?”
Previously, Wang Shouzhe dispatched a household head to send the [Cultivation Pill] and spiritual stones, and wrote a letter to Wang Xiaohan outlying his plan. However, Wang Xiaohan refused, saying that his ambition was old, and he only wished to build a thatched house in front of the spirit field and protect it for a lifetime.
He did not blame Wang Xiaohan for his defeatist attitude.
After sipping the ordinary tea, Wang Shouzhe looked around and glanced at his shabby thatched cottage. Leaning back slightly, he smiled and said, “No, Shouzhe just came to bid farewell to the Sixth Grand Elder, and to take one last look at the Spirit Field left by Ancestor Zhou Xuan. After all, I am just a dying man.”
“What?”
Wang Xiaohan almost crushed the cup, and exclaimed in shocks and anger, “Wang Shouzhe, what is this nonsense you’re uttering?”
An astounding aura erupted from him.