I smiled and grabbed that bundle over my shoulder.

Grandma Sha couldn’t walk too much, so I became the transporter here. Plus I wanted to see Grandpa Jin doing his magic to grow the plants. The walk to his field wasn’t too bad, approximately 12 minutes.

“Tonight I will prepare your favorite soup. Drag that old man home soon, don’t stay at the field too long, for he can stay there day and night!”

“Sure will!” I waved back at Grandma Sha, and turned toward the road.

After walking a little bit, I looked back and still saw Grandma Sha waving at me. It was quite far away, I couldn’t even tell her features anymore. Everything blurred out, except for that waving hand. She tended to stay at the door and waved until I was completely out of sight.

I waved back, and continued on.

It didn’t take long to arrive in the field.

The field was relatively small, consisting of about ten rows of anesthetic plants. They were four feet tall with circular purple leaves. The stalk was smooth and thick as the wrist. From far away, the field of purple plants really stood out from the rest of the greenery.

“Grandpa Jin!” I hurried and went over to check how much the plants had grown.

Hmmm……………

They looked the same as yesterday, not much of a difference.

“Just on time, LiNa, here is your favorite part!”

Grandpa Jin closed his eyes and concentrated, and then slowly moved his hands in an intriguing way, as if drawing a specific pattern in the air, and soon green sparkles appeared out of nowhere!

He opened his eyes and gave me a wink, then pointed his forefinger toward the plants. All the firefly-liked green sparkles flew through the air and fluttered through the leaves, brushed the stalks, and kissed all the buddings.

As the green sparkles were performing their magic, Grandpa Jin drew out another pattern in the air and pushed it onto the plants.

Then-------

The plants magically grew four more inches, right in front of my eyes!

Although this was not the first time I had seen it, I was still amazed by the idea of magic arts. It felt as if watching some kind of fantasy movie or a clip of a fast-forwarded sprouting or flower blooming. The sparkles slowly went away, Grandpa Jin smiled with satisfaction and proudly stared at the field.

Yes, he was a proud old man because it was always so easy to impress a human like me.

I clapped with my hands and jumped like a kid, “That was awesome! I want to learn to grow anesthetic plants too!”

My language skills definitely improved a lot after the winter season. At least it wasn’t as awkward as before.

He laughed like Santa.

“It’s not that difficult, like any other plants, there are mainly two important keys here. The first one is sunlight, secondly is water, then the rest would be occasional magic feeding and bug catching.”

All right, demons fed crops with magic, but not fertilizers in this land.

“Bugs?”

“Yes, when you came last year it was already summer time, these little buggies only appeared briefly in the spring. You had missed them before, but not this time!”

With the tip of two fingers, he quickly snatched a squirming caterpillar from one of the leaves and shove right into my face. It was huge and orange with yellow stripes that looked like a mustard hot dog! It had countless little feet that kept on moving, and wanted to get a hold of a plant. There were at least fifty little eyes on its head, with that many eyes, I could see through the end of the universe. That really triggered my trypophobia!

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My eyes were stunned like two ping pong balls stuck onto the socket, and couldn't even roll a hair.

“Ayaa------------!”

I hurried and jumped away, with goosebumps all over my body.

“Do we have that many caterpillars on our plants!?”

Grandpa Jin chuckled, “not that many, probably a couple dozen.”

Oh gosh, one was enough to knock me off, a couple dozen would probably kill me on the spot. At first I thought about helping Grandpa Jin with farming, but now that idea has been vacillated.

Still, I didn’t want to be a useless being, maybe I should overcome my fear and help out in the field?

While I was trying to smooth out my goosebumps, Grandpa Jin already put a tiny stick through its body and stuck it under the warm sun.

“This is an excellent ingredient for herbal soup. The caterpillars love to suck the juice out of the plants, so they have some level of anesthetic effect. It’s also a good source of proteins, which helps a sick person recover sooner. Once dry, it can be preserved for a long period of time.”

Wait……….Does that mean……….?!

A memory quickly flashed through my mind………….

When I was rescued by the old couple, I literally gobbled that whole bowl of herbal soup down. Now I recalled, there were some chopped up squishy pieces of food in that bowl, and I swallowed them all down.

Great, I freaking just ate a bunch of caterpillars.

Aaaahhhhhhhhh………….

All right, LiNa, calm down okay? These wriggling little “worms” were full of proteins, which were found in meat as well. It was the same thing!

Jeez, I was trying so hard to convince myself!

“They have a tingling feeling effect on the tongue, which is good for a sick person, but definitely doesn't work for dinners. Otherwise we would fry them in a pot to make one big feast!”

After hearing Grandpa Jin’s “possible suggestion,” I started gagging as if there was already one in my throat. I would love to have proteins, but definitely not caterpillars. Grandpa Jin went to clean up some more caterpillars and stuck the sticks in rows in the soil, while I was trying to recover from the “shock.”

“LiNa, see this.”

Grandpa Jin held out a small purple fruit with pink silk at the top. The color was very vibrant and smelled a little sweet from outside.

“We already got one? Wow, it’s still early spring!” I was surprised.

“Yes, this is worth days of magic work!” He handed me the anesthetic fruit, and I held and played with it.

I recalled that Grandpa Jin was only able to produce one anesthetic fruit every seven days, so that meant he could produce about four fruits per month. The problem was that ten anesthetic fruits sold for five coins and that could only get us forty pounds of sweet potatoes. Forty pounds of food could feed the household for no more than two weeks. To produce ten fruits, it would take more than two months, and we could only get forty pounds of food for those two months. Well, the math didn’t seem to work here. Although we didn’t produce that much last summer, definitely more than four per month.

“Grandpa Jin, since you can only make one fruit per week, where did the other ones come from then?” I wondered.

Grandpa Jin smiled.

“Of course it’s from the blessing of Goddess Aniela. Her highness has given hope to the land and its civilians. Last summer was a tough one, but on an average summer month, the plants could produce as many as a hundred fruits. If they are good quality, they can even be sold for double the price. That’s how we are able to save some fruits for winter and make a living. Summer is really the productive season. Most of the fruits are blessed by Aniela.”

In other words, most of the fruits were produced by mother nature, but then……

“Grandpa Jin, you just made magic sound so useless,” I grumbled.

He laughed so hard that his beard was shaking in the air.

“Oh, LiNa, don’t overlook that one fruit per week. In an emergency situation, that one little fruit may save your life! By the way, I utilize magic to produce only small amounts of fruits, but that doesn’t mean I won’t use magic to grow the leaves, stalks, and its roots. Only when the plants are healthy and strong, then they can start budding and produce fruits.”

“What are the fruits used for anyways?” I was curious.

“All kinds of purposes, but mostly for numbing effects to get the pain in control. We demons love to have a few at home just in case.”

So it sounded like a stay home pain killer.

He stared far away in the field, continued on, “That young man did not come on time, otherwise we would have extras to give to him. Demons take pain very well, but that young man is on a whole other level. Hopefully he has reached the destination now.”

I actually did not care whether he had accomplished whatever was in his head or not, since he left me no good impressions. I tugged the fruit in my pocket, and found a flat rock in the field to sit down on.

“Let’s eat lunch,” I untied the knot of the cloth, and saw two huge baked sweet potatoes.

I handed them to Grandpa Jin, but he gave one to me, “She knows you must be hungry, so packed extra.”