…
“Fourth brother, don’t you trust me?” Wang Luojing’s small face drooped.
“Fourth brother, I suggest you listen to that girl,” the older Wang Luotong also came over, “Although Luojing is young, she has always loved playing with insects since she was a child and knows a lot about them. She is also good at attracting insects.”
“Interesting~” Wang Shouzhe suddenly became interested, his eyes shining, “You tell me first, how did you solve the honeybee problem, take your time, we have plenty of time.”
“In recent years, Grandpa has always complained about the abundance of honeybees and the lack of grain compared to previous years,” Wang Luojing said weakly, “So I thought, if I could solve the honeybee problem for Grandpa, he would be very happy. Then I could ask Grandpa not to marry my sister off, and I don’t want my sister to leave~”
Wang Luotong’s face suddenly turned pale and she lowered her head, unable to speak. This kind of thing was not up to her to decide.
“If you can really solve the honeybee disaster, fourth brother promises to protect you,” Wang Shouzhe promised firmly, “As long as you don’t want to get married, we won’t marry you off.”
“Thank you, fourth brother.” Wang Luojing’s face lit up with joy, “Actually, I saw in the ‘Insect Classic’ a long time ago that ancient people used grasshoppers to control honeybees, but in recent years, grasshoppers have become increasingly rare. Last year, I raised some honeybees and grasshoppers, and it was effective, so this year I asked my brother to catch two grasshopper kings in the mountains. I spent some effort and tamed them…”
“Wait a minute…” Wang Shouzhe’s face changed, “What is the ‘Insect Classic’, and how can you tame the grasshopper king?”
“The ‘Insect Classic’ is the ‘Insect Classic’, I found it in the family’s collection,” Wang Luojing said innocently, “The ‘Insect Classic’ explains how to tame insects, it’s not that difficult. If fourth brother wants to learn, I can teach you.”
Not that difficult!?
Wang Shouzhe’s face turned dark. He had merged with the memories of his predecessor and was quite familiar with the Xuanwu world. In this world, there was a small group of people who liked to produce or fight by controlling spirit insects, usually called insect masters.
But insect masters were quite rare and required extremely high talent to communicate with spirit insects. The threshold for this profession was even higher than that of alchemists. The reason was simple. Even if ordinary people were smarter, they could barely learn alchemy, at most it was just a huge consumption with limited achievements.
But if you didn’t have the rare talent to communicate with spirit insects, you couldn’t even touch the door of an insect master.
Therefore, insect masters were very rare, and ordinary aristocratic children had never even heard of them. As far as Wang Shouzhe knew, only the Xu family in Changning and the Liu family in Shanyin secretly trained two insect masters.
If Wang Luojing had the talent of an insect master…
For a moment, Wang Shouzhe’s heart was pounding.
“Fourth brother, fourth brother, what’s wrong with you?” Wang Luojing waved her hand in front of him, pouting, “Don’t you believe me either?”
“I believe you,” Wang Shouzhe nodded vigorously, “My Luojing is the smartest, and I’m very interested. Let’s go a little further away, and you can demonstrate it to me.”
“Well, those two grasshopper kings are on fourth brother’s carriage,” Wang Luojing, feeling recognized, was very happy, “I’ll go get them with my sister.”
Wang Shouzhe suddenly remembered that this morning, when he met the sisters, he noticed that they were each carrying a strange large box. At that time, he thought it was their personal belongings, and it was not appropriate to ask about girls’ private things, so he just asked them to put them on the carriage.
Now that he thought about it, they should have planned to come to the farm to try it out.”Let the family servants go.” Wang Shouzhe waved his hand.
The family servant who was waiting in the distance immediately ran over quickly and respectfully asked, “Clan Leader, what are your orders?”
“Wang Wu, Wang Yong. Go to the carriage and bring back Miss Luo Jing’s two boxes.”
“Yes, Clan Leader.”
The two family servants ran off at a very fast speed. In less than half an hour, they each returned with a box in hand.
“Wang Gui, Wang Wu, you guys go to Four Elder’s place and see if there’s anything you can help with.” Wang Shouzhe dismissed them all. After all, he saw that Wang Xiaozhi was also trying to find ways to control the aphids using grass and wood ash, so they were short-handed.
