Chapter 513 - 513: Ploughing the Fields

For the next few days, Kian stayed at the Minamoto home and wandered around outside the village whenever he felt like it.

The villagers treated him with great respect. Whenever they passed him on the road, they bowed to him deeply.

They assumed he was a relative of Hei's, since he was just as tall and powerfully built.

As for why they respected Hei so much, it was because Hei was the only armoured samurai in the village.

Every autumn and winter, the Big Yōkai crawled out of their mountain caves to hunt humans, and villages like this one had to organize their own armed defence.

When autumn and winter came, Hei would put on his armour, take up the katana handed down from his ancestors, and patrol the village with the spear militia the villagers had raised, to keep the Big Yōkai from getting in and killing people.

Hei was about Kian's height, 2.2 metres. Picture him in a full suit of ō-yoroi, wielding an oversized katana, and you can imagine just how imposing he was.

At his height, he was taller than the smallest Big Yōkai, which stood around two metres, and he had become the backbone of Bamboo Grove County's defence against them.

Today, while Kian was strolling around the county's farmland, he ran into an old man. It was the county headman.

Kian asked him, "Has Bamboo Grove County ever been attacked by Big Yōkai?"

The headman bowed to Kian and said:

"Sir, Bamboo Grove County sits right next to Kyoto, and we benefit from that. The samurai patrols out of Kyoto often pass through here, so we haven't suffered many Big Yōkai attacks.

"But every so often a stray Big Yōkai wanders down from the mountains into Bamboo Grove County, and then we have to raise our own militia to deal with it.

"About two years ago, a Big Yōkai strayed into our village.

"It was a scrawny one, about two metres tall.

"It got into Bamboo Grove County and killed several of our militiamen. Thank goodness Lord Minamoto stepped in and cut it down, or it would have been a disaster."

Kian asked, "What's the biggest Big Yōkai you've ever seen?"

The headman thought back and said:

"The biggest one I've seen myself was only a bit over two metres.

"But at the end of every winter, Kyoto puts the heads of the slain Big Yōkai on display, and they say the biggest one was over three metres tall!

"Its head was bigger than an ox's. It was terrifying! Thank goodness the Lord Shōgun led his samurai and put it down!"

Kian nodded, forming some guesses in his head about how strong the Big Yōkai were.

The most ordinary Big Yōkai were a bit over two metres, and a dozen or so militiamen with spears could easily deal with one.

The more elite ones were over three metres tall and might need a large company of samurai to bring down.

But overall, these daemons weren't very strong. Ordinary mortals could handle them.

If anyone here had firearms, the Big Yōkai would be learning to dance overnight.

The only shame was that Kian didn't know which planet he was on and couldn't reach the psychic beacon in the Warp.

Otherwise, the weapons in that container of his would have been more than enough to clear this whole world. He could have had a taste of what it was like to be a Primarch and conquered an entire unknown world!

Having gotten what he wanted to know, Kian said goodbye to the headman and kept strolling along the paths between the fields.

The surroundings were lovely, with a real pastoral, idyllic feel.

All around, the paddies were full of farmers busy transplanting rice seedlings. Some households had a kind of four-horned ox, something like a water buffalo. The farmers hitched ploughs behind the four-horned oxen and had them plough the paddies.

As he walked, Kian suddenly spotted Hei working in the paddies with his son and his wife.

Hei was using himself as the ox, with a plough harnessed to his neck, breaking up the soil in the paddy.

His wife and son followed behind, transplanting seedlings and happily busy.

Kian felt a bit sheepish. He was eating their food for free, they were out working the fields, and here he was with nothing to do, wandering around.

He wanted to go help, but it looked like the Minamotos had nearly finished planting their fields, so he wouldn't be much help anyway.

Then Kian noticed someone he recognized. In the paddy to his left, a woman who looked worn out was hauling a single-handled plough, struggling to break up the soil.

Three children followed behind her, planting rice seedlings in the paddy.

The oldest of them was Yamashita-maru. He was behind his mother, pushing the plough from the back.

One woman and one child pushing a one-person plough looked like back-breaking work.

Kian watched for a while, then suddenly called out, "Oi! Kiddo!"

Yamashita-maru heard someone calling him, turned around, and saw it was Kian. He immediately pointed at him and shouted:

"I'm not kiddo! I'm Yamashita-maru!"

Kian pointed at the two little kids planting seedlings.

"If you're Yamashita-maru, then those two must be Yamanaka-maru and Yamagami-maru, right?"

Yamashita-maru and the other two kids looked startled.

"How'd you know?"

Kian rolled his eyes at them. With a naming system like theirs, Tarō-Jirō-Saburō, Inoue-Inonaka-Inoshita, Morikami-Morishita, you only needed to know how many kids a family had and one kid's name, and you could work out the rest.

Kian hopped straight down into the paddy and went over to the woman hauling the plough.

"Ma'am, mind if I borrow your plough?"

The woman was terribly flustered and kept bowing to him.

"Sir, how could I let you trouble yourself!"

"It's fine, I'm getting a workout. Cardio and strength training in one go!"

With that, Kian tied the plough rope straight over his shoulder and took off running through the paddy, dragging the plough behind him!

Splash! Splash! Splash!

Kian charged along, and the soil split open with remarkable efficiency.

"WOW!!"

Yamashita-maru saw how strong Kian was. He was actually running through the paddy while dragging the plough with no effort at all.

Soil that he and his mother together couldn't break was breaking open easily, and his eyes filled with little stars.

Kian dragged the plough back and forth through the paddy in sprints.

Yamashita-maru's family's paddy was ploughed at an incredible pace.

Yamashita-maru and his two little brothers ran excitedly after Kian, back and forth, laughing every now and then.

The woman stood in the paddy wiping away tears. Her husband had been killed by a Big Yōkai the year before, and the family had no ox. If the paddy wasn't ploughed and they just planted it as it was, next year's harvest would suffer.

For a widow with three young children, ploughing was the hardest part of all.

But clearly, this year she wouldn't have that trouble. She stood where she was with her palms pressed together, praying for Kian over and over.

Meanwhile, Tarō and Hei had finished their work and were climbing out of their paddy.

When Tarō saw Kian, he said, "Father, look over there."

Hei watched Kian charging through the paddy hauling the plough and marvelled that his strength could be so tremendous!

Not even Hei himself could have hauled a plough that heavy through a paddy at that speed!

Then he saw Yamashita-maru's mother standing in the paddy, palms together, praying, and a smile spread across his face.

☆☆☆

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