Word travels fast in a small village, and by the time we’re ready to leave, half the farmers along Tan’s uncle’s row have found some excuse to wander past and get a look at the strangers who apparently care enough to ask real questions.
“You should look at Old Feng’s south field before you go,” Tan’s uncle says, nodding toward a plot two houses down where the soil’s gone visibly pale and cracked despite the season.
“He’s about ready to give up on it entirely.
Says it won’t grow anything worth the effort anymore.”
I glance at the field in question and feel the old, familiar itch of a problem I actually know how to solve, which after a morning of conspiracy and corruption and things far outside my control, is honestly a relief.
“Mind if I take a look?”
Old Feng, when we find him, is exactly the kind of weathered, suspicious farmer I’d expect from a village that’s learned the hard way not to trust strangers offering help.
“Nothing to see,” he says, not looking up from where he’s halfheartedly turning dry, pale soil with a hoe that’s seen better decades.
“Field’s finished.
Been finished for two seasons now.”
“Mind if I check?”
“Check all you like.
Won’t change anything.”
I crouch down and run a handful of the soil through my fingers, and the problem announces itself almost immediately, the same sour, exhausted smell I remember from our own garden before we started working green matter back into it, soil that’s been asked to produce the same crop season after season with nothing given back in return.
“You’ve been planting the same thing here every year,” I say.
“No rotation.
No rest.”
“Same thing that’s always grown here.
My father planted this field the same way, and his father before him.”
“That worked when the soil had more to give.
It doesn’t anymore.
It’s exhausted, not ruined.
There’s a difference.” I stand, brushing dirt off my hands, already turning through everything I remember from a life spent learning exactly this kind of patient, practical fix. Read the latest chapters at novelping.com.
“If you plant something different here next season, something that gives back what your usual crop takes out, legumes, if you’ve got them, or even just let it sit fallow with some green cover for a season, the soil recovers.
Takes time, but it works.”
Feng looks at me like I’ve suggested something faintly ridiculous.
“You expect me to plant something I can’t sell, on land I need feeding my family, on the word of a stranger who’s never worked this soil a day in her life.”
Fair, honestly.
I’d be suspicious too.
“Try it on a small corner first,” I suggest instead.
“Not the whole field.
Just enough to see if it makes a difference by next season.
If it doesn’t work, you’ve lost nothing but a small patch you weren’t getting anything from anyway.”
He considers this for a long moment, weighing suspicion against the plain, undeniable fact that his current approach is producing exactly nothing.
“A small corner,” he repeats slowly.
“That’s all I’m asking.”
By the time we’re ready to leave, word’s spread further than I expected, and a handful of other farmers have quietly asked their own questions, tucked in alongside genuine curiosity about who exactly we are and why an apparent stranger seems to know so much about soil that’s given up.
“You’ve got a real knack for this,” Tan’s uncle observes, watching me explain the same rotation principle to a second, slightly less suspicious farmer down the row.
“Where’d you learn all that?”
“Long story.
Complicated life before this one.” I keep it deliberately vague, because the actual answer involves several centuries and a career built on eating bugs on camera, which is not information this village needs right now.
“I’ve just spent a lot of time paying attention to how things grow, and how to fix them when they stop.”
“You’re not from around here,” he says, not quite a question.
“No,” I admit.
“I’m really not.”
“You’re the empress, aren’t you.
The one banished to the Cold Palace.”
I feel my whole body go still, weighing how much this admission is going to cost, whether trust earned over an afternoon of soil advice survives the reveal of exactly who’s been giving it.
“I am,” I say finally, deciding, again, that honesty’s earned its place here.
“For what it’s worth, that title’s never meant much of anything I actually asked for.”
He’s quiet for a moment, and I brace myself for suspicion, for the wariness I’ve grown used to whenever my actual identity surfaces around people outside my small, trusted circle.
Instead, something in his weathered face softens, slow and considering.
“An empress who crouches in dirt and cares enough to fix a stranger’s field,” he says finally.
“That’s not something I expected to see in this lifetime.”
“Neither did I, honestly.”
“Why do you care, though.
Truly.” His eyes are sharp despite his years, cutting through polite deflection with the ease of a man who’s spent a lifetime reading people who want something from him.
“You’re an empress with your own troubles, plenty by the sound of it.
Why bother with our fields, our fees, any of it?”
I think about the answer for a long moment, weighing the easy version against the true one.
“Because nobody helped me either, when I first needed it,” I say eventually.
“I built what I have now out of nothing, mostly because I refused to just fade away quietly like everyone expected.
Watching people here get squeezed into giving up the same way, that doesn’t sit right with me.
Not when I know exactly what it costs a person to stop fighting.”
Something in his expression settles at that, quiet and genuine, and he nods slowly, like the answer’s satisfied something he needed to know before deciding how much to trust the rest of what we’re offering.
“Well,” he says, “if you’re serious about helping, come back next season.
See if that corner of Feng’s field actually grows something worth the trouble.”
“I intend to.”
We head back toward the palace as evening settles gold and heavy over the fields, records tucked safely away, a village’s cautious trust earned alongside them, and I feel something settle deep and certain in my chest, less like a survival instinct now and more like purpose, solid and undeniable, the kind that doesn’t let you go back to just tending your own small garden once you’ve seen how far the same careful work could actually reach.