Chapter 37 In the blink of an eye, the rice changed...

In the blink of an eye, the rice turned golden. Cang Li looked at the hundred-odd acres of land and took a deep breath.

"Master Daoist! Do you have some free time?!"

Taiqing certainly had free time; all five children had been cultivating for the past month, so he had suspended his teaching.

"What do you want to do?" Taiqing asked as he walked up to Cangli.

Cang Li pointed to a large expanse of golden rice: "These all need to be harvested, then threshed, dried, and stored. We also need a cave to store the grain."

The cave where she and her children lived couldn't hold so much grain. One hundred acres of land—and this seed wasn't the current unimproved seed, but a superior rice variety produced by the system. Even with second-generation planting, the yield per acre was estimated to be over 600 jin, so one hundred acres would yield around 60,000 jin. Harvesting it all would be a huge undertaking.

Based on the minimum number of offspring required for a species to continue to reproduce, plus various accidental deaths and excluding inbreeding, Cang Li felt that her mother had to create at least five thousand people. Given how dangerous the prehistoric world was, five thousand people were a must, excluding losses and unexpected events.

The harvested grain should last until the next season.

Cangli and Taiqing discussed the rice together, then used magic to thresh it and spread it on flat ground to dry. To dry the rice, Cangli also had Taiqing harden a large area where the straw was piled up, specifically for drying.

After harvesting the rice, they immediately began grazing cattle and plowing the fields, dug huge caves to store the grain, and harvested and replanted cotton. Once the next season's rice was planted, Cang Li had some free time and said to Tai Qing:

"Taoist Master, I'm not lying to you. Let's go. Today I'm going to get my mom up and start making babies."

Full of energy, Cang Li tucked his usual axe behind his waist and headed towards the river.

Taiqing followed behind, and after calculating with his fingers, he realized that the time was indeed right, so he did not stop them. It was time for the human race to appear; if it were any later, the Heavenly Dao would probably become impatient.

Upon reaching the riverbank, Cang Li took out a bamboo raft and crossed to the other side. This time, the journey was smooth. After disembarking and approaching Nuwa, Cang Li took a deep breath and focused his energy in his dantian—

"Mom!!! Get up! You've been sleeping for half a year!"

Taiqing: ...

Despite being well-prepared, Cang Li's method was still too crude.

Nuwa, naturally, remained silent; she couldn't be bothered to pay attention to her beloved eldest daughter.

Cang Li pursed his lips, sat down on the ground, and screamed at the top of his lungs, "Ah! Mom! Help! I'm going to die! Where did this big tiger come from! Mom! Help!"

Taiqing: ? ? ?

Taiqing looked around warily, but where was the tiger? What kind of tiger could evade his senses?

Cang Li winked at Tai Qing and continued to wail, her tone extremely panicked and weak; her acting was nothing short of superb.

The opposite mountain moved, and Nuwa appeared before Cang Li:

"Ah!? There's a tiger there! Da Bao, don't be afraid!"

Only after saying that did they realize there was no tiger at all; Cang Li was just pretending.

Nuwa: ...

"Baby, didn't we agree not to bother me?"

Nuwa's face was filled with helplessness and indulgence.

Cang Li looked up at Nuwa with a serious expression:

"Mom, you've been sleeping for a long time. The chores you promised to do haven't been brought to me yet. How am I supposed to finish all this land? Even though Master Taiqing helped me, he can't stay here forever. Mom, you should get up and start making a baby."

Nuwa's gaze drifted, and she greeted Taiqing: "Senior Brother Taiqing, you haven't left yet."

Cang Li: "Mom~ don't change the subject, it's time to make a baby, don't sleep."

Seeing that she couldn't avoid it, Nuwa sat down in front of Cang Li, somewhat dejected, and said, resting her chin on her hand:

“But people are really hard to raise, baby. Not everyone is as well-behaved as you. Zhong and Yu are so noisy. They want to eat, they want to drink, they crawl all over the place, and they scream loudly. It took me eighteen years to raise you. If I were to create many more people, I couldn’t raise them. So many little babies, I can’t do it. They will die all at once for various reasons.”

In fact, Nuwa was not making things up. Before Cangli, she created about ten offspring, each of whom died for one reason or another. It wasn't until Cangli that Nuwa created Cangli and carefully raised him for a long time before he slowly became independent.

It was because Cang Li survived that Nuwa created Ji and Jie, and later, with great confidence, she created Er. Just as Nuwa was preparing to create a race, she encountered two babies with high needs and difficult to raise, Zhong and Yu.

Exhausted from raising her child, Nuwa gave up on the idea of ​​creating humans.

Cang Li: ...

Looking at Nuwa's beautiful, divine face, Cang Li wondered if her mother was an idiot. Why was she so insistent on creating offspring and raising them slowly?

Nuwa clasped her hands together and said, "Baby, please let me go. If you want to farm, I'll go to the demon race and catch a few strong demons for you to use. I really don't want to take care of the children, and I don't want you to take care of them either. The cubs are really hard to raise. Look how haggard you look after raising them for a year."

Taiqing finally couldn't help but speak up: "Junior Sister Nuwa, if you don't want to create the human race, do you also not want to become a saint?"

Nuwa paused, her gaze wandering for a moment, before she said with great determination, "Between becoming a saint and not having children, I choose not to have children."

Taiqing: ...

