“It’s now the morning of the 28th day. Altogether, you’ve been gone about one and a half days.
“If you can’t use time currency to offset the time difference in the ruins of time, you’ll have to be very careful the next time you go in and investigate the problem with the time flow!”
Hearing the information Su Mo provided about the ruins of time, Zhong Qingshu’s face was at first surprised, but then she patted her chest with a sense of lingering fear and muttered to herself.
“It’s lucky that you were the one who entered the ruins. Otherwise, if it was me facing such a perverted task, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to accomplish it.”
“Still, only you could have ensured the survival of all those humans living there!”
Even if Su Mo had purposely hidden a lot of the details and only vaguely described what the world in the ruins of time looked like, as well as the requirements to clear the mission in the ruins, Zhong Qingshu had already guessed most of the details.
Saving all of humankind.
It sounded like a romantic and very noble heroic mission.
However, if this mission were really assigned to someone other than Su Mo, unless that person possessed truly great luck and strength, they definitely would not be able to finish it within a few days.
“It was still okay. There definitely are other ways to resolve the mission. It’s just that I chose the most straightforward one.”
Seeing that Su Mo did not want to speak further, Zhong Qingshu wisely did not continue asking and started talking about the hard work that Candlelight Shelter’s inhabitants had put in after Su Mo left.
After receiving King Kong, even though they lacked Su Mo’s inspiration, the refugees still meticulously followed the previously made plan and exceeded expectations by completing the second day’s mission.
After a day of land reclamation, another 90-plus mu had been reclaimed. Together with the previous amount, they had reclaimed a little over a hundred mu of land.
Moreover, most shockingly, the land was not only reclaimed, but the refugees even assigned their own people and manually plowed the land a second time, picking out the stones and weeds.
Fighting for their own survival, everybody was naturally incredibly hardworking. They kept working until nine in the evening, before being forcibly instructed by the four “extremely helpless” prison guards to rest and eat.
“Good people! There probably isn’t a team out there as enthusiastic as ours!”
After chasing the last person, who was reluctant to leave the soil, back to his room, the four prison guards huddled together, shocked as they stared at the beads of sweat forming on each other’s heads.
However, this was still far from over!
Over 70% of the people had eagerly left their rooms at 5 in the morning, before even the sun had risen. They yelled as they picked up their tools and dashed out into the fields amid the dimly lit sky to clear out their own part of the land.
When the three excavator operators got up, they were stupefied!
Tens of people had forcefully used manual labor to plow five or six mu of land in the morning, with just the hoes in their hands!
“In other words, they only have to work until this time tomorrow to have completed the 200 mu we previously agreed upon?”
Hearing Zhong Qingshu’s words, Su Mo’s eyes looked dazed.
This… The farming combat spirit in every Huaxian’s DNA had been activated by a buff. It was simply far too terrifying!
According to the time, it was currently the morning of the 28th.
The 29th, and then the 30th.
The moment 12 midnight passed on the 30th, the welfare disaster would begin and would last throughout the three days of 31st, 1st, and 2nd.
Based on how things were progressing, he would have to enter the secret trading realm to trade things the day before the disaster, and the airdrop rewards would be sent out too, so the time Su Mo had to cultivate excellent-quality plants was actually less than two days.
“Uh-huh! We can tidy up all this land tomorrow. Once your seeds arrive, we can plant them all at once before the disaster arrives.”
Taking out her notebook, Zhong Qingshu carefully drew a bird’s-eye view map that corresponded with the farmland they had reclaimed.
Although the drawing was a little crude, one could tell that the land was the shape of a neat square. Within that square were countless smaller squares, divided into around a hundred or so areas.
Each person was responsible for their own area, and then Su Mo would be paid
“rent” according to the average value.
If their planting did not go well and they harvested less grain, but still had to pay a large rent sum, there definitely would not be much grain left for them.
On the other hand, if they prepared accordingly, and surpassed the average value, they could take more for themselves and save the extra rations!
Driven by this kind of personal motivation, some people might have slacked off in the civilized era, but in the Doomsday Wasteland, it greatly increased everyone’s enthusiasm to perform instead.
“Alright. Since you’ve already made a plan on your side, I won’t interfere. As for the seeds, I’ll think of a plan.”
In order to operate King Kong over the past few days, pretty much all of the diesel reserves that had been saved in the shelter these past few days had been used as fuel.
If the final harvest was poor, that would be a big loss indeed!
Feeling a sense of urgency, Su Mo lost the inclination to continue chatting with Zhong Qingshu. After hastily ending the conversation, he instructed the workers to drive King Kong over.
The distance of the fields to the Underground Shelter was about a hundred kilometers. If he were to travel back there on foot, he did not know which day of what month he would arrive.
While everyone gazed at him respectfully, Su Mo stepped up into King Kong’s backseat and instructed the workers to follow the path.
The excavator still had to be used for work, but giving him a ride along the way was not a problem.
With the special ability to recover daily, any damage to the excavator could basically be offset by the daily repair value.
Sitting in the backseat, and taking advantage of the long-distance journey, Su Mo began to close his eyes and rest.
After half a day’s work, once the operator announced their arrival, the Deep-sea Shelter had already appeared in his field of vision.
Furthermore, in the distant horizon, Su Mo even saw the familiar Moore and Oreo, who had been waiting for a long time.
“Okay, you can let me off here. Hurry up and go back. Work well. Your role is vital to our success!”
Patting the operator’s shoulder and sensing his excitement, Su Mo smiled. Standing on King Kong’s step bar, he hopped down.
In the distance, Oreo clearly saw Su Mo’s figure in the distance.
Howling and woofing at the same time, she ran over.
Moore also patted his own bear head and walked over, hugging his stomach.
