Cthulhu Gonfalon

Translator: Nyoi-Bo Studio Editor: Nyoi-Bo Studio

It was still cold in the early spring. The snow and ice on the ground had just started to thaw, and the cold wind dug into people's marrows like needles piercing, making them tremble.

But it was the seeding season of Golden Vine. Farmers, wearing as many clothes as they could, waved their hoes and tilled the frozen land to put the seeds of Golden Vine one by one into the hole. The seeds had been previously soaked in clean water containing magic power. There was no need to cover the seeds with soil because the most important thing for its growth was sunshine over anything else.

It would be a simple job even for children to do if it had been in warmer places. But things had been different in the Northwest area. In early spring, the ground started to thaw; though it was not as hard as stone as it had been in the winter, it was still difficult to till. For those weaker farmers, they had to dig several times for a shallow hole to put the seed in. They couldn't do much work in one hour even they had been busy and sweating.

Fortunately, in the entire process of growing Golden Vine, there was nothing more difficult than seeding; it was a kind of plant with a strong vitality and extreme adaptability. After its buds appeared, the only thing to do was to supply magic power to it every day. Then it could grow up smoothly without any concerns.

When planting Golden Vine, the normal procedures, such as turning the soil, fertilizing, watering, weeding and killing pests, were all unnecessary. It was because that its powerful root system was able to go deep into the frozen soil for abundant nutrition and water; it could also absorb nutrition from sunshine, and no pests or weeds could survive in the Ash Forest. If not for it needing a continuous supply of magic power, farmers could leave it alone after seeding and wait for the harvest in autumn as many farmers did in other places.

But the Golden Vine had big shortcomings as well. First, it was low in production with a poor output of sixty jin per mu; second, it was impossible for normal people to plant it independently because it needed a supply of magic power during its growth. Lastly, it had a terrible flavor even worse than that of rye. It was slightly sour and was hard to chew. Except for some special dishes, Gold Vine was used as food only by the poor.

In fact, merchants purchased Golden Vine in large scale only to refine it through a magic array to get magic essence containing the power of sunshine. After refinement, its residue was good enough to be animals' food. After all, pigs and cattle were not picky eaters.

Looking at these busy farmers, Sui Xiong shook his head slightly.

The Golden Vine was not a good choice. Even planting rye would be better than that.

Rye was common in cold areas. Although it needed more manpower to plant rye than Golden Vine, it had a better flavor and higher production than Golden Vine. If a farmer could work hard, the land was fertile, and the climate was not bad, it was common to get an output of one hundred jin per mu. You could mill rye into flour to make rye cake, or make bread if you mixed it with some wheat flour. It was not only a favorite food for poor people, but it also could be a staple food for middle-class families.

However, planting rye required a much higher quality of soil than what was needed for Golden Vine. It didn't mean that the land needed to be more fertile or less influenced by cold weather. It was mainly to say that rye was weaker than Golden Vine in facing the contamination of negative power. It was also impossible to mix them together because they had different growing seasons.

Within the whole Northwest area, only the southern Rye Town and its surrounding area were able to plant rye because there was a lower degree of negative power contamination.

That was the reason why the Rye Town had become the grain house of the Northwest area. It had advanced agriculture, as well as commerce and trade. It had also been prosperous enough to supply a strong army.

Sui Xiong wanted to promote the development of Pyroxene Town, and naturally, everything started from agriculture. He had to at least ensure that the residents in this town were self-sufficient enough in producing grain. But that meant opening up more land and needing to enlarge the scale of the purification array.

A Purification Array was a magic array that worked by relying on the System of God's Belief. The population of Pyroxene Town determined the level of belief, which further determined the scale and number of divine temple this town could have. Without enough divine temples, the baldacchinos in the center of the purification array would be useless.

This was similar to the question of "which came first, the chicken or the egg?" As for those pioneer villages (villages under exploration), the church which was in charge of the village, could promote belief by coercive measures. That meant that they could force people to believe in their church to increase the rate of their followers. But that was not what Sui Xiong had pursued. He saw no progress in a society where people didn't even have the freedom of thought.

So he had to find another plan.