The family servants were all Xuanwu practitioners, and they were much more efficient than ordinary farmers.
More importantly, the matter was not yet confirmed, and he did not want it to be known to everyone.
After Wang Gui and the other four family servants left, Wang Shouzhe personally carried two large boxes and ran with Wang Luotong and Luo Jing to a remote wheat field.
The three thousand and several hundred acres of land were like a vast ocean. It was empty and deserted, and it was perfect for a demonstration.
Wang Shouzhe opened the wheat ears and found that there were also some green aphids in this wheat field. The tiny insects made him feel a little creepy.
“Luo Jing, let Fourth Brother see your skills.”
“Well~ the recruitment of honey insects this time is earlier than I expected.” Luo Jing’s expression was also somewhat serious and uneasy. She carefully opened one of the boxes.
Wang Shouzhe curiously glanced into the box and immediately had an intense fear reaction. His whole body was covered in goosebumps because the box was full of leaves, and those leaves grew out of thin, thread-like things, with tiny dots all over them.
“Fourth Brother, Sister, can you help me?” Luo Jing took out pieces of “leaves” and said, “Place a piece of leaf every ten meters.”
Wang Shouzhe’s mouth twitched. This little girl was really bold to even dare to order the Clan Leader around. But he was very obedient and followed Luo Jing’s instructions. He had a high level of cultivation, so he could easily throw a “leaf” to its designated spot.
According to Luo Jing’s instructions, dozens of pieces of leaves were needed for each acre of wheat field. But she only opened one of the two large boxes, and there were only a few hundred pieces of “leaves” that could cover only ten acres of land. It was a drop in the bucket compared to the thousands of acres of wheat fields.
After spending fifteen minutes placing the “leaves,” Wang Shouzhe and Wang Luotong stood near Luo Jing and patiently waited for her instructions.
“Fourth Brother, these grasshopper eggs take three days to hatch.” Luo Jing explained, “They will hatch slower in the dark box, but as soon as they see sunlight, they will hatch quickly.”
Well~ you are the expert in this field, so whatever you say goes.
Wang Shouzhe was always very honest about his blind spots in knowledge and never overstepped. As time passed, in less than half an hour, the few pieces of “leaves” that were initially placed started to change, and strange-looking little insects struggled to hatch from their shells.
The leaves were right in front of them, and they could clearly observe the small insects. They were only about two millimeters long, shaped like elongated beetles, but with two large pincers in front of their heads, making them look very ugly.
After they were born, they did not move and just hung quietly on the thread-like things.
After a while, they finally started to move, sliding down the thread-like things and slowly spreading in all directions on the leaves. They seemed to be born with the ability to sense where there was food and leisurely climbed up the wheat stems.
Suddenly!One of them encountered an aphid. It pounced fiercely, using its pincers to clamp down on the aphid and inserting its mouthparts to suck out its innards. In just a short moment, the poor aphid was sucked dry and its empty shell scattered away with the wind.
Afterwards, the grasshopper larva continued to climb forward, searching for its next prey.
“Amazing!” Wang Shouzhe exclaimed, “This little bug is really fierce.”
“Fourth brother, when I raised grasshopper larvae before, I calculated that it only takes ten days for them to pupate, during which they can eat nearly a thousand honeybugs. When they are just born, they are still relatively small and can only eat a dozen or so a day.” Wang Luojing had been playing with these things for a long time, so she was not surprised.
“If that’s the case, although the newly irrigated wheat field of more than ten mu will reduce its yield slightly, it can still be saved.” Wang Shouzhe praised, but he also said worriedly, “But just in our Fenggu Farm alone, there are thousands of mu of wheat.”
“Don’t worry, fourth brother. I was just testing it out earlier.” Wang Luojing opened another box, which was no longer filled with grasshopper larvae, but small colorful beetles.
“Isn’t this…” Wang Shouzhe recognized those beetles and was surprised, “Seven-spotted ladybugs?”
“Fourth brother, you know them too? But the insect book says they are nine-spotted ladybugs, not seven-spotted.” Wang Luojing took out a fist-sized giant beetle with nine spots on its body and affectionately stroked it, “From now on, I’ll call you the Nine-star Beetle King.”
…