Foreign Land Reclamation By a Vegetable-growing Skeleton

“Pfft! Aren’t those the high-yield grains you initially planted? Kvada, I completely forgot about them. In the harsh environment of soil and water erosion in the Resting Camp, you could mature them in the same season. If we change to fertile land, could you make it so they can be harvested in three months and maintain high yield?” Negris inquired.

“We could pre-grow them,” Ange replied.

“Kvada, you seem to have prepared well in advance what you wanted to plant here, just waiting for the eternal darkness to pass. So, what have you been so busy with these past few days, turning over the land and planting the Luminous Moss?” Negris had a feeling that it was in vain.

Ange cocked his head, speaking truthfully, “Playing.”

Spurts of blood would be coughed up, if there was any.

The grain Ange cultivated inside the Temple of Rest was a genuinely high-yield crop. Over a thousand years, the fertility of the farms steadily depleted. To ensure the crops could be harvested before the end of each growing season, Ange continuously improved the grain varieties for a millennium.

These grains cultivated under extreme conditions, once moved to fertile land outside, immediately demonstrated outstanding potency. Previously, Ange’s fastest growth and harvesting speed was one and a half month.

However, this rapid harvesting method led to lower yields, so after mastering the Instant Death Halo, the short growth time advantage was disregarded. Then came the Long-grain Valley with excellent taste and the Saline Demon Rice that can grow in salt water. As such, Negris overlooked this basic grain variety.

Short growing time and relatively high yield, isn’t this the perfect divine artifact for this plane?

What irked Negris the most was that Ange clearly knew what he wanted to plant, yet futilely busied himself for several days, causing Negris to worry about him. Fearing that this poor skeleton would be disheartened, nuts!

For the following period, Ange was busy preparing and arranging the farmland. He adjusted the fertility and pH level of the soil, tilled, sterilized, purified, and added base manure, etc. To grow a good crop, the preliminary work was important.

Some tasks may be cumbersome for ordinary farmers, but they were effortless for Ange, as long as he continuously cast Purification.

So, in a part of the Undead’s territory, there was ever-present fizzing sound accompanied by the scent of a sun-dried quilt spreading around. The deep-seated stench of death was cleansed, and even tenacious microorganisms could not survive.

Meanwhile, as Ange was preparing the land, in the slums behind the Holy Wall City, the Great Sage was also at his wit’s end. There were too many things he had to deal with. At this moment, he deeply realized the disadvantage of having too few high-ranking undead creatures.

For instance, he even had to personally handle interrogations now.

“This suspect, robbery, murder.” An undead underling commanded several skeletons, leading a lineup of criminals and pointed at one of them.

“Robbery? Murder? Suspect, please raise your head. Did you commit these crimes?” Prompted by the Great Sage’s question, the criminal lifted his head, his gaze became dazed, and he answered vacantly, “Yes… killed two…”

The Great Sage had evidently used some spiritual interrogation technique and had extracted the evidence promptly. Hearing the response, he dismissed it, “Off with his head.”

Speaking of beheading, a Silver Skeleton moved the convict aside, gripped a bone dagger, and stabbed it from his jaw into his brain, stirring forcefully.

The bone dagger entered the brain without damaging the skeleton’s structure, swiftly killing him. This yielded a complete corpse.

One could also stab it through the eye socket, but then the eyes couldn’t be preserved. If this body were to be converted into a Witch, wouldn’t they become a One-Eyed Witch?

Even such details were carefully considered. The Undead Empire truly lived up to its name.

“This suspect, theft, large amounts.”

“Sever his hand.”

“This suspect, sexual assault.”

“Off with his head.”

“This suspect, sexual assault, a little girl.”

“Throw him in the Soul Prison. Burn him to death.” The Soul Prison was a punishment worse than the death penalty. The soul would be set aflame. Normally, creatures would faint or die from being set on fire.

However, Soul Prison burns souls, you can’t lose consciousness or die easily. Being burned to death means that the consciousness in your soul is burned to the point where you can’t recognize yourself anymore.

Great Sage made his judgements swiftly. Under his mental pressure, these criminals admitted their wrongdoings one by one, very honestly.

Judgement was just one part of it, the bigger issue was how to feed the captured humans.

These years, the Great Sage has been tirelessly increasing the number of living creatures, trying to feed more populations.

Some people think that the undead are immortal, never dying, everlasting, but that only applies to high-level undead. Lower-level skeleton zombies may not die, but they do wear out.

The bones and joints of normal humans are worn out by the age of fifty-six, and that is because they have skin and muscles for protection.

The skeleton has no such protection. If it acts like a human, its joints and feet will wear out in about ten years.

To protect these low-level undead to the maximum extent, the best way is to let them lay still. Lying in the Land of Deathly Silence covered with Breathing Soil can greatly delay this wear and tear.

But no matter how much you delay, a thousand years is the limit. Without new corpses to supplement, all undead creatures will eventually rot.

Most of these undead creatures returned from various planes of existence a thousand years ago. Many of them are already in a state of decay. If this continues, I’m afraid only those high-level undead with bones, flesh, and metal will be able to move.

Therefore, living creatures are not the enemies of the undead, but the foundation of the Undead Empire. The undead are not the enemies of the living, but a new form of life after death.

However, this interdependent relationship has been gradually distorted by the propaganda of the Church of Light, and has become irreconcilable.

Why would the undead kill you? They don’t eat people.

This time, the retreat of the Church of Light left hundreds of thousands of living creatures in the Land of Fallen, humans, horses, and cows. This is a great fortune.

The Great Sage doesn’t care if his soldiers are human skeletons or Corpse Witch Horses, as long as they are undead.

The only challenge is how to feed these hundreds of thousands of people. The supplies left behind by the Church of Light and the food available from human villages in the vicinity can support them for a couple of eternal nights.

But for sustainable development, the problem of food self-sufficiency must be solved. Otherwise, the end result will just be hundreds of thousands of corpses.

To solve this problem, the Great Sage didn’t hesitate to bring out the Staff of Heaven, believing that the Church of Light couldn’t resist. Solving the food problem would only add hundreds of thousands of living mouths to the Land of Fallen, but getting the Staff of Heaven was like getting the key to Heaven.

Halfway through the judgement of the criminals, someone suddenly reported: “Great Sage, there is a teleportation request on the Teleportation Array.”

The Great Sage was energized and exclaimed: “Here they come! You take over the judgement.” The Great Sage floated away excitedly, casually pointing at the undead who was brought up with the criminals.

“Me? Great Sage, I don’t know how… uh, okay, I’ll judge. This one, murder? Cut off.

“This one, adultery? Hmm, chop it off. Chop it off.”

“This one, cheating, chop off.”

“This one, solicitation? Cut off.”

“Chop, chop, chop!”

The Great Sage arrived at the Teleportation Array, eagerly expecting who the Church of Light might send to negotiate with him.

With a flash of light, several elderly farmers appeared in the Teleportation Array.

It’s not the Church of Light? The Great Sage was taken aback. There was no hint of Holy Light on them.

Seeing the Great Sage, one of the farmers said loudly, “Is the gentleman in front the Great Sage of the Undead Empire? We are members of the Druid Guild. This is the inventor of the high-yielding grain variety that won the Spring Breeze Cup Druid Contest. Great Sage, we have brought you high-yielding grain seeds.”

The inventor of the high-yielding grain variety snorted dismissively, “There will be no Spring Breeze Cup in the future. That coward, Spring Breeze, doesn’t deserve to have his name associated with the grain contest.”