Parallel World Farm

Planting corn

The sudden and strange sight took Loulan by surprise. However, having just gone through the test of life and death, his state of mind had become much stronger. After adjusting his emotions a little, he strolled towards the small thatched cottages.Still somewhat in a daze, Loulan didn't notice that quite a number of those light spots that had filled the sky earlier had actually merged into his own body.Loulan first walked to the small piece of black soil, crouched down, reached out and grabbed a handful of soil. He found that the soil was pliable and slightly moist, which was extremely fertile land suitable for farming. Moreover, judging from its shape, this piece of land was a very standard one-tenth of a mu of cultivated land, as if someone had already reclaimed it long ago."The soil is fertile and fine. What a wonderful piece of land!" Loulan thought to himself. Since he had helped his grandmother farm the land since childhood, he could naturally tell the quality of the land.Standing up, Loulan walked to the side of the two thatched cottages. The first thing that caught Loulan's eye was the large seal script characters on the doors of the cottages: on one door was written "Seeds", and on the other was written "Home".The handwriting was neat and ancient, clearly the work of a famous calligrapher. Even though it was written on the simple wooden doors of these thatched cottages, it still gave people a solemn feeling."The meaning is quite straightforward!" Loulan was a bit puzzled in his heart. There was cultivated land and seeds, and even a home was prepared for him. Did it mean that he was supposed to farm here? What a joke! He didn't even know where his next meal was coming from. By the time the crops matured, he would have starved to death long ago.Although he thought so in his heart, Loulan didn't have any other options at present. After thinking for a while, he decided that instead of hurrying back to "Home", he would go and check out the "Seeds" first. After all, seeds were also a kind of food. If worst came to worst, he could even eat them.Walking to the door of the cottage, before Loulan could reach out to push the door, it creaked open by itself. Loulan looked inside the cottage but found that it was pitch black and he couldn't see anything.Although a strange feeling rose in Loulan's heart, he still summoned up his courage and walked in. Who would have thought that once he entered the cottage, he found that it was actually very spacious and bright inside, and the previous darkness had completely disappeared.The room was rather empty. Besides the door, there were wooden cabinets on each of the other three walls, just like the medicine cabinets in a pharmacy where traditional Chinese medicine was placed. There were also many small drawers on these three cabinets, and each drawer had an ancient-looking small black lock on it.Loulan walked to one of the cabinets, reached out and tried to pull a few of the small drawers. He found that the locks were unusually sturdy. No matter how hard Loulan pulled, they didn't budge at all.Seeing that he couldn't open the drawers, Loulan looked around again. Finding that there was nothing else here, he turned around and was about to leave. But at that moment, a clear "click" sound suddenly rang out, which sounded exactly like the sound of a lock opening. Loulan quickly turned his head and immediately found the source of the sound - the lock on a small drawer right in front of him had disappeared.Walking over, Loulan gently pulled open this small drawer. To his surprise, inside the drawer was a mass of black thick fog, constantly churning, filling the entire drawer without spilling out at all."What on earth is this?" Loulan thought to himself. Nevertheless, he still bravely reached his hand in. Only then did he find that there was indeed something inside, and it felt very soft to the touch, like a cloth bag.Loulan grasped this bag-like thing and pulled it out with a little effort. When he brought it in front of him and took a look, he found that it was indeed a bag of seeds. Moreover, there was even an instruction on the bag:"Corn seeds, Level 1, not suitable for direct consumption, Price: Free, Yield: 10 jin per plant, Usage: Plow the soil - Sow the seeds - Water. Maturity period: Twenty-four hours.""Twenty-four hours? What does that mean? Can they mature in just one day? What kind of corn can mature so quickly? Why have I never heard of it?"Loulan asked four questions in his mind in one breath. However, these doubts didn't make him delay even for a second. His hand reached into the drawer again and took out another bag of corn seeds.In this way, Loulan took out more than ten bags of seeds one after another. However, in this small drawer, the seeds seemed endless. As long as Loulan put his hand in, he was sure to be able to take out a bag of seeds. It was a pity that these seeds couldn't be eaten directly. Otherwise, Loulan wouldn't even need to farm. He could just take the seeds from here and eat them.Loulan, who had almost starved to death just now, was finally in a much better mood. Without caring whether these seeds could be eaten or not, he picked them all up and rushed out of the room at a sprinting speed, arriving beside the black soil outside."Plow the soil - Sow the seeds - Water. The process is quite simple. So, what are we waiting for? Let's get to work!"Loulan was constantly facing the threat of