The first frost came to Willow Creek Village not with a bang, but with a whisper.
It arrived in the dead of night, a silent thief that stole the warmth from the earth and left the world painted in brittle white. When Chen Yuan stepped out of the house the next morning, the air was sharp enough to cut, and the mud of the courtyard had frozen into hard, uneven ruts.
He wrapped his thin jacket tighter around himself, his breath puffing out in white clouds. The change in season was a ticking clock. Every farmer knew the rhythm: harvest, pay taxes, stockpile, and pray.
But for a rancher, the rhythm was different. Harvest meant hay. Stockpile meant fodder. And prayer... well, prayer was for the weak. Preparation was for the wise.
He walked quickly to the Wasteland. The grass there was coated in a layer of crystalline ice, sparkling in the weak morning sun.
**[Environmental Alert: First Frost. Temperature: -2°C.]**
**[Warning: Ryegrass growth rate decreasing. Photosynthesis efficiency dropping.]**
**[Action Required: Harvest remaining biomass for silage immediately.]**
"I know," Chen Yuan muttered, crunching through the frost. "I know."
He found Xu Tie already awake, huddled by the lean-to, feeding a small fire. The two kid goats, now a week old, were bouncing around their mother inside the shelter, seemingly oblivious to the cold. They had grown noticeably, their legs sturdy, their coats thick.
"The kids are lively," Xu Tie said, stamping his feet to keep warm. "But the mother is shivering. The wind cuts through the thatch."
"We need to bank the walls with mud," Chen Yuan said, kneeling to check Nanny 01. She was cold, but her eyes were bright. "And we need to cut the rest of the grass. Today. If it freezes solid tonight, the nutritional value will drop by half."
"I'll get the sickle."
As Xu Tie turned to go, a breathless runner appeared at the gate. It was one of the village boys, looking red-faced and urgent.
"Chen Yuan! Chen Yuan! The man from town is here! The broker! He's at your house!"
Chen Yuan frowned. "The broker? Now?"
"He says it's urgent! He brought a cart!"
Chen Yuan exchanged a look with Xu Tie. This couldn't be good. Urgent visits from merchants usually meant trouble.
"Stay here. Start cutting. I'll handle this."
---
When Chen Yuan arrived back at the house, the courtyard was crowded.
A sturdy donkey cart stood in the center, laden with empty crates. The broker—a slick, overweight man named Master Zhao who operated a stall in the Qinghe labor market—was standing in the center of the yard, talking loudly to Wang Shi.
Wang Shi looked pale, clutching her apron. Father stood by the door, his arms crossed, looking grim.
"I am telling you, good woman, it is a blessing!" Master Zhao was saying, his voice oily. "The foreman at the dock loves your cloaks. He wants to outfit the entire winter crew. Fifty cloaks! I have the deposit right here." He jingled a heavy pouch.
Fifty cloaks. In one week.
Wang Shi's eyes flickered to the pouch. It was a lot of money. An enormous amount. Enough to buy a whole winter's worth of grain.
"Chen Yuan!" Master Zhao spotted him. "There you are. Tell your sister. We need fifty cloaks. Deliver by the end of the week. I will pay twelve coins each. That is six hundred copper coins! A fortune for a farming family."
Chen Yuan walked up to the man. He didn't look at the pouch. He looked at the broker's shoes—fine cloth, protected by wooden overshoes to keep them out of the mud.
"Master Zhao," Chen Yuan said calmly. "We appreciate the business. But fifty cloaks in five days? That is impossible."
"Impossible?" Zhao laughed. "I saw how fast you turned them around last time. You have a big family. Wake them up earlier. The money is good. Why refuse?"
"Because we are not weavers," Chen Yuan said firmly. "We are farmers. And right now, it is harvest time. We need to bring in the hay before the snow sets in. If we spend the week weaving, our animals starve."
"Animals?" Zhao scoffed. "You mean that goat? Let it eat straw. Six hundred coins buys a lot of straw, boy. Don't be stupid."
Wang Shi stepped forward, her voice tight. "Yuan... the money..."
She was tempted. Of course she was. The fear of the debt was still fresh in her mind. Six hundred coins was security. It was peace of mind.
Chen Yuan looked at his sister-in-law. He saw the conflict in her eyes. He understood it. But he also knew that if they dropped everything to weave now, the Wasteland project would stall. The grass would rot in the field. The momentum they had built would die.
"Sister-in-law," Chen Yuan said, pitching his voice so the whole family could hear. "If we take this order, we work day and night. We ignore the fields. We ignore the ranch. Yes, we get six hundred coins. But come spring, we have no fertilizer. We have no healthy goats. We are back where we started—surviving on scraps."
He turned to the broker. "We can do twenty. That is our limit. We need to maintain quality. If you rush us, the weave will be loose. The dockworkers will come back complaining, and you will lose your reputation."
Master Zhao's face darkened. "Twenty? I need fifty! The dock is wet! The men are sick!"
"Then spread the order," Chen Yuan suggested. "Give twenty to us. Give thirty to the Li family down the road. They have idle hands."
"The Li family weaves garbage," Zhao spat.
"And we weave quality," Chen Yuan countered. "But we have other duties. Take the twenty, or take nothing. We are not desperate enough to sell our future for a quick coin."
