The dirt rows behind the shack were baked hard. To turn over enough soil for two hundred bags of grain in two weeks, a man would have to break his back using a basic hand hoe.
Even with my improved physical strength, doing it all by hand, minute by minute, was a foolish waste of time.
I sat by the woodpile, using my finger to sketch a layout in the loose dirt. In my past life, I had drafted designs for agricultural water pumps and automated irrigation. We had a small mountain stream flowing just twenty yards away from the plot, but the bank was low and the water just slipped past our soil into the ravine.
I needed to redirect that energy. I needed a modern harrow and an undershot water wheel.
I stood up, grabbed my notched iron axe, and went to work. I didn’t stop to rest. For five hours straight, I cut down thick timber, split logs into flat slats, and used my chisel to cut precise joints. I wasn’t just throwing wood together; I calculated the radius of the wheel so the natural flow of the stream would turn it effortlessly, scooping up buckets of water and dumping them straight into a wooden trench that led into our dry field.
From the open window of the shack, four pairs of eyes watched me.
Mo Ran sat in her wheelchair, her hands gripping the wooden wheels tightly. She watched the sweat coat my neck, her brow furrowing as she saw me lift a massive pine log onto my shoulders without a single complaint.
"He hasn’t stopped to drink water once," Chu Ning’er whispered, her chin resting on the window sill. Her face looked bright, the sickly blue color entirely gone from her cheeks. "Sister Xinyang, look at his hands. They’re covered in splinters. He’s doing all of this so the old clerk doesn’t take him away."
Ye Xinyang didn’t say a word. She stood by the doorframe, her fingers tightly holding the parchment containing her bone-cultivation notes. Last night, she had felt the first true spark of energy inside her skeleton. She knew I had given her a future—and now, she was watching me risk my own safety to protect that future. Her eyes softened, the fierce, defensive wall completely melting away into a deep, aching sense of devotion.
"He’s using his head," Gu Qinghan murmured from the shadows behind them. Her cloudy eyes were fixed on my silhouette in the yard, her sight slowly returning drop by drop. "The rhythm of his axe isn’t random. He is building a machine. He is putting pieces together like a master puzzle."
"He’s an idiot," Mo Ran muttered, but her voice didn’t carry any bitterness. It sounded thick, almost like she was fighting back tears. "He should just run away. Why stay here and break his body for four cripples?"
"Because he promised he wouldn’t leave us," Ye Xinyang said softly, her voice filled with a quiet, unshakeable certainty.
By evening, the construction was complete. I dug a narrow ditch from the stream to the fields, lined it with hollowed-out log troughs, and set the wooden wheel into the current.
Creak. Splash.
The current caught the slats. The structure began to spin smoothly, scooping up buckets of water and pouring a steady, rushing stream straight into the dry dirt rows. Within minutes, the hard, baked earth became soft, dark, and perfectly moist mud. I didn’t have to carry a single bucket.
I wiped the sweat from my brow, picked up a wooden frame attached to three sharp iron teeth I had carved from the toolshed scraps—a homemade harrow—and began pulling it through the soft mud to create perfect planting rows.
"Lu Chen." A soft voice made me stop.Ye Xinyang was standing at the edge of the muddy field. She was holding a small wooden bowl filled with clean spring water and a clean, dry cloth. Her long hair was tied back, and she looked at me with an expression so tender it made my chest feel warm.
"Stop for a minute," she said, her voice dropping all its old caution, sounding incredibly sweet and gentle. "You’ve been under the sun all day. Drink this."
I stepped out of the mud and took the bowl from her hands. "Thanks."
As I drank, she stepped closer. She didn’t flinch or look away. She took the cloth and gently wiped the sweat and dirt from my temple, her fingers brushing against my skin with extreme care.
"The wheel is amazing," she whispered, a beautiful, genuine smile appearing on her face. "None of the inner sect elders have ever built something like that. They just force the servants to crawl on their knees. You... you really are different."
"It’s just basic logic," I said, handing the bowl back.
"It’s not just logic. It’s your heart," she said softly, her eyes looking straight into mine, filled with a deep, budding romance that didn’t need any grand words. "Tonight, let me help you sort the seeds. You shouldn’t have to do everything alone."
Mo Ran rolled her wheelchair out onto the grass, stopping a few feet away. She looked at the flowing water channel, then looked at my muddy boots. Her face flushed a little bit red out of embarrassment, but she didn’t turn away this time.
"I... I can use my hands to sort the grain packets too," the assassin girl muttered, looking down at her wheels, her voice small but entirely kind. "I’m not completely useless. If you’re going to work yourself to death, the least I can do is help clean the seeds."
I looked at the two of them, then looked back at the shack where Gu Qinghan and Chu Ning’er were waving at us from the window. The cold, lonely feeling of waking up in a strange world was completely gone.
"Alright," I said, giving them a warm, reassuring nod. "Let’s go inside. I have something special to mix into the planting bags."
After few minutes...
Inside we gathered around the low stool. I pulled out the white packets of Spiritual Grain Essence and carefully mixed the glowing dust into the sacks of ordinary millet seeds.
[ding! investment verified.]
[you provided: automated irrigation system & enhanced labor to protect your household.]
[triggering 10,000x multiplier...]
[reward received: wood-spirit acceleration manual (low-grade growth technique) & divine farming plow x1.]
[note: the manual will allow you to channel a tiny bit of your physical vitality into the soil, causing the spirit-infused seeds to grow to full maturity in exactly seven days instead of three months!]
I absorbed the simple technique instantly. Combined with the water wheel, this meant the two hundred bags wouldn’t just be met—we were about to create an agricultural miracle that would shake the entire outer hall.
I looked up at my wives. Xinyang was carefully organizing the grain sacks, Mo Ran was cleaning the table, and Qinghan was sitting near the bed, her cloudy eyes tracking the movement of my hands with absolute peace.
"Tomorrow, we plant," I said quietly, looking at each of them. "And next week, we show the elder exactly who owns this mountain."