2. Smallville: Don't let waiting become a regret
3.
Parsnips can be used in a ploughman's lunch or parsnip soup, but Aria believes Martha can create something more with them—it's all the confidence Martha gave her when she made apple pie after their last trip to the seed store! She's already learned a new recipe; the only drawback is she's running out of ingredients.
Apples need greenhouses, greenhouses require community sacrifices, and the content of the sacrifices... seems to have changed and is no longer the same as before.
Aria pulled up the dashboard, not quite understanding why those quests that were supposed to be about gathering crops had become…? No wonder some players found them difficult; these confusing quests were just hard to guess.
Luckily, Aria wasn't a speedrunner; she was more focused on experiencing the game. After a minute of hesitation, she decided to put the quest aside and get out of bed to finish her work for the day.
After turning on the TV and checking the fortune for today, Aria went out with an axe and a pickaxe and decided to go to Martha's house first.
Although she didn't say it out loud, Aria had a vague feeling that the man of the family might no longer be around, and that Martha was now the sole caretaker of the land. Martha was getting a bit elderly, and when Aria had been loading the seeds into the pickup truck, she'd sensed she wasn't able to do it—so she'd taken a large bag of seeds and carried it on one shoulder, demonstrating her farmer's strength and secretly resolving to lighten Martha's load in the future.
At 6:30, the lights in Martha's house were still on. Aria walked around her house with an axe in hand and found a large pile of wood in the corner.
From the player's perspective, the fireplace in the house is just a decoration, but for the town's residents, it's a practical piece of furniture for keeping warm in the winter. This pile of logs isn't a valuable wood, but it's piled outside the house. They must be chopped into firewood during the farming off-season, dried in the summer, and used as fireplace fuel in the winter.
Thinking of how much wood Martha had to chop, Aria felt a surge of pride in her heart: Martha is so gentle, now that she is here, how could she give her such hard work!
Let AAA agricultural and sideline product distributors take care of it! She will be responsible for all the firewood from now on!
…
Martha had a dreamless night and when she woke up she heard clanging sounds in the yard.
The sound of metal meeting wood continued, as if the person swinging the metal never got tired and would never stop. Martha felt a little happy. Although she let Clark go and venture out into the world, she always wanted to see her child more.
When Clark Kent left, she asked him to come back and do all the heavy work. Clark tried not to miss any busy farming seasons, renovating silos and repairing fences. Martha knew her son had greater careers outside, about saving lives and criticizing current affairs, but he never hesitated to do farm work.
She pushed open the door: "K..." The voice stopped abruptly, and Martha was glad that she stopped.
Aria was sweating profusely in the yard, dressed in her farm clothes. The muscles beneath her short sleeves flexed faithfully as she wielded her axe, slicing each log with the precision of a factory machine. The firewood piled up behind her like a small mountain; it was hard to imagine how much she could accomplish alone in just half a morning. Martha understood she was trying to express her gratitude—coming from a bustling city, Aria still retained a sincerity unworn by the world's grit, which was perhaps why she couldn't stay there for long. After even a few days of contact, Martha began to feel that this child, like an eagle, deserved a free and unfettered life.
Seeing her come out, Aria smiled, her eyes narrowed. "Good morning, Martha!" She wiped the sweat from her forehead, a little embarrassed. "Did I disturb you?" So detailed, there's even a sound range determination?
Martha said nothing, but found a hot towel in the house and handed it to her.
Aria put down the axe and took it. Martha looked at her anxiously: "...Did I do something wrong?" Oh my god, she wouldn't chop the tree wrong! If she did, she would immediately chop some more trees for Martha to make amends. She just hoped Martha wouldn't deduct her favorability points.
Martha suppressed the warmth welling up in her heart. As she wiped the sweat from her forehead, the corners of her lips curved up. "No, not at all."
A heart popped out from Martha's head. Did her favorability actually increase?
"Thank you for your help, dear."
The wind blew the wind chimes on the door frame, making them tinkle. Martha pointed inside the house, blinked, and seemed in a good mood: "You haven't had breakfast yet, right? How about we have some together?"
I know Martha is the best!
4.
At the dinner table, Martha shared some interesting stories with her. Old Joe, the grocer, sold decent food, but he heard that a certain group in the city was planning to develop a warehouse-style supermarket. Old Joe was worried that their overly low prices would affect his own small shop, as many young people these days preferred to go to the city for a couple of days of fun on weekends.
Aria nodded obediently, "I understand, it's JOJA."
JOJA? That might be her mistake. At her age, her memory wasn't as good as a young person's. The aroma of cooked meat gradually wafted from the pot. Martha took the pot off the stove and added two more slices of bacon to the young man's plate. "You're at your age, you're growing up. Eat more."
In fact, Aria didn't know how old she was. The game didn't let her set it, so the date of birth on her driver's license couldn't be taken seriously. So when Martha treated her as a child, she immediately accepted this setting.
"Martha is so nice!" she exclaimed sincerely. "And the bacon is so delicious! It's so nice to have Martha as a neighbor."
"Don't tease me," Martha laughed. "I'm just an old country lady from Smallville. I'm not as good as you say."
"But when Clark comes back, you can ask him to take you around town." Martha handed her a napkin, her eyes fixed on the vast expanse of land outside the window that hadn't been planted yet. "He'll be back when the corn is planted. Clark has been running around this town since he was a kid, so he knows some of its corners better than I do."
"Didn't you ask me where I could go fishing? I think he knows."
Aria's attention was not on Martha's son. She propped up her head, as if thinking, "It's great to have a seed drill now." She still had to plant the seeds one by one, and she didn't know if this game included a quick seeding mod.
"Yes, but watering is still a bit troublesome." It needs to be watered every three or four days. Although there is a watering truck, it still takes most of the day to finish watering.
Aria's eyes lit up, she stood up, patted her chest and promised, "I have a way to do this!"
She will go to the mine today to repair twenty or thirty iron automatic sprinklers!
————————
Clark came home and found himself dead:?
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