Armed with a machete and a gun, armed with a system, they fled the famine.

Chapter 423 It's terrifying!

After being emperor for a few months, Dou Qingran finally understood why Yang Sanlang had so vehemently disagreed in the first place.

What's so great about being an emperor?

Aside from eating better, dressing better, living in a more luxurious house, and having more power, nothing else was what he wanted.

He couldn't sleep well every day, and he had to listen to the endless nagging of the ministers all day long. After all that, he had to rack his brains to figure out how to make life a little better for the millions of ordinary people.

Hey.

He was really fed up with this stifling life.

He would have been much happier being a general in the north.

Yang Sanlang's dark eyes flashed slightly, and he pretended to be stupid and clasped his hands in a fist salute to Dou Qingran again.

"Brother Dou, I was wrong. You were my Brother Dou before, and you will always be my Brother Dou."

Ha ha ha.

He knew that being an emperor was no joke.

Look at how Brother Dou, who used to be so spirited, is now so pent up, he looks exactly like a resentful woman.

Zhao Yan, without Dou Qingran needing to say anything more, greeted him with a smile, "Brother Dou."

Dou Xingyan, standing to the side, also sweetly called out, "Brother."

Dou Qingran felt a little better after that.

"Come on, let's go to the study to talk."

Dou Qingran led the person to the study and waved for the servants to leave.

After Zhao Yan and Yang Sanlang sat down opposite him, he asked, "Sanlang, sister-in-law, is there something you want to say in the capital this time?"

He had already seen that Yang Sanlang was carrying a burlap sack, which seemed to contain what they wanted to talk about.

Zhao Yan paused for a moment, then extended her hand to Yang Sanlang.

Yang Sanlang understood and immediately took a sweet potato out of the sack and handed it to Zhao Yan.

Zhao Yan then smiled and said to Dou Qingran, "Brother Dou, take a look at this first."

"This is……"

Dou Qingran took the sweet potato from her hand and looked it over carefully with her eyes down.

After a moment, he said in surprise, "Sister-in-law, could this be a sweet potato?"

When he was in the North, he had the opportunity to taste sweet potatoes, but they had already been processed before he ate them. He had no idea what they looked like before they were processed.

Zhao Yan smiled and nodded, saying, "Yes, this is a sweet potato, also called a red potato."

Dou Qingran asked in surprise, "How did you get this?"

And they just handed over a whole sack of them.

At that moment, he assumed that Zhao Yan and the others had bought these from somewhere else, and he never imagined that they were grown by Zhao Yan and the others themselves.

Zhao Yan curled the corners of her lips and said with a smile, "Of course, we grew them ourselves."

Upon hearing this, Dou Qingran exclaimed in surprise, "What did you say? You're saying this was grown by you... by yourselves? How could this be?"

He clearly remembered that this thing was extremely precious, and ordinary people couldn't afford it at all; it was generally only available to the wealthy and powerful.

"Sister-in-law, you're not lying to me?"

Dou Xingyan, who was standing next to her, was extremely anxious and immediately spoke up, "Big brother, how could Sister Zhao lie to you? This is a sweet potato, also called a yam. During the Spring Festival this year, when I was at Sister Zhao's place, she gave us this to eat."

"These were discovered by Sister Zhao by chance on the mountain. This year, Sister Zhao tried planting the sweet potatoes she found on the mountain last year, and to her surprise, they actually grew. Look at this sack of sweet potatoes, they're growing so well."

Zhao Yan blinked and looked at Dou Xingyan with a smile.

Not bad.

Xingyan had already said everything for her, so she didn't need to repeat herself.

After hearing this, Dou Qingran's surprise gradually subsided.

"So that's it."

After Zhao Yan waited for him to recover, she continued, "Brother Dou, Sanlang and I came to the capital to talk to you about this sweet potato."

"I have a record here showing our sweet potato harvest this year. Brother Dou, please take a look."

As she spoke, she handed Dou Qingran a blank sheet of paper with her handwritten notes.

Dou Qingran reached out and took the white paper, then looked down at it.

When he saw the specific yield per acre, he was so surprised that he jumped up from his chair.

"Sister-in-law, are the numbers you wrote down here correct? Is the yield of sweet potatoes per mu really one or two thousand jin?"

One or two thousand catties!

This isn't just food; it's a lifesaver!

Zhao Yan said with a smile, "Of course it's true. To be honest, not only did I try planting sweet potatoes, but I also had the villagers in Huaihua Village, which is across from the farm, try planting them as well."

"As you can see, everyone's sweet potato yield is quite good, with an average yield of 1,600 to 1,700 jin per mu."

Dou Xingyan, who was standing next to her, was so shocked by the number that she jumped up from her chair.

"Sister Zhao, is what you said true? This is too, too, too scary."

Don't assume that she knows nothing because she was pampered by her father and brothers since she was a child. In fact, she is very knowledgeable about food.

Back in the north, my father tried every possible way to increase grain production, but the yield per mu was only four or five hundred jin at most.

Now, when Sister Zhao tells me that the yield per mu can reach as high as 1,600 to 1,700 jin, it's simply unbelievable.

Yang Sanlang glanced at Zhao Yan and said with a smile, "This is absolutely true, Xingyan. You saw it yesterday too. When we came, we brought a cartload of sweet potatoes. That was only a small part. There are other parts at the farm."

Dou Qingran looked at the sweet potato in her hand with excitement, and it took her a long time to calm down.

He asked Zhao Yan impatiently, "Sister-in-law, what do you mean...?"

"I hope that Brother Dou can make sweet potatoes more widely available to ordinary people, so that everyone can grow sweet potatoes. If grain production increases, fewer people will starve to death."

"However, this matter cannot be rushed; it needs to be done step by step."

"We can't rush it."

Dou Qingran, his thick eyebrows furrowed, paced back and forth in the study.

"I need to think carefully about how to carry this out."

At this moment, Zhao Yan took out a recipe booklet about sweet potatoes, including planting methods and related precautions.

"Brother Dou, don't worry. Here are the planting methods for sweet potatoes, as well as related recipes. You can take your time to look through them."

"The planting methods for sweet potatoes are all in the booklet, and I have written them all out clearly. If Brother Dou needs sweet potato seeds, he can just send someone to my place to get them."

Not only did she have sweet potatoes, but the villagers of Huaihua Village also had a lot of sweet potatoes.

One sweet potato can sprout many sweet potato seedlings, and then just a little bit can be used to help the surrounding people plant sweet potatoes.

However, this cannot be rolled out nationwide all at once; it must be done one place at a time.