Just as the winter snow of Green Ox Valley had tucked the Five Elements Medicinal Field under a white quilt, the Protagonist's abacus hoe tapped with a "clack" against the frozen topsoil, its beads bouncing along the handle to form the Chinese character for "till": "According to the Essential Techniques for the Peasantry, winter tilling must go three feet deep to bake the soil and kill pests!" An old mountain villager shook his head: "For generations we've sown in spring and reaped in autumn, who ever turned the earth in winter?" The beads instantly bounced into the shape of a "pest", projecting an animated display of overwintering insect eggs beneath the frozen soil, startling the old man into taking three steps back.
"Xiaoxiu, send the crop rotation schedule to all the farming estates." The Protagonist shook the abacus winter-tilling diagram, and the beads clattered into Xiaoxiu's Abacus Carrier Pigeon tube. Every pigeon had "Winter tilling is like fighting a tiger; spring sprouts will suffer no pain" embroidered on its wings. Xiaoxiu smiled softly as she held an abacus brush: "I already had Huwa carve the crop rotation wooden plaques, and the beads even added a little caricature to the surface saying 'Those who don't till get their bottoms smacked by beads'." The beads bounced into the character for "bad", flashing into a luminous chain in her hair.
At the third quarter of the eighth hour, the mountain folk carried their abacus hoes out to the fields, where the beads bou…
Chapter 248