The morning after the new hens arrived, Lin Yan was up before the sun, drawn to the edge of their rocky, sloping pasture. The Basic Soil Amendment Knowledge hummed in his mind like a newly tuned instrument. He knelt, grabbing a handful of the dry, pale soil. It was lifeless powder, leaching away with every rain, hosting little but tough, wiry grass that even goats scorned.
But he saw it differently now. He saw potential nitrogen from the chicken manure steadily piling up on the dung board. He saw potassium in the ash from their cooking fire. He saw structure in the leaf litter from the woods. It was a puzzle, and he had the first pieces.
"You're talking to the dirt now, Second Brother?"
Lin Xiao's sleepy voice came from behind him. The boy had taken to shadowing Lin Yan with the devotion of a disciple.
"In a way," Lin Yan said, letting the soil trickle through his fingers. "It's telling me what it needs. And it needs a lot." He stood, brushing his hands. "Today, we start a new project. Bigger than the coop."
He gathered the family after the morning meal. With the two new hens already exploring the run he'd built off the coop, there was a palpable sense of growing enterprise.
"We have five hens now. Their manure is waste, or it is treasure," Lin Yan announced. "We will make it treasure. And we will use it to turn that worthless slope into something valuable."
Lin Dahu looked skeptical. "That slope has been barren since my grandfather's time. The soil is hungry. It eats effort and gives back stones."
"Then we will feed it until it's full," Lin Yan said simply. "We will build a compost heap. We will gather every bit of organic matter we can find—manure, leaf litter, rotten wood, kitchen scraps, weeds. We will layer it, turn it, and let it cook. And in a month, maybe two, we will have black gold to spread on that slope."
It was a foreign concept. Waste was something to be disposed of, not cultivated. But Lin Zhu, the thinker, caught on first. "Like curing wood… but for soil. You create the conditions for it to transform."
"Exactly."
Wang Shi saw the practical angle. "The kitchen scraps we cannot eat, the weeds from the garden that choke the beans—they go to this heap?"
"Yes. Nothing organic leaves our land anymore. Everything cycles."
Under Lin Yan's direction, they selected a shaded, level spot near the woods' edge. Using stones and old planks, they built a three-sided bin. And then the gathering began. It was unglamorous, humble work. Lin Tie and Lin Dahu hauled the accumulated chicken manure and mixed it with straw. The women and girls brought armfuls of dry leaves and pulled non-seeding weeds. Lin Yan and Lin Xiao scoured the forest floor for patches of decomposing leaves and crumbly, dark humus.
By midday, they had a respectable, damp, earthy-smelling pile. Lin Yan used a stick to demonstrate layering: browns (leaves, straw) for carbon, greens (manure, fresh weeds) for nitrogen. He watered it lightly from the creek.
[Action Recognized: Initiated Systematic Composting. Foundation for Land Regeneration laid. Points awarded: +10.]
[New Long-Term Project: 'The Living Soil.']
Total Points: 37. He had enough. He immediately purchased the Hardy Forage Grass Seed Mix for 25 points. A nondescript, homespun cloth bag of seeds appeared in his system inventory. He would introduce it later.
As they stood back, admiring their malodorous new enterprise, Chen Fu appeared on the path. His visits were becoming a tense routine. This time, his expression was grim, carrying official news rather than personal leverage.
"Lin Dahu," he called, dispensing with pleasantries. "A notice from the village head, relayed from the county. The spring corvée labor levy is announced."
A collective groan, almost imperceptible, passed through the family. The corvée—unpaid, compulsory labor for the state on roads, canals, or walls. It fell on all able-bodied commoner men between 16 and 60.
"Each household must provide one man for ten days," Chen Fu recited. "Work is on the post road north of the county town. Reporting is in seven days." His eyes scanned the Lin men. Lin Dahu was eligible but old. Lin Tie and Lin Zhu were prime candidates. And Lin Yan, now visibly past his sickness and sixteen years old, was newly eligible.
Lin Yan's blood ran cold. Ten days. Right in the middle of his 30-day mission. Right when the hens were hitting their stride, the compost needed turning, the grassland needed seeding. It would gut their momentum.
"Who will you send?" Chen Fu asked, a hint of his old smugness returning. This was a different kind of shackle, one forged by the imperial bureaucracy.
Lin Dahu's jaw worked. "I will go." He was the head of household. It was his responsibility, even if his back would break under the labor.
"No, Father," Lin Tie said, his voice final. "Your place is here. I am the strongest. I will go." He said it as a fact, already accepting the burden.
