NOVEL NEXT Ch. 16
Chapter 16: The Fertilization Method (2)
Around that time.
I repaid an old debt.
“……Y-you’re giving me all this farmland?”
In front of the bewildered Munso, I smiled wryly.
“It’s thanks to you that I succeeded, sir.”
If Munso hadn’t bought me a weapon or taught me how to climb mountains?
No.
Before that—even if he hadn’t given my mother a place to live.
I might not even exist here.
It was only natural that I repaid Munso with land.
“Besides, I’m planning to rise in the world.”
“Rise in the world?”
“Yes. I’ll be going to Pyeongyang.”
At those words, Munso nodded.
“Well, you’re not someone meant to rot in this village. Then, are you saying I should become an administrator?”
“How long do you plan on living?”
I chuckled softly.
At a glance, it sounded like I was being disrespectful to an elder… but Munso understood the meaning well.
“Not just me, but even my children. So, you’re saying our family should become your retainers.”
A retainer—someone who works alongside the family.
It’s different from getting paid a salary at In-sam Company Inc. That’s a servant, not a retainer.
Retainers of this era were practically companions in fate, and of course, I would share with them everything I knew—my spawn cultivation method, ginseng cultivation, and all The Fertilization Methods.
In short, ‘I trust you enough to give you everything I have, so give me your loyalty’—that’s what it meant.
Compared to that knowledge, the patches of land I gave Munso hardly meant anything more than a token gesture.
Munso nodded.
“Is kneeling good enough?”
“No, that won’t be necessary.”
“Well then. Even if someone holds a knife to my throat, I won’t break my promise to you.”
Even after buying the land I gave to Munso, I still had plenty of cotton cloth left.
Munso asked.
“Why don’t you buy some farmland too?”
“I don’t plan to for now.”
“Then what are you going to do with all that cotton? Just store it in the warehouse?”
“Not exactly… I’m thinking of building a latrine first.”
Since I couldn’t borrow any slaves, farming was out of the question, so I decided to use this wealth for the public good.
“A latrine? Isn’t that something only in Pyeongyang Fortress?”
Even in this era, while they don’t have running water systems, the concepts of sewage and toilet facilities do exist.
You sit and do your business on a plank or use a chamber pot.
Especially in Goguryeo, people seem to value cleanliness, so such facilities had developed quite a bit.
But of course, in a rural mountain village like this, there were no such things as toilets.
In a city like Pyeongyang, unless you want to be wiped out by a plague, you dig toilets and install sewers.
But in sparsely populated villages, you just squat in the grass, pull down your pants, and let the dung beetles handle the rest.
However, during the late Goryeo and early Joseon period, even rural areas started getting toilets.
That’s because the concept of fertilizer began spreading around that time.
‘Actually, human manure is pretty dangerous…’
The most dangerous thing to a human is human feces.
Experiments show that humans find their own species’ feces far more disgusting than that of animals.
Excrement from other animals might or might not affect humans.
For example, heartworms fatal to cats and dogs don’t pose a threat to humans.
But parasites and germs that come from human bodies affect humans 100% of the time.
That’s why people find human feces most repulsive—and why it’s also the most dangerous.
Of course, if it’s properly decomposed, there’s no problem.
But if not, it becomes a breeding ground for parasites and germs.
Early records from Joseon, when fertilization practices were starting to spread, mention people collapsing from improper composting or having roundworms burst out en masse.
But conversely, if properly decomposed—and topped with lime or powdered cordyceps—the risk drops significantly.
That only happened in early Joseon.
Once proper Fertilization Methods spread among local nobility, those issues drastically decreased.
It’s doable.
So, I began constructing toilets to collect human manure using the remaining cotton cloth—and the results were explosive.
“Really? You’re going to build us toilets?”
“Are we really going to poop in a toilet? Like people in Pyeongyang?”
Upon hearing they’d get toilets, their faces lit up.
