After the initial surprise, Ding Yun of course hurried to open the farm's warehouse. However, she couldn't find any indication of a limited storage capacity on the warehouse page, nor any signs of selling. This was truly troublesome.
The warehouse was full, and she couldn't sell anything.
She couldn't just throw it all away.
Hundreds of millions of jin of wheat and rice, wherever they were thrown, would cause a sensation. Moreover, the rice and wheat in the warehouse were almost identical to the ones she had previously donated to the Nanhua Temple. If she really threw them away, wouldn't that be a direct self-betrayal, revealing that she was the one who discarded this grain?
But if she didn't throw them away...
The warehouse would be full, and she wouldn't be able to continue planting. If she couldn't continue planting, how could she continue using this golden finger to write trial reports?
In short, Ding Yun was completely flustered.
She was extremely worried.
She was so worried that she didn't sleep at night. She kept digging through every page of the farm, meticulously examining every small pattern, hoping to find something she might have missed earlier.
Or perhaps, she hoped that after the farm leveled up, new functions would appear.
The result was both surprise and disappointment. The surprise was that Ding Yun did indeed find some functions and displays that hadn't been there before. The disappointment was that the newly appeared functions couldn't solve her current problem.
In fact, they even brought her new problems.
That was the farm's energy supply issue.
After this upgrade, the previously blank space at the bottom of the experience points page now displayed the farm's current energy level, and the energy consumption and replenishment records since the farm's activation.
[Farm Remaining Energy: 1569 points]
"Farm Energy Consumption and Replenishment Records
Farm activation +100 points.
Default high-frequency growth mode, consuming one energy point per hour per plot of land.
-1/h, -1/h, -1/h, -1/h...
Farm independently absorbs void energy, increasing energy by one point per hour +1/h, +1/h...
Saving eighteen lives +18 Merit Points
Merit points automatically converted to energy +180 points
-1/h, -1/h, -1/h, -1/h...
Saving...
Farm upgrade, -2/h, -2/h...
Saving...
...
Farm upgrade, -5/h"
After a brief review of the farm's energy ledger, Ding Yun realized her luck was quite good. Fortunately, out of compassion, she had early on thrown out radishes and pumpkins, thereby saving many people and accumulating considerable merit.
Otherwise, she might have experienced an energy depletion soon after her super fast-growing farm leveled up to level two.
When the farm operated without any external energy, i.e., merit point replenishment, at level zero and level one, it could barely maintain its normal operation by automatically absorbing twenty-four energy points per day. However, once it reached level two, with an additional plot of land, the farm would require forty-eight energy points per day. The initial one hundred energy points she received would only allow her to last less than five days after upgrading to level two.
If there were no energy source afterward, the farm would likely shut down automatically due to energy depletion.
Whether it could be reopened afterward
Was an unknown.
"Oh my god, who designed this golden finger with a screw loose? Shouldn't such crucial information be directly communicated from the beginning? The relevant information only appears after reaching level five. Is the designer testing people's kindness here!
Is that something they should be concerned about?"
After vehemently complaining about the golden finger designer, Ding Yun still felt helpless about the current situation. Based on the existing information, the designer's original intention was likely for the golden finger user to save the world with this golden finger.
Or to save as many lives as possible.
The fact that the relevant information appeared so late
Was likely because the designer himself wanted the golden finger user to be a truly compassionate person, rather than acting compassionately for the sake of the golden finger.
Even the limited warehouse capacity, or the inability to find a way to upgrade the farm's warehouse for now,
Also indicated the designer's hope that the user would distribute more grain.
And help more people suffering from disasters and hardship.
It seemed her golden finger was likely designed specifically for worlds with doomsday scenarios, famines, and food shortages.
The growth speed, experience points, and yield of staple grains far exceeded those of other seeds, which was probably also due to this reason. One had to admit that the designer had put in considerable effort to save more people.
However, Ding Yun still felt conflicted.
Because she truly didn't want to be too ostentatious, yet this golden finger was now forcing her to be conspicuous:
"Alas, it's truly a difficult situation.
What should I do with all this grain? A large-scale donation is definitely not feasible. Selling it at a low price would likely be insufficient to appease the grain merchants in the city. It seems I can only give it out in small quantities.
I can secretly deliver it to some households in the village and even in the city. Most people receiving an unexpected supply of grain likely wouldn't go around spreading the word ostentatiously. However, since the rice and wheat stalks have already been seen by True Master Yunqi, I absolutely cannot give them out as is. It seems I'll have to find a way to get a hulling and milling tool into the farm and grind the grain into rice and flour to give away.
Oh my, just thinking about it gives me a headache. How tiring would that be? Grinding over a hundred million jin of grain by myself with such primitive tools, my heavens, it's truly despair-inducing. I might as well just reveal myself!"
Although Ding Yun quickly came up with a seemingly good solution, the moment she considered the workload involved, she felt like it was the heavens trying to destroy her, to exhaust her to death.
What did over a hundred million jin of grain even mean?
And what did the workload of grinding so much grain into rice and flour entail? Even the donkeys of the production team wouldn't dare to take on such a task; it would likely exhaust a hundred of them to death.
However, apart from this method, Ding Yun could not think of any other way for the time being. Therefore, she temporarily stopped further production in the farm and, the next day, disguised herself again and sold a lot of fruits, which were now very rare.
Then, using the money from selling the fruits,
She found someone to buy several donkeys and various primitive tools that could help the donkeys with threshing.
After the delivery person left, Ding Yun quickly stored these items in the farm. She then returned to the Nanhua Temple, outwardly appearing extremely focused, not even going to Jinling City to eat or gossip, but diligently studying the Taoist scriptures. In reality, she was dedicating a significant portion of her energy, sleeping only four to five hours a day, working tirelessly in the farm to force those donkeys to work.
It was only for threshing, not for milling into rice and flour.
Although distributing the grain after hulling and milling it into rice and flour would be the safest option, Ding Yun simply couldn't bear that workload. Even stuffing a hundred donkeys into the farm probably wouldn't be enough.
So, she had to settle for threshing only.
Threshing it into rice grains and wheat grains.
Even though they would still be plumper than normal grain, they wouldn't be immediately recognizable as identical to the grain she donated to the Nanhua Temple.