But Lin Yan was thinking faster. The system was about development, sustainability. Losing his strongest labor for ten days was a massive setback. There had to be another way. "Is there… a commutation?" he asked. "Can the labor be bought out?"
Chen Fu looked surprised, then nodded slowly. "Aye. The official commutation rate is three silver fen per ten-day levy. Or the equivalent in grain at the official tax price." He said it like stating the height of a mountain. Three silver fen was thirty copper coins. A fortune. More than they had just paid for their interest, more than they had left.
The family's faces fell. Silver was a myth, copper was hard enough.
"I see," Lin Yan said, his mind racing. "Thank you for the notice, Brother Chen Fu."
After the man left, despair threatened to sink them again. The tax was one thing—a distant, silver-shaped cloud. The corvée was a lightning strike, imminent and paralyzing.
"I go," Lin Tie stated again. "It is only ten days."
"Ten days you are not here building, lifting, protecting," Lin Yan argued softly. "Ten days of lost eggs, of stalled projects. We have seven days to find another way."
"With what?" Lin Zhu asked, frustration edging his voice. "We have nine copper coins. We need thirty times that amount. In silver."
"We have the land," Lin Yan said, his gaze turning back to the barren slope. "And we have this." He walked to the woods' edge and returned with the cloth bag of system grass seed, as if he had stored it there earlier. "This is a special grass seed. Hardy, deep-rooted, nutritious for grazing animals. It can grow on that slope. If we can establish it… it becomes pasture. And pasture can support livestock worth more than eggs."
"What livestock?" Lin Dahu asked, exhausted. "A goat? A goat is not worth three silver fen."
"Not a goat," Lin Yan said, the vision forming, desperate and clear. "But the promise of future pasture could be. We need a patron. An advance."
"Who would give us an advance on grass?" Lin Zhu scoffed.
Lin Yan thought of the steward in Yellow Creek Town, of the interest in quality, in something different. He thought bigger. "Not for the grass. For what the grass means. We need to sell a dream, and we need to sell it before the corvée deadline."
It was a reckless plan. But the system had given him the seed. It was a tangible start.
That afternoon, while the family digested this new crisis, Lin Yan and Lin Xiao prepared the slope. They didn't have time to wait for compost. Using hoes, they broke the hard crust of the soil in a small, one-mu test plot. It was back-breaking work. Lin Yan mixed in the little compost they had, some ash, and even a portion of their precious cracked wheat as a nurse crop. Finally, with a broadcaster's prayerful motion, he sowed the hardy grass seed.
[Action Recognized: First Pasture Plot Seeded. Area: 1 Mu. Soil Quality: Very Poor -> Poor (and improving).]
[Project: 'Green Foundations' initiated. Growth rate accelerated by system intervention: First shoots in 5-7 days.]
Five to seven days. Just before the corvée deadline. It would be a sign, a tiny green miracle.
As they worked, Lin Yan taught Lin Xiao a song—a slow, rhythmic work chant he adapted from a remembered cowboy ballad, its words about rain and green grass and waiting for sunrise fitting their labor perfectly. The boy learned it fast, his clear voice singing against the thud of the hoe.
"Turn the earth, break the clay,
Waitin' for the sun's bright day.
Seed is sleeping, deep and brown,
'Til the green comes pushin' up from the ground…"
The singing drew the family. They listened, their worry momentarily suspended by the simple, hopeful rhythm. Lin Xiaolian even hummed along.
That night, Lin Yan didn't sleep. He stared at the system screen.
Points: 12.
Mission: 16/50 Eggs. (Two more that day.)
Threats: Corvée Levy (7 days). Imperial Tax (25 days).
He had sown the literal seed. Tomorrow, he would have to sow the figurative one. He would return to Yellow Creek Town, not with eggs, but with a proposal. He would find the steward, or someone like him, and he would try to sell the future—a future of rich pasture, of quality livestock, of a reliable supply of meat and dairy for a wealthy household. He would ask for an advance against that future to buy his brother's freedom from the corvée.
It was madness. It was the only chance he had.
As the first hint of grey light touched the sky, he heard a soft sound from the coop. Then another. The hens were beginning their day. They knew nothing of silver or levies. They only knew the safety of their house, the promise of food, and the instinct to create.
Lin Yan clung to that simplicity. Create. He had to create something from nothing, and he had seven days to do it. The first blade of grass on that barren slope would be his opening argument. He just needed it to sprout in time.