The early spring air was still cold, but it did nothing to dampen the enthusiasm of the Green Sparrow Tribe members working in the fields.
One after another, the skilled workers carried hoes and bronze plows to the fields of hope.
The hoe in Ping Zi’s hands rose and fell. Without much effort, the entire bronze hoe sank into the moist soil.
Gripping the hoe’s handle with both hands, Ping Zi lifted it, and the hoe emerged from the soil, bringing up a large clump of earth.
With a slight raise of the handle and a twist of the wrist, the hoe flipped in mid-air and landed back down with its back facing downward.
The back of the hoe struck the clump of soil, breaking it apart. After several consecutive strikes, the large chunk of soil was crumbled entirely.
Without pause, Ping Zi moved forward, breaking up more soil. The more he worked, the smoother it felt, and the more he grew attached to the bronze hoe.
Compared to the stone hoes previously used in the tribe, the bronze hoe was lighter and sharper. Its thinner blade made it much more suitable for breaking ground. With minimal effort, it quickly dug into the soil.
The ease of using the bronze hoe made tilling land, which had been grueling before, much less tiring for Ping Zi.
He continued digging, one hoe strike after another, efficiently and effectively, until he reached the edge of the field. Only then did he stop to rest, leaning on the hoe.
Even during his break, his gaze remained fixed on the bronze hoe in his hands.
Once again, Ping Zi was filled with admiration for the Divine Child's wisdom. It was no wonder the Divine Child had gone to such great lengths to produce bronze and craft it into various tools.
With these bronze farming tools, Ping Zi felt confident about the plan to open an additional 800 acres of farmland, which was announced after the New Year.
Eight hundred acres? He was sure they could manage even more than that!
After all, aside from the hoes they held, there were even more powerful bronze farming tools.
After a moment of studying the bronze hoe in his hands, Ping Zi looked up toward a part of the field.
From there came occasional shouts. Twenty or so deer, paired in twos, were pulling wooden plows fitted with bronze plowshares and moldboards. Behind them were people guiding the plows.
As the deer moved forward, the bronze plowshare sliced through the soil easily.
Before it had a chance to scatter, the freshly turned soil was caught by the slanted, slightly curved moldboard and pushed upward.
As the soil climbed along the moldboard, it was flipped neatly to one side.
Row after row of soil was turned over and laid out, transforming the field into a brown sea.
The deer pulling the plows and the people guiding them resembled small boats sailing on waves of soil.
The scene was beautiful. The shouts guiding the deer blended with the earthy fragrance, filling even these primitive people, who had little concept of beauty, with a sense of contentment.
Ping Zi knew the effectiveness of using deer to pull bronze plows.
When the Divine Child and his team first made the bronze plow with a plowshare and moldboard, they had enclosed two plots of equal size with similar soil conditions. The Divine Child, who wasn’t exceptionally skilled at farming, had personally demonstrated how to guide the plow on one of the plots.
Four others wielding bronze hoes or shovels were working a separate plot of land nearby, digging and breaking soil. The two groups were set up for comparison.
Among them was Ping Zi, who was exceptionally skilled at breaking ground. He and three other experts put in their best effort with the bronze hoes, but they still couldn’t match the plowing speed of the Divine Child, who didn’t typically work in the fields.
In the end, seven people with bronze hoes could barely keep up with the speed of the two deer and two workers operating the plow guided by the Divine Child.
Ping Zi understood that this was only because the plot being plowed was relatively small. If the Divine Child had chosen a larger plot, even seven would have fallen behind the two people and their deer.
Afterwards, when the group stopped to rest, they gasped for breath, while the Divine Child, although slightly fatigued, was far less exhausted. As for the person leading the deer at the front, they seemed completely unaffected, as if they hadn’t exerted themselves at all.
But this wasn’t the most remarkable part. What stood out the most was that the people leading the deer in the fields were those in the tribe who were physically weaker or older children who weren’t suited for heavy labor.
In the past, tasks like digging for long periods were never assigned to them. Yet now, they were participating in the fieldwork and weren’t doing a bad job either.
This meant that a physically strong adult could be freed up for other tasks requiring greater strength. It also meant that a team of one strong adult and one weaker individual—or even a teenager—could achieve the same output as seven or more strong adults!
Like most people of this era, Ping Zi wasn’t great at arithmetic, but even he could grasp that the introduction of bronze plows and other bronze farming tools would significantly increase the amount of arable land the tribe could work.
Thinking about the granaries in the tribe, filled with stored food, Ping Zi’s heart swelled with excitement.
If the current fields could already produce enough food for everyone in the tribe to eat their fill, opening up even more land would surely mean even greater harvests!
And with so much grain… how would they ever manage to eat it all?
In an age where food scarcity was the norm, worrying about having too much food seemed almost absurd. If this thought were shared with members of other tribes still struggling with food shortages, their reactions would be unimaginable.
Even Ping Zi himself was stunned as the realization hit him.
He had never dreamed that one day he would be troubled by the thought of having too much food to eat!
With a final glance at the deer plowing the soil and turning it into waves of earth, Ping Zi, now well-rested, picked up his hoe and began working again.
The patch he was about to tackle was untouched wilderness.
The ground was hard and compact, riddled with roots from trees and grasses, making it unsuitable for plowing with a plow…