Chapter 238 - 155: You Can Still Keep Your Stubbornness
Chapter 238: Chapter 155: You Can Still Keep Your Stubbornness
Dean Song sat by the field in dismay, staring at the seedlings that had died in the dark soil, looking both distressed and stupefied.
Just then, a disheveled Song Xiaoxing with red-rimmed eyes came running over. Mustering his courage, he blurted out his confession to Dean Song:
"Sister Yao didn’t do it! It was me!"
Dean Song looked at him in astonishment.
Shu Yao had no reason to stop a man filled with such courage.
"I buried the Poisonous Tree Seeds in the greenhouse!" Song Xiaoxing confessed with the resolve of a man facing his doom. "You can check the surveillance! When I brought Sister Yao here yesterday, she didn’t go inside the greenhouse at all. She stayed outside the whole time!"
He squeezed his eyes shut to stop the tears from overflowing, sniffling as he explained, "I didn’t think the seeds’ poison would be so strong... I just wanted them to sprout quickly... It’s all my fault! Sister Yao is taking the fall for me!"
His confession was met with silence.
Song Xiaoxing wanted to see his father’s reaction, but the moment he opened his eyes, tears streamed out. He subconsciously raised a hand to wipe them away, but his hand was grabbed.
Dean Song had gotten up at some point and held his hand down. "Your hands have touched the contaminated soil. Don’t touch your eyes."
Realizing this belatedly, Song Xiaoxing quickly put his dirty hands behind his back, hanging his head and burying his face as he sobbed uncontrollably.
Dean Song gently patted his trembling shoulder.
He wasn’t the best at talking with his son, but he could tell his boy wasn’t lying.
Dean Song turned and glared at Shu Yao, demanding, "If you didn’t do it, why did you take the blame for my son? Are you in love with my son?"
"AHEM, AHEM!" Song Xiaoxing choked on a sob, his face flushing bright red.
"I’m already married." Shu Yao had to admire Dean Song’s peculiar train of thought.
"Then... then..." Dean Song’s gaze darted about, not daring to look directly at Shu Yao. He stammered for a long time, unable to form a complete sentence.
"Those 2 million Star Coins... if you’re reluctant to return them, you can just keep them," Shu Yao finished for him. "Just consider it me buying out all the resources in this greenhouse."
Dean Song’s face was stern. "Don’t expect me to give you a spot!"
With a short, scornful laugh, Shu Yao turned to comfort Song Xiaoxing. "You don’t need to be so upset. Even if the seeds hadn’t poisoned the crops in this greenhouse, your dad would have ruined them with his methods anyway."
Dean Song stared, incredulous. "What did you say!?"
Shu Yao ignored him, continuing to address Song Xiaoxing, "I looked at the wheat seedlings you all salvaged. The roots on some of them were black and almost rotten, did you notice?"
Song Xiaoxing wiped his tears on his clothes, ran over, and picked up a handful of seedlings to carefully examine the roots.
Some of the seedlings’ roots were black, but not all of them.
"It’s true!"
He looked out at the field.
The seedlings in his hand were ones he and the others had salvaged from near where he’d buried the Poisonous Tree Seeds.
He had thought it was strange at the time—why some of the seedlings’ roots were black and others weren’t.
If the roots turned black from the poison, then all the seedlings in that area should have had black roots.
"It’s root rot. Even if the seedlings in this greenhouse hadn’t been poisoned, the yield wouldn’t have been very high after they matured." Shu Yao visually estimated the greenhouse’s area. "This greenhouse is about three mu, right? And about 32 pounds of wheat seed were sown per mu. Given the current planting conditions and cultivation techniques, you’d get 400 pounds of wheat per mu at the very most."
In her books, one mu of land should produce around 800 pounds of wheat.
The yield per mu in this greenhouse didn’t even reach half that. ’Just where did all that funding get burned?’
She sighed, TSK, TSK.
"No wonder food prices are always so high," Shu Yao said to Song Xiaoxing. "Honestly, the cat grass I grow for fun does better than these seedlings your dad so carefully cultivated."
Flushed with shame and anger, Dean Song blustered, "A mere layman like you has the nerve to humiliate me!?"
But one of the graduate students spoke up, "But Dean... she was right about all those numbers."
’If she were really a layman in agriculture, could she have recited all those figures from a single glance?’
Song Xiaoxing still felt it was a terrible shame.
Holding on to a sliver of hope, he asked, "Sister Yao, can these seedlings still be saved?"
"Even if you save them, raise them to maturity, and harvest them, can you be sure it’s not poisonous wheat? Would you dare to eat it?" Shu Yao asked.
Song Xiaoxing gently placed the withered seedlings back down, showing a respect for life instead of carelessly tossing them aside.
Before long, the people Shu Yao had called arrived.
The arrivals included a team of medical personnel in hazmat suits.
Shu Yao waved to the person in charge. "Doctor Wen."
It was Wen Youran.
Thinking of Wen Miaomiao, Shu Yao figured the contaminated soil in the greenhouse might help the Wen Family develop her talent. So, she had contacted Wen Youran and briefly explained the situation.