Spring planting consumed the first three weeks.
Marcus learned quickly that farming was less about individual skill and more about coordinated endurance. The entire village worked in rotating groups—one day in your family's plots, the next in the communal fields, then helping neighbors who needed extra hands. The cycle repeated endlessly: plowing, planting, maintaining irrigation, weeding.
His body adapted to the rhythm faster than he expected. Chen Liang's muscle memory helped, but so did the improved nutrition from winter. He could work a full day now without collapsing, though he was still among the weaker laborers compared to men who'd been doing this for decades.
It was during the communal work days that opportunities emerged.
"You're Chen Wei's boy, aren't you? The hunter?"
Marcus looked up from the rice paddy where he'd been transplanting seedlings to find Zhang Kun regarding him with professional interest. The blacksmith's son was built like his trade suggested—broad shoulders, thick arms, hands scarred from hot metal and sharp edges.
"Yes," Marcus confirmed, straightening and wiping mud from his hands.
"My father says you killed four pigs last fall. Good spear work, supposedly." Zhang Kun gestured toward the edge of the field where tools were laid out for repair. "But I saw your spear tip after that male pig incident. Bent from hitting bone, yeah?"
Marcus nodded, unsure where this was leading.
"That's a problem with the basic tips—too soft, bend on hard impact. But they're easy to make and cheap to replace." Zhang Kun picked up a farming hoe, examining its blade. "You want to learn how to work metal properly? Make tips that won't bend?"
"You'd teach me?"
"Why not? You helped my grandmother carry firewood all winter when she was sick. Figured I owed you something." He shrugged. "Besides, blacksmith work is good to know. Even basic repairs are valuable skills."
Thus began Marcus's education in metalworking.
Three times a week, after the day's farming was done, he'd spend two hours at the smithy. Zhang Kun started him on fundamentals—maintaining the forge fire, recognizing metal temperature by color, basic hammer technique.
"You've got decent hand-eye coordination," Zhang Kun observed after Marcus's first attempt at shaping a simple nail. "Better than most who start. But your arms are weak. You're trying to force the metal instead of letting the hammer's weight do the work."
Marcus absorbed the corrections, his enhanced memory cataloguing every detail. The specific orange-red of iron at working temperature. The rhythm of striking—hard blows to move metal, lighter taps to refine. The way to hold the tongs to maximize control while minimizing strain.
He was terrible at it, initially. His first nail looked like a twisted piece of scrap. His second attempt at a simple hook broke when he quenched it wrong. But his perfect recall of Zhang Kun's demonstrations helped him identify exactly where his technique diverged from the correct form.
Slow improvement. But improvement nonetheless.
"You actually pay attention," Zhang Kun said after the second week. "Most people I try to teach, they just go through the motions. You're watching everything, remembering it all."
If only he knew how literally true that was.
Meanwhile, Mei had found her own teachers.
The village had a tailor—Old Widow Qian, who made her living mending and creating simple garments for families who could afford to pay. Mei had approached her about learning the trade, offering labor in exchange for instruction.
"Your sister's a natural," Widow Qian told their mother one evening when she came to deliver a mended shirt. "Better hands for fine work than I had at her age. She's already doing straight seams that don't need correcting."
Marcus watched Mei practice that evening, her fingers working the needle with surprising precision. The same knife skills that had made her excellent at field dressing translated well to sewing—steady hands, good spatial awareness, an intuitive understanding of how materials fit together.
"It's satisfying," she said when he asked about it. "Like butchering, but creating instead of destroying. You're putting pieces together to make something useful."
She was improving faster than Marcus was at metalwork, her natural dexterity giving her an advantage he couldn't match through mere analysis and memory.
But Mei hadn't stopped there.
Elder Huang lived on the village's eastern edge, in a small house fragrant with dried herbs. She was the closest thing Bluestone had to a physician—a woman who'd learned medicine from her mother, who'd learned from her mother, passing down generations of practical knowledge about treating common ailments.
