šĀ Chapter 5: The Valley Matures
š September 29th, 90 BCE ā Early Autumn š
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Before metal learned to breathe, the Hidden Valley moved by hands and hooves and water.
Mill races left the Great Dam like bright ribbons and turned ranks of wooden wheels that thudded with patient certainty. Terraces climbed the slopes with vineyards and orchards that the Illuminati had planted in their first seasons. Bees drifted in slow, golden clouds between apple and apricot and plum. Clay jars of honey waited in cool storerooms beside amphorae of last year's wine.
Villagers, stronger than most men beyond the wall, pushed handcarts that a team of oxen would struggle to budge. Animal-pulled wagons rolled grain to the granaries. Timber slid on greased skids toward saw pits. It was a working peace, orderly and human, and the air smelled of pressed fruit and wet stone.
ā” Vision of MotionĀ
The planning cave lay high in the mountains, veiled by cedar and rock. Junjie carried Claudia there as if she were weightless and set her down at the mouth, her robe fluttering in the wind his speed had braided behind them.
Inside, the chamber woke. Light gathered over the round table and rose into quiet constellations. Nano's voice followed, even and intimate.
"Your mills are near their ceiling. Animal power is loyal but finite. If the valleys are to keep breathing, you need engines that do not tire."
The light clarified into holograms. First: a compact purifier with a hopper throat, separation chambers, and a press head. Next: a sealed heat engine whose cycle Nano rendered as flowing bands. Then came a family of devices that such an engine would drive: conveyor flights for smelter mouths, lifting cranes with ratcheted knees, and low transport carts with balanced axles.
"Begin with the purifier," Nano said. "Fuel first, then motion. Your workshops can build both."
Claudia studied the projections with a scribe's careful eye. "Will our people accept them?"
"They will accept a story that fits the order of their lives," Nano said.
Nanoswarms shimmered. Scrolls appeared on the table already inscribed in Junjie's hand, the ink illusion perfect and dry. The diagrams named tolerances and clearances, listed parts in advanced alloys the valley smiths had learned to cast and machine, noted surface finishes that felt like thought. Junjie could not resist adding a bolt size here, a gear tooth profile there. It was what the valley expected of him; in their memory, he had been the village inventor long before he became the Prophet.
"Tomorrow," Junjie said, gathering the plans, "I will say the Light showed me how fire can be refined and how heat can be taught to work. They will nod. They will ask where to build."
Claudia smiled. "They always do."
āļø Proposal of Industry
The town hall stood in the residential district between the temple and school, a stone lantern at the edge of the quarter that faced the Human Wall. Elders of all three valleys filled the semicircle of benches. Seating was set so every face could see the table; dwarves occupied the front tiers, their eyes bright beneath heavy brows, while elves and humans fanned behind them. Scribes waited with tablets.
Junjie laid the first scroll flat. "The river has more to give, and the flame can serve without smoke. I woke with these shapes in my mind."
He turned the plan so the room could follow his finger. "A purifier that separates filth and presses what remains into uniform pellets. A dedicated mill will house it. Fuel will be clean, hot, and steady."
He opened the second. "An engine that turns heat into motion. With it come tools designed to save hands from waste: conveyors for smelters, cranes and lifters, and low carts for heavy loads. We will keep our old strengths and add new ones."
The dwarves leaned in, murmuring among themselves. One elder, a stocky builder with soot still in his beard, studied the drawing of the water-driven mill and frowned thoughtfully. "A fine idea for those with rivers," he said. "Our valley has more rock than water. But," he turned his head toward the windows, where the peaks framed a row of human wind-pumps slowly turning against the sky, "those little windmills that lift your water... hmm. That would work for us."
He looked back at Junjie, eyes glinting with mischief. "Of course, we would not buildĀ cuteĀ little ones like these."
A human millwright blinked from the back row, caught between pride and disbelief. "Cute?" he echoed under his breath, half amused, half offended.
The dwarf chuckled. "We'll make them larger. Properly so."
Laughter rippled through the hall. Questions followed: placement, staffing, materials, but none about the source of the Prophet's dream. When the vote came, there was no dissent. The council authorized construction of the new coal-pellet mill and released the workshops to begin work on the first engines and their attendant devices.
š ļøĀ Schools, Guilds, and Blessings
The schools were no longer an experiment. Classrooms had long since overflowed the temple quarter and now occupied fronts along the Artisan District. Scribes taught letters and numbers in the morning; masters took apprentices by the dozen in the afternoon. Smiths, machinists, millwrights, glassmakers, potters, stonecutters, and carpenters all kept rosters of youths whose hands were already sure.
