Chapter 9 Return to the Village

  The villagers of Zhangjiacun didn't know that Qin Yu was returning to the village today, but when they saw his figure in the fields, they all put down their work and came forward to greet him, surrounding him as he returned to the village.

  The wheat has been harvested, and the villagers are busy plowing the land to prepare for planting soybeans or millet. As for Qin Yu's twenty mu of so-called good land, it is actually barren land, but at this moment, it has also been plowed by the villagers and can be planted with soybeans or millet at any time.

  Qin Yu did have corn, unfortunately it wasn't seeds, only three, these were bought by Qin Yu when he was buying seeds, planning to bring them back and boil them for eating, but at the moment, Qin Yu could only hope that these three corns would ripen later, success or not depended on heaven's will.

  If it were mature corn itself, Qin Yu would have added corn to the betrothal gifts long ago and wouldn't be carefully serving three stalks of corn now.

  As for potatoes and sweet potatoes, sweet potatoes are fine, but potatoes are not suitable for planting at this time, it's just the hot season, however, they can still survive, just can't produce a high yield, even if they have sprouted, they can only be planted.

  Qin Yu could feel the enthusiasm of the villagers in Zhangjiacun, frequently nodding and smiling to greet them. When Qin Yu returned to Zhangjiacun, fifty-two students had already received the news and gathered together to welcome him back to the village. As soon as they saw Qin Yu, everyone knelt down and bowed in unison, "Greetings, benevolent teacher."

  "Alright, alright, everyone get up, everyone get up." Qin Yu said with great excitement.

  It's not easy, these little guys used to call me "mister" all the time, now they know to call me "teacher", although it means the same thing, but it sounds more intimate.

  Cheng Huailiang naturally didn't know what Qin Yu had done in Zhangjiacun, and he looked at Qin Yu with great surprise, not understanding why Qin Yu was so popular.

  Xiao Tao and Xiao Hong proudly puffed out their chests, the two of them not exchanging a word, their faces stern, occasionally stealing glances at Qin Yu. Now that they were Qin Yu's maidservants, they naturally had to put on a show, but unfortunately no one was paying attention to these two little maids' performance.

  Cai Langzhong was also quite excited, now Cai Langzhong's identity is the exclusive imperial physician of the Qin Manor, although this Qin Manor doesn't have a shadow yet, but Qin Yu is respected by people, as a follower it's also prestigious.

  It was the busy farming season, so Qin Yu naturally didn't want to waste the villagers' time. After simply saying a few words, he persuaded the villagers to return to their fields and get back to work. The children in the village were also asked by Qin Yu to go home and quietly write out the Three Character Classic and Thousand Character Essay, which would be tested the next day.

  Qin Yu introduced Cheng Huailiang and others to Cun Zheng, who was surprised at the time. Without Qin Yu's introduction, Cun Zheng proactively invited Cheng Huailiang to live in his home, thus saving a lot of explanation.

  Yongnian County to Zhangjiacun is not too far, but this road is still very bumpy. At that time, the road was not like the asphalt road in the previous life. Qin Yu's lower back began to ache slightly, which was also one of the reasons why Qin Yu asked the children to go home first.

  It was late at night, and Qin Yu lay in bed for a long time unable to fall asleep. As he watched his injuries get better day by day, the day of his departure for Chang'an also drew near. To be honest, Qin Yu really did not want to go to that place of trouble.

  Chang'an was the capital of the Tang Dynasty, a place people yearned for, but it wasn't very peaceful either.

  Let's just talk about Li Shimin's sons, when they grew up, which one wasn't involved in intrigue and struggle? Even several princesses followed the rebellion when they grew up. And that famous Longsun Wuji, none of them were easy to deal with.

  Qin Yu sincerely did not want to have any connection with these people, he just wanted to be a carefree and worry-free small landowner.

  Furthermore, Li Shimin suppressed the aristocratic families for imperial power, and Qin Yu's position in Chang'an was another problem. Cheng Yaojin was a staunch supporter of Li Shimin, so Qin Yu would inevitably be seen as supporting Li Shimin and be viewed with hostility by the aristocratic families, making it difficult to do anything without being restricted, which went against Qin Yu's original intention.

  In the end, Li Shimin himself was also a member of the aristocracy, and suppressing the aristocracy could not be done perfectly, nor did he dare to do so. More than 90% of the Tang Dynasty was in the hands of the aristocracy. If suppression was too severe, the Tang Dynasty would be unstable, but if it was not suppressed, imperial power would also be unstable.

