The Farmer Who Ended Up Teaching the World’s Greatest Martial Artist - Chapter 39

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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| Chapter 39

 

“The Soil Lord Mouse has appeared?”

 

When Yoo Eun-hyun asked back with a surprised expression, Soo Hwa-seon and Ju Yu-ryeon nodded with their mouths tightly shut.

 

If the Soil Lord Mouse had appeared, then the current state of the field made sense. The fact that they could maintain even this much showed how much effort Soo Hwa-seon and Ju Yu-ryeon had been putting in.

 

“Right. The Soil Lord Mouse is a mole that burrows through the ground and destroys fields. Thanks to it, we ended up like this.”

 

Ju Yu-ryeon bit her lips and spoke as if frustrated.

 

If someone who didn’t know heard this, they might wonder how martial artists, not ordinary people, could be troubled by just a mole, but it wasn’t called the Soil Lord Mouse for nothing.

 

The Soil Lord Mouse wasn’t just any mole—it was a kind of spirit beast. While ordinary moles also destroyed fields by digging up the ground, the Soil Lord Mouse was on a completely different scale as a spirit beast.

 

“Father mentioned it once before, didn’t he?”

 

Yoo Eun-hyun nodded at Soo Hwa-seon’s question.

 

Since it was a spirit beast, it was hard to encounter, but he had heard stories from Yoo Pyo-gyeong in the past.

 

When Yoo Pyo-gyeong was young, a Soil Lord Mouse had appeared in a neighboring village, and because of it, the village that lived off farming was completely ruined.

 

“Unlike ordinary moles, this creature doesn’t just tear up fields—it has different eating habits and causes direct damage.”

 

Ordinary moles damage crops by tearing up fields and making the roots of planted crops unusable.

 

But while ordinary moles catch and eat bugs and earthworms underground, the Soil Lord Mouse is herbivorous and devours all the crops, leaving no roots behind.

 

“Sigh… That’s why the Jijeung ginseng is the problem. Unlike the other four herbs, Jijeung ginseng is a type of ginseng that grows entirely underground, so there needs to be something left.”

 

As Ju Yu-ryeon let out a deep sigh, Soo Hwa-seon placed a comforting hand on her shoulder.

 

“On top of that, among the five herbs, Jijeung ginseng happens to be the hardest to obtain and most expensive. There’s no immediate problem, but…”

 

“Once a Soil Lord Mouse claims territory, it won’t leave until it completely destroys everything.”

 

“That’s a problem too, but after it leaves, you can’t use the land for years.”

 

“Still, shouldn’t driving away the Soil Lord Mouse be the priority?”

 

“For ordinary farming, yes, but this isn’t that simple. Since lives are at stake… Even the Sega finds it hard to give up easily considering the opportunity costs invested so far.”

 

As Soo Hwa-seon narrowed her eyes and spoke, Yoo Eun-hyun unconsciously made a similar expression, narrowing his gaze. Ju Yu-ryeon, who was watching the mother and son’s expressions, muttered quietly.

 

“I’m the manager here, so I have to decide whether it’s possible or not and report it. If it’s not possible, we’ll have to create fields elsewhere… It’s driving me crazy.”

 

“Have you tried catching it?”

 

“We tried. As you know, since it burrows underground, catching it directly is impossible.”

 

Only after hearing Ju Yu-ryeon’s words did Yoo Eun-hyun finally realize why she looked disheveled and tired.

 

‘She must not have been able to rest properly while dealing with the Soil Lord Mouse. There probably wasn’t any good solution either…’

 

While ordinary moles sometimes come above ground and don’t go very deep, the Soil Lord Mouse goes twice as deep and moves very quickly. Moreover, the Soil Lord Mouse can sense vibrations from above ground, and when it feels danger, it burrows even deeper underground.

 

No matter how skilled a martial artist might be, a person is still a person. It might be different if it were underwater, but there’s no answer for something underground.

 

“Traps are useless, and we tried driving wooden stakes into the ground to prevent it from coming, but it just broke through the wooden stakes.”

 

“I guess a spirit beast is still a spirit beast… This is difficult.”

 

The countermeasures Ju Yu-ryeon mentioned were commonly used methods for exterminating harmful animals, and Yoo Eun-hyun knew that most harmful animals could be dealt with easily using such methods.