To these people, a ‘toilet’ was something only the wealthy of Pyeongyang had access to.
If someone were to bring that into our village—with someone else’s money, no less—it was only natural for them to be overjoyed.
Munso said,
“I’ll bring in the latrine builders. But we’ll need people to clean the toilets too…”
“How do they do it in Pyeongyang?”
“They make slaves do it. If you ask a servant, they won’t renew the contract next year.”
Hmm, then who’s going to clean the toilets in our village without slaves?
There’s only one solution in times like this.
“I’ll do it.”
Lead by example. Self-sacrifice.
Sacrificing myself to achieve virtue…
“What if you get sick? I’d rather do it myself!”
…Turns out it wasn’t necessary.
I was the goose that laid golden eggs in this village.
Who would ask the golden goose to clean the toilets?
Soon, the latrine experts from Pyeongyang arrived.
They were truly professionals.
First, they chose a spot far from water.
Then they dug the ground and layered the sides with clay like making a well.
One toilet was installed for every ten households.
I didn’t assign the zones.
Rural villages in this era naturally grouped into about ten households.
Since iron tools, carts, or even cows were expensive, ten households would pool money together to buy and share them.
That’s how farming worked.
I just applied that same structure.
Now, ten households would share one toilet.
You poop on top, toss in the straw you wiped with, and let the composting process begin.
“So, we wipe with straw?”
“Yes.”
“Hmph, people in Pyeongyang use something else.”
“What do they use?”
Do they use hemp cloth?
“A stick.”
“Ahh.”
Then I remembered.
There’s an old saying used to describe something anyone could do—‘even a poop-stick can do it’—and that poop-stick came from here.
Is it even effective?
No need to wonder.
When people think of Roman toilet paper, they think of sponges.
But sponges were expensive even in Rome.
Wiping with a sponge was for nobles.
Commoners wiped with broken ceramic shards.
How did their butts survive?
…Anyway, it felt like a wooden stick was better than broken ceramics.
“Let’s use straw instead of sticks. Then just toss it into the latrine. If it fills up, I’ll clean it.”
“I told you, you don’t have to do it.”
“Even if I don’t do it alone, I should still do it together with everyone.”
If I proposed it and didn’t follow through, wouldn’t that be the weirdest thing?
There’s even an old tale of Emperor Yao, who, upon hearing poor crop reports, got angry and said he’d do it himself—then the farming efficiency jumped by 300% the moment he grabbed a plow.
Emperor Yao couldn’t have been a human tractor.
More likely, anyone slacking off would’ve gotten their head chopped off, so people worked extra hard to pull weeds and such.
Maybe a scene similar to Joseon’s ‘super-intensive gardening’ where fields were tended like royal gardens.
Of course, I didn’t have Emperor Yao’s authority, but I was at least like a company president operating machines himself.
If anyone crossed me, their spawn jar might shrink a bit, or they’d get a lower-quality spawn.
That’s why taking the lead matters.
Also, this was the safest option.
“I’ll sprinkle a bit of quicklime here. Only sprinkle this at the beginning—once fermentation starts, don’t add it again.”
“Let’s dig a bit deeper. So it won’t overflow.”
“Let’s install it on an uphill slope rather than a downhill one.”
If I managed all the human manure myself, I could ferment it into fertilizer without issue.
This wasn’t a time where people obsessed about safety, but still…
If a food poisoning party broke out after eating crops fertilized with manure, that would be the end of The Fertilization Method.
I once heard someone say that Koreans get more furious about someone stubbing out a cigarette in freshly cooked rice than hearing insults about their parents.
So my actions had to be ‘for the sake of rice,’ not an ‘insult to rice.’
Therefore.
Only I, in this world,
knew how to safely ferment poop.
Making compost isn’t hard at all.
Collect the poop.
Cover it with grass.
