Worried that the outsiders would eat and take too much from the fields, Huo Changzhou quickly threw every person he could spare into the teams harvesting vegetables and grain.

As the saying goes, many hands make light work. Soon, mounds of vegetables and grains piled up along the edges of the fields.

It was a delightful sight.

Huo Changzhou stood in the wind, savoring the joy of the bumper crop, and narrowed his eyes in satisfaction. The lingering displeasure he’d felt earlier scattered to the winds.

’That Miss Gu might be a bit domineering, but she was right about one thing,’ he thought. ’Those people who came to help, greedy though they may be, are just ordinary folks. How much can they really eat and take?’

’Compared to the total yield, it’s not even worth mentioning.’

Huo Changzhou’s eyes narrowed slightly.

’I was thinking about this all wrong. Having outsiders here to help is actually a good thing. The more people, the murkier the water, and murky water is perfect for fishing.’

Looking at the endless expanse of vegetables and grain before him, Huo Changzhou began to scheme.

’Once this produce is in the farm’s warehouse later, I can pull a perfect bait-and-switch—’

’Conveniently, the granary in the East Suburb still has a lot of grain and vegetables from last year’s harvest. Back then, that stuff was considered top-tier... it has very low X Energy content. Otherwise, the higher-ups wouldn’t have bothered stashing it in that secret granary.’

’But now? Compared to this batch of completely X-Energy-free, safe, and delicious premium produce, that old stuff is just garbage.’

’There’s no comparison.’

’So, after the news broke that plants could undergo reverse evolution, the higher-ups naturally lost interest in it. It’s just been sitting in the East Suburb, untouched.’

’And now, it’s all to my advantage.’

Huo Changzhou mulled it over. He would use the old stock. After the switch, he’d pass off the inferior goods for the superior ones. He’d send the batch from the East Suburb for disaster relief, then secretly present the crops Gu Xi had grown to his superiors...

’Then, not only will I secretly make a huge profit, but I’ll also earn goodwill on both sides. Publicly, my disaster relief efforts will be a success, a feather in my political cap. Privately, my superiors will remember my contribution of high-quality grain and will surely support me from the shadows.’

’With a plan like this, how could I not have a meteoric rise?’

’And in the worst-case scenario, if someone finds out something is wrong...’ Huo Changzhou narrowed his eyes, glancing at the refugees who were both eating and taking produce. ’Aren’t they all perfect scapegoats?’

’When the time comes, I’ll just pin the blame on these refugees, and I’ll remain the innocent, responsible intellectual. After all, I did warn that Miss Gu beforehand that these people were of dubious origin and had sticky fingers!’

’But Miss Gu just wouldn’t listen to my advice and insisted on using them, didn’t she?’

’So if something goes wrong, it’s not my fault!’

No wonder Li Ming was always telling Gu Xi that intellectuals were full of devious schemes, their minds as full of holes as a honeycomb briquette.

Huo Changzhou himself was a prime example.

With his mental abacus clacking away, Huo Changzhou deemed his plan flawless and was overcome with joy.

He was so thrilled that even the sight of the napa cabbages was immensely satisfying—though the old woman off to the side, secretly stuffing cabbage leaves into her mouth, did turn his stomach a bit.

’But never mind,’ he told himself. ’I’m a proper Ph.D. in agronomy, the esteemed head of Farm 0101. Arguing with an ignorant peasant woman would be beneath me.’

’Think bigger! Think bigger!’

Huo Changzhou silently consoled himself. ’But... damn, it still hurts. This is my grain, my political accomplishment, my bright and promising future!’

Clutching his chest, Huo Changzhou decided to go with "out of sight, out of mind" and walked toward the hilly area where they were digging up sweet potatoes.

Unlike the vegetables, sweet potatoes were a proper staple crop, and a high-yield one at that!

Huo Changzhou gazed at the endless mounds of sweet potatoes piled high like small hills, and his heart soared...

But his joy was short-lived.

A deafening roar echoed from the sky—airplanes!

Shen Yue had personally led a team, arriving with a large transport plane and several helicopters!

Huo Changzhou watched as his bright, promising future was hauled away by Shen Yue’s people before it had even crossed the warehouse threshold. One could only imagine his mood.

The worst part was, he couldn’t openly object. Their justification was perfectly righteous, after all: disaster relief couldn’t be delayed!

Hundreds of thousands of refugees were over there, starving and waiting to be fed.

What a noble and unimpeachable reason!

No matter how pained or furious he was, Huo Changzhou didn’t dare risk being accused of obstructing disaster relief. Never mind his superiors holding him accountable later; if the refugees right here caught wind of his true intentions, they would tear him limb from limb.

In the apocalypse, food was life.

His face frozen in a twisted, grim smile, Huo Changzhou sullenly departed from the cultivation area.

Not far away, Qi Xiang watched him leave, her eyes narrowed and a derisive smile playing on her lips.

’That Mr. Huo of mine,’ she thought, ’is the same old idiot. Does he really think he’s the only smart person in the world and everyone else is just a fool for him to manipulate?’

’It’s... almost cute, how idiotic he is.’

...

Gu Xi, leading a group of ability users, spent three days covering all of Farm 0101 and the surrounding wasteland.

Of course, this was mainly because the ability users Tang You had recruited from the city were mostly at the beginner or intermediate levels. Their powers were limited and couldn’t be sustained for long periods, and Gu Xi herself had hardly lifted a finger.

She only gave a few token demonstrations when someone asked her for advice on how to channel their powers.

During this time, Shen Yue’s air transport team—which he’d procured from who-knows-where—returned several times. In addition to hauling away the grain and vegetables, he saw how shorthanded they were and brought over a group of ordinary people from the hardest-hit areas of City A to help.

This was a win-win situation, killing several birds with one stone. It solved the food shortage for the refugees over there and addressed the labor shortage here.

After all, harvesting vegetables and grain was delicate, time-consuming manual labor.

For example, an Intermediate Wood Ability User could plant about three acres of land in a single go, taking only about half an hour.

But to harvest all the produce from those three acres, you would need at least fifty people, and it would still take them the better part of a day.

This disparity in speed meant they needed a much larger ordinary workforce.

So, Shen Yue figured he might as well take advantage of the grain transport runs. He used the planes to fly in some of the more diligent refugees and, on the return trips, hauled away every last bit of the harvest.

They didn’t leave so much as a single vegetable leaf for Huo Changzhou!

...There was no helping it. The older women who had clawed their way to survival in the apocalypse had all developed eagle eyes. They were incredibly shrewd; if even a single leaf was left in the fields, it would be stuffed into their own mouths.

They absolutely would not leave it for anyone else.

’This is the kind of good stuff we wouldn’t have even dared to dream about a few years ago. We’d have to be idiots not to grab it for ourselves!’