Chapter 15: Worrying About Having Too Much Land

Liu Heming carefully thought about his second task, planting crops in spring, and felt it should be easy to complete. He had already started sprouting the seeds, so all he needed to do was plant them in the soil when the time came. Besides, he had a whole month to finish the task, so it felt very manageable.

The only thing that made him a bit unhappy was that this task offered no rewards at all. He figured he would need to flatter the System more in the future, try to please it, so he could get better tasks and rewards, and also learn more about this Task System.

After thinking about it, he felt a bit frustrated. He had spent a lot of time chatting with the System but hadn’t gotten any useful information from it. He had hoped for a task that would bring in quick money, but it seemed he needed to slowly build a relationship with it.

After pulling himself together, Liu Heming started to examine the rewards the System had given him. The System said it gave rewards, so it must be true. Just like his sudden language talent—he was able to understand English in an instant, and it was a truly amazing feeling.

However, he had no clear idea what the three Strength Points and two Spirit Points meant. He understood strength—it probably meant he had become physically stronger—but what about spirit? He couldn’t possibly have developed superpowers.

How could he test his strength? It was simple: see how much weight he could lift.

He went to the Warehouse and started testing with the bags of Fertilizer he had bought. Each bag was 25 kilograms, and when he first brought them in, it had been really exhausting.

He grabbed one bag with both hands and felt it was a bit easier than when he had first bought them. Then he stacked another bag on top, making it two bags totaling 50 kilograms.

Fifty kilograms might be easy for strong young men or people used to hard work, but for someone like Liu Heming before, lifting 50 kilograms of Fertilizer was out of the question—no doors, windows, or gaps left to try.

He felt a little excited just thinking about it. What if his strength had increased a lot and he could actually lift these Fertilizer bags in one go? If he completed more tasks in the future, his strength would keep going up, and life would be so good. Maybe he could easily push a car away or kick a ball really far.

After daydreaming for a while, he turned his attention back to the two Fertilizer bags in front of him.

He bent down and got into position. He gripped the bags firmly with his hands, took a few deep breaths, and felt like a weightlifter about to compete.

“Hey!”

To pump himself up, Liu Heming let out a shout and started to exert force with his arms. His face turned red, and veins bulged on his forehead as he finally managed to stand up while holding the two bags. That was as far as he could go, though; he wobbled when trying to take a few steps. After putting the bags down, he leaned against them, breathing heavily.

He had set his expectations too high. Although the System had given him three additional Strength Points, in the end, it didn’t seem to make much of a difference.

He thought that even without the System’s help, the hard work he had been doing on the Land had already changed him. His hands had become rougher and had a few small calluses. Although his stomach muscles were still one big piece, at least they weren’t bulging out as much.

Even with these three extra Strength Points, he still couldn’t handle 50 kilograms easily, so it didn’t really seem to matter much for him. Maybe if it had been thirty or fifty points, it would have made a difference.

Overall, he felt a little disappointed with the rewards the System had given him. The increase in Strength Points didn’t bring an obvious change, and the Spirit Points were just too abstract for him to grasp. So far, only gaining language skills seemed practical, directly benefiting him.

He comforted himself mentally—sooner or later, it would add up. Slowly accumulating more rewards would lead to a breakthrough eventually. At least he had completed the task and avoided the risk of losing his ability to speak, which was something to be happy about.

However, a new small problem had come up: he needed to adjust his plans for the Ranch.

Originally, he had thought he had to do everything himself to win the System’s approval and complete tasks. But it turned out that the System was playing mind games with him, and it had nothing to do with anything else.

Without that restriction, his earlier hard work, aside from giving him a bit of exercise, didn’t seem to have much purpose.

No matter how hardworking he was, he couldn’t match the speed of machines. With such a large area of Land here, if he wanted to plant well, he would need to rely on machinery.

He could take care of the vegetables himself, but what about planting crops like Corn, Soybeans, and Wheat? There would be no chance if he tried to do it all by hand. And if he expanded the planting area, it would directly mean he needed to spend a lot of money on seeds and Fertilizer.

He had less than thirty thousand US Dollars left—more precisely, just over twenty-seven thousand US Dollars. Regular Fertilizer in 25-kilogram bags cost over ten US Dollars each, and they weren’t even high in nutrients. Roughly speaking, one acre of Land would need two bags at the very least, but one Acre actually required twelve bags.

And that was just for one type of Fertilizer—plants needed nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. If he planted on a large scale, the Land he could cultivate would be at least fifteen to twenty Acres. Taking an average of eighteen Acres, that would be 216 bags. Conservatively speaking, if he wanted to take good care of his Land, just the Fertilizer costs would be around five thousand US Dollars.

And that was just his estimate as someone who didn’t know much about farming. Other farmers used combined Fertilizer with nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, so those costs would probably not be enough anyway—he might need to spend even more.

Then there was the issue of equipment. Buying it wasn’t realistic—if he did, he’d run out of money. He could only ask George and see if he could borrow from the few people in town, which would at least save him some costs.

Having too much Land was a worry. Luckily, a large part of the Ranch was covered by forest, and some areas were too desertified for planting. Otherwise, just thinking about farming could have driven him crazy.

The small bit of happiness he felt after getting the rewards disappeared as he thought about expanding the planting area. Even though mechanized farming in the United States was said to be advanced, for someone like him with no foundation, it still meant a big investment.

And if something went wrong during the planting process—like the crops yielding less or the quality dropping—all the money he’d invested would be wasted.

After all, no matter which country you were in, farming was about digging food out of the soil and depending on the weather. It wasn’t easy.