Foreign Land Reclamation By a Vegetable-growing Skeleton

John was dragging a lifeless body wrapped in a straw mat, towards the Fallen Dragon Gorge. Legend has it that hundreds of thousands of years ago, a giant dragon fell from the sky, crashing into the land and carving out a gorge, hence its name, the Fallen Dragon Gorge.

Young John once had adventurous thoughts of finding the fallen giant dragon. But once he arrived in the gorge, he lost all interest.

“Rather than calling it Fallen Dragon Gorge, Bird Droppings Ditch would be more suitable,” John had once disappointingly boasted to his peers.

Be it Fallen Dragon Gorge, or Bird Droppings Ditch, today it had now all turned into the village’s dumping ground for corpses, the Chaotic Burial Mound. This was already the sixteenth body he had disposed of this month.

The straw mat was not tied tightly, and as he dragged, a hand fell out, scraping the ground. The hand was shrivelled and bony, with only skin wrapping around its bones. It seemed to have starved to death.

John hooked it with his foot, kicking the corpse’s hand back into the straw mat. If he could, he would have also liked to provide a coffin for every corpse, but alas, straw mats were the only decent things available in the village because they were plentiful, thanks to the reeds at the village entrance.

However, there had been very few people with the strength to make straw mats recently. Everyone was starving. Since last year, the village had been experiencing a famine. The amounts of edible food were shrinking, and after a period of gnawing on reed roots, the number of people starving to death was increasing.

John wasn’t even sure if his village would still exist next year, it could possibly die out and gradually be buried under the sand, but that didn’t seem to be anything unusual.

By the edge of the Fallen Dragon Lake, traces of mud walls could occasionally be seen, they were abandoned villages from hundreds of years past, most likely devastated by famine.

John voluntarily buried the dead, because if the bodies were left in the village, there was a good chance that something bad would happen. But he didn’t know how long he could keep this up because he too, was starving.

In the past couple of days he’d survived by gnawing on some grass roots and white clay. While the grass roots were still okay, the white clay would cause intestinal blockages. Many of the villagers who ate white clay would die from bloated stomachs, which was extremely uncomfortable. But when compared to the feeling of starving, it didn’t seem that important.

Well, everyone was just hanging on, surviving one day at a time.

Deep down, John still held a glimmer of hope, hoping to find the giant dragon. He had heard the dragon’s chants in the Fallen Dragon Gorge and had seen a golden giant dragon soaring across the sky a few times.

If he could find the giant dragon and receive the dragon’s protection, his village would stand a good chance at surviving.

Rumor had it that the Hope Oasis, located two hundred kilometers away, had never been raided by sand thieves nor had suffered famine or plague due to the protection of the giant dragon.

A few years back, a merchant from the Hope Oasis visited Fallen Dragon Lake to engage in trading. When the conversation drifted to the legend of the giant dragon, the merchant complained about the lack of variety in oasis crops, claiming that he could only eat green dates and small fatty sheep, which gave him heartburn.

At that time, John felt like punching the merchant’s smug face and taking his place. Complaining about having food to eat? Then what would he call their circumstance where they had nothing to eat? Hell?

Perhaps the giant dragon was the one protecting the Hope Oasis. If the dragon could also watch over Fallen Dragon Lake, he would willingly offer his everything in return.

John had reached the place where he dumped the bodies, a large pit. Afraid of angering the giant dragon, he dared not directly throw the bodies into Fallen Dragon Gorge. But he was too weak to dig a burial for each body. The only option was to dump them all together and cover them thinly with dirt whenever he had the energy, considering it a burial.

The hand broke out of the straw mat again. John extended his foot to push it back in. No sooner had his toes touched the corpse’s hand, he felt a tightening around his ankle. The corpse’s hand had grabbed his foot.

“Ah!” John screamed with all his might, but even after struggling to free himself, he stumbled backwards, falling into the pit of corpses.

Before he even hit the ground, he felt a helping hand. When he took a closer look, he fainted from shock, as the helpers were Aunt Baer and Uncle Bull who had died a few days ago. They crawled out of the straw mats, their eyes rolled back, half of their faces rotten, all staring back at John.

It took some time for John to regain consciousness after blacking out. When he woke up, two young dragons were hovering in front of him. “You’re awake? Sorry if we startled you. We accidentally stomped too hard. Sorry, sorry,” one of the juvenile dragons said with a smile.

“Dra… Dra… Dragon…” John was so startled he could barely speak properly.

“Oh, right, I’m a dragon, a bronze one at that. You can call me Negris. Are you one of the villagers from around here?” Negris asked.

“Yes, yes, Dra… Dragon, Lord… I, I, ah!” John had never left his village in his whole life, all his information about the outside world came from travelling merchants.

Despite hoping to find a giant dragon for protection, when he finally saw one—even if it was just a young dragon—he could barely speak coherently. Soon enough, he noticed another incredible sight.

All the corpses and skeletons thrown into the pits, had come back to life, forming a queue, bustling around to transport something.

“Dea… dead… people… move?!” John pointed in horror at the skeletons transporting items in the distance, stuttering in shock as he looked at Negris and Naeli.