[Cozy Fantasy] [Farming LitRPG] The Chronicles of Emberstone Farm

Chapter 60 - Don't beet yourself up over the result

🙞❤︎🙜

During the day, people visited their families and friends for merrymaking, but once the sun set, everybody headed out to the town square to reserve a prime seat for the show. Thankfully, Shuye had volunteered to do that for us since he wasn’t going to join us for dinner.

The rest of us gathered at the inn’s inner courtyard and ordered a lavish meal. There were nine dishes all in all, not counting rice - one fish, one chicken, one pork, one shrimp, one rabbit, one quail, and three vegetable dishes. The restaurant’s chef had really gone all out and served us dishes that use a variety of techniques including steaming, boiling, deep frying, stir-frying, grilling, and braising.

“It’s pretty good,” I said.

“Not as good as our chef’s,” said Lari.

“Well, of course!” I was quite relieved to see that my apprentice had learned their table manners.

Fengying, ever the stickler for propriety, had booked two tables for us. One for me and my apprentices, and another for the rest of the household. It seemed that they wouldn’t feel comfortable eating with their boss, and I understood that.

Once we had finished eating all the dishes, Fengying distributed the mooncakes.

“This is more like it,” said Lari.

“Don’t talk when your mouth is full,” said Mo.

“Hush, don’t quarrel in public, people are looking at you!” said Kharli.

The mooncakes were excellent, as expected of the Demon Chef. The soft, crumbly floury exterior of the pastry contrasted very nicely with the sweet lotus paste filling. The flavor was rich and sweet, but not cloying. When I first cut a slice of it, I expected to eat a quarter, since it was quite filling and I’d already eaten a lot, but I ended up finishing the entire thing.

“All right, it looks like everyone’s finished. Let’s go!”

We all got our capes and jackets since it could be quite chilly during the evening. However, there were going to be a lot of people there, and I suspected that it would be reasonably warm.

Shuye was easy to find despite the crowd because he was standing right beside the Mayor. A large temporary stage had been built in front of the temple, and it seemed that the priests were almost finished setting it up when we gathered around Shuye.

“They’re starting off with a shadow puppet show for the children,” Shuye informed me. “Then there’s a lion dance with fireworks. They’ll announce the winners of the contests after that.”

Apart from the produce display contest, they also had cooking, dance, and beauty contests during the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival.

“Sounds fun.”

This world didn’t have TV or radio, much less the Internet, and entertainment opportunities were hard to come by, which meant that everyone in the town square was quite excited, including me.

Half an hour after we arrived, the priestesses started banging on the drums and everyone quieted down as the shadow puppets started moving behind a semi-transparent white curtain.

A voice boomed out, “The Wise Lioness.”

The story was told with music and lyrics as well as shadows. Of course, being an alien to this world, the story it told was quite new to me, but evidently not to the rest of the audience who whooped and cheered every time something happened. The lioness of the title recovered her nine lost cubs from fire, earthquake, tsunami, and tornado while teaching them lessons about obedience and kindness. My three apprentices cheered along with the rest of the crowd, and it looked like they were really having the time of their lives.

Next came the traditional Lion Dance. The white lion, representing the wisdom of old age, had the symbol for “ruler” on its forehead. Its steps were stately and majestic, seeming to stomp down on the ground with great power. The black lion, representing the liveliness of youth, jumped and pranced around energetically, while the red lion, representing the heroic courage of middle age, had an iron horn in the middle of his forehead that it used to slash and stab at imaginary targets.

Dozens and dozens of different kinds of fireworks exploded as the Lion Dance came to its end, then the Mayor went up to the stage to give a short speech. I started to feel sleepy as the contest winners were announced to much fanfare, and each one gave a speech. Then it was time to reveal the Farming Contest winners.

“Remember, be cool,” I told my apprentices yet again. “Don’t say anything bad, either.”

“… And in ninth place, Emberstone Farm!” said the mayor.

Even though I had warned them, Lari, Kharli, and Mo’s mouths still fell open in shock. At least they didn’t say anything as I went up the stage and accepted my reward, a bit of cash and a small wooden acorn trophy.

[Ninth Place Trophy (Mid-Autumn Farming Contest)

A wooden trophy in the shape of an acorn.

+0.1% Farming Exp]

Everyone was so shocked and disappointed that I decided we should leave the town square immediately and as quietly as we could. At the inn, Lari burst out into a passionate rant the moment we closed the door to our rooms.

“Ninth place! That’s impossible! They must be blind. We had the best produce by far. How could we lose? It’s not fair. We should complain to the Mayor! Who the heck are the judges? They should be made to explain their decision!” He went on and on as the maids packed up all the items we had bought in town.

I waited until he ran out of breath before explaining what happened. “I expected it. This is a small town, and everyone knows each other. They’re not about to award the big prizes to an outsider, no matter how good. The important thing is that we got this.”

I held out the trophy and they passed it around.

“Teacher, what does [+0.1% Farming Exp] mean?” asked Kharli.

“It means that we get bonus experience now! Isn’t it great?” I took back the trophy and polished it with my sleeve before storing it safely in my inventory. “Every time we get exp, we’ll receive a little extra because of this trophy.”

“How much extra?” asked Mo.

