Harem Legion: Queens of the Apocalypse-Chapter 174 One Crystal Grows a Fortune

On the 13th day at Willowglen Village, dawn hadn’t fully broken when Alex and Ian were already moving. They handed out ginseng seeds to the Ice Regiment and the prisoners, explaining how to plant them and what to watch out for.

House to house, Ian did the rounds himself. For a moment, he felt like he was back in the days of peace, being a real village chief again. It wasn’t bad.

By 9 a.m., Magnus personally led over 2,200 people out - close to the full 2,500 they had. They marched to the foot of a hill they’d burned earlier. The ground was still bleak and ashen, and a few straggling mutated beasts had returned these past few days. Not many. Magnus scanned the area through a scope, then turned to Ashton. "Ashton, take a hundred people. Clear the hill."

Ashton gave a simple nod and moved off to gather her team.

Then Magnus sent Molly and Lucy with two hundred more to sweep the base of the hill. He didn’t want any twisted creatures crawling in once the ginseng started growing.

After that, things moved fast. Over a thousand people dug pits, sowed seeds, tamped down soil. In just over an hour, the entire hill was planted.

Magnus stood alone on the summit, while the women of the team and the prisoners waited below. He looked around, then glanced up - clusters of massive black mosquitoes floated like dark smears in the sky.

He took a deep breath of the clean morning air and pulled out a pale green Earth Crystal from his pocket - already prepared. He tightened his fist and crushed it.

Now or never, he thought.

The moment the crystal shattered, threads of pale green mist began to drift upward, light and constant. Magnus raised his brows - his first time using an Earth Crystal. He’d tried Metal, Nature, Water, Fire, even a Life Crystal. But never Earth.

The green mist didn’t sink into the soil. Instead, it hovered midair, curling into a loose cloud. The cloud grew, thicker and wider, hovering steadily above his head, spreading until it covered a full thirty acres in soft green haze.

That’s it?

The last wisps floated out from the broken crystal, drifting into the mass above. Magnus stared upward, then looked down again - nothing seemed to have changed.

At the foot of the hill, over 2,000 people all noticed the green cloud at the same time. Every one of them looked stunned.

Just as the final curl of green mist slipped into the floating cloud, it moved.

The entire thirty-acre cloud began to drift downward, slowly, silently. It swallowed Magnus - head, shoulders, feet - then kept going, wrapping the hill in its rolling mist.

Watching it felt eerie. It was like a massive sheet of green fabric from the sky was slowly draping itself over the land.

It only lasted five minutes, but it felt like an hour. No sound, just that eerie hum of silence as the ginseng hill disappeared under the green.

Then the last edge of the green cloud sank into the dirt and vanished.

For a moment, there was stillness.

Then, before their eyes, the ginseng seeds pushed up through the soil one by one. Sprouts turned to stalks, leaf buds stretched out and unfurled, rising fast, stopping only when every leaf stood firm and still.

Alex was the first to snap out of it. He yelled at the top of his lungs, "They’re ripe! Damn it - they’re all ripe!"

A chorus of gasps burst from the female squad members, while the captured men stood there, dumbfounded. Some rubbed their eyes over and over, refusing to believe what they were seeing. Everyone turned to look at Magnus standing atop the small hill, eyes filled with awe. In that moment, he wasn’t just a man to them - he was something like a god.

Though he was impressed, Magnus had more or less expected the result. His eyes lifted toward the sky. The black swarm of giant mosquitoes seemed uninterested in the ginseng. Good - since ginseng grew underground, they couldn’t do much to it anyway.

Acting like this was his own harvest, Alex led the charge, shouting excitedly as he began digging. Megan and Amber snapped out of their daze and barked orders to the prisoners and female members alike. Everyone quickly got to work.

Digging up ginseng was supposed to be a delicate task - you had to keep the roots intact and all that. But Magnus had already made it clear last night: speed was everything now.

As a result, one scene kept playing out - Alex and Ian, along with a few village elders, weaving through the workers and yelling things like, "Damn it! What are you doing? This isn’t how you dig ginseng! You’re wasting it! Wasting!"

But none of the women gave them the time of day. The men didn’t care either.

With so many people, the job was fast. By two in the afternoon, Magnus used two more Earth Crystals. The 60 acres of ginseng fields? Harvested and cleared.

That evening, after dinner, Magnus pulled Alex and Ian aside to ask about ginseng storage. The trickiest part, it seemed, was drying them out to keep them from rotting.

Back when Alex first came to exchange news with the Ice Regiment, Magnus had promised him two bottles of good wine. Alex hadn’t touched them since. But with the team leaving tomorrow, tonight he finally cracked one open with the village head. A little drunk, he gave Magnus a half-hearted complaint.

"Captain Magnus, you said you’d help chop firewood for a day, remember? But now you’re leaving. When’s that happening, huh?"

Magnus chuckled and stood up. He pulled four Water Crystals from the chest on the heated brick bed and handed them over.

"Alex, Chief Parker, thanks for everything these past few days."

Alex blinked at the crystals. Honest as ever, he frowned. "Wait, didn’t we say two? Why four?"

Beside him, Ian seemed to catch on. "This about not chopping the wood? You’re making up for it?"

"Yeah - partly," said Magnus with a grin. He headed outside, came back carrying a woven sack, and dumped it on the floor. Inside was a pile of loose, black soil.

Alex squinted. "Ain’t this the same soil from those stones?"

"Just watch," Magnus said, smoothing the soil into a thin layer. He scooped some into his palm, fetched a candle, and slowly brought the flame close to the black dirt.

Nothing. No spark, no smoke - just silence.

Every woman in the room, Alex, and Ian all stared... completely confused.