On the other side, after Xi Hanmei received Xiao's transfer order, the next day she handed control of the family over to Qin Huairu, her trusted confidante.
She immediately began quietly selecting elites to form an extraordinary force of thousands.
Compared to the usual "homefront" matters, it was clear this cold beauty had a sharp eye for real power.
Xiao didn't care. He missed her, of course, but if he wanted to, he could always pull her over using the Dimensional Farm. Besides, Xi Hanmei was busy consolidating her authority, which meant she couldn't bother him anyway. In the courtyard, Xiao was free to do as he pleased—no one dared say a word.
The state also strongly supported Xi Hanmei's endeavors. From her space cube—which expanded effortlessly like air—Xiao could clearly feel the massive resources the superiors had invested in her army.
In just one year, Xi Hanmei had expanded her dimensional space to over 10 acres, nearly 7,000 square meters. And that included the portion Xiao had boosted by extracting half of the resources. Including the area he had grown himself, the total exceeded two hectares.
Combined with the other Weiwei Farms cultivated by various powerful families, the total farm area reached nearly three hectares.
For context, when Siheyuan Xiao first awakened the Dimensional Farm upon arriving in this world, he had relied on scavenging corpses from battlefields and stealing military resources. It took him three years to develop just a few hundred square meters.
Eventually, the old Siheyuan Xiao couldn't bear the painstaking effort. He retired, leaving his work unfinished.
After the "Investment Attraction" initiative, however, Xiao—leveraging his bloodline power—grew the Weiwei Farm from a single acre to 35 acres in just one year.
By normal standards, it would have taken decades to achieve such scale.
This was the advantage of teamwork. He only had to contribute a fraction of the benefits to mobilize countless others, reaping dozens of times the harvest. The era of lone heroes was over. Now, unity was power.
Even though, under normal circumstances, Xiao still couldn't access the separated dimensions in public to maintain appearances and morale, the Dimensional Farm's power remained undeniable. Every inch added increased his strength.
If the original Siheyuan Xiao had access to such a massive dimensional farm, even with fourth-level superpowers, he would have been utterly overwhelmed by the farm's sheer energy. Resistance would be impossible.
This was the true power of a fully developed Dimensional Farm. Individual effort became almost laughably insignificant in comparison.
Xiao had assumed that once Xi Hanmei had expanded the farm, the superiors would immediately have her plant peaches—after all, many of the youngest cabinet members were already over sixty. At that age, with half their feet in the grave, longevity would undoubtedly be their main concern.
But Xiao was surprised. The first crops sown in Weiwei Farm were not flat peaches, the symbol of long life and indulgence everyone expected. Instead, every inch of land was planted with food.
It startled him—and also touched him deeply. These leaders of the era had a mindset no future generation could easily imagine. Their first thought was always for the people.
The people say, "Long live the rabbit!"—but the rabbit says, "Long live the people."
Even with immortality within reach, they chose to ensure the people's bellies were full first.
In fact, as Xiao marveled, some officials were even more excited than they had been at the founding of the new country.
Xi Hanmei's ten-acre dimensional space could produce 1,200 kilograms of rice per acre every half month, maturing 24 times a year. That totaled 288,000 kilograms, or 288 tons of rice.
To put it in perspective: the Dragon Kingdom's total rice output in 1956 was just over 70 million tons. That meant the yield per acre in dimensional space was 120 times greater than ordinary farmland.
And these grains could also serve as seeds for further cultivation. Even when grown in the outside world, though growth slowed, each mu could still yield 800 kilograms, far surpassing normal rice.
After agricultural scientists hybridized and optimized multiple rice strains using Weiwei Farm, yields skyrocketed again—to 2,000 kilograms per mu.
Such staggering output was nothing short of miraculous. For this achievement, Xiao was awarded the First Class Medal of the Dragon Kingdom.
With food secured, famine was no longer a threat. More people could thrive, providing a vast labor force—the cornerstone of national economic growth. Everything was falling into place for rapid development.
The breakthroughs in agricultural science acted like a starting gun for the Dragon Kingdom. Dimensional space allowed countless experiments to achieve results once thought impossible. Foreign technologies were cracked effortlessly, and national security measures crumbled like paper.
Physics obeyed reality—but in dimensional space, the metaphysical could flourish. Items could be broken down to their purest components.
In materials science, even a trace sample could be decomposed and restored to its original formula. Calculations that would normally take months were completed in an instant. Rare metals and alloys—once costly to import—could now be grown and synthesized repeatedly. Defective alloys could be automatically optimized.
Since the creation of dimensional space, materials scientists had been driven to near madness, working nearly around the clock in experimental ecstasy.
During this period, a father-in-law named Zhong Weiguo found himself troubled. His daughter had acquired her Space Cube late. Most resources and research bases had already been claimed, leaving little for him to develop.
But he refused to fall behind. After much thought, he stumbled upon a field no one had ever explored…