Chapter 567. Horse Breeding Farm (1/2)

Ever since that passionate kiss during her coming of age ceremony, Yu Xiaocao discovered that Zhu Junyang had become much more clingy compared to before.

The firearms camps portion of Xishan Barracks had already started. With the emperor, who loved and was fascinated by firearms, at the forefront at this project, they needed to make sure that progress on developing and manufacturing firearms and red coat cannons was going well. Those soldiers under Royal Prince Yang, who had been assigned to the firearms camp, each had a firearm assigned to them and every battalion was given a large cannon.

After he delegated the task of training these new firearms to Dong Dali, who had already become a skilled gunman, Zhu Junyang became much more idle. He took on the task of escorting his future little wife to and from her tasks at the Imperial Plantation. Occasionally he’d steal a kiss from her. Thus, the days passed idly and happily for him.

At this time, whether it was the capital’s seed breeding program or the Yu Family’s commercial farmstead, they were all operating smoothly. The capital’s seed breeding program had been split into four large farmsteads and each one had an overseer who was personally sent over by the emperor to keep an eye on things. They were already two years into the program and everyone working there knew the drill. Prior to the plowing seasons, Xiaocao would go to each farmstead to deliver her ‘specially prepared’ seeds. In addition, she also took the time to inspect the wells at each place.

Some of the stewards in the plantation discovered that the seeds that Official Yu sent over didn’t have much difference between the seeds that were produced there. Thus, they tried an experiment and grew a batch of seeds on a separate plot of land. When it was time to harvest, they discovered that the yield between the two types of seeds wasn’t very different from one another.

However, when these seeds were sold on the market, the officials in those areas got accused by the farmers who bought them. They claimed that those stores had sold counterfeit high-yielding seeds as they gave an output of around one hundred to two hundred catties per mu less than the other villages. For the commoners, their crop outputs were even more important than their lives. Wasn’t selling counterfeit seeds tantamount to killing them?

Since the outputs between the two types of seeds were so different, even though they were sold at the same shops, this made people question what might have happened. After a thorough investigation, they discovered that the seeds that had lower yields were all products that had not gone through Official Yu’s hands.

With such a report that had ‘the facts’, they found out that Official Yu always used a special type of ‘plant liquid’ that not only increased the yield of the seeds but also prevented pests from damaging them. Consequently, there were some shrewd people who wanted to force Yu Xiaocao to bring out the recipe in the open and the ‘lawsuit’ had even been sent up to the emperor.

The emperor was well aware of Xiaocao’s hidden hand, so he found a suitable excuse and helped Xiaocao smooth this all over. However, this wasn’t the true solution he was looking for. After all, the little divine stone would one day go back to its home dimension. Once that happened, wouldn’t all of the high-yielding crops they had now revert back to the way things were at the start of the dynasty?

In private, the emperor urged Xiaocao to experiment with methods to breed real high-yield seeds. In addition, he commanded the Ministry of Works to develop more high tech machinery for the use in farming, such as seed drillers, crop harvesters and threshing machines.

Yu Xiaocao consulted with the little divine stone about this problem. She found out from it that once it restored all of its powers, it would help her alter the genetic materials of the seeds before it left. That way, they would truly have wheat seeds capable of producing a thousand catties per mu. With that guarantee on hand, Yu Xiaocao no longer had to worry about this issue. After all, she wasn’t a true farming expert and wasn’t able to become like Yuan Longping  [1] . She mostly relied on the little divine stone as her cheat item for this.

“Lass, the autumn corn has already been harvested and the winter wheat has been sowed. You promised me in the past that you would help this prince start a good horse breeding program. Isn’t it about time for you to make good on that promise?” After Zhu Junyang had organized everything at the firearms camps to his liking, he once again started to ponder about his desire to create a standing cavalry.

Cavalries had the advantage of being incredibly mobile and fast, so their attack power was quite high. In Zhu Junyang’s eyes, the Great Ming Dynasty needed to build their own cavalry, and the sooner the better. Troops on horseback could speedily chase after enemies, surround them, mount sneak attacks, and provide rescue missions. A charging cavalry could effectively deal with a battalion of crudely equipped foot troops. Furthermore, troops on horseback relied on the speed of their horses to travel. This meant that they could strike an enemy’s camp like lightning and effectively break apart their formation. The imposing looks of a cavalry could also strike at an enemy’s morale and make them cower back in fear. All in all, for foot troops, a well-trained cavalry was their worst nightmare.

At the northern borders of the Great Ming Empire there were fierce nomad tribes that were on horseback. On the wide prairies, their superiority over foot troops in battle could easily be seen. Time after time, the Great Ming Empire’s army had suffered losses against them. It was particularly bad once winter set in. For the sake of obtaining food and other goods, these enemy tribes adopted guerilla warfare tactics and would strike border villages like the wind. After plundering and killing all of the inhabitants there, they would then flee like ghosts. By the time the Great Ming’s army arrived, all that was leftover were the grisly corpses of the dead villagers and the burnt out shell of the village. The soldiers stationed at the borders naturally hated these tribal horse cavalry units to the heavens.

There were also other high-ranking military officers who had wanted to create fast cavalry units to fight against these attacks. However, where would they get their supply of good horses? The outside nomad tribes naturally wouldn’t sell or trade their best horses to the Great Ming Empire to be used against themselves. As for the horse breeders within the country, they didn’t have good bloodlines to work with so they naturally couldn't produce horses that could be of any threat to the nomads. If they attempted to forcefully create these cavalry units without a good supply of horses, then they would end up being ineffective units in the end.

Zhu Junyang had long been eyeing Yu Xiaocao’s beloved horse, Little Red. In fact, he had especially invited horse experts over to inspect Little Red from head to toe but ended up getting inconclusive findings. Many of the experts who had examined Little Red stated that the horse was of a typical hybrid breed that was found in the country and that breed was usually considered inferior. These horses were typically used to transport cargo or pull wagons. However, they had no idea how its master had raised it to transform an inferior breed into such a prime specimen. If it weren’t for Zhu Junyang’s high and mighty status as a royal prince, those horse experts would have chased after him incessantly, begging him to tell them his secrets in raising and feeding horses.

Zhu Junyang was even more certain that Xiaocao had a method on her hands to alter an inferior horse into a good horse. Naturally, if Xiaocao didn’t want to reveal this secret, he wouldn’t force her to. His backup plan would be to bring along some troops armed with firearms and sneak into enemy territory to steal their horses.

However, his little lass didn’t fail him this time either. He only proposed the issue and the little lass easily agreed to his request. However, Xiaocao told him that all of the credit of breeding good horses needed to go to him as well as the expert breeders he brought along. Zhu Junyang was quite happy to serve as a smokescreen for the little lass and deliberately chose two soldiers from the hidden guard ranks to become these expert horse breeders and trainers and announced it publicly.