The old things I repaired have become fine

Chapter 732 Copper Flakes, can I use some magic to fast forward a bit?

Shen Le took out the pottery fragments one by one, which had been cleansed of their demonic aura, mixed with clay, and fired in an electric furnace, and arranged them on the table.

His judgment was indeed correct. After this treatment, the spirit on the pottery fragments became exceptionally lively, as if it had awakened from years of slumber and begun to stretch its arms and legs, or sprout branches and leaves.

Not only that, they also began to stretch outwards, circle after circle, gently chirping, trying to find their brothers and sisters—or rather, the other fragments.

Gradually, even if Shen Le stood by with his hands folded, without touching or picking them up, he could see each piece of broken pottery vibrating on the table:

This is because their spirituality is not strong enough to make their bodies float. Otherwise, they could directly piece themselves together or move to where they should be!
Shen Le thought for a moment and built a frame with plastic boards, layer upon layer, five or six layers in total.

Then, pick up the first pottery shard you found, the one with the strange beast crouching on it, and place it on top. Then pick up another pottery shard that looks like a foundation and place it on the bottom.

I closed my eyes slightly, entering a semi-meditative state, sensing the changes in the energy of these pottery shards, inserting them one by one, moving them one by one:
"Hmm, this piece should be in the middle... this piece should be a little to the right... this piece should be on the lower left layer..."

Although many parts are still missing, and although what we have now is not enough to build a single pottery house, it is not without its advantages:
Once placed in a relatively correct location, their resonance became much stronger. Sensing their slightly more active and joyful changes, Shen Le couldn't help but smile.

It seems like it's fine as it is? No need to rush to plaster them and shape them into a complete form, just leaving them like this is fine?
He slowly moved the last piece of pottery in his hand, laying it flat, standing it upright, laying it flat again, and then standing it upright in a different direction.

As they were moved to what seemed to be the right position, the pile of pottery shards suddenly emitted a thick, yellow light with a "buzz," sweeping towards Shen Le—

Then, Shen Le felt his consciousness fall with the yellow light, and soon, the world before him changed:

"Ah... this time it's not about artisans anymore, is it an agrarian society...?"

Shen Le stood on a patch of uneven, barren land, looking around. Before he could even figure out what was happening, he received a slap on the back of the head:

"You little rascal, what are you standing there for! Hurry up and dig!"

"???"

Before Shen Le could even process what was happening, his hands had already reflexively raised something he didn't know and swung it down hard.

The recoil made his hands ache. He looked down and realized he was holding... a rake? A pickaxe? A hoe?
It doesn't seem to be either of those. The main body of this thing is a wooden stick, with a... or maybe another wooden stick, embedded horizontally at the end. I poked it into the ground, pressed it down hard, and dug up a little bit of soil.

Then poke it into the soil again, press it down, and dig up a little more soil.

This labor efficiency is not only incomparable to modern agricultural machinery, but also not even comparable to shovels, hoes, and picks.

Shen Le had only dug a couple of times when he felt pain in his hands, arms, back, and everywhere else.
Looking down at the excavated ground beneath his feet, he realized it was only about the size of one of his feet. With such a vast expanse of wasteland in front of him, how long would it take him to dig...?

Looking around, he saw the man who had slapped him and called him "dog" on his left, digging in the ground with the same tool he was holding.

The man was probably... thirty? Forty? Fifty? His face was tanned a deep brown, his profile was covered in wrinkles, and his hair, visible outside the cloth, was already gray.

The hand gripping the wooden stick bulged with veins, then released, then bulged again, beads of sweat forming a continuous line as they fell down.

On the right, a boy who wasn't even a teenager, but more like a child, was also squatting in the ground, digging frantically. His cheeks puffed out, his teeth gritted, he pressed down with all his might, again and again.

Wait, the one on the right, is she already fourteen? Why is she so short? So thin? Is she not full?

Shen Le felt large chunks of memories surging up. Yes, this body, or rather, the memories the clay figures were showing him, belonged to a farming family:
The man on the left is the father, the eldest son; the one on the right is the second son. Right now, the three of them are working hard to clear the land, hoping to create a small plot so they can at least grow a decent amount of millet next year.

No rent required, all the grain can end up in your own pocket...

