Awesome! That was exactly what I was hoping for when I used a bug to fill the lake instead of waiting for the rain to do it for me.
I woke up bright and early and headed to the courtyard to have my morning cup of coffee beneath the [White Tree of Remembrance]. I had fresh spring rolls, which I had requested since I wanted a light meal. My mom would have called it popiah since that was what it would have been called in Singapore. It was a very simple dish of finely shredded vegetables and meat rolled into a crêpe wrapper. The main ingredients were bamboo shoots, carrots, lettuce, peanuts, pork, and peanuts. I asked for a mildly spicy sauce, and the Demon Chef obliged in his own way by giving me a popiah that had a slow-burn type of sauce. The fresh spring roll was hardly spicy at all when I first bit into it, but as I continued, the spiciness slowly built up until it was almost, but not quite, too spicy for me.
We were out of the house very early in the morning since that was the best time to work outside in this hot climate.
“Guys, let’s plant our berry bushes after I build this, then we can return to the castle where I can explain what this is in detail,” I said to my apprentices. “For now, just know that the System said it will rain soon and I should build more reservoirs.”
“That’s good. More rain is always better here.” Lari looked up at the sky. “There aren’t that many clouds.”
“I bet more will be blown here by the wind soon,” said Mo.
“Okay, wait a minute while I build.” I used the [Empyrean Earth Transformer] again in the way the System recommended and bought more [Construct-O-Matic Turbochargers] from the Cash Shop. Since the build was smaller, the time needed was shorter.
[Time Left: 00 Days 11 Hours 59 Minutes]
“Done. Up the hill to plant more bushes.”
We walked in pleasant, comfortable silence, all of us dressed in our work clothes which were soft, airy cotton robes, loose trousers, and wide-brimmed hats. Cutie bounced beside us, and I kept an eye on her to make sure she didn’t get dehydrated. The sun was still low in the sky, and it was hot, but not unbearably so. We climbed up the hillside, weaving between the young trees and saplings, and pausing occasionally to point out a few interesting spots. A light breeze stirred the leaves above, casting dappled shade that provided momentary relief from the heat. Small stones occasionally shifted under my footsteps, creating tiny avalanches behind me. I was very heartened to see that there were a lot of birds today, since I knew that they were great seed spreaders.
Today we spread out and tried to cover a larger area by spacing out the planting areas more. Everyone knew what to do, therefore, there was no need for me to supervise the others closely, and so we worked independently in separate but side-by-side locations on the hillside.
When we finished, we went back to the house in high spirits. As always, working on the desert revivification project was deeply satisfying.
“The hill is so alive now!” Mo had picked up Cutie to keep her away from a large ant mound. “There are tons of insects and birds.”
“And lizards and snakes,” added Kharli.
“Rodents, too,” said Lari. “They come out at night.”
I shuddered. “I don’t like mice.”
“No farmer does,” said Kharli.
“I’d love to see the elk again. They were pretty nice.” A herd of elk had wandered into the valley in my first year here, but they were far north of us right now. I took a bamboo container from my inventory and drank some of the water in it. “I think I want some ice cream.”
“The sorbet last night was great,” said Mo.
“Ice cream is better,” said Lari.
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“I also vote for ice cream.” Kharli took Cutie from Mo. “And Cutie needs water.”
“I’ll make sure she bathes and cools off,” I said.
At the castle, we went to our respective room to wash up and change. I handed Cutie off to Yinuo, who was happy enough to take care of her for me. Once we were all ready, we met in the Music Room, a cheerful and bright place with large windows draped with white curtains tastefully edged with silver. A huge crystal chandelier hung from the vaulted ceiling painted with cherubs, and the shelves on the walls were filled with elegant musical instruments like a harp, lute, violin, chimes, and so forth. I removed the piano that was in the center of the room and replaced it with a wooden work table. I gestured for Lari, Kharli, and Mo to gather around it before triggering the System display.
Adventure Incarnate had this as an in-game lore book with lots of text and illustrations. Needless to say, I, as a gamer looking for entertainment, never bothered to read it. Thankfully, here it manifested as a 3D hologram of Skyfang Hill and Blossom Valley instead. Mentally clicking on one of the items in the model brought up a brief text explanation of it.
“Isn’t it cool?” Grinning, I bent down to peer more closely at the display. “Just check on each spot to see what the System says about it. I’ll make it bigger.”
