Leaping lightly over the familiar stepping stones, I once again set foot on the soft earth of the opposite riverbank.
The morning dew dampened the edges of my shoes, bringing a cool sensation.
A few steps away, those few stalks of Riverside Jade-Needle Rice stood tall in the morning light, their jade-white ears drooping, as if in greeting to me.
Approaching them, I crouched down, my fingertips gently brushing the rice leaves, feeling the familiar, gentle surge of life.
The System task required me to submit 100 kilograms of grain, and relying solely on these few naturally growing stalks was a drop in the bucket.
I had to start planting, and quickly.
“So, how should I plant them?” I murmured, my ice-blue eyes intensely studying the plants and the surrounding soil.
First, the seeds.
The few stalks before me were the best seed source.
I needed to obtain mature grains.
Yesterday, guiding the Leyline had brought one stalk to near maturity.
Today, I could give it a slight push, enabling the remaining stalks to also reach a state where seeds could be kept.
But I couldn’t over-ripen them all at once like yesterday, lest I affect the seeds’ vitality.
I planned to use a gentler, more lasting method: guiding the Leyline Water Essence to slowly nourish them, allowing them to naturally complete the final grain filling and ripening process.
I estimated I should be able to harvest the first batch of seeds by today.
Next was the land.
This gentle slope by the riverbank had fertile soil (I had sensed the Leyline yesterday, and the water and earth energies converged here, very active).
It was close to the water source with ample sunlight, making it an ideal choice.
But the weeds and shrubs needed to be cleared.
The System task “First Trial of Cultivation” corresponded exactly to this.
Cultivation…
I thought of the “Mountain-Cleaving Yue” in my toolkit.
With a thought, the short-handled bronze yue, inscribed with patterns of abundance, appeared in my hand.
It felt lighter in my grip than it looked, but its texture was solid and substantial.
I tried swinging it, aiming at a dense cluster of weeds and low shrubs on the edge of the gentle slope, and sliced down diagonally, mimicking the steady and powerful posture of “Shu” from my memories.
The sound of wind swept past as the yue’s blade carved a clean arc.
There was no heavy impact as I had imagined.
Instead, the vegetation seemed to be “pushed aside” and “cut through” by an invisible, gentle, yet firm force.
The roots loosened, and the stems and leaves fell neatly to one side, revealing the moist, dark brown soil beneath.
More miraculously, a faint, imperceptible rhythm that promoted soil loosening and the restoration of vitality seemed to linger on the surface of the cleared land.
“This tool…
is indeed extraordinary.” I was pleasantly surprised.
It didn’t rely on brute force for destruction, but instead seemed to “guide” energy, completing the clearing and preliminary tilling.
“Plain appearance, extraordinary substance?” I inexplicably associated it with…
“Better get back to work.”
With the efficient tool in hand, I was immediately full of vigor.
I planned out a relatively flat, square area of about a dozen square meters, and began swinging the Mountain-Cleaving Yue to clear weeds and shrubs.
I used the back of the yue to roughly level larger clods of earth and piled the cleared plant debris to one side (perhaps for composting?).
At the same time, I devoted a part of my mind to continuously and gently guiding the Leyline Water Essence, slowly infusing it into the roots of those few stalks of Jade-Needle Rice awaiting harvest, promoting their steady ripening.
The sun gradually rose higher, and sweat slightly dampened my hairline.
Yet my body didn’t feel particularly tired; instead, there was a sense of fulfillment from the labor.
Contacting the land, guiding the Leyline, clearing weeds…
all these actions seemed to carry a natural rhythm, drawing me deeper into the process.
The entire morning flew by in a blur of focused labor.
When I straightened my back, wiped the fine sweat from my forehead, and looked at my handiwork, I couldn’t help but let out a satisfied smile.
Before me, a plot of land measuring about twelve or thirteen square meters had been cleared completely.
Although the soil wasn’t yet finely tilled, it had been roughly leveled, revealing its fertile, natural color.
Beside it, the few stalks of Jade-Needle Rice had heads that hung fuller and lower than they had been in the early morning.
The jade-white husks of the grains were nearly translucent in the sunlight, and the ice-blue glow at their tips had become even more pronounced, clearly indicating they had reached full ripeness.
[ Ding~ Daily Quest ‘First Trial of Cultivation’ (Clear and level no less than 10 square meters of land) completed.
Reward issued: 15 System Points, Random Common Tool or Seed ×1.
]
Before I could even check how many points had been added, a translucent, shimmering circular wheel materialized abruptly in the air before me.
The wheel was evenly divided into a dozen or so small slots, each containing a simple icon and a text label: there were seed icons for wheat, rice, and radishes; tool icons for a hoe, a sickle, and a watering can; there was even a question mark icon.
“Is there really a lottery feature?” I froze for a moment, then joked half in amusement and half in disbelief.
This System really knows how to have some fun.
The cursor at the center of the wheel began to spin at high speed, whizzing past each slot and emitting a faint humming sound.
A few seconds later, the rotation gradually slowed down.
The cursor wavered past “Premium Rice Seeds,” “Common Watering Can,” and “???”…
before finally coming to a stop on a slot featuring a simple, ancient-looking hoe.
[ Congratulations!
You have obtained: Refined Iron Hoe ×1.
]
The phantom wheel dissipated, and a heavy iron hoe, gleaming with a dull metallic luster, appeared out of thin air with a soft “thud,” landing perfectly in my outstretched hand.
The hoe’s handle was made of polished hardwood, smooth to the touch and of moderate length.
The blade was forged iron, not as shiny as modern steel, but its edge looked quite sharp and sturdy, far superior to stone or bone tools.
“An iron hoe…
This is much better than a stone knife!” I felt its weight, and it felt solid in my hand.
With the Mountain-Cleaving Yue for clearing land, this iron hoe was perfect for finer soil turning, ridging, and digging planting holes.
A tool upgrade!
I leaned the iron hoe against a nearby stump I’d just cleared, then walked over to the few stalks of ripe Jade-Needle Rice.
Carefully, I used a stone sickle (which I took out of my tool bag) to cut the full panicles of rice.
The panicles felt heavy in my hand, carrying the warmth of the sun and the unique fragrance of plants.
With a gentle rub, a few jade-white grains fell into my palm, round and lovely.
“The first batch of seeds, in my hand.” I looked at the grains in my palm, then at the newly cultivated land before me, and the new tool in my hand.
A clear cycle, from seed to field, seemed about to be started by my own hands in this quiet valley.
Though it was only a small patch of land, and though everything had just begun, the sense of anticipation from creating and nurturing something with my own hands made my ice-blue eyes sparkle with a bright light.