The System scowled. "My little undies are so torn now they barely cover the important bits."

’Damn it, whose System is this? It’s so crude!’

Seeing the tears welling up in the System’s big, dark eyes, Wu Yue’s cat-mom instincts flared up. On a sudden whim, she instantly transferred 50 Golden Powder Points into the System’s spending points account.

"Lucky System, your host has sent you 50 spending points. Feel free to visit the System Mall and spend them any time!"

The System was stunned. He remembered the last time he’d heard this voice—it was the cold, mechanical tone of rejection he got when he couldn’t afford to buy shorts, a stark contrast to the sweet voice he was hearing now.

’So it’s not just people who are materialistic these days,’ he thought. ’Even Systems are this superficial?’

Wu Yue now had a general idea of how to plant taro. Although the taro in this world was surely different from the ones back in Hua Country, they were still taro. Their growing habits couldn’t be that different... right?

With an apprehensive heart, while the Scorpion Tribe Beastmen toiled away turning the soil, Wu Yue had the slaves move all the taro out of the cellar to sprout.

To her pleasant surprise, the taro here didn’t take long to sprout at all. Perhaps because the cellar was still a bit damp from the long rainy season, the shoots eagerly burst forth in just one week.

After turning the soil, the conscripted Scorpion Tribe Beastmen unlocked a new skill: digging ditches. With a flick of their long scorpion tails, they looked like they didn’t give a damn about anything.

Tell them how deep a ditch you wanted, and that’s exactly how deep they’d dig it—perfectly standardized work.

Watching them, Wu Yue secretly considered the idea of keeping these useful Scorpion Tribe Beastmen around permanently.

Once all the taro was planted, Wu Yue divided the field into ten plots and assigned each one to a different slave to manage.

Neither the members of the Snow Tiger Tribe nor the slaves could understand why Wu Yue was planting taro this way.

To them, if you wanted to eat something, you just had to remember where you last gathered it and go back. All this troublesome planting felt like a needlessly complicated ordeal.

But since both the Clan Leader and the witch supported Wu Yue’s methods, no one voiced any objections. Besides, Wu Yue had already discovered so much food for the tribe that everyone felt a secret glimmer of anticipation.

Maybe she really could grow something special.

With the taro planted, Wu Yue turned her attention back to raising animals.

Before the long rainy season, she hadn’t had enough time, so she’d only raised a few chickens. The limited number of eggs they laid was only enough for a handful of people.

Now, however, she wanted to expand her flock.

She had discovered that the chickens here were quite interesting. Whether it was because food was scarce in the wild or because the slaves took such good care of them, the birds showed no inclination to run away even when let out of their coop.

Every morning, the slaves would gather tender grass the chickens loved and feed it to them before opening the coop to let them out for the day.

The chickens would forage in the area behind the settlement, and they especially loved to hang around the young slave children, who would feed them insects.

At night, they would return to the coop on their own to roost.

Sometimes, they’d even return from their wanderings with one or two new chickens in tow.

"Yue, we’re here!"

Grandma Hua Shu, whom Wu Yue hadn’t seen in a while, approached with a hearty laugh. Behind her were many other females, all members of the Collection Team.

Wu Yue smiled and greeted them, then led the group toward the chicken coop.

"I had the slaves wait a little before letting the chickens out, so you’ll be just in time to see them eat."

Hearing this, all their faces lit up with delight. 𝙧𝙚𝙚𝔀𝒆𝓫𝓷𝙤𝓿𝒆𝙡.𝒄𝙤𝓶

Sure enough, up ahead where the chickens were kept, two slaves were feeding the flock. The plump, well-behaved birds crowded around the slaves, pecking at the tender grass they tossed on the ground.

They clucked softly from time to time.

The group of females stood there and watched.

Once the slaves finished feeding them and left, the chickens milled about for a moment before heading off in a flock toward a grassy slope nearby.

It had become their favorite foraging spot recently.

The young slave children were gathered there too, catching insects.

When they saw the chickens approaching, they smiled and dumped the insects from their bamboo canisters onto the ground. A chase ensued—insects scrambling away with chickens in hot pursuit—and soon the birds were clucking contentedly as they ate their fill.