“A type of easy-to-grow, high-yield food.” Mark Johnson didn’t think much of it, simply assuming that people in this world didn’t know the edible value of potatoes. That wasn’t surprising—after all, in his own world, for a long time, humans didn’t know this thing was edible… let alone delicious: “Since wild potatoes can be found, it proves that potatoes can be cultivated here.”

Mark Watson had originally planned to grow potatoes inside the Mars base, but there were far too many problems to solve for potato cultivation on Mars, and the chances of success were very low.

By comparison, bringing those live potatoes here and opening up a potato field in this world to continuously grow large quantities of potatoes would not only secure his own food supply, but also count as a contribution to the village—simply perfect.

Caught up in excitement, Mark Watson no longer wanted to continue the tour. He couldn’t wait to start his potato field project right away, already calculating in his mind how much land he would need and where the potato field should be established.

Watching Mark Watson muttering to himself, David Clark didn’t interrupt his train of thought, but instead turned to look at the potato seedlings at his feet.

The fresh, green leaves grew right out of the black soil. After observing for a moment, David Clark noticed that the land beneath his feet seemed to have subtle differences compared to the land farther away.

“An illusion?”

He looked a few more times, but couldn’t tell if he was mistaken; or maybe he had simply never noticed such tiny differences before.

But one thing was certain: there had definitely never been wild potatoes here before—he’d lived here for two years, and had never missed any edible wild vegetables or berries in the surrounding land. There was no way he could have overlooked a crop growing right under his nose. Besides, it’s not like he didn’t recognize potatoes.

Since there weren’t any before, there’s no reason for them to suddenly appear out of nowhere.

The most plausible explanation was the person next to him, Mark Watson, who was muttering and calculating something.

“Could it be that the reward isn’t just giving me these people’s skills or talents, but even includes actual items like potatoes?” David Clark pondered. Rewards in the form of physical objects should also have a special connection to the person granting the reward—just like Mark Watson and potatoes. In the story, Mark Johnson survived on Mars until rescue arrived, and successfully returned to Earth, all thanks to potatoes.

“But, potatoes growing behind the house are easy to find. If it were some other strange thing, how would I discover or claim it?”

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Chapter 11: The Invincible Potato

David Clark didn’t dwell on it for long, because there was no point in overthinking—before actually encountering such a situation, everything was just speculation.

Rather than wasting time worrying about uncertain things, it was better to deal with the problem at hand: for example, clearing a field and planting the potatoes.

Mark Watson had a bag of live potatoes in his hand. This was the foundation that allowed him to successfully establish a potato field and grow large quantities of potatoes on Mars in the story.

At this moment, the bag of live potatoes was right in front of David Clark and Franklin Baker.

“Aren’t these potatoes?”

The well-traveled Franklin Baker also recognized them; in the world of Azeroth, this was also a very common food.

Hearing Franklin Baker’s words, David Clark remembered that the world of Azeroth also had many “familiar” crops—he had actually overlooked this before.

“Although there aren’t many, it’s enough to go with venison or wolf meat for a few days.”

“No, these are for planting.” David Clark immediately explained the use of the potatoes to Franklin Baker: “When I was showing Mark Johnson around just now, we accidentally discovered wild potatoes growing near the village, so Mark Johnson thinks the land here should be suitable for potato cultivation.”

“Oh? If it works, does that mean we’ll have a stable food supply?” Franklin Baker finally realized what this bag of potatoes meant.

He was already quite clear about the situation in David Clark’s Winter Village—the situation was right there, and could be explained in just a few words.

Things like low winter temperatures and difficulty surviving could be overcome, but the food problem was the hardest to solve.

If a stable food supply couldn’t be ensured, it would be very difficult to truly establish a village, let alone attract more people to settle here.

Once the food problem was solved, the remaining issues wouldn’t really be problems.

If winter is cold, just put more effort into the houses—even if every household builds a fireplace, it’s not like they can’t afford firewood, since there’s a forest nearby with plenty of wood.

At the same time, being able to open up fields with stable grain production would attract farmers to settle here, and with enough farmers, blacksmiths, stonemasons, tailors, and other professionals would also be drawn to settle, gradually making the village more complete and prosperous.

These things occurred to Franklin Baker, and of course to David Clark as well, so he was very happy now.

On the other hand, Mark Watson was still marveling at how he could travel freely between different worlds. As a scientist, he was very curious about what caused such a miraculous phenomenon—even the potatoes in front of him couldn’t attract his attention anymore.