War God of Fertile Fields: Reviving Green Agriculture in the Great Tang

When top agricultural scientist Cui Yan opened his eyes, he had become a destitute small landowner in the third year of the Zhenguan era. Faced with an estate overrun by weeds and a house full of creditors, everyone else was fretting, but his eyes lit up. Wasn’t this the perfect natural laboratory for an ecological farm?

He taught villagers to make compost, and they called him “a lunatic obsessed with dirt.” He bred earthworms, and rumors spread that he was “raising earth dragons.” He built a biogas digester to power lamps and cook food, and it blew a vegetable thief sky-high, leaving the county magistrate to suspect him of using “demonic arts of heavenly punishment.” With modern ecological knowledge, he turns waste into wealth, barren land into granaries, and manure into “fertilizer treasure.”

When the Turks raid, he leads the old and weak into biogas tunnels, driving the enemy into disarray with the stench of fermented slurry. The news of “defeating the enemy with fertilizer” reaches Chang’an, and Li Shimin slaps the table and laughs: “Summon this extraordinary man at once! I want him in charge of the imperial fields... But first, make him wash up!” And so begins a hilarious tale of farming with knowledge and serving the country with homespun methods.