Repeat the process like layering a cake. (They usually call it ‘poop-layer’ after the traditional rice cake, but modern farmers called it poop-cake.)
Poke holes with sticks so air circulates—this helps create good fertilizer.
Ferment it thoroughly until the poop smell disappears.
I’d done this many times.
Why would I do this in the 21st century, when we have chemical fertilizers?
There are two reasons.
First: chemical fertilizers cost money.
If you make manure, you can buy less chemical fertilizer—why wouldn’t you?
Second: the wellness trend.
As wellness became popular, organic produce without pesticides or chemical fertilizers gained the spotlight.
This was especially true for ginseng, a traditional medicinal crop.
As a result, I had watched and learned how to make manure from a very young age.
‘Now that I’ve got a toilet, making compost won’t be hard.’
The real issue was persuasion.
“We’re not throwing poop away… you’re saying we pile it up and let it rot, then spread it in the fields?”
“Yes. If you do that, crops will thrive.”
“…You expect us to believe that?”
Faced with skeptical villagers, I wondered how to explain it.
How could I explain that it adds nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to the field?
Answer?
“If you dry wood and plant mushrooms in it, then punch it, mushrooms will sprout all over. Do you believe that?”
There’s no need to explain.
I already did something unbelievable once, didn’t I?
Someone who’s done the unbelievable once doesn’t need to explain when they do it a second time.
Because I was the kind of person who made the unbelievable happen.
“And you don’t even need to let your fields lie fallow anymore.”
“No fallow period?”
“Well, not exactly no fallow period… more like, the rest period gets shorter. Right now, you let it rest every year—but from now on, just once every two years, and only in fall and winter.”
“…Does that even make sense?”
“You don’t have to do it if you don’t believe me.”
This is why I waited until now to spread the fertilization method.
Imagine a fallen noble suddenly showing up, spreading poop on your field and planting beans in your carefully resting land.
Noble or not, you’d get smacked in the face.
But this time, things were different.
“I-I’ll do it! I believe in Insam!”
“I’ll believe in Insam too!”
Several shouted like that.
These were people who hadn’t believed me when I grew mushrooms on wood last year—calling me crazy.
Because of that, others made a fortune growing mushrooms and added cattle and land, while these folks got beaten on the back by their fierce Goguryeo wives who asked, “Why didn’t you do that too?”
Now that I was launching a new project again… could they possibly not follow me?
“Poop! Let’s gather poop!”
“Give me your pooooooop!”
Once you fail once, you’ll follow without question the second time.
In the 21st century, this might seem like someone falling for a lottery scam, but… don’t worry.
I’m no scammer.
Of course, not everyone became a fanatic—but that was fine too.
“Well, if it fails, we can blame Insam… and he did promise the next spawn would be free if the crop fails.”
I also handed out money.
“Besides, poop is already piling up, right? It’s a bit unpleasant to collect it deliberately, but… it doesn’t hurt to try now.”
The existence of toilets helped a lot.
It’s similar to the Japanese company Yamaha.
They started out repairing pianos.
Then they got into woodworking.
Since they were good at woodwork, they got hired to make propellers—then they expanded to fans and helicopters, then to motors, and eventually motorcycles… it’s a strange but fascinating company.
The lesson?
It’s hard to start with nothing, but it’s easier to expand from a solid foundation.
My father did the same—he started with ginseng farming and expanded into a red ginseng candy farm.
Same applies here.
Since we already had toilets, people naturally became curious about what to do with all that poop.
Thus the poop slowly fermented—and soon, I met Gyeonhwon’s father.
“Hello, earthworm!”
Earthworms were the best proof that the compost was well made.
After that, we crushed the poop-cake, spread it thin under the sun to sterilize and disinfect it, then scattered it on the fields.
“It really doesn’t smell like poop.”
“It just looks like soil. But… are you sure it’s safe to spread this?”
“If it’s not, I’ll compensate you—didn’t I say so?”