Cang Li tugged at Nuwa: "Mom, is there any possibility that you don't have to mold the cubs?"

Nuwa looked at Cangli in confusion: "Huh?" Not creating cubs? But every race comes from the cub stage, doesn't it?

Cang Li grabbed a lump of wet clay from the ground and sculpted it into an adult human figure. She truly hadn't considered that Nuwa didn't create humans because she didn't want to raise children, or even that she would directly create a self-sufficient adult. Cang Li was speechless. She handed the completed clay figure with long arms and legs to Nuwa and said:

"Look! Adults! They can take care of themselves! Humans who won't suddenly collapse!"

Nuwa: ...

Nuwa turned around and disappeared.

Cang Li: ? ? ?

Cang Li turned to Tai Qing and asked, "What does my mother mean by this?"

Tai Qing's heart skipped a beat. He grabbed Cang Li's shoulder and quickly retreated, soon returning to the other side of the river. As soon as the two stood still, before Cang Li could even speak, they saw the opposite side of the river suddenly shake, and the ground trembled violently.

The mountain slowly rose from the ground, then gradually shrank. The enormous mountain disappeared without a trace in just a few seconds, as if it had never existed.

Before long, Nuwa flew over from the other side of the river, smiling as she pinched Cang Li's cheek and said:

"Baby~ You're such a smart baby, hehe. Just you wait, Mom will make you lots of people to do the work."

Cang Li was speechless. Nuwa had already happily returned to the other side of the river. Cang Li looked over and saw that where there used to be a mountain, there had become a mud pit. Nuwa had transformed into her Dharma form and was sitting by the pit, earnestly sculpting clay figures. Cang Li looked away. Hmm, her mother was working hard to create humans. She should also work hard to farm.

The five children had already noticed the changes here. One of them, carrying Yu on his back and pulling the others along, ran over and asked in a somewhat panicked manner:

"Sister, what happened?"

Cang Li said with a smile, "It's alright, Mom's up and getting to work. Come on, I'll take you to build a bridge so it'll be easier for people to cross between the two banks later."

The five children looked at Cang Li with admiration on their faces. Their older sister had really done it!

Looking across to the other side, the Mother Goddess was indeed busy sculpting people.

Jie said happily, "Sister, will there be many people working together from now on?"

Cang Li nodded: "That's right. Okay, now let's go cut some wood and bamboo to build a bridge, and move some big stones."

Once Taiqing was certain that Nuwa was seriously creating humans again, he stopped paying attention and turned to Cangli, asking, "Is there anything I can help you with?"

Cang Li looked around and pointed to the dough, saying, "Make me a sturdy bridge pier in the middle of the river."

Taiqing hesitated for a moment and asked, "What do you use to do it?"

Cang Li realized that there was no bridge yet, so he explained to Tai Qing:

"I want to build a bridge. It needs a support point in the middle. You can use stone or wood, as long as it is sturdy and won't be easily washed away."

Cang Li even drew a simple diagram on the ground with a twig.

Taiqing understood. After thinking for a moment, following Cangli's instructions, he remotely retrieved two sturdy trees from the mountain and firmly planted them in the water. Half of the trees were submerged in the silt at the bottom of the river. The two trees were very tall, and even so, only a small section of them was exposed above the water, left to be washed away by the flowing water.

After determining the central position, Taiqing followed the same pattern and set eight bridge piers, each a straight line, about five zhang wide, roughly sixteen meters.

Taiqing then found many large stones from the mountain and piled them up around the logs, using magic to firmly fix the large stones together.

The two sides together consist of a total of 10 bridge piers fixed in the water.

Cang Li: "Wow! Not bad, not bad, it looks sturdy! Daoist, get some big trees and connect the two bridge piers together."

Taiqing was silent for a while. Many large trees flew down from the mountain and were placed on the bridge piers one by one. Holes were drilled and fixed in place to form a sturdy bridge frame. Then, the gaps in the middle were leveled with wood, and finally, the uneven wood on both sides was trimmed and leveled. The guardrails were also thoughtfully installed.

A bridge was completed before dark, so Cang Li didn't have to worry about it.

Jihe Jie came over carrying bamboo, and when he saw the completed bridge, he was instantly stunned, then cheered:

"Sister is amazing!"

Cang Li smiled and pointed at Tai Qing, saying, "It was the Taoist priest who did it; he's the real expert."

The two children shouted at Taiqing again, "Master, you're amazing!"

Taiqing stepped aside and said, "Go up and give it a try."

The two children happily ran onto the new bridge. The bridge was very sturdy; the water flow below wasn't slow, but the bridge didn't sway at all. Cang Li also went up and walked across it, and after confirming that there were no problems, he instructed Ji Hejie:

"Keep an eye on the crowds; don't let them walk alone on the bridge."

Ji Hejie nodded, then asked Cang Li, "Sister, may we go and see the Mother Goddess?"

Cang Li shook his head: "Don't disturb Mother Goddess, she's busy. Alright, let's go back. It's getting dark, and the three of them will be scared at home."

Ji and Jie obediently stepped off the bridge, each holding one of Cang Li's hands, and the three of them walked back together.

Taiqing glanced back at Nuwa, who was busily and enthusiastically sculpting people, and then followed Cangli back to the cave. The real task now was to educate the human race, to let them live naturally on this continent through the principle of non-action.