"But clearing this land is too tiring..."

Shen Le, who had never cleared land before, or even done a single day of farm work, opened his palms, clenched them, opened them again, clenched them again, and continued to work diligently.

After only twenty or thirty digs, his palms were already throbbing with pain. He turned his hand over and saw that the edges of his palms were completely red. He gritted his teeth and continued digging. After finishing one long strip, several blisters had formed on his palms…

Sigh, farmers really have it tough; it's so hard to accumulate any wealth. Shen Le sighed, turned her head to the right, and saw the little boy swaying precariously, still working desperately.

Looking further to the left, wiping the sweat from my eyes and squinting to block the slanting sunlight, I could clearly see my father, his back hunched, already digging one and a half plots of land.

Shen Le racked his brains for a way to improve the ancient farming tools, but his hands could only mechanically move them one step at a time:
Turn over the compacted soil, lift up the hard soil layer, and bend down to pick up stones of various sizes.

The hardest part was finding the tree roots. You had to bend down and dig around them, back and forth. Finally, you had to desperately cut off the thinner roots and carry the larger stumps away...

"Why can't we use magic? If we use earth magic to clear this wasteland, it can be done in an instant!"

Whether it's clay or copper, they don't give us any special treatment! Shen Le silently felt annoyed, half angry at himself and half angry at the copper.

We've already upgraded in reality, and a large piece of copper has grown, so can't we get more support and speed things up a bit?
It seemed as if they had heard his thoughts, or as if the copper sheet had finally begun to exert its power.

Shen Le felt a jolt throughout his body, and he felt much more comfortable. His strength had increased significantly, and a warm current circulated through his body.

Without a second thought, he cast a healing spell on himself first:

My hands are killing me! The blisters are all bursting! Normally, someone who does manual labor shouldn't be like this; he must have just entered this body and used the wrong power…

Then, he patted his shoulders and back, just to make sure he could at least straighten up. Only then, leaning on the unidentified farm tool in his hand, did he stand up straight and look around:
Well, what he considered "wasteland" couldn't really be called wasteland; it at least had some boundaries. Wooden sticks were erected, holes dug, and tangled straw ropes and rags were tied to the sticks—

Sigh, these days, even clearing a piece of wasteland requires first demarcating the boundaries and marking the four corners. It's as if everyone's fighting over such a small, worthless plot of land…

Shen Le sighed, lowered his head, gripped the wooden stick, and leaned on the ground, slowly sensing the surrounding earth. After a pause, he suddenly lifted the stick and slammed it heavily into the ground:
"boom!"

It was as if a deafening explosion erupted from the ground, yet also as if no sound had occurred at all. Centered on where Shen Le stood, the earth trembled a few times and began rapidly "spitting" something outwards:
The hardened, compacted earth cracked open automatically. Cracks, ranging from coarse to fine, meandered across the ground like branching lightning bolts.

Then, stones ranging in size from the size of a human head to the size of a pea were spewed out, piling up into heaps of stones of various sizes;

Rotten or still-living tree and grass roots wriggled out on their own and piled up neatly to one side. Then, the earth began to churn, burying the hardened soil and turning up the moist black soil buried deep beneath. Small insects scrambled away in panic, attracting birds to fly down and peck at the food.

In just a short while, the small patch of land that would have required countless days of labor from the whole family to barely cultivate was transformed on its own, becoming soft and flat, ready to be planted with grain...

The entire wasteland fell silent. The father gripped his wooden stick tightly to avoid being knocked down by the shaking ground.
To Shen Le's right, a thin little boy stared wide-eyed at his older brother, stammering:
"Brother, brother, you know magic?"

Ah this...

Oh no, I should have toned it down a bit!

At the very least, they should have waited until everyone had left before sneaking over to cast the spell! How can they possibly hide it like this?
Fortunately, Shen Le, having learned from his previous experience repairing the porcelain tower, had become a semi-qualified charlatan. A thought struck him, and he knelt down with a thud, pretending to kowtow:

"May the Earth God protect us! May the Earth God protect us!!!"

Thump, thump, the two men beside him knelt down as well, the father kowtowing especially devoutly.

Shen Le lay half-prone on the ground and let out a long sigh:

Thank goodness, we finally got away with it... Next time, remember to keep it a secret!