 

But the Soil Lord Mouse was a proper spirit beast. Such methods would be completely useless.

 

“How about blocking it completely with iron plates?”

 

Yoo Eun-hyun suggested a method that came to mind. No matter how much of a spirit beast the Soil Lord Mouse was, breaking through iron plates wouldn’t be easy.

 

Even if it could break through, it would take time, so they could at least buy some time to respond.

 

“That won’t work either. There’s a limit to how deep we can drive iron plates, but the Soil Lord Mouse can go deeper than that.”

 

“What about poison?”

 

“Most don’t work. And if we use too much and contaminate the soil itself, we won’t be able to farm, so it would be meaningless.”

 

Yoo Eun-hyun nodded as if he understood. Certainly, the deeper you go into the ground, the more rocks and such there are, so while you could drive stakes, it’s impossible to block a wide area with iron plates at a uniform depth. It wouldn’t be impossible using internal energy, but it wouldn’t be efficient, and the Soil Lord Mouse could just avoid it.

 

“If we really can’t solve it, we’ll have to close the field, but Yu-ryeon and I are doing our best to somehow resolve it… The only answer is to plant more as much gets destroyed.”

 

“Just the two of you? What about other people? You say it’s such an important matter, but only two people are dealing with it?”

 

“Yu-ryeon and I are the only ones who learned about farming professionally. And since this is a secret family matter, we can’t reveal this place by bringing in people from outside, so we were worrying about it when… you happened to come.”

 

Yoo Eun-hyun scratched his head uncertainly.

 

Honestly, just from what he’d heard so far, he had no idea how to catch it.

 

“Even if we could make it come out, would we be able to catch it? It’s a spirit beast, so it must be quite strong, right?”

 

Yoo Eun-hyun asked back with a worried voice, but Soo Hwa-seon and Ju Yu-ryeon chuckled.

 

“Once we get it above ground, beating it to death is no problem at all. Where do you think this is? If it were some other spirit beast, the moment it crawled into the Sega, its body would just become tonic soup and its inner core would become an internal energy enhancement pill. It’s just our luck that of all things, a Soil Lord Mouse had to come and cause this mess.”

 

“Yu-ryeon is right. Just make it come out. Once I catch it, I’ll turn it into mole soup.”

 

Watching the two women speak while grinding their teeth menacingly, Yoo Eun-hyun swallowed. Just from these words, he could tell how much trouble the Soil Lord Mouse had been causing these two women.

 

“For now, I’ll observe it a bit. I need to examine it to find an answer…”

 

“Right. That’s what you should do. Good. Yu-ryeon, this time you should really rest. I heard U-hui came back too, so go see your mother. Anyway, if Eun-hyun can’t solve it, bringing any helper from the farming side would be meaningless. Let’s think about it again then.”

 

“Hmm… If I think about showing this to Uncle Dong-gi, that seems right… Alright. Then Eun-hyun, please take care of it. You too, Auntie.”

 

Seeming to agree with Soo Hwa-seon’s words, Ju Yu-ryeon left a request with Yoo Eun-hyun with a suddenly drained face. Then she turned around with staggering steps and headed somewhere.

 

Watching her figure, Yoo Eun-hyun suddenly felt anxious and turned to Soo Hwa-seon.

 

“That won’t be me in a few days, will it?”

 

“I believe in my son.”

 

“I can’t pass this off to someone else either… Alright.”

 

Actually, contrary to his confidence, Yoo Eun-hyun was quite interested. He clearly remembered hearing about the Soil Lord Mouse from Yoo Pyo-gyeong when he was young.

 

When would Yoo Eun-hyun have been born to see a spirit beast? Moreover, it wasn’t just any spirit beast, but a mole spirit beast that was like an enemy to farmers.

 

Since being alone was sufficient for observing the situation, Yoo Eun-hyun took over the room inside the storage warehouse where Ju Yu-ryeon had been staying until just before and settled in.

 

“Mother should go back now too. It’s comfortable staying here.”

 

“This kid, really. Just one day after sleeping with mom, you want to stay alone again? Mom is sad.”

 

“This is the Sega, so it’s like being in the same house anyway. What’s there to be sad about? I can see you anytime I want to.”

