After returning from my cultivation journey, I built a farm through fortune telling.

Chapter 56 What a Big Pit
Aunt Hua spoke with great emotion and vivid detail, as if she had witnessed it herself, leaving Bai Lu completely stunned.

Spread a rumor and break a leg.

It's estimated that in just a few days, Chen Dajiao's mother will not only sit up and speak from her coffin, but will also climb out of the mourning hall and wander around, commenting on whether her funeral was conducted properly or not!

Aunt Gui sighed, "Chen Dajiao's family is quite capable! They even managed to get Master Qingxu to come!"

"What? They didn't invite them! The Taoist priest just happened to be passing through their village and saw that there was an eerie aura there, so he went to take a look. He was shocked to find that Chen Dajiao's mother was crying in the coffin and refused to be buried!"

Egret: "..."

No, ghosts, how are they related to demonic energy? Don't you guys even bother to write a draft before making up gossip?!

Qin Xiu looked on with curiosity, even slowing down her movements as she put out the peanuts: "Did someone really see Chen Dajiao's mother's spirit?"

Although she believes in gods and Buddhas, she has never seen a real ghost in her life! She doesn't even know what a ghost looks like!
"Then there's still a lie!"

Aunt Hua spoke with absolute certainty, pausing in her hoe swing, spitting twice into her palms, rubbing them together, and continuing to hoe. As she hoeed, she made faces and gestures: "I heard it was smeared with cow tears! It's so clear! Her mother was hit by a car and her body was repaired, so her spirit isn't scary at all, it's exactly the same as when she was alive! Even the black mole on the corner of her mouth is clearly visible!"

"sister……"

Bai Wei had somehow gotten close to Bai Lu and asked, "Is what Aunt Hua said true?"

She knew her sister had gone to Aunt Jiao's house, but her sister hadn't mentioned the scene was so shocking when she came back!
Although she cultivated herself, she had never actually seen a ghost!
"How could that be? Ordinary people can't just see ghosts! Only children with pure hearts and people whose lifespan is about to end can see ghosts."

Bai Wei: "...They made it sound so convincing! I almost believed them!"

Bai Lu clicked her tongue and shook her head: "Three women make a drama, but there are six here. Just by looking at Aunt Hua's face, you can tell she's a gossipy and talkative person. Not only can she sing opera, but she can also write storybooks! Look at all the embellishment she's adding! If she keeps going, Aunt Jiao's mother will have been reincarnated and grown to be eighteen years old!"

Aunt Hua continued, "Everyone knows that Master Qingxu is very capable and hard to invite. You can't even get a glimpse of him without connections. But we just happened to run into him. The Master is kind-hearted, so he asked Chen Dajiao for a jujube tree. It was a jujube tree that had been struck by lightning and we don't know if it can survive. The Master said that the jujubes that grow from this kind of tree are sweet! Xiao Qin, it's the one in front of your house!"

Qin Xiu: "Really? Then Chen Dajiao really hit the jackpot. I checked that jujube tree last night, it looked like charcoal, it's probably not going to survive!"

"No!"

The six women chattered incessantly, like sparrows, talking about Chen Dajiao's family and then about Uncle Wang's family.

Uncle Wang, also known as Wang Dazong, is one of the few people with different surnames in Dongshi Village. They were also the first family to get rich. They owned a piece of land at the foot of Sanqing Mountain and ran a farmhouse restaurant, which had made them a fortune. But recently, for some reason, their business has been terrible.

"It's one thing to have no business, but we also got inspected and found to be unhygienic! It's strange, you know. It's normal to find two small green caterpillars in your food, which means no pesticides were used. If you find a cockroach, that would be disgusting, but to find a rat is just outrageous!"

"A rat? How could that be! It's so big, how could it possibly get into the food! Is someone sabotaging this? Are they jealous of Old Wang's good business?"

"At first, the Wang family thought so too, but the restaurant has surveillance cameras. They checked it dozens of times, and the customers didn't tamper with anything! But what's even stranger is that the chefs and kitchen staff have no reason to tamper with anything. These things just appeared out of thin air in the dishes!"

Qin Xiu said, "That's really strange! What will they do then? Is the shop really not going to open?"

"How could he really not open? That shop makes so much money! Look at his family over the years, they bought a house in the city, built a three-and-a-half-story house in the village, and they even have two cars! Old Wang has been asking people to look into his affairs lately, but they can't figure anything out. If this continues, he'll have to use his connections to get a consultation with Master Qingxu of Sanqing Mountain!"

"Whoa, what dares to cause trouble at the foot of Sanqing Mountain? Who's so reckless, they're courting death!"