I slid the size controls up until the model filled the entire surface of the table. Then I gave the kids a few minutes to explore it and read the text before summarizing its contents.
“Do you understand it?” I asked.
Lari scratched his head. “The System says there will be one inch of rain this month. Doesn’t that mean the lake will only get one more inch of water?”
“Not at all.” Thinking fast, I placed a smaller table beside the large one and demonstrated the concept with nine glasses of water and a test tube mounted on a rack. “Now see these glasses? This is the hill. You know the lake has a much smaller surface area than the hill. This glass tube is the lake. Now pour the water from the glasses into the tube.”
Lari did as I instructed, but he had to stop before finishing because the tube was full. “I get it now! I thought it was one inch on the lake, not one inch of water everywhere.”
“Yes, and if you pour in more of the water, it will spill, right? That’s what will happen to the lake.” I put the small table away and gestured to the display. “Watch as I turn on the rain.”
Blue light fell on the model and flowed down from the higher to the lower parts of the landscape. Now we could see the water pooling where the lake was and overflowing into the spillway which led to a small pond lower down the valley. The pond had its own long spillway which curved along the natural ridges of the land and terminated in a bigger pond. That pond also had a drainage channel that emptied into a low-lying field.
“Will there really be this much water?” asked Kharli. “I don’t think there’s a lot of rain here.”
“The ponds aren’t that big. Maybe they’re shallower than the lake,” said Mo.
“We’ll have to see if all the reservoirs get filled. Even if they don’t, it’s always good to get as much of that blue gold as we can. Watch this.” I split the model into four using the System controls so that we could see the cross-sections. “The last pond seems to have both shallow and deep parts.”
Lari poked the model with a finger which passed right through it. “I think they will all be filled. Like the tube.”
“Teacher, I have a question. Why doesn’t the System just build a bigger or deeper lake?” Mo poked it with her finger, too.
“I have no idea.”
My apprentices looked startled.
I shrugged. The System gave me a lot of info, but it’s not like it told me everything.
“We should ask Scholar Wu,” said Mo.
“That would be good, but… we do have brains, too. Why don’t we figure it out?” I lifted the model into the air so we could see the bottom. Then I put it down again and added chairs around the table. “Let’s read the info again.”
I sat and thought about it while Mo sat beside me and Lari and Kharli walked around the model, looking at it from all angles.
“It’s because it’s prettier,” was Mo’s final analysis. “The System likes pretty things.”
Kharli shook her head. “No, read the text on the middle pond. One edge is shallow and lined with rocks to give wild animals, especially birds, a place to drink water and bathe.”
Mo looked thoughtful, her head tilted to one side and her gaze unfocused. “They can’t drink or bathe on the lake?”
“I know why.” Lari pointed at the model. “Look at the edge of the pond. You can see the bottom, which you can’t at the lake. Birds probably can’t drink if the water is too deep.”
I gave them two thumbs up.“Good! That sounds very plausible. I’m sure there are other reasons, too.”
Kharli recoiled in mock horror, throwing her hands over her face to cover her eyes. “Teacher, we told you that gesture is rude!”
“Oops, I forgot.” I hid my hands behind my back.
The kids then wrote down all of the System information and drew the model, which took the rest of the morning. We took a break for lunch, and we each did whatever we wanted for the rest of the day. Mo and Kharli had a sewing, embroidery, and gossip session with the maids in Mo’s room.
Lari helped the kitchen staff, under Deming’s supervision, build something called an earth oven, which appeared to be a pit in the ground filled with hot rocks. When I checked out what they were doing, the Demon Chef’s eyes were glowing red as he directed them to layer leaves on top of the rocks, then vegetables, then the meat which was also covered in leaves. I overheard them saying it would take all day to cook. Lari was laughing and joking with the men in a very friendly manner. He was a very sociable type of person.
I left them to their devices and used my portal to the Mines with Cutie, where an unexpected turn of events left me reeling.
“Cutie, what happened to the Mushroom Cave?!”
Author's Note:
- Is it the naughty mushrooms???
- Blue gold = water
- I hope you like this chapter. When farming in an arid region, water gathering is crucial, so there is a lot about it in the desert farm chapters.
- Advanced chapters on my Patreon!
- Thank you very much for reading.
- Please let me know if there are any errors.