86 The Speed of Spitting

86. The Speed of Spitting

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Need it to be this exaggerated, really?

After hearing Huang Xing pile so many descriptors onto this troop of monkeys in one breath, Wu Qingchen believed that the committee had surely spent real effort to find such a specific, disgracefully low-grade, almost-human crowd.

Still, he thought to himself, they seemed to be taking it far too seriously.
Wasn’t this just a quick lesson on farming? Couldn’t they have just pulled a few city office workers who can’t tell one grain from another and let them imitate it?
Did they really need to search the whole Earth to gather this lot of monkeys closest to the medieval-world natives?

In Wu Qingchen’s view, if the comparison were about understanding, receptivity, and logical thinking—the things tied so tightly to knowledge and information—a medieval villager couldn’t possibly keep pace with an ordinary Earth person, no contest.
But when it came to sowing, weeding, plowing, reaping, and all the other chores that demand real work in the dirt...
apart from those old hands who spend their entire lives battling the fields, Wu Qingchen could not convince himself that modern city dwellers—who have long left agriculture behind and only picture it through transplanting machines, tractors, and combines—could somehow leave the medieval farmers, who are happy to stay in the soil all day, far behind.

He had, after all, gone all the way from farm greenhorn to farm expert the hard way. In the first half-month after entering the medieval world, when his time on Earth was already jammed with tiny chores he couldn’t fit into his learning schedule, Wu Qingchen still had to learn from his medieval family.

Of course, those early days were filled with things he had to watch for all the time. Pretending to be deaf and mute then, Wu Qingchen hadn’t noticed anything at all.
Only when he somehow managed to meet every demand of his household did he see, for the first time, the surprise and admiration in old William’s eyes.

“All right...” The translators relayed the warriors’ calls. The monkeys, whose handcuffs and hoods had been removed, had already flexed their arms and legs several times. Huang Xing signaled the leading officer, then turned to the teaching team.
“...That’s enough. Let’s begin.”

“All right...”

The lead teacher, a bespectacled, refined middle-aged man, came beside Wu Qingchen, calm as always.
“Mr. Wu, we’ll start with the forage work that must be finished before the summer operations. The first item is cutting. Please demonstrate the movements a few times for these ‘students’ in your own way.”

Three to eight basketball fields’ worth of green hay stretched out a few meters away.

Taking the scythe and woven glove from a staff officer, Wu Qingchen put on the gear and walked over, bent at the waist, and began cutting the hay.

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Grab the grass, swing, let it fall—grab the grass, swing, let it fall...
The hay in front of him, it looked as though when it had been moved over it still carried nearly half a meter of soil around its roots, held fast and stubborn.
After only a few swipes, Wu Qingchen found the familiar farming rhythm.

Farming is like this: once body and nerves have built memory, the brain, on seeing a familiar scene, automatically computes the best sequence for the next move before the hands have even finished the last.
With this familiar hay and practiced movement—already repeated for nearly two weeks in the medieval world—Wu Qingchen worked with surprising smoothness. He cut almost without pausing, and the hay toppled quickly, leaving neat lines of stubble behind him.

As he cut, the warriors carried out their orders as well. They opened several large crates prepared in advance. From them the soldiers pulled out plastic scythes and plastic boards about two square meters each, each board bearing synthetic “hay” made of soft material.

A plastic scythe and a special patch of “hay” were distributed to each monkey, and through the translator they were ordered to imitate Wu Qingchen’s motions.
The monkeys began their “harvest.”

“Good...” After several minutes, the team leader called out to Wu Qingchen.
“...That’s all for now, Mr. Wu. Please stop.”

Wu Qingchen put down the scythe and turned around.

“Now, watch their demonstration...”
The teacher in charge finished speaking, and the translator instantly gave the order.

At once the monkeys bent, swung their “scythes,” and cut into the just-replaced board of artificial hay.
After only a few seconds, Wu Qingchen could not help rolling his eyes.
Some moved so slowly they looked like the dead.
Some grasped only three to five blades at a time.
Some held their hands the wrong way.
Some even tossed the scythe away.

The scene was miserable to watch.

“What... what... what are these people?”
After staring blankly for a while, he finally found his voice.
“So what do these folks do? They’ve never done real labor before, have they?”

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“Junkies caught in a crackdown from some Southeast Asian island state... only addicts whose brains are nearly gone from drugs can really have gone so long without touching farm work.”

“This... these junkies... this... if they’ve never done farm work... how are we to teach them?”
“Only this does it fully test whether the teaching works,” Huang Xing said in a reassuring tone. “You too had never done farm work before, and yet you learned it. Don’t worry...
The method our teachers developed has already passed enough tests and can be picked up quickly.”

“What method?”

“Don’t worry about the method yet...” Huang Xing didn’t answer directly.
“Before formal teaching starts, try giving a round of ‘directed instruction’ yourself. It will help your understanding.”

“What do we do?” Wu Qingchen was completely at a loss.

Huang Xing merely made a gesture: please.

With no clear answer, Wu Qingchen slowly moved to one of the addicts—though “to the side” here meant, with ten or so soldiers circling around, there were still at least ten meters between them.

“You... you...”
His mouth opened and shut again and again; after trying several times, he settled on the only thing he could think of:
“Watch my movements and do it with me.”

He had no idea what some island in the south or the United Nations had done to these addicts, but once the translator passed it along, the addict not only nodded obediently, but even forced a nasty little smile out of his swollen, bruised face.
After they’d finished communicating, Wu Qingchen took a plastic “scythe” and stepped in front of a plastic board to begin cutting the “hay.”

The props were made with care. Though the material was completely different, when Wu Qingchen cut, he barely felt much of a difference.
And the addict, too, tried in earnest.
Wu Qingchen bent, and the addict bent.
Wu Qingchen reached for the grass, and the addict reached too.
Wu Qingchen stood up, body leaning forward, then put his weight into the swing.
The addict stood and leaned forward as well...
and the “scythe” found its mark.