After three days of sun exposure, the clay on the surface of the fields began to lose moisture.
The day before, it was still a smooth, flat surface of yellow mud.
By the afternoon of the third day, cracks began to spread outwards from the center of the field.
The crop-eared veteran squatted on the ridge of the field and watched for a long while, turning back to shout to Sun Qi, "Brother Qi! Come quick! The ground is cracking again!"
Sun Qi hobbled over on his crutches, looked down, and his expression changed.
"That patch of saline-alkali land cracked exactly like this last time, and after it cracked, white stubble sprouted up."
News spread quickly, and in less time than it takes a stick of incense to burn, dozens of people had gathered by the field, chattering away.
Some said the yellow river mud was useless, some said the salt underneath the ground couldn't be suppressed at all, and others had already started cursing.
Lin Siniang came from the east carrying a wooden rake, and seeing the commotion, she slammed the rake onto the ground.
"What's all the shouting about now?"
"Commissioner Lin, the ground is cracking."
"It's supposed to crack." Lin Siniang squatted down, pinched a piece of cracked mud, crushed it, and placed it in her palm to examine. "Mud shrinks and cracks when it loses moisture, it's the same principle as dried mud."
"Who among you hasn't plastered a wall? It'd be strange if it didn't crack after plastering."
She stood up, brushed off the dirt from her hands, and waved to Sun Qi. "Go, bring all the wooden rakes. We start raking the fields today."
Sun Qi didn't move. "How deep should we rake?"
"Two inches." Lin Siniang held up two fingers to indicate. "Just break up the cracked pieces on the surface, don't touch the mud layer suppressing the salt underneath."
"If anyone is heavy-handed and digs too deep, I'll whip them with the rake teeth."
Sun Qi agreed and called people to fetch the tools.
When the wooden rakes hit the ground, Lin Siniang personally supervised.
Coincidentally, The severed-finger man had a lot of strength, and his first strike went deep, immediately getting his rake back stepped on by Lin Siniang.
"Shallow! Shallower! Do you think you're plowing the field?"
"Two inches is too shallow, what's the difference between this and scratching an itch?"
"Scratching an itch is exactly right." Lin Siniang snatched the rake from his hands and demonstrated it herself, the rake teeth gliding just above the surface.
She only loosened the top layer of dry, cracked mud, leaving the moist yellow mud layer underneath untouched. "See that? Just this depth, not a fraction more."
The severed-finger man muttered as he took back the rake and mimicked her action, this time escaping a scolding.
After raking for most of the day, by the time work stopped in the evening, Sun Qi led people to the storage carts to fetch seeds.
There were three large carts covered with tarpaulins. Sun Qi lifted the tarpaulin of the first cart and was stunned.
"This..."
Dozens of sacks were stacked on the cart. He lifted one, weighed it in his hand, untied the opening, and poured a handful into his palm.
It was filled with finely chopped grass seeds, yellowish-green, smaller than sesame seeds.
"What is this stuff?"
The people nearby also crowded over to look. The second and third carts were uncovered one by one, all filled with identical sacks.
Only in the corner of the last cart were three small sacks of broomcorn millet seeds stacked, pitifully few compared to the dozens of sacks of grass seeds.
Sun Qi's face darkened.
"Alfalfa." Lao Tong squeezed over from the back, twisting a few grass seeds in his palm to identify them. "These are alfalfa seeds."
"Alfalfa?"
"Horse feed?"
As the news spread, the crowd erupted.
The dark-faced woman was the first to jump out, standing by the cart shaft with her hands on her hips, her voice louder than a brass gong. "I knew it! How could the imperial court be so kind as to let us grow grain? They're just using our miserable lives to grow fodder for the military horses!"
"That's right! That's exactly what they did with the military farms last time!" Someone joined in the uproar. "First they said we'd grow grain, then it turned into growing grass to feed horses. No one cares if people starve to death, but if the horses get thin, someone comes to investigate!"
"Are we people or livestock? We can't even get enough to eat, and yet we have to feed the horses!"
Sun Qi didn't join in the cursing, but he stood motionless by the cart, his expression worse than if he had been cursing.
