Chapter 67

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As the head of the clan, Wang Shouzhe mostly needed to manage from the center and did not have to be involved in every step of the plans.

Therefore, during this period, he mostly stayed in the main residence, practicing cultivation or "bullying" one of his younger siblings.

With abundant resources, his cultivation progress was rapid, reaching the peak of the Sixth Layer. He only needed a few more days of refinement before he could attempt to break through to the Seventh Layer of the Qi Refinement stage.

However, today, he needed to take action.

After making arrangements with Wang Gui, he first summoned a child from the family.

Not long after,

A woman in her early thirties, with a gentle and beautiful appearance, led a boy of about ten years old to Wang Shouzhe's side hall.

"Chen has paid respects to the head of the family." The woman bowed. The boy, seemingly somewhat fearful, hid behind his mother.

"Sixth Aunt, no need for formalities, just call me Shouzhe." Wang Shouzhe returned the bow and invited her to sit, saying, "Please, take a seat."

This Chen was the wife of his sixth uncle, Wang Dinghai, and came from the direct line of the Donggang Chen family.

The Wang and Chen families had frequent marriages in the sixth generation. Two of the Ding generation married Donggang Chen women, and two of the Liu generation married into the Donggang Chen family.

Now, the two families were beginning to marry within the direct lines, making their relationship very intimate.

After the servant Wang Gui served tea, fruits, and sweets, he stepped aside.

Wang Shouzhe then began to chat with Chen, asking about her well-being. After a while, he turned his gaze to the boy and smiled, saying, "Shouye, how are your studies going recently?"

This boy was the youngest male of the seventh generation, Shouye, who was only ten years old and ranked seventh.

Why "currently"? Of course, the elders of the sixth generation, such as his third uncle Wang Dingzu and sixth uncle Wang Dinghai, were still young and strong, and might still have more children.

This was not without precedent. For example, his eldest uncle Wang Dingchuan had his fifth son, Wang Shouyong, at the age of fifty, truly showing his vigor in old age.

Of course, this also had to be credited to his eldest aunt, who could still have children in her forties and was particularly good at it.

Let's leave the side talk aside.

Wang Shouye was clearly shy and very respectful of Wang Shouzhe. Upon hearing this, he was immediately frightened, his face turning pale, and he tightly clung to Chen's clothes, saying, "Fourth Brother, it's, it's okay."

"Shouzhe, don't blame him; this child has always been shy," Chen explained somewhat awkwardly, "But he has been quite diligent recently..."

As she spoke, she glanced at Wang Shouzhe.

Wang Shouzhe understood. The seventh child had heard about the recent reputation of the "exam demon" and was afraid of being targeted by his fourth brother for an exam, so he had started to work hard early.

This was a good thing.

Wang Shouzhe sipped his tea, increasingly satisfied with the reputation of the exam demon. It was like a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of his younger siblings and the younger generation.

Fine, then let's conduct an exam.

Wang Shouzhe began to test Wang Shouye, starting from basic literature, basic mathematics, to understanding of body techniques and combat skills.

At first, Wang Shouye was terrified, his answers stammering and hesitant. After a while, encouraged by Wang Shouzhe, he began to answer fluently, showing that his foundation was solid and he had indeed been working hard recently.

"Very good, very good," Wang Shouzhe smiled in approval, "Shouye is quite promising. This is your reward." Wang Shouzhe directly gave him a reward of ten gold pieces to commend the first child to successfully pass his exam.

"Thank you, Fourth Brother." Wang Shouye's face turned red with excitement, and his eyes and speech became more confident.

The recent pressure from the exam demon had made the younger generation and the younger members of the family feel threatened. At this time, rewarding the outstanding ones would inevitably cause some envy.

Wang Shouzhe believed that the carrot and stick policy would make the young children of the family increasingly excellent.

Wang Shouye's good performance also made Chen very pleased and happy. Which mother doesn't hope for her son to excel?

After the exam, Wang Shouzhe turned to the main topic, "Sixth Aunt, I will have Shouye accompany me to Xing Sheng Farm to visit Sixth Grandfather." The implication was, of course, that she should not go.

Wang Shouzhe was not against Chen going, but he felt that as a male in the family, Shouye seemed to be overly dependent on his mother.