"that is……"

The egret listened, seemingly lost in thought.

But she didn't say she wanted to get involved in these things; she was too busy putting peanuts in the pan right now.

These middle-aged women are indeed skilled at their work. Their gossip doesn't hinder their work at all; on the contrary, the few of them who are easily putting peanuts in the pan are too busy to keep up.

The sun was high in the sky, and the parasols were already set up. Bailu's family wasn't just taking advantage of people; if the people they hired were too tired, they could take a break, have some water, and wipe their sweat.

I leave work promptly at 12 o'clock.

Lunch is not included; everyone should eat at their own homes.

I'll start work at 2 PM, but I won't be able to leave until 6:30 PM.

As the group walked home, Aunt Hua's face was flushed from the sun. She kept looking at Qin Xiu and said, "Little Qin, I noticed you haven't rested much this morning, but you seem to be in good spirits. What have you been eating lately to replenish your energy?"

After Qin Xiu underwent these three surgeries, due to her own self-promotion, it became common knowledge that she was a fraud.

Qin Xiu was stunned for a moment. She hadn't noticed it until Aunt Hua pointed it out. She did feel that her body hadn't been as weak lately.

In the past, let alone working, just standing under the sun would make her dizzy and lightheaded, but during this period, she has been working non-stop and feels quite good!

No headache, no blurred vision, eat well, sleep well!

Although she pays close attention to rest, she hasn't felt this healthy in a long time!

Qin Xiu looked at her thin, bony hands.

What did you eat?
We slaughtered a pig at home, and we also have some wild vegetables.

Could it be that wild vegetables are highly nutritious?
It's not impossible; many wild vegetables are used in traditional Chinese medicine.

Although Qin Xiu thought this way, she didn't dwell on it too much. She just planned to go to the hospital for a check-up in a few days.

The terraced fields in Tianshan were created by the villagers' ancestors when they had no land to cultivate and they dug them out of the mountains during the poor years.

The road is narrow and difficult to walk on.

Now, all the planting materials are carried up by hand. The small agricultural tractors used for plowing last time were also carried up. After the peanuts are harvested, they will also have to be transported by hand. Therefore, this area is the most severely abandoned.

Aunt Hua's family still has two acres of land here, and she just asked Qin Xiu if she wanted to pick some to make something.

After thinking it over, Bailu still declined. In its current state, it would be good enough to cultivate forty or fifty acres of land well; it would be better to wait before expanding the scale.

As they were talking, they arrived at the fork in the road near Bailu's house. Aunt Hua's house was still in the middle of the village. Everyone went their separate ways. When Qin Xiu got home, she remembered the jujube tree that Aunt Hua had mentioned, so she went around to the outside of the wall to take a look. Wow, what a big pit!

She asked the egret, "Did you see anyone digging up the jujube trees this morning?" The egret looked innocent and replied, "No, I didn't see anything!"

Bai Wei and Bai Chen touched their noses.

Qin Xiu found it strange: "Then how come it's gone? I saw it before dark yesterday. It can't be that someone came to steal the tree in the middle of the night!"

Bailu didn't like hearing that. She retorted, "How can that be called stealing! Aunt Jiao has already promised to give it to Master Qingxu. It's their freedom to come and dig whenever they want. Stealing sounds awful!"

"Why are you so excited? I never said you stole it."

Qin Xiu said irritably, then found it even stranger: "Why do you think the Daoist wants this jujube tree? Fruits struck by lightning aren't sweet!"

The egret tilted its head: "You've ever eaten fruit from a tree that's been struck by lightning?!"

"I've eaten them, haven't you? There's a peach tree on the hill behind our house, right? It used to grow big and sweet fruit. It was struck by lightning, but it survived and the fruit still grows well. However, some of the fruit from the tree on the left side makes my mouth numb!"

Egret: "!!!"

Who says lightning-struck wood is hard to come by? She has one at home!
Qin Xiu immediately remembered that eating peaches with numb mouths would cause diarrhea, so Qin Xiu gradually stopped letting Bai Lu and the others pick and eat them.

But the egrets don't lack lightning-struck wood now, so let it continue to grow.

"Speaking of peach trees, Mom, after we're done with this busy period, how about we get some excavators to clear out our two mountains and plant more fruit trees?"

"We haven't even figured out how to cultivate the land yet, and you're already thinking about planting fruit trees! The lychee and longan trees will be in bloom soon, and you can't even finish eating all the lychee and longan you have on our mountain! Why bother planting fruit trees! Lulu, let's take it one step at a time, okay? If you really want to plant them, how about next year, next year?"

Qin Xiu can no longer control Bai Lu. She has given up to the point that if she doesn't lose money on these dozens of acres of land this year, she will let her fruit trees grow!

