Reclaiming Wasteland: Carefree Mountain Farmer

Chapter 22 The Good-for-Nothing

Beijiwu rested for a while, while porridge was still cooking inside the house.

"You two have a bowl of porridge and rest for a while. I'll go out and take a look at that piece of land first."

Beijiwu picked up his sickle and walked outside.

Gao Cong caught up in a few steps, "Brother Wu, I'll lead the way for you."

Beijiwu said, "No need. I can tell you've been hungry for a long time just by looking at you. After you finish two bowls of porridge, lie down and take a nap. How old is your youngest child?"

Gao Conglian replied, "Just nine months."

Beijiwu sighed, "Then you should rest for a while and go back. Come back when the child is a little older."

"Yes, Brother Wu." Gao Conglian looked at Beiji Wu gratefully, "Once the child can eat by himself, I'll come to repay your kindness, Brother Wu!"

"Let's get some rest first." Beijiwu walked out directly, somewhat moved by the state of this dilapidated place.

As long as we remain poor, these kinds of awful things won't disappear; they'll only increase.

To get rich, the first thing is to have more land.

Land alone is not enough; the most important things are labor and land.

Outside the village are large tracts of wasteland, all of which are weed fields abandoned after years of war.

These fields are easy to restore; they just need to be well cared for for a few years.

It has only been a few years since things stabilized, and people have just started coming to this area to farm.

At the beginning, there weren't many seeds. Year after year, it took several years to develop the land to the present situation where each household has more than 40 acres of land.

There's just that there's too much land and not enough people, so the farms are too busy to manage, and the wasteland remains wasteland.

It's definitely not considered land reclamation if you don't cultivate it; land reclamation is only considered successful when the crops are ripe.

The kind of thing that involves marking out land with stones and branches is something that, unless you're leading an army or a military settlement, you'll eventually have to solve the problem with your fists and hoes. It's pointless to occupy it.

The villagers mediated the dispute themselves, and the government endorsed and issued the land deeds.

Everyone who came at the beginning was allocated land recognized by the government. Ai Dake, for example, relied on the more than 20 mu of land given to him by the government to establish himself.

After that, whoever had the ability to reclaim wasteland would be granted a permanent land deed by the government, acknowledging their ownership of the land.

In the first few years, everyone was busy cleaning up the weeds and tree roots in their own fields. Some fields that hadn't been cultivated for more than a decade required a long period of effort to recover.

We will gradually expand after everything is settled.

As the population grows, villages will increase, and land expansion will inevitably lead to the rise of towns and villages, resulting in the emergence of numerous hamlets and villages near Xintian.

Between Beitian Village and Hutou Village, there are at least two more villages.

Therefore, occupying land for cultivation became the primary task. Once the land was occupied, the government would not send people there, but would transfer them to other areas.

When the government recruited people, they would send them to places with plenty of wasteland. If there was no land available, the people would either run away or be driven away by the locals.

When Beijiwu arrived at Li Hong's field, it had already been harvested. Even as the sun was about to set, there were still many children picking up wheat in the field.

"roll!"

With a roar, Beijiwu rode his horse and charged forward at high speed.

Upon seeing this, the women, old women, and children who were picking wheat at Ai Dake's house quickly ran out.

Beijiwu rode his horse to the edge of the field, took out a sickle, and looked at the people.

The adults and children ran away like dogs, then stood at a distance watching this scene.

"Coward!" Arctic Martial cursed.

I'm not talking about the people in front of me, I'm talking about that good-for-nothing Ai Dake.

The good-for-nothing not only sells his wife, daughter, and land to earn a living, but even the women, old women, and children in the village are not afraid of him and come to steal things from his fields.

No one in the village dared to go to Beijiwu's fields to pick up anything.

Arctic Martial was somewhat reluctant to help Ai Dake; such a coward deserved to be childless and without descendants.

"Come here!" Beijiwu shouted to a group of old women, women, children, and young women.

The women and children in the neighborhood are too scared to come over.

Arctic Martial roared, "Get over here! Do you think I don't know where you live? If you don't come over, I'll show you what's what!!"

At less than twenty years old, Beijiwu already possessed the imposing aura of a tiger roaring through the mountains.

Before long, a group of timid women and children came over with frightened expressions.

Looking at the sacks these people were carrying, and the sickles some of them were holding, it was clear they were not going to leave anyone else a way to make a living.

Aunt Li watched Beijiwu nervously. As Ai Dake's next-door neighbor, she naturally participated in the retrieval activity and was the first to take action.

"Give it to me!" Arctic Martial forcefully snatched a sack of wheat from the old woman's hands.

Li Hong's mother held on tightly with both hands, refusing to let go.

Upon seeing this, Beijiwu slapped him.

Snapped! !

Aunt Li winced in pain, her teeth loosened, and her hands went limp. Her mind went blank for a moment. Bei Jiwu picked up a heavy sack of wheat and yelled at the other women and children who were about to cry, "You got the grain, so you'll do the work for that amount!"

"I'm here to harvest the wheat. Each of you must tie five bundles of wheat before you leave. If anyone tries to run away, I'll beat them to a pulp!"

"Did you hear that?!"

The children hid behind the women, who quickly said, "We heard you!"

Men, women, and children who had rushed to gather wheat upon hearing the news from afar now stood at the edge of the field, dozens of meters away, and dared not approach.