“One thousandth,” I said.

“What? Isn’t that too small for all the effort that we did?” Lari looked even more disappointed now.

“No. There is a minimum of 0.25 exp.” Of course, when we did activities that gave a lot of experience, like harvesting crops, one measly point of exp was nothing, but it was a significant addition to our everyday chores that only gave tiny amounts of exp, like watering and weeding plants.

My three apprentices huddled together and started whispering amongst themselves.

“She seems happy.” That was Kharli.

“You know she’s easily pleased.” That was Mo.

“I don’t understand what all this is about.” That was Lari.

I sat down on the inn room’s chair and waited for the maids to finish packing.

“Maybe she just really likes exp? I mean, exp is nice,” said Mo.

“Eh, I don’t think this extra exp will help much, but it won’t hurt either,” said Kharli.

I let them talk because I understood how disappointed they must be. Adventure Incarnate’s developers were a little bit playful when it came to events. Things almost never turned out the way you expected them to. I thought of the time when some players used an exploit to kill all of the Farming Contest participants, hoping that they would be able to carry off the first prize, the [Cheerful Cow Trophy], but they still only got fifth place in the contest. We joked in the forums that the judges had given the awards posthumously and placed the trophies on the contestants’ graves though, of course, the townspeople simply respawned when the developers restarted the server.

“Don’t fret, didn’t we all have fun?” I asked them when they quieted down a little.

Lari, Kharli, and Mo all nodded.

“Then it’s all good!” I yawned. It was after midnight, and I was really sleepy. “Let’s start walking to the gate where the carriage is. I can’t wait to go home and rest.”

***

The next day, my apprentices found out the joy of getting extra exp.

“I’m getting twice as much exp!” said Mo.

“You liar! It’s only half,” said Lari.

“Are you two stupid? It’s only one-third!” said Kharli.

I made a mental note to ask Fengying to teach them about fractions, decimals, and percentage points. We were actually getting 25% more exp when we watered the plants.

“Now do you know why I wasn’t in favor of planting rice?” I almost said “this early in the game” but caught myself in time. “Since the rice paddy is flooded, we’re actually losing out on watering exp.”

Since we were already in the middle of autumn, the crops were halfway to harvest time. The vegetable field was full of lush greenery, and the two rice fields were full of two-feet tall rice plants.

However, there was one small problem. The rice we were growing was rather weird. They sucked up so much water that we had to constantly adjust the irrigation canal’s gate to keep the paddies at the right water level. Furthermore, the plants were not the green ones I expected. Instead, they were striped blue and pink with golden edges. I had to admit it looked really mystical, but I wasn’t sure what was going on. Would I be able to harvest regular white rice at all, or would I end up with some exotic rice variety?

Well, it was no use worrying about it now. I’d find out at harvest time.

The trees in the greenhouse were also doing quite nicely, and I was impatient to get started on my new farming project.

“What’s taking so long?” I asked my Farm Guide the next day when he visited me. “I got permission to farm ages ago.”

“It’s not as simple as you might think. I told you about ‘territory.’ Did you ever stop to wonder whose territory you would be farming on?” he said.

“Wow, I hadn’t considered that. Isn’t it enough that I have the prince’s permission?”

“You actually received the Lady of the West’s permission, not the prince’s. And no, it’s not enough. We had to send some people to look for a place that meets your requirements since the place you initially chose is disputed land. Now that we’ve found some sites, we have to get permission from the clans who claim that territory.”

“But no one lives there! Wasn’t it abandoned a long time ago?”

“People consider that land cursed, but you don’t know how tenacious people are about their old territories. Those who lost their homes during the demon invasion still talk about reclaiming the land.”

“Ah…” All this stuff wasn’t in Adventure Incarnate. Real life was so much messier than the game.

“Anyway, just be patient.”

“Okay, but if you could hurry them up a little, I would be grateful. I’d like to get started before winter, otherwise, I’ll have to delay until the start of spring.”

“I’ll see what I can do.”

Chapter 60.5

An excerpt from the journal of Shuye Skullcrusher, Guardian of the Ancient Hill Forest:

I think I know where she’s from now.

Hongzhen Town has the same stealth aura around it as Emberstone Farm. Once Baroness Violet showed me the place, I experimented with giving people directions and maps to locate it. No one was able to find it until I personally brought them there.

The town is even better protected than the farm because the people I showed it to were then unable to return once they left the town walls. I believe the only reason I was able to remember it was because Baroness Violet showed it to me herself. My passing on the knowledge of its existence doesn’t seem to work as well.

Hongzhen town itself seems unremarkable except for the stealth aura. Its inhabitants are well aware that people from outside can’t enter their town and forget them once they are out of sight.

The Mayor assured me that the Lion God’s protection, which is what they call it, doesn’t extend to criminals or scammers. According to him, such unsavory characters are immediately thrown out of town by divine will. I perused the neighboring towns’ records and found that there were a few dozen nameless persons of unknown origin who were thrown in jail or otherwise punished for various crimes in the past century, so the Mayor’s words seem to be true.

I sent a report to the Prince, but every time we discuss it, he forgets what I said moments later.

Perhaps Baroness Violet’s unknown parents were from Hongzhen or a similar place.