"No, Mom!" Bailu said in the most indifferent tone, saying the words that made Qin Xiu give up the most: "I'm already tired of lychees, longans, and wampees. I'm thinking of planting some apple trees!"

“Apples don’t grow here, so don’t mess around with them! Although you made some money from wild vegetables and bamboo shoots, and it was easier to make money, you can’t treat money like it’s nothing! You should give it to your mother, and she’ll save it for you as your dowry!”

Qin Xiu felt that Bai Lu must have planned this all along. She hadn't seen a single penny of the large sum of money from selling wild vegetables. Moreover, these days, it was becoming increasingly difficult to get money out of her. She was afraid that if Bai Lu slipped through her fingers, the money she had just earned would be spent before she could even enjoy it.

dowry?

Is it something very unlucky?

Bai Lu ignored Qin Xiu's words. The dowry, the promise of "saving it for you"—just like the New Year's money she'd been saving for years, she hadn't seen a single penny. When she was younger, she would ask, but every time she did, the answer was the same—

You don't need to eat, drink, or pay tuition?
The three siblings, Bai Lu, suffered greatly from this. From then on, they never believed Qin Xiu's advice to save money again. They could give her the money they earned, but some children handed over their salary cards instead.
Impossible, absolutely impossible!
However, Qin Xiu is right about one thing: apples are not actually produced in Jiang Province. It may be due to geographical reasons, but the fruit is sour.

The apples they usually eat are all transported from the north. The egret family loves apples, but they have never seen a real apple tree. The egret has only seen them online, and the sight of them laden with fruit is very pleasing.

She had never seen a pear tree before; the most common fruits here, besides lychees, longans, mangoes, wampee, guavas, and tangerines, were...

The yield per acre of fruit is also astonishing. This was already part of Bailu's grand plan for farming, so Qin Xiu's opinion was not important.

Bai Lu said to Bai Jiang, "Let's plant fruit trees on the mountain, then fence it off and bring our chickens up there! Free-range chickens from the orchard are much more expensive than broiler chickens! We can raise hundreds of them!"

Bai Lu has too many chickens in her backyard, and the smell of fermenting chicken manure drifts into her house, which is unpleasant and doesn't meet her current expectations for her living environment. She has long wanted to catch them all and move them to the mountains, but the farmland hasn't been planted yet, so she doesn't have time to dig up the mountains!

Take it one step at a time, and you'll achieve it sooner or later.

Bai Jiang felt that what he had said that morning was completely wasted.

Well, now they're thinking of messing with the fruit trees again.

Before he could even voice his opinion, his eldest daughter said, "But Mom just said the lychee and longan trees are about to bloom, Dad, let's buy two boxes of bees!"

"A bee?"

Bai Jiang breathed a sigh of relief: "The bees are easy to handle, no need to buy them. Your grandfather told me last time that he found two bee colonies in Maling that were splitting up. Once we finish planting the peanuts and sweet potatoes, your uncle and I will go and bring them back."

"Let's split up!"

Bee swarming, also known as bee colony swarming, occurs when a bee colony becomes overcrowded or has abundant resources. In order to expand the population size and range, bees will breed new queen bees.

There used to be a hive on the roof of Bailu's house, but because of disagreements among the bees, they fought to the death, and in the end, not a single bee was left.

Egrets love drinking honey water, but Qin Xiu forbids them from drinking too much, saying it causes internal heat.

……

After the peanuts are planted, there will be yams.

The hairy yam is a native crop here. It gets its name from the hairy surface of its roots. It is rich in nutrients and is used not only as food but also as medicine.

You can steam them directly. When fresh yams are steamed, the skin will crack open, revealing the white, powdery flesh inside.

You can also make sweet soup with it, but it's a bit troublesome to deal with the hairy roots of the yam because the hairs are deeply embedded.

After cleaning the yams, cut them into evenly sized pieces. Add a little glutinous rice and cook together until the rice has bloomed, the yams have softened, and the edges have flattened. Then add brick sugar or brown sugar and cook for a few more minutes. The taste is amazing!

Sweet.

It's both sweet and sticky.

If you add white sugar or rock sugar, Bailu thinks the taste will be different; it's definitely not as good as adding brown sugar.

This sweet soup was Bai Lu's favorite drink when she was a child, but now hardly anyone grows it anymore because yams have a long growing period, and if you plant them now, you won't be able to harvest them until at least autumn.

With today's fast-paced lifestyle, crops with a growing period of only six months are not worth planting from all aspects because they have no economic value.

But the egret likes to eat, so she's willing to wait.

(End of this chapter)