 

“Such a heartless kid. Is there anything I can help you with?”

 

“Can you assign someone who knows the herb garden locations and such well? I don’t know everything yet. I want to look around everything and try various things.”

 

“Mom could show you directly, you know? I’m staying because of this matter anyway, and since it’s been 20 years since I left the family home, I don’t have anything else to do.”

 

Thinking about it, Yoo Eun-hyun felt it would be better to work with Soo Hwa-seon rather than having an unfamiliar person assigned, if she wasn’t particularly busy, so he nodded.

 

“Alright. But no nagging while I’m working.”

 

“Hey. When has mom ever interfered or said anything while you were working?”

 

“Never, actually.”

 

Indeed, Soo Hwa-seon only spoke playfully to Yoo Eun-hyun when they were resting together at home, and she had never interfered when he was working.

 

And so Yoo Eun-hyun’s Soil Lord Mouse extermination work began.

 

Since it wasn’t something he was particularly confident about from the start, he decided not to think about it too urgently at first and slowly looked around the entire herb garden.

 

“It’s definitely badly damaged. And it’s clearly not natural—something definitely caused this.”

 

Yoo Eun-hyun muttered as he looked around the entire field with Soo Hwa-seon’s guidance. Fields don’t get damaged like this from natural disasters.

 

When fields are damaged by earthquakes, typhoons, or floods, the scale is different, and they don’t just get randomly destroyed—there are also parts that improve as a counterbalance. That was the natural order and flow, but the damage caused by the Soil Lord Mouse was reckless and had no pattern at all.

 

“This could be considered a kind of natural disaster too, but… the nature is definitely different. But this way, I can’t get any sense of it at all. What should I do…”

 

After being lost in thought for a moment, Yoo Eun-hyun finished thinking and suddenly stood up, prompting Soo Hwa-seon to ask.

 

“Did you come up with some good idea?”

 

“No, not at all. I just think we can’t leave the field like this. I need to see what kind of damage it causes and how.”

 

“Yu-ryeon should have records of it?”

 

“I need to see and feel it directly. There are things you can do with just data, and there are things you need to see directly.”

 

“Is that so? Do as you wish.”

 

Soo Hwa-seon seemed to have no intention of interfering with what Yoo Eun-hyun had decided to do, as she nodded and said nothing more.

 

For about three days after that, Yoo Eun-hyun worked hard with Soo Hwa-seon to normalize the field.

 

There were many servants helping here and there, and it was flat land rather than a mountain. Although the herb garden was wide, it was less than half the size of the mountain fields Yoo Eun-hyun usually managed, so it wasn’t particularly difficult work. While planting new herbs and managing the planted herbs, Yoo Eun-hyun began working on everything in the surrounding area.

 

“The surroundings have changed significantly since father last worked on it. That tree needs to be cut down, and we need to plant a new tree here. And we need to block this side window and make a window over there, and open a new ventilation shaft here…”

 

The servants looked suspiciously at Yoo Eun-hyun as he ran around giving instructions.

 

But since not only Soo Hwa-seon but also Ju Yu-ryeon, who had now rested well and returned, were moving as if entrusting everything completely to Yoo Eun-hyun, they had nothing particular to say.

 

“He looks like he’s enjoying himself.”

 

“That kid has been doing this work since he was born. Actually, I don’t understand what he’s doing right now at all. Do you understand it somewhat?”

 

“No, not at all. I don’t know what logic there is behind what he’s doing, but since all the results turn out well, I have nothing to say. Well… Uncle was like that too.”

 

“Eun-hyun says there are limits to what logic can do. When you arm yourself with logic, there are times when you feel something that transcends it…”

 

“Huh? What does that mean?”

 

“I don’t know either. He’s my son and I’ve been watching him for 20 years, but sometimes I wonder if that kid is in his right mind.”

 

Hearing the two people whispering, Yoo Eun-hyun approached while brushing the dirt off his hands.

 

“That’s exactly what being ordinary people means.”

 

“With results like this, I have nothing to say.”

 

At Yoo Eun-hyun’s words, Ju Yu-ryeon frowned slightly, while Soo Hwa-seon shrugged as if she was used to this.

 

“Even though I don’t really understand it, our son has never failed at anything related to farming, so I’m sure he’ll do well.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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