“Alright, alright. I only left for a day; why are you both acting so pitiful!”
Based on the ruins of time description, Moore and Oreo had fallen into a void, where the time that passed relative to the outside world was just one second.
However, Su Mo could enter the ruins of time and escape the exclusion and limitations of the outer world’s ruins.
The two little ones could not. The moment it hit the two-hour mark, they followed Zhong Qingshu and were teleported out of the ruins.
Luckily, Oreo’s sixth sense was strong nowadays. When she sensed that Su Mo was not in danger, she took Moore with her, and the two of them crossed the plains from the entrance of Candlelight Shelter to travel back.
For two consecutive days, the stubborn Oreo sat on the hill in front of the Underground Shelter; no matter whether it was day or night, staring into the distance.
The hungry Moore could only sit dejectedly at the side, hoping in his heart that Su Mo could hurry back.
He hugged the dejected Oreo and heard Moore’s stomach growling, chuckling at his embarrassed expression.
The long-lost feeling of returning home flooded his heart.
After telling Zhong Qingshu a bunch of nonsense and going through Oreo’s “lecture”, Moore had sufficiently recognized his error.
Seeing this adorable big guy’s performance, Su Mo was tickled pink. He patted Moore’s shoulder, then walked forward as he held Oreo.
Having received Su Mo’s forgiveness, Moore’s mood turned much better. He hastily chased after them, smiling foolishly as he skipped along.
No matter whether it was a golden house or a silver house, none could compare to being greeted by one’s own dog at home!
With his two small companions in tow, the sadness he felt at leaving Hope Shelter in the ruins of time also lessened somewhat.
The sturdy alloy gates and the 15-meter tall hill—although it was not as wide as Hope Plains, it brought about a sense of safety and security that was hard to put into words.
Pushing the gate open and sensing the slightly murky air, Su Mo waved his hand and activated the wind of the lion clan. In the span of two or three breaths, the murky air cleared up.
“I was wondering why you two little guys wouldn’t go in. So you couldn’t open the gate!”
Seeing Moore’s curious expression, Su Mo simply took them outside again and demonstrated how to open and close the gate.
Though the clever bear warrior had low EQ, his IQ was not lacking.
After Su Mo demonstrated it once, he could do the same and quickly stepped up to complete a series of actions that could be considered very complicated for other animals.
“Huh, it seems Moore isn’t just a warrior. He’ll be a good helper for everyday work too!”
Glancing at Moore, who could not take his hands off his new toy, Su Mo smiled, opened the stone door, and walked in.
Time was running out, so he hastily made a rather luxurious lunch for himself and the four hungry little ones…
Su Mo quickly moved all the seeds to the workbench and started carefully investigating methods of growing higher-quality crops.
Planting was a craft, especially if one wanted to cultivate seeds of the right variety and direction—that was an even more difficult task.
He calculated that, according to the requirement of 4,000 catties of seeds on 200 mu of land, he had to prepare and plant close to four mu of land in order to gather enough seeds.
“4000 catties is a big problem!”
At present, the base only had the 50 catties of high-quality disaster-resilient spring wheat seeds he had received from the prize draw.
Steeling his heart while glancing at the extremely terrifying prices currently on the trading channel, Su Mo gritted his teeth and forked out the money to buy six different varieties of spring wheat seeds.
He bought one catty of each. Based on the market price, Su Mo had to pay ten times the amount of food in weight.
For just these six catties of seeds, he had to fork out 60 catties of white flour. Including the delivery fees, it was a great loss.
“Everyone says that I am monopolizing the market. Now I know what it’s like to have someone else monopolize the market.”
Seeing the six bags of seeds that appeared before his eyes, Su Mo’s head hurt a little, and he summoned the system to check out their properties.
Six different types of seeds, in addition to the types of seeds Su Mo had previously received, could be divided into three different directions.
The first direction was naturally the high-yield direction that everybody on Earth was familiar with. One of the varieties, called Early Spring 6, had an incredible average yield of 1320 catties per mu.
Of course, this kind of high-yield crop was also a double-edged sword. While the production quantity was increased, the taste of the wheat was sacrificed. Once it had been processed into flour, the taste of the food products developed from it was much worse than other varieties of wheat.
The second direction was the disaster-resistant direction. These kinds of seeds had more balanced properties. Its yield could basically be maintained between 900-1000 catties per mu, and its taste would not be too bad. Adding in its strong disaster-resistant abilities, quite a few people chose to plant this variety of crops.
The third direction was the least popular one on the market at the moment, the kind that the least number of people planted.
This variety of spring wheat was called Beautiful Spring 2. Its yield was just a little over 700 catties per mu, but on its property panel, it was clearly labeled as delicious.
This property of being tasty and delicious was naturally not welcomed by humans who were still fighting for food and warmth at the moment.
Still, in the hands of most wheat traders, the price of this kind of wheat was not too different from the other varieties.
“The variety… We should definitely head toward the high-yield direction. The more wheat produced, the better!
“As for the crops being disaster-resistant, if they can be crossbred, that would be even better!”
The moment he thought about crossbreeding, Su Mo shook his head helplessly and tossed the thought to the back of his mind for now.
Crossbreeding a new variety was something to be done by true, great experts. A half-hearted guy like him was far from being able to achieve such things.
“I have a title and a buff. I can only try planting the first round of crops and observe the effects. Dragging it out longer isn’t much of a plan either!”
After considering it for a long time, Su Mo got himself ready to stand up and take the seeds for an experiment in the fields but, as he opened up the storage space, he spied the epic-level treasure chest lying obediently in the corner instead.
The epic-level treasure chest that shone with golden light seemed to have healing abilities, instantly turning Su Mo’s slightly sour mood into a happy one instead!
