My Apocalypse System Arrives 10 Years Early

Chapter 52: Chapter 51: Drying Persimmon Cakes, Good Things Happen, All As Wished

It was an early morning in the first days of winter. The backyard lawn was covered in white frost, and the sky had just begun to lighten.

Li Xiang got up early, washed up, and went to let out the chickens and ducks, who were already waiting impatiently. After tossing them a few handfuls of grain, he grabbed an Iron Pickaxe and began tilling the soil in the backyard.

His two Dahuangs ran back and forth beside their master.

For the past few days, the big rooster with the red comb and colorful feathers had started crowing around 5:30 AM. ”COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO~” Its call was as resonant as a great bell, so Li Xiang basically didn’t need an alarm clock. As soon as the rooster crowed, he knew it was about 5:30 and time to get up.

It was incredibly punctual.

What surprised Li Xiang was that just a few days ago, the rooster had been crowing a little after 4:00 AM, back when the sun rose a bit earlier.

It wasn’t that the rooster had gotten lazy with the arrival of winter, as if chickens observed daylight saving time. Rather, roosters are sensitive to light, and their internal biological clocks can adjust the time on their own.

Research shows that a rooster’s brain has a pineal gland that secretes melatonin. When dawn breaks, the melatonin levels drop, causing it to crow.

As for chickens that crow at midnight, that’s just Zhou Bapi in disguise. If not, it’s likely the rooster’s hormones are out of whack.

According to Feng Shui, raising chickens can protect a house and ward off evil. Venomous creatures like centipedes wouldn’t dare come near. In ancient times, a rooster crowing in the middle of the night signified that something inauspicious was nearby, and its crowing would dispel it. However, another belief holds that the rooster has been possessed by something malevolent. In that case, upon discovering a rooster crowing at night, one must immediately chop off its head and sprinkle its blood in a circle around the house to resolve the issue.

Li Xiang circulated his Breathing Technique and Body Techniques, tilling the earth one swing of the Iron Pickaxe at a time. He wanted to get all the unused land in the backyard tilled before the super-snowstorm arrived.

When the heavy snow fell, it would freeze the upturned soil, making it loose and killing any insect eggs within. Come spring, it would be perfect for planting crops.

It wasn’t just about the work; he was primarily using the labor to cultivate his Breathing Technique and Body Techniques.

According to the legacy he had inherited, Cultivation was most effective when performed during manual labor. For him, a man who had returned to the countryside to farm, it was a way to kill two birds with one stone. What was not to love?

In the eyes of the villagers, Li Xiang was simply exceptionally diligent. Even though he had gone to university and worked in a big city, he hadn’t forgotten any of his farming skills. In fact, he was far better than the average farmhand.

Li Xiang worked until about eight o’clock, then went to make breakfast for himself and his grandmother. After they ate, he called for his grandmother to come pick persimmons with him.

As for the rest of the tilling, he would continue tomorrow morning. It was his daily ”morning exercise”—integrating his Breathing Technique and Body Techniques into his farm work, persevering day after day.

Everyone knows you can’t just go for a morning run in the countryside. Forging one’s body by working hard first thing in the morning, like Li Xiang, was the proper way to do it.

By this time of year, the persimmon tree had lost almost all its leaves, leaving only a canopy full of bright red fruit, a delightful sight to behold.

But picking persimmons required a special tool. His family’s persimmon tree was very tall and large, and the distant twigs where the persimmons hung were often quite slender.

But country folk have their own methods.

Li Xiang brought out his family’s heirloom persimmon-picking ”artifact”: a long bamboo pole with a thin iron hook at the tip. Usually, one person would use it to hook a fruit’s stem, give it a gentle twist to make the persimmon fall, while another person waited below, head tilted up, tracking the fruit’s descent to catch it in a cloth bag.

There were more ”advanced” fruit-picking gadgets online, but it wasn’t like he’d bought one.