Protect Our Patriarch

Book 1: Chapter 68: Rise up! Elder Salted Fish

A quick calculation shows that Zhuxi Lake is not a large lake, but it has an area of ??about tens of thousands of acres. Clearing one meter of silt on average requires six or seven million cubic meters of silt...

Wang Shouzhe has seen the dredging boats of this world before.

They are manually dredged with a dredging rake, and one dredging boat can only hold about ten cubic meters of silt.

The silt that is usually cleaned up itself has good organic matter. After mixing with other fertilizers and fermenting, it is a better agricultural fertilizer that can supplement the fertility of farmland.

After all, the silt at the bottom of rivers and lakes in this era does not accumulate heavy metal pollution.

But the problem is that six or seven million cubic meters is sixty or seventy thousand boats! If ten dredging boats work all year round, each boat clears three boats and fills three boats every day, it is about more than 20,000 days of work, and it takes 60 or 70 years to work without rest!

And those silt shrinks greatly after drying, and the swamp itself is mostly mud, and it can probably only fill up two or three thousand acres of good land at most. The entire project is estimated to cost more than ten thousand Top Gold.

After consuming a lot of manpower, material resources, energy, and time, it is not cost-effective to cultivate one acre of land with three or four Top Gold.

If Zhuxi Lake is cleared to a depth of two meters, the cost will double, and it will be more difficult to clean up as you dig deeper. Even if you buy good land, it only costs two or three Top Gold to buy an acre of land.

However, the account is not calculated so simply. With the large-scale dredging of Zhuxi Lake and the increase in water storage capacity, large fish can be bred, and even spirit fish can be released. Considering the long-term interests of the clan, relying solely on wild fishing is not a long-term plan, and the source of income is not stable.

If economically valuable fish species, or even spirit fish species, can be bred on a large scale, this is the correct way for the clan to open up its fundamental industries. The investment is huge and time-consuming, but once successfully built, it will be a continuous source of wealth for the clan.

Moreover, in order to encourage the Xuanwu family to open up land, the government exempts grain tax for the first ten years of newly opened land, which is also a considerable saving.

Of course, with Wang Shouzhe's personality, even if he wants to do this huge project of dredging, filling, and cultivating land, he cannot spend 60 or 70 years doing it. If it really comes to that time, even great-grandchildren will have come out...

This project plan has been brewing in his mind for a long time.

He originally planned to start small-scale implementation next year, and then gradually increase the scale of the project, striving to deepen Zhuxi Lake by two meters and fill the swamp with four or five thousand acres of good land within ten years, gradually creating the clan's next large-scale farm with tens of thousands of acres of breeding water and thousands of acres of good land.

The annual output value should definitely not be low, and the total cost should be able to be controlled within 30,000 Top Gold."But now, the plan has changed a bit!

Standing on the black sail boat, Wang Shouzhe stood with his hands behind his back, looking out at the desolate wilderness on both sides. He had the appearance of overseeing the family's millennium foundation.

Wang Shouye, the seventh generation of the Wang clan, sat in the cabin of the boat. His originally anxious heart gradually calmed down as he watched his fourth brother standing tall with his hands behind his back. He felt admiration and respect in his heart.

I, Wang Shouye.

In the future, I must become a man like my fourth brother, standing tall and proud.

...

The black sail boat docked at the pier of the Xingsheng Farm. Led by the clan's main official, Wang Shouzhe and Wang Shouye went to find Wang Xiaohan.

At this moment, Wang Xiaohan was carefully tending to the precious 20 acres of spiritual fields, carefully removing the weeds inside. Those weeds were just sprouting out of the seedlings and were immediately pulled out, not allowing them to absorb any extra nutrients and spiritual energy.

With the same acreage of spiritual fields, if they were carefully cultivated, even if they produced only half, it would still be a considerable resource.

Wang Shouzhe didn't disturb him, but patiently waited.

This Xingsheng Farm was the second farm developed by Ancestor Zhouxuan. It had 2,000 acres of fertile land, a small livestock farm, and a small field specifically for growing fruits and vegetables. The most important thing was that Xingsheng Farm had opened up 20 acres of spiritual fields.

The terrain here was surrounded by a small branch of the Yumai Mountains, and the original land had many broken rocks. Theoretically, it was not a very suitable land for cultivation.

However, Ancestor Zhouxuan chose to cultivate here and even dug a canal to bring in water for the farm. This was because there was a small spiritual vein in the mountain stream.

With a spiritual vein, the spiritual energy in the vein could be condensed and not dispersed by building a Gathering Spirit Array around it. The spiritual spring water could then be used to irrigate the land, and with various agricultural techniques, the land could be gradually developed into a suitable place for growing various spiritual plants.

With their own spiritual fields, they could produce their own spiritual rice, and the Xuanwu clan would truly have its own foundation.

Therefore, Ancestor Zhouxuan named this farm Xingsheng Farm, with the hope that the clan would prosper.

This small spiritual vein and spiritual spring could support up to 60 acres of spiritual fields at the most. However, at that time, the Wang clan was unfamiliar with the technology of growing spiritual rice, so they only built one Gathering Spirit Array and opened up 20 acres of spiritual fields for the time being."I had planned to wait until Wang's Clan's technique for planting spirit rice was more mature before opening up the remaining forty acres of spirit fields. However, before the plan could be implemented, Wang's Clan suffered a great disaster.