  Li Shimin was able to achieve that step in history, which is not bad. Unfortunately, he was later ruined by Zhangsun Wuji, resulting in the emergence of Empress Wu Zetian.

  These are still a bit far away, and for now, there is one thing in front of Qin Yu that is giving him a headache - the mountain villa worth 50,000 taels that the Cheng family bought in the southern suburbs of Chang'an.

  Just yesterday, in a private conversation, Qin Yu only learned about the aesthetic view of the Tang Dynasty through Xiaotao. In people's eyes, Cheng Lingyun was very ugly, and Qin Yu could imagine that he must have become a shameless person who clung to the powerful, making people disgusted, and even ordinary people might think so.

  This is nothing in modern times, it's just a normal thing. If it were modern times, Qin Yu wouldn't hesitate to take it, that's for sure.

  It's not going to work in ancient times, you can imagine what kind of discrimination he will face after arriving in Chang'an, and what kind of gaze he will receive. In other people's eyes, Qin Yu is probably the son-in-law of the Cheng family, and entanglement is now his main theme.

  If one has a noble status, is wealthy and powerful, then it's a different story. But Qin Yu was just an ordinary scholar, not even a small landowner, with only twenty mu of land that had just been reclaimed by the villagers of Zhangjia Village.

  Qin Yu tossed and turned, unable to fall asleep for a long time. The mosquitoes that kept buzzing around made it even harder for him to sleep. In the end, he finally welcomed the morning sunlight with a sigh.

  San Zi Jing, Qian Zi Wen, the children of Zhangjia Village all wrote very well, with neat handwriting. Qin Yu looked at them carefully and praised everyone before starting to explain math.

  Each number has a corresponding ancient character explanation behind it. Children have already memorized and understood them in their free time, which is much simpler and easier than ancient characters.

  However, when it came to addition, subtraction, multiplication and division operations, Qin Yu spent a lot of time guiding the children to understand, and the progress suddenly slowed down.

  As time went by day after day, Qin Yu taught children while starting to get anxious about food's monotony.

  The food in the Tang Dynasty was really not much, at least Zhangjiacun was like this. At first, because it was purely natural food, Qin Yu ate with relish, but after eating many times, Qin Yu missed the taste of the dishes from his previous life, spicy, sour, sweet, bitter and cooling, but Qin Yu didn't like to eat them.

  No matter in Zhangjiacun or Yongnian County, Qin Yu only had one kind of dish, salty and very light.

  Logically, the Tang Dynasty had already introduced chili peppers and garlic. Even carrots and cucumbers should have taken root in the Tang Dynasty, but Qin Yu didn't see a single one, not even a shadow. Moreover, the Tang Dynasty also had vinegar, but he really hadn't seen it before.

  Qin Yu asked the village head, and only then did he realize that in this era, people had trouble getting enough to eat. What's the point of talking about growing vegetables? Of course, some people do grow vegetables, but mostly they choose to grow napa cabbage and radishes. Why? Because they have big yields.

  As for carrots, cucumbers, garlic and peppers, Village Zheng had never heard of them before. Vinegar was also often used directly as a drink, not for cooking.

  The big head, this reason made Qin Yu helpless for a while, but Qin Yu did know that his 20 mu of land had been cultivated. Just in time, the village chief asked whether to plant soybeans or chestnuts, and Qin Yu said straightforwardly, "Plant vegetables."

  Qin Yu returned to the house, took out all the seeds from the cart, of course, the packaging bags absolutely could not be exposed, otherwise the village chief who didn't know many characters would guess the meaning on it, there were instructions on the packaging, and the material was plastic. Qin Yu had already prepared to destroy the evidence.

  Qin Yu tore open the packaging, pouring the seeds into a cloth bag that Xiao Tao had specially prepared for him on the bed, while carefully calculating, each type of seed was packed in a separate cloth bag.

  "One mu of pumpkin, one mu of winter melon, hmm, this one is bigger, one mu of red pepper, one mu of green pepper, tomatoes, hmm, enough for two mu, two mu of eggplant, cucumbers, two mu, this one is more troublesome, one mu of hyacinth bean, also troublesome, huh? Isn't this watermelon? This black-hearted merchant, not bad, at least there's watermelon to eat."