"I want to learn," Mei had told her bluntly. "How to treat wounds, stop infections, help when someone is sick."
Elder Huang had studied her with sharp eyes. "Why? Most young women your age are thinking about marriage, not medicine."
"Because my brother nearly got killed by a pig, and I didn't know how to properly clean the wound. Because winter took three people, and maybe if I'd known more, I could have helped." Mei's voice was matter-of-fact. "And because medicine seems useful."
The old woman had laughed—a dry, crackling sound—and accepted her as a student.
Now Mei spent her free time learning to identify plants, prepare poultices, understand which herbs treated which conditions. She practiced bandaging on Bao, who tolerated being her test subject in exchange for stories. She memorized treatments for fever, techniques for setting broken bones, signs of infections that required immediate intervention.
"She's got the temperament for it," Elder Huang told Marcus when he stopped by to deliver firewood as payment for Mei's lessons. "Steady hands, doesn't panic, asks good questions. Some people can't handle the blood and mess. Your sister doesn't even flinch."
Marcus thought about Mei calmly field dressing animals, her knife moving with clinical precision even after the chaos of the pig attack. No, blood wouldn't bother her.
Liu Ming caught Marcus after a communal work day in the fourth week of spring.
"Heard you're learning smithing," the wiry hunter said. "But you still can't use a bow, can you?"
"Never tried," Marcus admitted.
"Want to learn? I'm teaching my nephew, could use another student to demonstrate proper form versus common mistakes."
Marcus accepted immediately.
Archery was different from spear throwing in ways that frustrated his analytical mind. With a spear, you could calculate trajectory, account for weight and balance, execute a throw with consistent mechanics. Bows introduced too many variables—string tension, arrow weight, wind resistance, the bow's specific characteristics.
"You're overthinking," Liu Ming said after watching Marcus's fifth shot go wide. "Archery isn't about calculation. It's about feel, muscle memory, letting your body learn the motion."
But Marcus's body didn't learn the same way others' did. His perfect memory recorded every shot, every adjustment, but translating that into consistent physical execution was maddeningly difficult.
After three weeks of practice, he could hit a target at twenty meters maybe 40% of the time. Respectable for a beginner, but frustrating for someone who expected his enhanced capabilities to translate into rapid mastery.
"You're improving steadily," Liu Ming assured him. "Most people plateau faster. You keep finding small improvements each session."
Because Marcus could perfectly recall yesterday's technique and compare it to today's, identifying minute differences and their effects. But the translation from understanding to execution remained stubbornly slow.
His nephew, by contrast, was hitting targets at thirty meters with 60% accuracy after the same amount of training. Natural talent trumping analytical understanding.
Humbling.
Marcus's mother became his teacher for a different kind of knowledge.
"If you're going to hunt, you need to know plants," Lin Shu said during one of their foraging trips. "Not just for food, but for medicine, for tools, for understanding what animals eat and where they'll be."
She taught him to identify edible spring shoots, which mushrooms were safe and which would kill you, what roots could be boiled for medicine and what leaves made good wrapping material. Practical botany, refined through generations of survival.
Marcus's perfect memory made him an ideal student for this—once shown a plant and told its properties, he never forgot. Within two weeks, he could identify forty different species on sight and recite their uses.
"You learn faster than your sister did," his mother observed. "Though she was younger when I taught her."
"Mei learned this too?"
"Of course. Every child learns basic plants. Mei just learned faster than most." Lin Shu paused at a patch of broad-leafed growth. "This is bloodstop leaf. Remember the texture—slightly fuzzy on the underside. Crushed and applied to wounds, it helps clotting."
Marcus filed the information away perfectly, alongside the visual memory of the plant, the feel of the leaf, the location where they'd found it.
His mother was right—this knowledge was directly applicable to hunting. Understanding what deer ate told you where they'd feed. Knowing which plants indicated water sources helped you find good ambush locations. Recognizing poisonous species kept you from accidentally contaminating your kills during field dressing.