Afterwards, the hearts of the clan were in turmoil, and resources were scarce.

Investing in spirit fields was also a big investment with slow returns. They were all thinking about cultivating an Ancestor of the Lingtai first, and then slowly accumulating money to develop the spirit fields and accumulate the clan's heritage.

However, the first heir to be cultivated, Wang Dingtian, the second elder of the family, either due to a psychological trauma caused by a great disaster when he was five years old, or because the elders of the family pressured him too much, or because he was too anxious himself, unexpectedly lost his life at the age of twenty due to demonic cultivation.

It should be noted that Wang's Clan's "Xuan Yuan Jue" has always been known for its fairness and harmony, and even if we go back to the Wang's Clan in Longzhou a thousand years ago, there were few who practiced demonic cultivation.

After the clan mourned, they focused their attention on Wang Dingyue, the second eldest son of Wang's Clan, and Wang Xiaohan, the sixth son. The elders who had learned their lesson did not put too much pressure on Wang Dingyue, but instead cultivated him methodically.

More pressure was actually focused on the direct descendants of the clan with extraordinary talent, Wang Xiaohan. However, when he started on the path of the Lingtai, it was already relatively late. It was not until nearly twenty years ago that Wang Xiaohan secretly sold off a lot of the clan's property in exchange for the "Heavenly Spirit Pill".

He failed to advance!

Later, Wang Dingyue died in the outer regions.

This matter is also strange. Originally, Wang Shouzhe thought that the clan was really at its wits' end and could not afford to buy the Heavenly Spirit Pill for Wang Dingyue. But recently, Wang Shouzhe has been thinking carefully about it, and there is still something not quite right.

Why did Ancestor Long Yan sell her personal spirit treasure, the Turtle Scale Treasure Shield, to raise resources for him, Wang Shouzhe, but not buy it for his late father, Wang Dingyue?

In addition, after the former head of the clan died, Ancestor Long Yan did not show herself, was she afraid of being caught doing something wrong? There is a high possibility that she took action during this period.

If Ancestor took action, then who did she take action against? Could it be that it wasn't just Wang Dingyue who went to the outer regions, but there was also Ancestor accompanying him?

If this speculation is true, why did Ancestor and the elders go to the outer regions at such a critical moment? Could it really be just for external publicity, to raise resources to seek opportunities?

It must not be.

Wang Shouzhe has reason to believe that Ancestor and the elders are hiding a big secret from him. And that secret should be very important to Wang's Clan! Perhaps, there is also an opportunity to advance to the Lingtai Realm in the outer regions, but it was because his late father, Wang Dingyue, failed?The more he thought about it, the more he felt it should be so. Otherwise, Long Yan's Ancestor would have chosen to sell the Turtle Scale Treasure Shield and exchange it for the Heavenly Spirit Pill for his late father Wang Dingyue, instead of taking risks together in the foreign domain to seek some broken chance.

If he had the opportunity, he would try to pry some information from the Ancestor's mouth.

As Wang Shouzhe was pondering, the Sixth Elder finished dealing with the weeds and walked out of the forest field. Seeing Wang Shouzhe and Wang Shouye waiting outside, he couldn't help but smile and ask, "Shouzhe, how come you're here? Have you been waiting long? Why didn't you call me earlier?"

Although Wang Shouzhe couldn't see through his cultivation, he could feel a sense of depression and twilight in his spirit. It was very obvious that he had not yet recovered from the failure of his costly attempt to break through the Lingtai Realm years ago. He was only sixty-five years old, but he looked older than the Fourth Elder, Wang Xiaozhi, like a real old farmer.

"Sixth Grandpa, hello." Wang Shouzhe greeted with a bow.

"Grandpa." Wang Shouye rushed up.

"Oh, you little rascal, how come you came to see Grandpa with your Fourth Uncle?" Wang Xiaohan picked up Wang Shouye, teased him for a few moments, and then let the side branch manager take him away to play.

Afterward, Wang Xiaohan invited Wang Shouzhe to sit in front of his secluded little thatched cottage and have a cup of ordinary tea. "Shouzhe, did you come here to persuade me to walk the Lingtai path again?"

Previously, Wang Shouzhe had sent a servant to deliver the Peiyuan Pill and spirit stones, and wrote a letter to him about his plan. However, Wang Xiaohan refused, saying that his ambition had grown old and he only wished to build a thatched cottage in front of the spiritual field to guard it for a lifetime.

Wang Shouzhe didn't blame him for this kind of salted fish mentality.

He took a sip of the ordinary tea, looked around, glanced at his humble thatched cottage, and said with a smile, "No, Shouzhe just came to bid farewell to Sixth Grandpa and take one last look at the spiritual field left by Ancestor Zhou Xuan. After all, Shouzhe is just a dying man."

"What?"

Wang Xiaohan almost crushed the cup in his hand, exclaiming angrily, "Wang Shouzhe, what nonsense are you talking about?"

An astonishing aura burst out from his body.

...