Chapter 444 - 9: Mei Family Ancestral Hall
Early in the morning, Mei Nian was woken up by an urgent phone call. Sister-in-law Hua exclaimed on the other end, "Miss, you need to hurry over, Xiao Xian girl..."
Mei Nian muttered to herself, fearing the worst. When she left a few days ago, she had mentioned Yanqing to boost Xiao Xian’s spirit. Could it be that this girl had rashly done something foolish, or could she have left Meijia Village on her own?
When she arrived at Meijia Village, it still looked like a scene of abundant harvest. The cherries were piled up by the orchard, and the roses were still covered with dew. Everything seemed normal as usual.
But not quite right.
Mei Nian sensed something amiss from the fresh air of Cherry Valley. What exactly was different?
The people? Yes, the people. Where had they all gone?
Usually, when Mei Nian arrived, the flower and fruit farmers would gather around her, chatting idly and asking about planting matters.
Today, these people were nowhere to be found.
Mei Nian arrived at the cellar where the Vincetoxicum fern was located.
The ferns that had been entrenched above the cellar for decades had been cleared.
The cellar door was wide open, and a cool breeze blew out from it.
Did she succeed?
Mei Nian noticed the cracked ground beneath her feet, seeming like the remnants of a forceful uprooting of the Vincetoxicum fern.
"Unexpectedly, through a blunder, this girl has managed to save Meijia Village once. Mei Nian hadn’t realized that the roots of this Vincetoxicum fern had penetrated so deeply underground," she genuinely knew how to eradicate the fern but had not acted because she thought it wasn’t very harmful. She didn’t expect her tolerance had almost caused trouble.
Not far from the cellar, Mei Nian heard familiar voices of the villagers discussing.
After passing through several rose bushes that blocked her view, she entered the newly formed Bulgarian rose field, caused by a car accident a few months ago. Her view suddenly became unobstructed.
The soil, still mixed with the smell of gasoline, was scorched black. Most of the burnt rose branches had been cleaned up. Mei Nian remembered that it was the season for cherry and rose harvesting, so she hadn’t had time to clean up this area yet.
Who had disobeyed her orders and started dealing with the flower field on their own?
Aside from a few who had gone out for purchases and were not in the village, all the people of Meijia Village were gathered here, with everyone nodding in unison.
Looking higher up, two months ago, Mei Nian had brought back a woodcutter (although in the village, people had never used any of the firewood she cut).
"Everyone thought these few acres of rose fields were beyond saving, right?" Xiao Xian, not knowing where she got a cherry-picking ladder, stood next to a cluster of fire-damaged roses, swinging a nearly gleaming black scissor in her hand.
"Indeed, we’ve been growing roses all our lives. Native roses wouldn’t survive such conditions, let alone these delicate foreign roses," chimed in a senior flower farmer from Meijia Village.
"But that’s wrong, everyone, look to the left, those are the new Bulgarian roses I pruned early this morning," Xiao Xian pointed to the clusters in the center of the accident site, where the disaster was most severe. Most of the branches were crushed, and the roots were completely smashed.
The villagers looked to the side, where all the weak and small branches had been cut off, as well as the dense multilayered branches, long and short, dead and scorched. However, some healthy branches that were still alive had only been cut down by a third, keeping the buds for new growth, considering the direction of new branches and leaves.
"Wow, new leaves are sprouting already, we hadn’t even noticed before,"
"Pruning and topping can be done in this season too, I thought it could only be done in the deep winter,"
"You’re silly, if we waited until winter, these few acres would indeed be ruined,"
Amid the villagers’ discussions, there was another round of pruning sounds. The woodcutter girl cut down swathes of branches, with skilled movements and clean cuts, like a seasoned horticulturist with decades of experience.
"Miss, you underestimated her this time. This young lady is a hidden master of gardening. Look, under her care, even dead roses are sprouting again," the villagers of Meijia Village, being honest and straightforward, thought what they saw. They didn’t understand that these few acres of rose fields had long been nourished by Xiao Xian’s Silver Water. Although it was too late to fully regenerate the limbs, reviving from the brink of death was still possible.