When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

#651 - Wheat breeding

As Lorenzo had anticipated, although the Saintly Path's doctrines were portrayed in newspapers and by some merchants as revolutionary and reasonable, to outsiders, especially those in the distant Golden Plains, the message they received was distorted. Due to the "rebellious" stance of Thousand River Valley itself, they heard that the people of Thousand River Valley had gone mad and were starting a new papacy.

In the eyes of citizens and nobles, it was absurd that a tiny cultural backwater was trying to launch a religious reformation movement.

However, within the Thousand River Valley, fueled by official promotion, the sparks of thought were spreading amidst the increasingly cold north winds and the withering flora.

If October's theme was "What does it mean to be human?", then November's theme was "What is the world?".

The former addressed the question of one's outlook on life, urging people to bravely pursue happiness in this world rather than passively accepting their current state.

The latter addressed the question of one's worldview, telling people that the world is a stage for humanity to achieve happiness and development, not a testing ground designed for suffering or salvation in the afterlife.

In just two months, the two intellectual centers of Shelley City and Rapid Current City began to spread outwards.

By December, not only the towns surrounding Shelley City and Rapid Current City, but even the streets of towns in Hotham County, were seeing monks waving the Truth Gazette and distributing leaflets.

Moreover, because the perpetual lease reform required the endorsement of freedom rights, this ideology began to flow along the Priest Order to village after village in the winter.

The monks, inspired by the ideological movement, erupted with unprecedented fervor for conversion.

Large numbers of monks began to promote the Saintly Path in monasteries, even joining forces with their companions to criticize the monastery's abbot or engage in face-to-face debates.

Driven by the enthusiasm for religious reform, more monks left the monasteries.

Some went to the cities, where they began to form societies with other monks to preach, while many others accepted employment as teachers in Horne's literacy classes, teaching adults and children to read with the help of the centurions.

From daily life, it seemed as if nothing had changed.

But the actions of these monks and priests were hidden undercurrents, constantly transforming the very foundation of the Thousand River Valley's people in ways unseen on the surface.

The people of Thousand River Valley, having accepted ideological transformation, began to show increasing differences from the average "person" of the Empire.

In the eyes of most monks, they should seize the opportunity and continue to relentlessly attack traditional theism.

However, after proposing these two topics, Horne did not continue to expand on new concepts, but instead turned around and began to patch up these two doctrines.

The main thing was to introduce various new words and concepts.

Therefore, the content of the Truth Gazette during this period was "What is rationality? I think, therefore I am!" and "How to understand free will?".

In addition to views on nature, the theories and definitions of the Saintly Path's ruling core, such as "exorcism", "judgmental holy war", "labor and exchange", and "labor and surplus labor results", were all reported in the newspaper.

The Theodora Printing House collected these articles at an extremely fast pace and, after hiring monks to add a large number of examples and metaphors, published a book called "A Concise Encyclopedia of Saintly Path Salvation Training", which was quickly welcomed by a large number of citizens.

The reason for not continuing to expand on new concepts in December was not because Horne had exhausted his tricks, but because he hoped that the monks would be able to comprehend the final layer themselves.

With the worldview and outlook on life under the Saintly Path's theory already built, the values were already on the verge of emerging.

In addition to ideological considerations, there was another factor: some hooligans and interested people were, whether intentionally or unintentionally, starting to profit from this enthusiasm.

This led to Horne welcoming a new batch of students to the Trinity Education Team of the Saintly Machine Court before the New Yuan Festival.

Regardless of the turmoil outside, there was peace and harmony in the Saintly Machine Court.

After the Advent of December 1st, Horne received good news: with Catherine's help, the experimental field of the Saintly Plow Monastery on Autumn Twilight Island finally yielded results.

Inside this glass-roofed greenhouse, peat moss dissipated heat throughout the room through flues. Although it was already winter, the room was still as warm as spring.

In order to conduct agricultural experiments all year round, the Saintly Plow Monastery purchased these large pieces of translucent glass at great expense.

Even Horne's Holy See Building had many windows made from the scraps of this greenhouse.

The greenhouse was divided into six plots of land, planted with wheat, rice fruit, soybeans, and root vegetables, as well as two blank experimental groups.

These four crops were basically the main food crops of the Thousand River Valley, and the breakthrough crop this time was wheat.

Looking at the wheat in the left plot and then at the wheat in the right plot, Horne immediately noticed the difference.

As an old farmer, he immediately smiled and asked Catherine, "Have you bred wheat seeds with more ears?".

"To be precise, I have bred wheat seeds that are more sensitive to manure." Catherine, wearing silk gloves, stroked the ears of wheat. "It's just that its own potential has been stimulated."

For Catherine, breeding was a rather simple matter. With her ability to manipulate plant growth, it might take others decades of field observation and cross-breeding to breed suitable varieties.

The most outrageous point was that the effects of Catherine's forced ripening of plants were almost the same as those of ordinary plants growing naturally, just spending a little more magic to maintain their vitality.

Taking the breeding of moisture-resistant seeds as an example.

Normally, one would have to look for wild wheat in wet areas or directly plant wheat in swamps, and select plants with better adaptability through stress selection, and then cross them with high-yield plants.

Under the current technical conditions, this process may take decades or even hundreds of years.

But for Catherine, she only needed to forcibly ripen the plants in a humid environment a few times. Generally, after two or three generations, the offspring of these plants would have moisture-resistant traits.

Of course, if Catherine did not intervene, the offspring of the offspring would immediately degenerate, but it did not prevent the offspring from being crossed with other varieties.

However, this required the clean-loving Catherine to crawl around in the fields, which was not unacceptable, but she was always a little resentful in her heart.

"Through this method, we have bred a wheat variety that is more sensitive to fertilizer and resistant to rust, which is estimated to reach a yield of about 110 to 120 pounds per acre.

With sufficient fertilizer and alchemical insecticides, it is estimated that the yield per acre can be increased to between 130 and 150 pounds."

This was an increase of nearly double the original yield of 80 to 90 pounds per acre.

Even without sufficient fertilizer and alchemical insecticides, the yield increased by about 20% compared to the original.

"After breeding wheat varieties that were more sensitive to irrigation and fertilization, we encountered a problem: the wheat straw was generally more than one meter high, and the overly full grains and abundant ears of wheat would pull down the straw because they were too heavy." Catherine continued to introduce, "Then, we got inspiration from you."

"Inspiration from me?"

"Yes, we bred wheat straw that was less than 70-80 centimeters high. Because the center of gravity was lower, even if the head was bigger, it would not pull down the straw."

Horne's face darkened, and he said blandly, "As expected of an old church member, I can rest assured that you are handling things. Next, let's develop in the direction of disease resistance."

After saying that, Horne immediately chose to disengage and turned to leave the greenhouse, not giving Catherine a chance to fight back.