Soon, Kang Hyuk arrived at Yeonkyo Garden and felt energy emanating from a person.
‘Is this energy coming from…Oh Tae?’
Kang Hyuk clapped as he realized what he had forgotten.
‘I made Oh Tae perform Stepping Skills to iron the flower bed and forgot about it.’
He hurried towards Oh Tae.
‘It’s my fault! I can’t believe I forgot Oh Tae because of Jimyung! You fool! I’ll beat you harder the next time I see you!’
Not long after, Kang Hyuk arrived at the flower bed and found Oh Tae continuing to perform Stepping Skills on the flower bed.
“…”
Oh Tae was drenched in sweat all over. Kang Hyuk realized that he had already surpassed his limits. It could be seen in his eyes.
‘Have you been doing Stepping Skills without a break like a narrow-minded fool?’
Nevertheless, Kang Hyuk was astounded by Oh Tae’s tenacity.
Whether or whether not he worked hard, Oh Tae’s Stepping Skills had transformed into its proper form.
‘I have to stop him first.’
He then approached Oh Tae.
“Teacher Oh, that’s enough.”
“…”
“Teacher Oh.”
But surprisingly, Oh Tae continued to perform Stepping Skills as if he had not heard Kang Hyuk.
“Teacher Oh!”
In response, Kang Hyuk shouted with internal energy infused in his voice, and only then did Oh Tae respond to Kang Hyuk’s voice.
“Ah…Teacher Kang.”
“Good work. Your training ends here.”
“Thank you.”
Oh Tae, who bowed to Kang Hyuk, staggered for a moment.
“Ugh!”
Kang Hyuk quickly approached Oh Tae and helped him up.
“Are you alright?”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. Take this.”
Kang Hyuk soon pulled a small bottle out of his sleeve and held it out.
“It’s a remedy for fatigue.”
Oh Tae took it and drank it without hesitation. In actuality, the drug was not any simple medicine that cured fatigue. It was made by Hosung. The drug was called Pure Water and its effects far surpassed the removal of fatigue.
And Oh Tae soon felt its effect.
He felt like he was going to die a while ago, but as soon as he took the medicine, he came to his senses and regained strength throughout his body.
“Is this an expensive medicine?”
“Not expensive…for me, that is.”
Of course, it was not expensive for Kang Hyuk, but normally, the Pure Water belonged to a fairly expensive category. But since he forgot and made Oh Tae suffer, this compensation was more than enough.
“Thanks anyway.”
“Goodbye, then.”
Kang Hyuk, who looked at Oh Tae’s fleeting figure, saw the flower bed that Oh Tae had ironed well. The soil on the flower bed was very hard.
The lack of gardening tools and seeds he had brought seemed to have been remedied by Baek Kap and Chun Haekwang.
“The Hundred Miles Flower needs to be planted tomorrow.”
He then slowly looked around Yeonkyo Garden.
What Kang Hyuk entrusted to Baek Kap and Chun Haekwang was to take care of the Moonlight Plant that had been collected before.
Now that the Moonlight Plant has stabilized, after the spring break, it seemed possible to start training on orchid cultivation.
It was now the next day.
Kang Hyuk, who was in charge of the morning class, headed to the academy for the class.
“Are you here, sir?”
Chun Haekwang was already in the classroom.
“It’s a First Years’ class today.”
“Indeed.”
“The weather is nice today, sir.”
He smiled as he looked at the stark spring weather.
“Indeed, it is. To think that it’s already spring. Did you prepare what I said?”
What Kang Hyuk was going to teach today was the breeding method of plants, except seed breeding.
“We’re still preparing the materials, sir.”
“Then, let’s do it together.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Surely there was a need for one more assistant. It seemed that assistants had more work to do than Kang Hyuk thought. From handling documents coming down from above to Kang Hyuk’s backroom, there was a lot of miscellaneous work. Those miscellaneous things were simple, but they took up a lot of time. It was easy to see why each teacher was assigned three assistants.
When they finished preparing for the class, the students soon began to come to school.
The clothes were a little disheveled, perhaps they came from the swords class.
Chun Haekwang sighed when he saw it.
“Teacher Oh must have gone hard on them this morning.”
“It seems so.”
When the students saw Kang Hyuk, they quickly bowed.
“Hello?”
“Yes, good morning. I’ll give you time to wash your face by the river, so wash up.”
“Thank you!”
There was a small stream flowing by the side of the garden.
It was too small to call it a river but it was too wide to call it a stream. Nevertheless, the water there was always clear.
Usually, Kang Hyuk used that water to water the garden’s plants, but students often washed their faces there and cooled their heated bodies after their martial arts lessons.
After a short while, Kang Hyuk stood in front of them as the students finished washing their faces, preparing to enter the class.
“What I’m going to teach today is about plant reproduction. Since we learned about seed breeding last time, we are going to learn about the rest of it today. The methods of breeding are sapling, grafting, bushy, bifurcation, and tree stock.”
Kang Hyuk spoke, pointing towards the branches and plants on the small table in front of him.
“In other words, by doing this, one obtains the advantage of growing flowers faster than breeding seeds and bearing fruits with bends, grafting, giving up, sharing the roots, and burying them. However, breeding is cumbersome and there is a disadvantage that not many can be done at once.”
Kang Hyuk then lifted a branch from among the ingredients in front of him.
“First of all, there is a way to put the stem into the soil, a way to put the leaves in it, and a way to put the roots in it. The plant we’ll use today is fig. It’s still early spring, so we have to do familiarization.”
Soon, a student raised his hand and asked a question.
“Teacher! What is an oblique shovel?”
“That’s a good question. I’ll give you a wheat cookie made of Dongjin Ginseng as a prize. Take it after class.”
“Thank you.”