Yu Xiaocao looked at the not yet ready corn growing in the fields. Her eyebrows came together in a deep frown. If the plague of locusts came, then everything here would be hard-pressed to escape. The corn still needed about a month’s worth of growth before it was ready to harvest. If the plants were harmed by the locusts, then their losses would be inestimable.

The family’s economic damage wasn’t even their first concern. The imperial courts and the young royal prince were ardently hoping for this crop of corn to go well as they only had a small subset of fields growing corn in the capital. In the future, the plan was to slowly push out this crop to the whole nation, especially the northern and northwestern parts of the country. Those areas truly needed a high-yielding crop that wasn’t picky about the soil.

Now back to her family’s concerns. Ten mu had all been planted with corn. If all of that was destroyed, then all the work they had done for a season would be gone! Yu Xiaocao reckoned that the emperor, whose policies had always helped the commoners, would not have their family plant these crops for the court in vain. He would very likely buy this corn back from them at a high price to be used as seeds later.

Yu Xiaocao wasn’t able to guarantee anything else, but she was pretty sure that there was no one in this era who was better at raising crops than her....