With the help of this "miracle," the farm family's land reclamation progress was greatly accelerated.

Shen Le no longer dared to use magic openly, but she would sneak out at night to tamper with the fields she cultivated.

Water the parched land, collect the scent of growing weeds from the surrounding area, and infuse it into the crops in the fields, or simply gather the earth's essence to nourish the farmland...

"I'm farming in ancient times... I'm not farming in some cultivation sect or a market town where cultivators gather, am I?"

Complaining aside, work went on. Shen Le even condensed his golden energy to turn the scrap iron he collected into hoes and rakes:
Thank goodness, we no longer have to use sticks to turn the soil!
This level of skill is comparable to slash-and-burn agriculture!

After a year of hard work, the reclaimed wasteland yielded a surprisingly good harvest.

The golden ears of grain hung heavily, one after another, and the harvested grain filled two large wooden barrels—for the first time in so many years, they had so much grain at their disposal!

No rent, no taxes, the grain produced on the newly cleared wasteland belongs to their family!
"If we cultivate two more acres next year, we can find a wife for Gouwazi the year after."

The father, a rare sight, smiled, his rough hands stroking the plump grains of rice, his eyes filled with hope.

"If only the Earth God would bless us just one more time..."

However, their good fortune didn't last long. Just as the Shen family was planning for the future, a group of people suddenly arrived at the edge of their fields.

The leader was a middle-aged man dressed in the uniform of a yamen runner, who was respectfully accompanied by the village head and two middle-aged men dressed in silk, followed by several burly servants.

The yamen runner directed his men to drive wooden stakes into the four corners of the newly opened field, measure the boundaries, and then disappear like a whirlwind.

Then, the servants who had accompanied him rushed to Shen Le's house and started shouting:

"Where are they? Where is this family? They're farming our land, why aren't they paying taxes to our master?"

Shen Le was stunned for a moment, completely bewildered as to how such a blatant act of robbery could occur.

Beside him, the body's father hurriedly stepped forward to explain:
"This...this is our reclaimed wasteland! It's wasteland! How did it become your master's land? It was wasteland last year..."

"presumptuous!"

The servant who came to kick down the door shoved the trembling, gaunt man aside. Shen Le, burning with rage, shouted:
"The government has decreed that if the people reclaim wasteland on their own, the land belongs to whoever reclaims it, and no land tax will be levied for three years!"

Although he didn't know much about ancient laws, this decree for reclaiming wasteland was basically a common order across various dynasties, so it must be correct!
"You're saying that whatever you cultivate is yours?"

The servant glanced at him sideways, and the smear almost sprayed onto his face:
"Didn't you see it in the county just now? The land deed is in black and white, it says it's our master's land! You said it's yours, did you get the deed done at the government office?"

What?
Is there another one?
Shen Le was stunned for a moment. Muramasa quickly stepped forward and whispered:

“They’re right. To reclaim land, it has to be registered with the government before it can be considered land under your family’s name. Without registration, sigh…”

Muramasa's face was full of helplessness. He had seen this kind of thing far too many times.

This is a common tactic used by landlords with some power—after poor peasants have successfully reclaimed the land and the land has become fertile, they then forcibly seize it by virtue of their power.

Originally, if this were a small plot of land, with only one or two acres of barren land, where 10 catties of seeds could be sown and 50 catties of grain harvested, there wouldn't be such a rush to rob it.

Alas, alas...

This is blatant robbery!

Shen Le stepped forward, his eyes practically spitting fire. He secretly circulated the warm energy within his body, preparing to teach these bandits a lesson.

However, his father held him tightly in his arms:
"You little brat! No! No! We can't afford to mess with you..."

The middle-aged man, worn down by the years, spoke with despair and helplessness in his voice. His hands, roughened by years of labor, trembled but held him down with unusual strength.

Shen Le looked at the body of her father. Looking at his gray hair and deep wrinkles, a lump formed in her throat, almost bursting out of her chest.

But he eventually loosened his clenched fist—if he really did it, he would be branded a criminal, branded a traitor, and his whole family would die or flee.

He has martial arts skills, what has his family done wrong?
Where exactly is the key to breaking the deadlock and bringing happiness to one's family?
(End of this chapter)