85 Scarcity

For Wu Qingchen, the odd note he had sensed in Huang Xing’s handshake that morning, the so-called "Emperor’s Golden Shoulder Pole" concocted at lunch, and the lapse only minutes ago, when Huang Xing had forgotten to prepare the farm tools in advance—one and all, these things had already left Wu Qingchen rather dissatisfied.

Yet all those strange signs, all those lapses, all that dissatisfaction vanished without a trace the moment Huang Xing finally spoke of the enormous shift in the training plan.

To be completely freed from front-line manual labor!

"Really? Are you serious?" Wu Qingchen’s heart surged at once. "You mean I can leave front-line labor for good?"

"Of course it’s true. You heard me right."

Looking at Wu Qingchen’s excited face, Huang Xing’s smile grew even warmer. "...This is an already approved and already implemented plan passed by the ad hoc United Nations committee on celestial events. In practice, there’s almost no chance of it being overturned."

At this point, Wu Qingchen no longer cared about the United Nations or any resolution. With a near-snatching motion, he seized the training plan from Huang Xing’s hand, his feverish gaze seeming ready to set the thin document ablaze on the spot.

"Targeted instruction in standard field labor methods... which means..." Wu Qingchen’s finger stabbed hard at the first major item on the page. "If this is done, I won’t have to go back out to the fields and work anymore?"

"Right..." Huang Xing nodded decisively.

"Targeted instruction in treating and tending draft cattle... which means I won’t have to crawl into trash heaps to stare at a cow’s backside anymore?"

"Exactly." Huang Xing nodded again.

"Comprehensive use of forest resources... which means I won’t have to hug firewood and run into the woods to catch sheep, geese, and chickens anymore?"

As Wu Qingchen fired off his questions in a breathless rush, the excitement on his face making his urgency plain, the staff officers, experts, and soldiers standing nearby could not help but show pity in many of their expressions when they thought of the restraint and hardship hidden beneath those questions.

"Yes! That’s all correct!" When Huang Xing answered, his tone remained solemn. "...No more field labor, no more handling draft cattle, and no more chasing sheep, geese, or chickens!"

"To do all that, I just need to get this targeted instruction done?"

"No..." Huang Xing shook his head. "Mastering 'targeted instruction' is only one of the prerequisites..."

Wu Qingchen had not even had time to feel disappointed before Huang Xing continued, "...But don’t worry. The other prerequisites are also part of today’s training. If all goes smoothly, we can basically finish by this afternoon."

"Then what are we waiting for?" For the first time, Wu Qingchen found himself impatient to the point of restlessness about the training itself. "Let’s get started at once!"

"Good!" Taking back the training schedule, which had nearly been pierced full of holes, Huang Xing led the way.

Because they were trying to save every precious minute of Wu Qingchen’s time, the training team had always agonized over the choice of training site, selecting it with great care and trying to satisfy as many needs as possible.

After taking two slight turns and skirting the edge of a patch of woods, just as Wu Qingchen’s steps reached roughly the ideal amount for a post-meal stroll to aid digestion, his group arrived at the site prepared for the "targeted instruction" session.

On the left front lay a broad stretch of the most ordinary and common of Ekri Village’s allotment fields. A dozen steps to the right stood a wooden cottage belonging to a household in Ekri Village whose draft cattle still needed treatment. Behind them stretched a small wood frequently used by neighboring villagers for gathering firewood and grazing livestock.

Following the order of the three major items, the targeted instruction training began.

First major item: standard high-efficiency movement training for agricultural labor in the fields.

The first to step forward were several broad-shouldered men in their forties. Strong-bodied and quick-moving, they were already holding the tools of the medieval world when Wu Qingchen and the others arrived. Without a word, they began to hoe, loosen the soil, and cut weeds.

The ordinary labor motions that could be seen anywhere in the countryside became, in their hands, a flowing and seamless performance, as if they felt no trace of the tools’ primitive nature, though those tools lagged behind by more than ten centuries. Each veteran hand, or rather each "outstanding representative of a great generation of working people," seemed suffused with a harmonious grace.

Wu Qingchen knew these old hands very well by now. They had also been part of the expert team at the previous training sessions.

It was precisely they who had, in this same careful and methodical way, taught Wu Qingchen about efficiency, energy conservation, and the hard-to-notice advanced tricks of laziness hidden within scientific farming techniques.

No, that was not quite right...

After more than a month of farm work, standing at the edge of the field ridge, Wu Qingchen soon noticed that this time the old experts’ demonstration no longer included the part about "sneaking in a bit of slack." Only the demonstrations of "efficiency" and "saving effort" remained.

And it seemed that, in this afternoon’s "targeted instruction" course, the old hands were no longer the main teaching team either.

About a hundred meters away, along both sides of a path in another Ekri Village allotment field, a small group stood on the left, made up of people with very different airs about them. There were young men in suits and ties, middle-aged men in simple clothes, scholars with refined bearing, and honest-looking, restrained folk.

On the right were two teams of fully armed soldiers, about twenty in all. Each pair of soldiers was escorting a man with his hands cuffed and a hood over his head.

As Wu Qingchen watched the labor techniques being demonstrated, these three oddly assembled groups were also making their way over at an unhurried pace.

The old hands demonstrated the full set of standard agricultural movements more than ten times.

After about five minutes, Wu Qingchen’s prior Earth-based training and his dozens of days’ experience in the medieval world had already formed a deep impression in his mind. He fine-tuned the various labor motions in his head until they were roughly consistent with what he was seeing in front of him, and the demonstration was basically over. One by one, the old hands stopped.

By then, the small group of people with varying temperaments, the alert soldiers, and the seven or eight hooded men being led over had also stopped at a distance of about ten meters from Wu Qingchen.

“All right...” The last old hand put down his tool as well. Huang Xing nodded toward the strange procession. "Let’s begin the next step."

"Yes, sir!"

After saluting, the officer in charge gave a signal. The soldiers first removed the handcuffs from the hooded men, then pulled off the hoods covering their heads.

When these hooded men approached, Wu Qingchen had already sensed that, standing beside the soldiers, there was something especially discordant about them in certain respects.

The instant they removed their hoods, Wu Qingchen immediately understood the source of that discordance: dark faces, slightly curled hair, slight builds, fierce eyes...

This half-finished, not-quite-evolved look...

They definitely were not Chinese!

What were they bringing this group of monkeys... no, these people here for?

As if hearing the question in Wu Qingchen’s mind, Huang Xing offered an explanation at just the right moment. "The medieval world’s ‘targeted instruction’ can, from some angles, actually be understood as a kind of alternative teaching..."

"Since it is teaching, its effect and efficiency naturally depend on two sides: the teachers and the students..."