The primary plan was to dig underground and cultivate special mushrooms that could help absorb negative power there. This had been put into practice in the Void Mask Land and had proven to be efficient and reliable. But there was another problem in this plan—it was out of the human's power to dig underground and plant special mushrooms there on a large scale. It was even too much for the experienced adventures because the concentration of negative energy in the underground was totally different from that of topsoil!

There was no such a thing as a free lunch or a free pass to progress given by a god. If social progress was not achieved through the effort of the people, it wouldn't be worthy of making it universal and also couldn't prove Sui Xiong's idea was right.

So he began to consider another plan—the strong negative energy of the Ash Forest was coming from the Ancient God buried deep in the ground. If Sui Xiong could manage to move the god's corpse out of there, and with the help of large scale of purification, it might be possible to clear out all the negative energy in the Ash Forest and turn it into a normal, frigid forest zone.

That could be an earth-shaking project with great difficulty. More importantly, Sui Xiong knew nothing about the background of this ancient god, so he didn't dare to take immediate action.

A god who had died such a long time ago and could still consistently generate strong negative energy so much that it contaminated the vast forest—that god must be unimaginably powerful. How dangerous would his corpse be? How many powerful gods would be envious if Sui Xiong moved his corpse? How would Sui Xiong deal with his corpse then? These were all big problems.

Sui Xiong had asked Javier, a resourceful and strategic man, to find the background of this ancient god. Javier was an expert in wine, food and enjoying himself. He had been a regular guest at various celebrations and maintained a good relationship with all the gods—except for the God of Plague and others like him. He had gotten along well with conservative gods from order keeping systems, brutal and violent gods from the evil system, and even fancy and wired gods from the chaos system. At least three-quarters of the gods in the Pantheon temple had dined or chatted with him before.

Although no news came from him until now, Sui Xiong believed that Javier would figure out everything of that ancient god sooner or later.

At that time, Sui Xiong would call all his friends together and do something astonishing!

But that day was still far away; it would be perhaps fifty or one hundred years from now, maybe even longer. He could wait slowly with endless life, but those ordinary people couldn't wait that long.

So, he had to make another plan.

For over half a month, Sui Xiong wandered around in Pyroxene Town. By observing the lives of ordinary people, he tried to figure out their needs and thought of how to improve their living standards.

If he had hair, he would have lost most of it in just the past half month, making himself almost bald.

Sui Xiong's meditation was rewarded at last. One day, when he was hiding out in the mine and watching the miners work hard, he finally found inspiration.

A few hours later, he found Felix and took out a design to show him.

"What a big project!" Felix studied the design carefully and admired it.

It was indeed a big project, as Sui Xiong was planning to dig four inclined tunnels out of Pyroxene Town and plant special mushrooms there. The underground temperature was high to maintain the growth of special mushrooms. With the growing and reproduction of special mushrooms, the concentration of negative energy in the surrounding area would decrease. Then it would be time to dig a deeper tunnel nearby to plant special mushrooms there and harvest the mushrooms had planted before to refine the magic essence of negative energy. Repeated in this way, it was equal to building an artificial vein of negative energy essence out of Pyroxene Town.

Over time, when these underground veins develop into a deep position, there would be more eastward construction. Then the crisscross planting zone of special mushrooms would form the huge Underground Vine Zone.

At the technical level, there was nothing difficult in this idea; it just needed a lot of manpower. Since the cultivation of Golden Vine did not take up much manpower, and Pyroxene Town still had many skilled miners, it would be easy.

But the investment of this "artificial vein" was relatively high, and it would take a long time from start to harvest. Without sufficient financial resources, there would be no way to support the plan.

And even if it succeeded in providing special mushrooms, there were still risks in harvesting these special mushrooms for they contained a lot of negative energy. Furthermore, after the harvest, the special mushrooms couldn't be refined by ordinary people. They would require magicians of a high level and adequate magical manpower.

Fortunately, these were not problems for Pyroxene Town because it was building a magic school.

"It's a good plan. With enough magical manpower, the whole Ash Forest will be transformed into a huge vein of negative energy," Felix commented. "I think… Your Majesty, you really have found a way to revitalize this dark forest of death!"

Sui Xiong scratched his head with his tentacles and smiled happily.

Although it had not solved the grain problem, with reliable financial resources, the revival of Pyroxene Town would be able to happen faster!