Practical, useful, immediately valuable.
By the time late spring arrived, both Marcus and Mei had accumulated an eclectic collection of skills.
Marcus could now perform basic metalwork—sharpening blades, making simple tools, understanding the properties of different metal treatments. His archery was mediocre but improving. His plant knowledge was extensive and perfectly retained. Combined with his hunting experience and analytical capabilities, he was becoming genuinely versatile even if not exceptional in any single area.
Mei had surpassed him in several domains. Her sewing was approaching professional quality—Widow Qian had started paying her for simple jobs. Her medical knowledge was advancing rapidly, Elder Huang trusting her with increasingly complex treatments. Her knife work remained superior to Marcus's, and she'd even picked up basic carpentry from helping repair the village's communal storage building.
"You're good at everything," Marcus told her one evening as they walked back from their respective lessons.
"Not everything. I'm terrible at anything that requires patience and stillness. Hunting, fishing, anything where you have to wait quietly for hours." Mei grinned. "That's your strength. I need to be moving, working with my hands, solving immediate problems."
"Complementary skills."
"Exactly. We make a good team."
It was true. Where Marcus excelled at planning, observation, and patient execution, Mei thrived in dynamic situations requiring quick decisions and precise manual work. Their hunting partnership had taught them to leverage their different strengths rather than competing.
The village had noticed their development too. Families began approaching them for specific help—Marcus to identify unfamiliar plants or help with tool repairs, Mei to sew garments or treat minor injuries. Small jobs, often paid in food or future favors rather than coin, but building a reputation.
"People trust you," their father said one evening. "Both of you. That's valuable. More valuable than any single skill."
Trust was currency in village life. The Chen family's successful winter, their useful children, their growing network of reciprocal obligations—it all accumulated into social capital that could be spent when needed.
Marcus understood this intellectually, but also felt it emotionally. These weren't just strategic relationships anymore. Zhang Kun was becoming something like a friend. Elder Huang treated Mei with genuine affection. Liu Ming invited Marcus to join the hunters' informal gatherings where they shared stories and techniques.
They were integrating. Becoming part of the village fabric rather than just surviving on its edges.
One evening, as Marcus practiced arrow-making under Liu Ming's supervision, the older hunter asked him a question that caught him off-guard.
"You ever think about leaving? Going to the county seat, maybe becoming an apprentice to a real craftsman?"
Marcus paused mid-cut. "No. Why would I?"
"Because you're smart. Observant. Good with your hands once you practice enough. You could probably make more of yourself in a city than in a backwater village like this."
Could he? Maybe. Marcus's modern knowledge and enhanced capabilities might translate better in a larger setting with more resources and opportunities.
But the thought of leaving—leaving his family, this village, the life he'd been building—felt wrong in a way he couldn't quite articulate.
"My family is here," he said finally. "That matters more."
Liu Ming nodded as if this was the answer he'd expected. "Good. Village needs people like you and your sister. People who are willing to learn, to help, to make things better for everyone."
After Marcus finished his arrows and headed home, he thought about that conversation. About choices and opportunities and what constituted a good life.
In his previous existence, Marcus Chen had chased advancement—better job, higher salary, more prestigious position. Always looking ahead to the next goal, never quite satisfied with where he was.
But here, as Chen Liang, he was learning to value different things. Family stability. Community trust. The satisfaction of acquiring useful skills. The simple pleasure of contributing to something larger than himself.
Not ambitious by his old standards. But maybe that was okay.
He was alive. His family was thriving. He was learning and growing and building a place in this world.
That was enough. More than enough.
Spring was ending. Summer would bring its own challenges—maintaining crops, preparing for fall harvest, continuing to build skills and relationships. And then another hunting season, where he could apply everything he'd learned.
The cycle would continue. And Marcus would continue with it, one season at a time.