The people were skeptical, but skepticism still meant they half-believed.
Jesus said, blessings come to those who believe.
That fall.
“Wow, this is insane.”
“What is this…?”
Gromchon’s agriculture experienced an unprecedented boom.
Normally, in Goguryeo, harvesting about five mal of grain per majigi was considered lucky.
One majigi was the area where one mal was sown—so getting five grains per seed meant decent success.
But now they were harvesting about ten grains per seed—twice that.
Compared to modern 21st-century farming, where you might harvest 100 to 200 grains per seed, it’s still small, but for this era, it was a huge leap.
“Is this… the power of fertilizer?”
“Then what the hell was all my previous farming about…?”
“Insam is really a god!”
“Ugh, it’s Kim Insam again. I have no choice but to worship him.”
Once is luck, but twice is fate.
After succeeding with mushroom cultivation and now with fertilizer, it was only natural that their faith deepened.
And that wasn’t all.
“Once you’re done harvesting, let’s bury the fertilizer again. Then you can farm again without leaving the field fallow.”
“What? Is that true?”
“Yes. Don’t let the field rest this time—plant beans. After you harvest the beans, only rest the field during winter.”
Two-Year Triple-Cropping system introduced.
Fields that would’ve rested for a full year now only rested for half.
Double the yield and 1.5 times the land use rate.
2 x 1.5 equals three times the farming efficiency compared to before!
The results were huge.
“Mother, my little brother pooped in the latrine next to ours!”
“Argh! Didn’t I tell you to only poop in our zone’s latrine? Poop is property! Get it back!”
“What do you mean get it back? He ate our food, so his poop belongs to us too!”
“No more feeding guests from now on?”
Because of fertilization, some people started to argue over poop, and Gromchon almost created a barbaric culture of refusing meals to guests.
(Fortunately, villagers made a customary law: ‘Poop belongs to the owner of the latrine,’ thus stopping Goguryeo from turning into Sweden.)
“Someone stole our poop?”
“Let’s hire people to guard the poop!”
A cooperative formed to share fertilizer.
“They can’t steal from our village.”
“Should we go steal from the next village?”
“They don’t have toilets though.”
“They just leave cow dung lying around.”
“That’s a crazy idea. Let’s do it right now.”
Even poop thieves appeared.
No one had to worry about who would clean the poop anymore.
Everyone scooped up their own, afraid it’d get stolen.
Thus, The Fertilization Method of Goguryeo gradually revealed itself.
And the value of feces, once worthless, skyrocketed like crazy.
And I too screamed with joy.
“It’s a ginseng berry, a ginseng berry!”
Out of the 400 ginseng seeds I planted, 238 survived and grew into three-year-old roots, now bearing red ginseng berries.
Ginseng seeds could be cloned.
Now I could plant and harvest ginseng every year.
It was good for me, and it was good for the people of Gromchon.
But not everyone was celebrating.
That winter.
“What the hell! Goryeo lost to Silla?”
“Back in King Gwanggaeto’s day, we saved those bastards from pirates—how could this happen?”
“Is this right? Is this really right? What the hell did Wang Jun do?”
News of the defeat at Kaema Plateau turned Pyeongyang Fortress into chaos.
There’s a saying that Gyeonhwon, who founded Later Baekje, was the son of a “Soil Dragon” (earthworm).
There are mixed opinions as to why, but here are some interesting theories.
Apparently, Gyeonhwon’s mother had relations with a “man in purple robes.”
As is well known, purple was the symbol of the true bone aristocracy.
At the same time, there were rumors that he was the “son of a dragon.”
Seeing this, rivals allegedly mocked him by saying, “If his father was a purple-robed dragon, isn’t he basically an earthworm?” thus degrading him.
Also, Gyeonhwon’s name was pronounced “Jinhwon” at the time, and the sound was similar to “Jireong-i” (earthworm), so that may have fueled the mockery.