Beijiwu dominates Kitada Village all by himself!

Beijiwu was harvesting wheat when he heard the sound of horses' hooves. He looked up and saw five or six people riding towards him.

"Arctic Warrior! How dare you bully my mother?! I'll fight you to the death!"

Bei Gong Dingbian, riding on horseback, cursed Bei Ji Wu.

Seeing this, Beiji Wu was too lazy to pay attention to him or explain.

You can't exactly say that you were just being kind-hearted and couldn't bear to see Ai Dake's family struggling to make a living, so you stayed up late at night to help them with farm work, gave them food, helped with the work, and even helped drive away the robbers, all for three acres of land that they could take anywhere they wanted, right?
Beijiwu himself regretted helping that good-for-nothing; it would be better if that kind of person died.

His four sons died, so be it. He was incompetent to have had so many children. Did he expect the village to raise them for him?

Even if you help this coward once, he'll only kneel down and beg for mercy in the future. You must have been out of your mind to help such a piece of trash.

Bei Gong Dingbian, the three Bei Tian brothers, and another strong man in his thirties from the village came together. With many people, they were able to overcome their weakness. When they saw that Bei Ji Wu was not responding in the field, they immediately had evil intentions.

"Let's attack together! Let's avenge what happened last time!"

"it is good!"

The six men picked up weapons; some took wooden sticks, some took sickles, and others took hoes and pitchforks.

Bei Gong Dingbian's weapon was a bow and arrow. He was skilled in archery and horsemanship, and he specially prepared this iron bow to deal with Beiji Wu.

Four out of the six people harbored extreme hatred for Arctic Martial Arts, and now that Arctic Martial Arts had bullied their own children and brothers, they could no longer hold back!

Arctic Martial sensed danger. He glanced at the group of people, then at the group of more than twenty women and children standing in the field in the distance, and at Ai Dake who had just arrived.

Ai Dake stood there for a few seconds, then quietly retreated.

Arctic Martial Arts is truly disappointed in this kind of person.

Reasoning with them is useless. Beiji Wu knew that even if he tried to reason with Beigong Dingbian and the others, they wouldn't listen.

"Second Brother Ma, Third Brother Ma." Bei Jiwu looked at the two men in their thirties. "How's First Brother Ma?"

Ma Lao Er and Ma Lao San stared wide-eyed at Beijiwu.

"You...what did you say?"

The Kitada brothers and Kitamiya Teiben looked at the man beside them with suspicion and instinctively kept their distance.

Ma Lao Er and Ma Lao San nervously swallowed, looking at Bei Ji Wu who was standing there quietly.

"What do you mean?" Old Ma's palms were sweaty, and the hoe he was holding had become slippery.

Beijiwu calmly said, "Last time, someone tried to rob me, and I killed them. There were six people involved."

"I'm not arguing with you because I'm afraid of you. I'm just thinking about what will happen to the other hundred people in this village if the six of you die. How should I handle this?"

All six of them stared at Beijiwu in fear, none daring to take another step forward.

At this moment, the father of the three Bei Gong brothers shouted from the crowd behind, "What's going on? What's wrong? We're all from the same village, don't ruin the harmony."

Kitada squeezed through the crowd and, seeing everyone carrying weapons, quickly pressed down on the fork in his son's hand. "Put it down! Put all your weapons down! Are you trying to rebel in the middle of the night?!"

Kitada's face was covered in sweat, and his back was cold.

The village only has a little over a hundred people. If Beijiwu can kill six people, he could really massacre the entire village if he really sets his mind to it.

Kitada had heard of massacres of villages many times and had seen several villages that had been emptied out. Even the land where everyone was standing had been cleared out several times.

The three Kitada brothers were the first to lay down their weapons, followed by Kitagong Dingbian, while Ma Lao Er and Ma Lao San simply threw away their weapons.

Beijiwu said, "Aida couldn't cultivate this land, so he sold it to me. Just now, your family came to my land to collect grain. It's only right and proper that you help me with some work. Old man Beitian, don't you think that makes sense?"

“That makes sense.” Kitada wiped the sweat from the corner of his eye. “We’re all from the same village, so I think we should just let this matter go. I’ll have them return all the grain they found later.”

Beijiwu pointed to twenty acres of land and said, "Three acres of this land are mine, and the rest belong to Ai Dake. Since everyone is here today, let's just say that Ai Dake, that good-for-nothing, sold his wife and daughter to me. I don't care about his land. I will pay the taxes and clean up the land I took. Now, everyone can be a witness. The three acres of land I'm standing on, which are adjacent to Old Man Li's house, will all be mine from now on!"

If Ai Da Ke refuses to come out during a fight, then he will never be entitled to any help from Arctic Martial Arts again in his life.

Kitada Ne didn't want his sons to die; if his three sons died here, everything would be over.

The Ma brothers were also terrified and dared not look at Arctic Martial Arts.

After learning that Arctic Wu had killed people, the other women and elderly people dared not take advantage of him.

With Kitada's intervention, everyone quickly left this place of trouble.

Beijiwu also went back to sleep, and when he passed by Aidake, he handed him a sickle.

"You can take back your land yourself. I don't owe you anything. If you ever dare to come near my house again, I'll make sure you have no descendants!"

Beijiwu dropped his sickle, carried a sack of wheat back to sleep, and ignored the good-for-nothing.

(End of this chapter)