death at the moment, so he couldn't care less. He directly started digging in the black soil with his hands: Plowing the soil was just fine without a hoe. Using hands would do the same job.Fortunately, the soil was very soft. Even though he used his hands instead of a hoe, Loulan didn't find it too difficult. It only took him an hour to completely plow this one-tenth of a mu of cultivated land.Doing farm work consumed a lot of physical strength. After Loulan finished plowing the land and stood up, he found that his whole body was soaked with sweat. The energy provided by that small piece of corn cake just now seemed to have been almost used up. The familiar feeling of hunger hit him again, making Loulan immediately nervous:"No, there's no time to waste. I must sow the seeds right away."With this thought in mind, Loulan immediately started sowing the seeds. Since he had done farm work since childhood, he naturally knew that the seeds couldn't be sown too densely, so he naturally spaced them out. Coincidentally or not, by the time he used up one bag of seeds, the land had just been planted - a total of twenty corn plants.After sowing the seeds, the next step was watering. Loulan didn't have any tools at hand, only a kettle. Fortunately, the small river was right beside him, so he didn't need to run too far. Moreover, one kettle of water was just enough to water one corn seed. So Loulan made twenty trips back and forth. By the time he finished watering the whole land, he was so tired that he collapsed on the ground and couldn't even stand up.Loulan sat by the field, gasping for breath, and gulped down the water from the kettle. Since he didn't have any other food at hand, he casually picked up a bag of corn seeds, took out one seed from it, and was about to put it in his mouth to eat.Corn seeds were actually partially dehydrated corn kernels. Unlike the sweet and soft corn after being cooked, these dehydrated corn kernels would become very hard. If eaten directly, only people with extremely good teeth could chew them up.Loulan was quite confident in his teeth. After all, he was at the prime age of seventeen at that time, the peak period of a person's physical condition. Because of poverty, when he ate stewed meat during the Spring Festival, he would even chew up the bones in the meat. Although these corn seeds were hard, how could they be harder than bones?However, he really couldn't chew them!Not only could he not chew them, but as soon as the corn seed entered Loulan's mouth, it immediately gave off a strong smell of rotten corpses, which made Loulan vomit heavily on the spot.After Loulan spat out the corn kernels, the strong smell of rotten corpses didn't disappear. Forced by this, Loulan quickly scrambled to the side of the small river and rinsed his mouth desperately with the river water. It took him quite a while to finally gradually get rid of this maddening smell."This damn place!" Thousands of curses rushed through Loulan's mind. As he walked back from the river, he muttered: "And these damn rotten seeds. They're just... Oh my! This is amazing!"Right in front of Loulan, on the originally black cultivated land, two neat rows of corn seedlings had already grown, looking very eye-catching with their lush green color!"It's only been less than ten minutes, and the seedlings have already grown. Could it be that this corn really matures in twenty-four hours?" Loulan was ecstatic in his heart. He quickly picked up a bag of corn seeds from the ground and carefully read the instructions on the bag again:"Corn seeds, Level 1, not suitable for direct consumption, Price: Free, Yield: 10 jin per plant, Usage: Plow the soil - Sow the seeds - Water. Maturity period: Twenty-four hours.""Twenty-four hours. Sure enough, it's twenty-four hours. Goodness! Each seed has a yield of 10 jin. Then by tomorrow, won't I have... have two hundred jin of corn! Hooray!"Loulan was so excited that he jumped up all of a sudden and walked back and forth beside the cornfield excitedly, carefully checking each corn seedling, fearing that any of them might not grow well and affect his harvest tomorrow.Fortunately, Loulan's worry was unnecessary. The corn seedlings were all growing very vigorously. And in just a short while, these seedlings grew a lot taller and were almost reaching Loulan's ankles.The sun was setting in the west, and the sky gradually darkened.A gentle breeze blew by, and Loulan suddenly felt a bit chilly. Although it was midsummer at that time, from being on the verge of starving to death to being luckily rescued and then farming for half a day, during which he had only eaten a small piece of corn cake, one could imagine how much physical strength he had consumed. It was normal for him to feel weak and cold at this time.To Loulan's surprise, as the sun completely disappeared behind the mountain, the thatched cottage with the word "Home" beside the cornfield suddenly lit up."Oh my! I almost forgot that I have a home!" Loulan looked at the corn seedlings under his feet a bit uneasily and finally walked towards the thatched cottage named "Home": "It should be okay. It seems that there isn't even a single living thing in this strange place except me!"The light in the thatched cottage was very bright, illuminating the area within four or five meters around the cottage clearly. So Loulan's vision wasn't affected at all. He walked all the way to the door and immediately smelled a pleasant aroma wafting over.