  "The watermelon seeds can probably cover two acres, but unfortunately the timing is not right now, so I'll have to give up for the time being. The onions are one acre, sigh...I bought too few of them, if only I had known to buy a whole bag of each." Qin Yu let out a sigh after pouring out all the seeds.

  Qin Yu took a look at the ripe corn that was still cooling in the shade, shook his head, and then took out his lighter to set all the packaging bags on fire, destroying the evidence. Fortunately, there were no text labels on the tarpaulin of the cart, otherwise they would have had to burn it too.

  The smell of burning plastic is not good, Qin Yu opens the door to ventilate and takes the opportunity to discuss with Cun Zheng about farming. Qin Yu knows the method but doesn't know when he can start farming himself, so he has no choice but to ask for Cun Zheng's help.

  Murata heard Qin Yu's request and readily agreed, also blaming Qin Yu for being too polite. Before long, the villagers were summoned one after another by Murata. Upon hearing that they would be growing vegetables for Qin Yu, each of them readily agreed.

  The seeds were distributed, and the villagers left the village chief's house with the planting method told by Qin Yu. Soon, more than half of Qin Yu's fields were planted with the vegetable seeds he brought.

  Sweet potatoes can be planted in the ground, but potatoes cannot. The timing is not right. Qin Yu had to take care of them carefully, but most of the time it was Xiaohong who took care of them, and Qin Yu just dropped by occasionally.

  Heavenly blessings, just when irrigation was needed, the clear sky that had lasted for over a month floated with dark clouds, and before long, heavy rain poured down, making the villagers of Zhangjiacun happy and no longer worried about irrigation.

  "I said, brother-in-law, what's burning in your house? It smells terrible." Cheng Huailiang finally caught up with Qin Yu when he was resting. Braving the heavy rain, he rushed to Qin Yu's house, wanting to find Qin Yu to drink together. These past few days had been suffocating him.

  Qin Yu told the children something, he didn't understand, the more he listened, the more confused he became, so he stopped listening. Here in Cheng Huiliang, there were no familiar faces, and he only knew Qin Yu. Although he had only met Qin Yu a few times, Qin Yu was his brother-in-law after all, who else could he turn to?

  This guy directly carried a jar of wine over, completely disregarding Qin Yu's injuries that hadn't fully healed yet and weren't suitable for drinking.

  Taking a glance at the wine jug in Cheng Huailiang's arms, Qin Yu helplessly rolled his eyes. With just one look, Qin Yu knew that there was at least twenty kilograms of wine in the jug.

  The wine in the Great Tang Dynasty is not strong enough, Qin Yu came to the Great Tang on the first day and drank a pot of it, purely treating it as water to drink, not afraid of getting drunk at all.

  But the wound has not healed yet, and it's about to be cured. Cheng Huailiang finally couldn't help but ask himself to drink again. Qin Yu's eyes lit up instantly, "What an opportunity! I was just thinking of not going to Chang'an."

  When Qin Huailiang came to Yongnian County again, he had looked for Qin Yu to drink together, but Qin Yu always made excuses that he couldn't drink. This was indeed the case, as drinking was not beneficial for his wound recovery. However, in the Tang Dynasty, there wasn't such a saying, and who wouldn't want to drink from large bowls and eat meat from large plates? Especially for martial artists like Cheng Yaojin.

  Getting injured on the battlefield is a common occurrence, and no one has ever seen anyone stop drinking because of an injury. Cheng Huailiang said Qin Yu was being overly sentimental, while Qin Yu said Cheng Huailiang was being reckless. The two had never been short on arguing with each other, but in the end, it was still Cheng Huailiang who suffered a crushing defeat.

  Qin Yu wouldn't joke about his own life, and after drinking a few mouthfuls, he said that the wound on his back was throbbing in pain. This scared Cheng Huailiang, who hastily called for Dr. Cai. Qin Yu raised an eyebrow and blinked, and Dr. Cai instantly understood what he meant, saying that the injury had relapsed and would require another month of recuperation.

  Cai Langzhong said a month, but it was because Qin Yu secretly raised a finger, and didn't know that Qin Yu actually wanted him to say a year.

  Cheng Huailiang was naturally suspicious, but Cai Langzhong swore solemnly because Qin Yu's injury was cured by him, so he had the right to speak. In the end, Cheng Huailiang believed in Cai Langzhong's words with some doubts.