The monthly Blessings continued. With immigration paused, only newborns and a few unblessed citizens stood beneath the temple light each cycle. The rite marked time more than change now, a steady pulse the valleys could feel without looking up.
š°Trade Without Trumpets
Beyond the wall, the river towns still spoke of the day a warlord's army vanished. Curiosity had a price, so the Illuminati chose caution. Trade widened and quieted at once.
Two ships served everything. The Gull of the Mountain, a small river-sea craft with an honest cabin, entered watched harbors, bargained like any merchant, and left on schedule. The Sky Leviathan waited beyond the headlands, cloaked on open water. At set points, the two met, and cargo moved in silence from the smaller hold to the greater.
They favored far ports over nearby suspicion. In one season, the ledgers filled with wool from Persia, rice and millet from India, silks and paper from the East, oils and sugar from Egypt. Gold flowed outward, and return cargo stacked to the beams. Tools and glass from the valley went the other way, along with dwarven alloys and elven medicines.
They had learned discretion. Raw ingots no longer changed hands; they were too heavy, too strange, too memorable. Instead, valley gold was left as bracelets, pendants, filigreed clasps, and small idols that looked like a merchant's curiosities. Jewelry was easier to trade, easier to melt, and raised no questions when carried by a traveling wife or clerk.
Now and then, Junjie joined the trade circuit himself, scanning markets through Nano's quiet lens. A flicker of breath, a heartbeat rhythm, a certain brightness behind the eyes; those were what they looked for.Ā When one appeared, a scribe, a healer, a builder worth saving, Junjie would signal the Gull's captain, and the purchase would be made quietly, payment wrapped in gold trinkets rather than bars. Such rescues were rare and deliberate, a trickle rather than the floods of old.
At home, the lakeshore road carried the caravans from the depots on the north and east shores into the Human Valley. The border remained sealed. No one slipped through. The valleys traded with the world and stayed unseen by it.
šµļøāāļøĀ The Quiet Mandate
Yet even as commerce grew discreet, unease took root in the Council. The markets beyond the mountains were rich again, but the same chains still clinked in every port. Rome had not changed; it had only grown hungrier.
That evening, Junjie called a private session beneath the Hall of Records. Only five answered: Claudia, Lianhua, Chengde, Meiyun, and himself. No scribes were summoned.
"The valley prospers," Junjie said, "but the world that feeds it rots. We cannot pretend our gold is clean if we buy from masters who sell men."
Claudia's voice was low but certain. "I saw the slave markets. They sell children beside amphorae and scholars beside beasts. I will not see it continue while we live in comfort."
Lianhua looked troubled. "Then what? War? You would march out and become what we condemn?"
"Not war," Junjie said. "Correction. Quiet, steady correction."
From her sleeve, Claudia drew a scroll already sealed with wax. "Then we do this properly. A department apart from the Council, answerable only to us. It will watch and act when the balance falters."
Claudia nodded. "Then let it be called the Intervention Department. No banners, no mark, only purpose."
Nano's voice rose softly from the chamber's stone.Ā Projected destabilization of Rome is achievable within four centuries if targeted moral and intellectual extraction is maintained.
Chengde frowned. "Extraction?"
"Rescue," Junjie corrected. "We take the best minds Rome enslaves and bring them here. Every life we save weakens the empire and strengthens the world to come."
They signed that night, five names under a single phrase: Preserve through correction.
By morning, the first merchants of the new order were already being chosen, traders who would buy brilliance out of bondage and bring it home under the veil of commerce. The world would never know its true purpose, and the valley would never again be entirely still.
šVine and Hive
Evening returned the slopes to gold. Vintners, many of them elves now, walked the vineyard rows with knives and baskets, choosing cuttings to root in new terraces. Bee-masters checked the hives and listened, heads cocked, for the tone that meant contentment. The orchards had begun to sweeten the very wind. The people called it the valley's polite breath.
Junjie and Claudia climbed to the overlook above the residential quarter. From there, the lanes ran like threads toward the wall, and behind them the school roofs and workshop chimneys made a tidy comb. Far off, the Great Dam held the lake like a giant bowl of night.
"They think this is the shape the world was meant to take," Claudia said.
"For now," Junjie answered.
Nano's voice came on the private channel, quiet and exact. "The plan you presented will keep the valleys balanced for a time. Completion invites pressure. Pressure arrives."
Junjie watched the lamplight settle. The council would break ground on the new mill in the morning. The handcarts would still roll, and the oxen would still lean into their traces, and the wheels below the dam would still turn. The future was on paper, folded neatly in the town hall vault, and the present was very calm.
For a while longer, the valley breathed as it always had.