Look at Wang Luoqiu, who was only one year older than Shouye, already starting to challenge the heavens and the earth, and boasting about shouldering the responsibility of the family's rise alone.

Although Wang Shouzhe could not understand the connection between the family's rise and challenging the gods... Moreover, the strong sense of a "lonely girl" bearing the family's fate... made him want to hit her. Was she treating the entire family as a team of pigs?

But this did not stop Wang Shouzhe from appreciating Wang Luoqiu's energetic and ambitious spirit.

Therefore, Wang Shouzhe wanted to let the seventh child leave his mother's embrace early and quickly grow into a little man.

"Everything as Shouzhe says." Sixth Aunt Chen, although somewhat worried about the seventh child, still followed his instructions.

Subsequently,

Wang Shouzhe took Wang Shouye and left through the waterway in the back garden, heading to Xing Sheng Farm. He was increasingly fond of the waterway, which was peaceful and natural, with a broad view, allowing him ample time to plan for the family's future.

For example, on the waterway leading to Xing Sheng Farm, the sides were low-lying wetlands, covered with reeds this season. Some farmers from nearby villages would step through the mud to harvest the reeds.

Reeds, though not valuable, had many uses. For example, they could be dried and used to cover the roofs of some mud houses, or woven into reed mats to make the coming summer cooler. At worst, they could be dried and used as firewood.

However, reed fluff had little use, looking like cotton but lacking its insulating properties. If on Earth, reeds could also be used to make paper.

Some information in his mind, triggered by the scene, faintly appeared.

Wait?

Cotton, paper?

Cotton had been cultivated in the Great Gan Kingdom for a long time, and some noble families relied on large-scale cotton cultivation as their industry. If Wang Shouzhe wanted to intervene, it would not be easy, as those noble families had excellent methods to guard their cotton seeds.

But papermaking?

Of course, there was paper in this world, used for books, letters, and various other purposes. The quality of paper varied, and the prices were generally high. The reason was simple: papermaking techniques were monopolized by a few powerful groups.

He searched his memory and had not heard of any noble family in Changning having papermaking techniques.

The paper used by everyone was transported from afar by the Qian family's merchant guild.

The principle of papermaking was very simple, much easier than making monosodium glutamate or the Jenny spinning machine. Even Wang Shouzhe had a basic understanding of the steps involved in papermaking.

This was worth pursuing.

Wang Shouzhe secretly recorded this idea and included it in his future plans. At the same time, he had some ideas about the large areas of wetlands on both sides of the waterway.

The ancestors chose relatively easy-to-cultivate areas when they first opened the farm. For example, areas with abundant water, flat terrain, fertile soil, and good expandability, which could reduce the cost of cultivation.

As generations of ancestors occupied and expanded the advantageous areas, the remaining uncultivated land had various disadvantages.

For example, the wetlands on both sides were low-lying. Once it rained, they would form large-scale wetlands. Even during the dry season, they were full of mud pits.

To turn them into farmland, large-scale land filling would be required to raise the entire area. Even in a mechanized era, this would be a massive project, let alone in a world with underdeveloped productivity.

However, it was already difficult to find large areas of land in Ping'an Town that could be easily cultivated into good farmland. Either they would have to annex the land of independent farmers or encroach on the living space of rival families.

Therefore, every time Wang Shouzhe passed these two large areas of wasteland, he would think about how to develop them.

If the wetlands were to be filled, where would the soil come from, and how would it be transported?

Moreover, if the two large wetlands were raised, their water storage capacity would be lost. In the same total amount of water, this water would flow into the river and Zhuwei Lake.

If the rainfall was heavy, it could cause the river and Zhuwei Lake to overflow, leading to flooding.

The best solution would be to dredge Zhuwei Lake on a large scale and use the silt to fill the wetlands. This would increase the water storage capacity of Zhuwei Lake during the rainy season and gradually turn the wetlands into good farmland.

Additionally, the deeper Zhuwei Lake could be used for large-scale fish farming, truly achieving multiple benefits.

The only problem!

This project was too massive, requiring more human and material resources and time than the ancestors' project to open the Fenggu Farm.

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