Chapter 686: Chapter 459: The Wedding
They made it just in time the day before the Lantern Festival; the rotation personnel finally arrived.
Commander Yang introduced them to Jiang Hu, then stayed on for two more days so the newcomers could get familiar with the environment and procedures, and to explain some things they needed to pay attention to.
The glutinous rice balls for the festival were homemade, using the few hundred jin of glutinous rice that Xiao Hua had brought back earlier.
Back then they hadn’t calculated for an extra five hundred people, so while everyone did get to eat tangyuan, each person only had a few.
On the morning of the seventeenth day of the first month, Commander Yang brought his men over to say farewell to the Jiang family, then led his own troops back.
Five hundred guards, dozens of carriages, packed full to the brim. Fortunately, the horses and carriages had been brought by other people, so the ones they themselves had prepared earlier ended up not being needed; they gave up a bit of the deposit and returned all of them.
The five hundred Imperial Guards taking over the shift not only brought their own luggage and dry rations for the road, they also hauled a lot of rewards from the palace.
It was said that what they brought were all ordinary items; the truly valuable things were left at the Marquis’ residence in the Capital City.
As for these carriages heading back, naturally they also carried what Xiao Hua had prepared—gifts sent on behalf of the Agricultural Marquis to the Emperor and Empress.
All these years, this was actually the first time they were sending New Year gifts to the Emperor and Empress.
When Commander Yang saw what it was, he was so shocked he almost forgot how to walk; on the way back, those two wine bottles were wrapped in quilts, layer upon layer, inside and out.
He absolutely refused to allow even the slightest bump or scratch!
With so many carriages on the road, even if they traveled day and night, it would still take more than half a month; it was far too easy for accidents to happen.
No wonder Commander Yang was so tense.
Soon after, Xiao Hua and Xiao Wei’s fourteenth birthday arrived as well; Wei Ziang specially took leave from General Song and rushed back to celebrate Xiao Hua’s birthday.
Fine, and also Jiang Wei’s—after all, the two of them were born on the same day.
After the New Year, the temperature gradually rose, and the potatoes Jiang Wei had been carefully tending could finally have their thatched shelter removed during the day to bask in the sun.
During those few days of the New Year, the potatoes happened to bloom with little pale purple flowers, but unfortunately they didn’t bear any fruit, which left Jiang Wei very disappointed.
Fortunately he then remembered that the potatoes he’d planted as seed grew in the ground, and he also had the gift his sister gave him, which included an introduction to potatoes, so he pulled himself together again.
After all, even though he had the materials, they were just written information; even knowing his sister wouldn’t lie to him, without growing them himself he still felt uneasy.
Back then, the gifts Xiao Hua had given the three of them had all been read in private, and they hadn’t discussed them with each other at all.
In other words, whatever each person’s gift was, only the recipient, plus Xiao Hua and Wei Ziang, knew.
Even Jiang Hu, Second Aunt, and the others had no idea.
Strictly speaking, that wasn’t entirely accurate, since Liu Ze’s had indeed been shown to Xiao Xue.
But everyone tacitly chose not to ask or say more.
After the twins’ birthday, everyone got busy again.
The five hundred Imperial Guards on rotation were under a commander surnamed Zhou, who, like Commander Yang, also had a straightforward temperament.
During the two days of handover, they learned from Commander Yang and the previous five hundred men what everyone was doing in Anning Village.
So now, Commander Zhou led his soldiers to throw themselves into the fields, working up a storm alongside everyone else.
Just like before, half the men patrolled the area nearby, and the other half worked in the fields.
Maybe it was that bowl of tangyuan during the Lantern Festival, or maybe the food in Anning Village had successfully won them over. In any case, work was just like training—both were sweaty jobs, no different.
Besides, only by working together could they all eat such delicious, fragrant polished rice and fine wheat flour; otherwise, they could only eat the old rice sent from the Capital City.
So even those who didn’t know how at first earnestly asked others for guidance; they learned properly, and in just a few days they were getting the hang of it.
Because the land had been wasteland before, all kinds of grass seeds had fallen there for many years; with the Spiritual Spring water’s blessing and the rising temperatures now, not only were the crops growing well, the weeds were doing even better.
So the first thing everyone had to busy themselves with now was weeding; whether it was open ground, rapeseed fields, or wheat fields, everything had to be weeded.
Just like last year, every month on the two days he went home, Wei Ziang would bring back lots of meat—especially tasty meat—to reward everyone.
Usually they also sent people specially to nearby towns to buy supplies, so the people working the fields never lacked meat.
But compared to what Wei Ziang brought back, it naturally still fell far short.
After spring began, Ling’er kept flying around whenever she had nothing to do, one claw clutching a chunk of potato, casually planting a few pieces in places a hundred li away.
As for whether anyone would harvest them, that didn’t matter.
The important thing was that when the potatoes had a bumper harvest this year, and later on when the common folk along the border regions started planting potatoes, they would be amazed to discover that—oh—this thing really did grow on the hills behind their own homes.
This was exactly the effect Xiao Hua was going for.
In the third month, the fields grew even livelier; all the radishes and cabbages were harvested, and with corn and sorghum being raised in seedbeds, it was the height of the busy season when a burst of delighted shouts came from the Jiang family’s back courtyard.
"They’re ripe, they’re ripe! Dad, Mom, Big Brother, Second Sister, Sis, come quick and see—the potatoes have grown, and they’re huge!"
Everyone had just come back from the fields and were drawing water at the well to wash their hands and faces, getting ready to eat.
Xiao Xue had come back early and already finished cooking, so they could eat as soon as they got home.
Jiang Wei, as usual, went to check on his potatoes first. Seeing that the potato vines had all withered, with a few potatoes having grown so big they’d pushed up out of the soil, revealing patches of smooth, earthy-yellow tubers.
They looked exactly like the ones he’d found in the mountains last year.
Jiang Wei got excited right away and started shouting at the top of his lungs.
The others hurried over when they heard him, and Xiao Hua grabbed the hoe she’d used that morning on the way.
"They really did grow. Quick, Xiao Wei, your hands aren’t washed yet anyway—dig them up and see how they turned out."
Jiang Wei didn’t refuse; he took the hoe and went at it with all his might.
Beneath one potato plant was a big cluster; counting the big and small ones together, there were over a dozen, and by the look of it they weighed at least three to five jin.
Jiang Wei was even happier: "These were planted from potato pieces with eyes. I never thought they’d grow this many."
So it was true—there really were plants that used pieces of their tubers as seed.
The potato pieces he’d cut up before had already disappeared; they must have been completely absorbed by the potato plant.
He remembered very clearly which ones had sprouted from cut potato pieces and which from whole potatoes.
Without anyone else needing to help, he relied on his memory to divide the potatoes into two piles: one big pile and another that was only a small fraction of the first.
When they’d dug them all up, Jiang Wei was thrilled.
"Dad, Mom, at the start there were only six potatoes that were cut into pieces and planted, and another six that were planted whole."
The result was plain as day: as long as the pieces had eyes, cutting potatoes into chunks could produce far more potatoes, and it saved seed to boot!