If that’s how it is on modern Earth, what could you expect from a place like this?

Sure, this place had plenty of fruits and vegetables—basically everything you could find on Earth.

But come winter...

You could go look.

You could search every street in Taiping City.

All you’d find was cabbage, potatoes, and bean sprouts.

Of course, there was the fact that Aunt Zhao was resourceful enough to get her hands on seafood and wild game.

But that was all meat.

When it came to vegetables, the house really had nothing.

Sometimes Lu Yuan would get a craving and couldn’t even find a raw tomato to eat.

Besides the limited variety in winter, even the vegetables here in spring and summer weren’t actually that good.

Why?

Because no one knew how to cultivate them properly!

Take all the stuff people ate on Earth, like that super-sweet corn you could just boil and eat.

You think it started out that way?

And what about the roasted sweet potatoes sold on every street corner in the winter?

You’d break one open, and the flesh would be bright red and oh-so-sweet.

And then there were the newer seedless watermelons, like the 8824 Qilin.

Did any of these things start out that way?

Of course not.

You could say that on modern Earth, the fruits and vegetables people ate were almost completely replaced by new, major varieties every few years.

They were basically nothing like what came before.

Take corn, for instance. Modern corn is delicious when you boil it—so sweet.

But here? Delicious, my ass.

What was corn here?

Corn was just feed corn!

In the villages surrounding Taiping City, the cornmeal people ate year-round was just ground-up corn.

When you mixed that cornmeal with white flour, you got ’two-blend flour,’ which was what the city folk ate.

Was this cornmeal any good?

Go ask the farmers of Taiping City. You probably wouldn’t find a single person who’d say it was.

People on modern Earth got so tired of refined white flour that they’d switch to whole grains for a change of pace, maybe having a few cornmeal cakes.

And they’d eat them and think, ’Wow, this is delicious! So sweet!’

’It’s even better than steamed buns made from white flour.’

But that’s because they’d never tasted the original stuff. If they tasted the cornmeal from around Taiping City, they wouldn’t be saying that.

It was bitter and hard to swallow.

To put it bluntly, it scratched up your throat!

Then there were sweet potatoes. What were modern sweet potatoes?

They were the Yanshu No. 25, the latest variety crossbred and selected in 2012 by the Yantai Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Shandong.

And what were sweet potatoes like before that?

No matter how you cooked them, they were never sweet. They were full of fibrous roots that wouldn’t soften even after boiling, so tough you couldn’t even chew them.

And the 8824 Qilin watermelon was the same—the result of countless agriculturalists crossbreeding new varieties in recent years.

But here in the Divine Ling Empire...

...where would you find any agriculturalists?

There were only farmers.

Basically, all modern agricultural products had undergone countless improvements to become better and better, more and more suited to human tastes.

Of course, there were exceptions.

Take the tomatoes Lu Yuan was just thinking about, for example.

The tomatoes from the old days were sweet and sour, with thin skins and lots of juice—just like Aunt Zhao’s big fat ass~

The ones now had thick, tough skins, and were neither sweet nor sour, with no juice to speak of.

It was as if they were artificial asses pumped full of who-knows-how-much silicone.

’Can an artificial ass even compare to Aunt Zhao’s big fat one?’

Lately, Lu Yuan had been reading *Shennong* and studying up on crop crossbreeding techniques.

He was getting ready to give it a try.

Lately, Lu Yuan had even been thinking, ’Why don’t I build some greenhouses in Taiping City for the winter?’

’Then I could eat whatever vegetables I want, whenever I want, couldn’t I?’

The plastic film needed for the greenhouses would be no trouble at all for him to make.

He could just refine some Spirit Stone Residue with a few special materials.

It would be just like when he refined the rubber for the bicycles.

Simple!

And with the greenhouse construction methods from *Craftsmanship*, the whole thing would be ridiculously easy.

Having thought of this, Lu Yuan decided to get right to it!

It was around eight or nine in the morning.

Aside from Lu Yuan, no one else was home in the central courtyard.

Aunt Song and his wife were at the factory today and would be eating lunch there too.

Aunt Zhao, meanwhile, was in the Zhao Family’s storehouse tower.

She was off counting Spirit Stones.

Lu Yuan threw on his clothes, put on his dog-skin hat, and headed out the door for the Zhao Family’s storehouse tower to find Aunt Zhao.

Why was he looking for Aunt Zhao?

To get money, obviously!

He’d already spent all the money they had at home!

Buying materials for the factory, feeding over a thousand mouths every day...

...and building the commercial district around the factory.

What didn’t cost money?

Of course, Lu Yuan had his own money—a huge amount awarded by the system that he hadn’t touched.

But he didn’t plan on using that money. He was saving it in case of a future emergency.

Soon, Lu Yuan arrived at the Zhao Family’s storehouse tower by carriage.

The storehouse tower was right in the center of Taiping City.

It looked just like a massive blockhouse.

Zhao Family Travelers were stationed everywhere around it.

When Lu Yuan arrived, no one stopped him. After all, who didn’t know the Zhao Family’s new young master?

Lu Yuan asked around and learned that Aunt Zhao was in the large courtyard behind the blockhouse, so he went in immediately.

He found the room where Aunt Zhao was.

Inside, several accountants were flicking beads on long abacuses.

Aunt Zhao herself was sitting primly in a chair by the window, one leg crossed over the other, looking at a ledger in front of her.

The moment he entered, Lu Yuan put on the face of a perfectly well-behaved child and said:

"Auntie~"

’If you’re going to ask for money, you have to look the part, don’t you?’

It was like going to a friend’s house to borrow money. You have to go in, speak nicely, and be polite, right?

You can’t just go to your friend’s house to borrow money, KICK the door open with a BANG, plop down on their sofa, cross your legs, light up a cigarette, and then point at your friend’s wife and say:

"You. Go pour me a cup of tea."