By the time Lin Siniang returned from the fields, it was already getting dark.
She saw a circle of people gathered around the storage carts, with scattered grass seeds on the ground.
"Disperse."
But no one moved an inch.
Lin Siniang pulled a wooden board from the cart and slammed it onto the ground.
She took two items from her bosom and placed them on the wooden board.
On the left was a section of alfalfa root, washed clean, over a foot long, with dense fibrous roots spreading in all directions.
On the right was the root of a broomcorn millet seedling, short and shallow, altogether three or four inches.
"Come and look."
The crowd pressed forward.
Lin Siniang pointed to the alfalfa root. "This thing goes over a foot deep into the ground. It can loosen the hardened saline soil, and the nodules on the roots can fertilize the field."
"Cut the grass above, let the roots rot in the ground, and next year the fertility of this field will double."
Her finger moved to the broomcorn millet seedling root. "Millet roots are shallow, three or four inches. If you plant it when the ground underneath is still saline soil, the roots will hit the salt layer and won't survive."
She looked up and swept her gaze around. "Who in this world doesn't know you want to eat grain? But I want it even more than you do."
"But this land can't grow grain this year. Forcing it to grow is just wasting seeds."
"First we plant alfalfa to nourish the land. Once the land's fertility is up next year, the millet will survive."
The dark-faced woman was unconvinced. "Then what do we eat this winter? Drink the northwest wind?"
"Magistrate Xu said the official grain can last another two months."
Lin Siniang didn't argue with her, but turned to look at Lao Tong. "Lao Tong, have you calculated it?"
Lao Tong took an abacus from his sleeve and flicked it a few times. "I have."
"If we replant late millet now, even if it all survives, less than forty percent will ripen before the frost. The grain harvested won't be enough to feed five hundred people for half a month."
"But alfalfa grows fast. We can cut a crop of grass before autumn, dry it, and sell it for money to buy grain, or feed it to livestock. More importantly, the land nourished by alfalfa roots over the winter will be more than twice as fertile as uncultivated land come spring."
He placed the abacus on his knee. "Planting late millet is a gamble, and nine times out of ten you lose. Planting alfalfa is building a foundation, slow but steady."
Lin Siniang took over the conversation. "Starting tomorrow, we divide the fields and mark them out."
"Seventy percent of the land will be sown with alfalfa, twenty percent will continue to be exposed to the sun to nourish it, and the remaining ten percent will be fenced off specifically to protect those five broomcorn millet seedlings for propagation and seed retention."
"This year's task is not to harvest grain, but to bring the land back to life and keep the seeds."
In the end, the crowd couldn't really say anything.
Because people knew all too well in their hearts:
What could they do in this world anyway? Better to just follow Magistrate Xu and Lin Siniang...
Early the next morning, the sowing began.
Among the five hundred people, those who could bend over did so, and those who couldn't carried the seed sacks on their backs.
Those with great strength carried loads back and forth from the storage carts to the fields.
The limping veteran followed behind the sowers, using a wooden board to press the grass seeds into the loose soil.
A few women found broken sieves, sifted fine mud, and covered the seeds with a thin layer, just enough to hide them.
That night, a flattened wooden board appeared on the wooden stake in the seed preservation area, with names and times for night watch scrawled on it in charcoal.
Sun Qi was first, Old Zhao second, and The severed-finger man third.
Later, seven or eight more names were gradually added, stretching out to five days later.
No one arranged it, no one ordered it; they wrote it up themselves.
Seven days later, in Zhenbei City, at the Imperial Envoy's temporary residence.
Li Sheng handed the brief report sent from Yanmen Wasteland to Magistrate Xu's desk and stood to the side without leaving.
Magistrate Xu opened it, read two lines, and raised an eyebrow.
"She didn't plant grain?"
"No," Li Sheng said, his tone hesitant. "It is entirely planted with alfalfa, save for a palm-sized plot of land left to shelter the millet seedlings."
"Miss, I am a little worried... If word of this gets out, I fear the people in the city will curse us for trading human lives to feed horses."
Xu Qinghuan closed the report, picked up her brush, and wrote four words on the approval slip.
"Let her plant it."