He held the broker's gaze. It was a bluff, partially. They were always desperate for money. But Chen Yuan had learned something from Steward Liu: never let the buyer see your desperation.
Master Zhao glared at him, his jowls quivering. Finally, he snorted.
"Fine. Twenty. But I want them by the market day. No delays. And the price drops to ten coins if they are late."
"Agreed."
Zhao untied a smaller pouch from his belt—a deposit of one hundred coins—and threw it at Chen Yuan's feet.
"Don't be late, country boy. Or I'll send the guards to collect."
He turned and stormed out of the courtyard, climbing into his cart and snapping the reins.
The silence he left behind was heavy.
Wang Shi stared at the pouch, then at Chen Yuan. "You turned down four hundred coins, Yuan."
"I protected our schedule," Chen Yuan corrected gently. He picked up the pouch and handed it to her. "Here is the deposit. Use it to buy grain. Real grain. And... maybe some coal for the hearth."
He looked at his father. "Father, we need to move fast. I need the ox cart today. I'm going to town."
"Town? Why?" Father asked. "To buy grain?"
"No," Chen Yuan said, his eyes gleaming with a cold, determined light. "To buy a cow."
"A cow?" The family exclaimed in unison.
"We have goats," Chen Yuan said. "But goats are for clearing land. I need a cow for the heavy work. And..." He paused, thinking of the System. "I have a plan for the winter. A plan that requires a cow."
---
The trip to Qinghe Town was a calculated risk.
Chen Yuan drove the family's old ox cart, a rickety contraption pulled by their aging beast, Old Black. The animal was slow but steady, its breath coming in rhythmic huffs.
He headed not to the livestock market, but to the edge of town, where the slaughterhouses and the knackers' yards were located. This was where animals went to die, or to be sold for meat when they could no longer work.
It smelled of blood, offal, and fear.
Chen Yuan parked the cart and walked through the muddy lanes, ignoring the butchers who called out prices for fresh pork or mutton. He was looking for something specific.
*System, scan the pens.*
**[Scanning...]**
**[Target: Bos taurus (Domestic Cow). Filter: Female. Filter: Low Price.]**
**[Result: Subject located. Pen 4.]**
Chen Yuan hurried to Pen 4. It was a muddy enclosure holding a single animal.
She was a local Yellow Cow, the standard breed of the region. But she looked pathetic. Her ribs were visible, her hip bones jutted out sharply, and her coat was dull and patchy. She stood with her head down, lethargic.
"She's a bag of bones, boy," a butcher said, leaning on the fence. He held a cleaver in his hand. "Going to the slaughterhouse tomorrow. Meat will be tough, but the bones are good for soup stock."
Chen Yuan walked up to the fence. He looked at the cow's eyes. They were glassy, but there was life there.
**[System Diagnosis:]**
**[Subject: Local Yellow Cow. Age: 8 years.]**
**[Status: Severe malnutrition. Internal parasite load: High. Reproductive Status: Barren (Suspected).]**
**[Reason for Sale: Previous owner claims she is infertile and dry. No milk. No calves. Useless for breeding.]**
"Barren?" Chen Yuan asked the butcher. "Why didn't he sell her earlier?"
"Farmer went bust," the butcher shrugged. "Kept her hoping she'd catch, but she never did. Wasted feed for two years. Now he needs the coin to pay his own debts."
**[System Analysis: Subject is not barren. Ovarian cysts caused by nutritional deficiency. Treatable with high-protein forage and specific mineral supplementation (System Protocol available).]**
Treatable. She wasn't broken; she was just starving and sick.
*This is it,* Chen Yuan thought. *The cheapest cow in the entire prefecture.*
"How much?" Chen Yuan asked.
The butcher laughed. "You want to buy her? She's meat, boy. Fifty catties of meat, maybe. I'm paying the owner two taels of silver for the carcass. If you want her alive... two taels. But you're buying a problem. She'll likely die on the way home."
Two taels. 2,000 copper coins. A healthy, breeding cow cost five or six taels.
"I have one tael in silver, and some copper," Chen Yuan said, bargaining hard. "And I have a good knife." He pointed to the Xu Tie's blade on his belt. "If you slaughter her, you have to process the meat, skin her, haul the bones. That's labor. Sell her to me alive, you save the work, and I take the risk."
The butcher scratched his chin. "One tael and a half. I want the silver."
"I have one tael and four hundred coins."
"Deal." The butcher spat on his hand.
They shook on it. Chen Yuan counted out his life savings—the money from the cloak deposit, the milk profits, everything he had scraped together. It was a heart-stopping amount of money to hand over for a dying animal.
He led the cow out of the pen. She stumbled, nearly falling.
"Easy, girl," he whispered, looping a rope around her neck. "I'm not going to eat you. We're going to make you a queen."
---
The journey home was a funeral march.
The Yellow Cow was weak. Every mile, she stopped, refusing to move. Chen Yuan had to coax her, talk to her, and finally, hitch her behind the cart to help her along when she stumbled.
It took twice as long as usual. By the time they reached the Wasteland, the sun had set, and the temperature had plummeted.
Xu Tie was waiting by the gate, a lantern in his hand. He had been repairing the fence.
"You're late," Xu Tie called out. Then he saw the cow. "What... what is that?"
"Meet the newest member of the herd," Chen Yuan said, shivering. "I call her 'Hope'."
"She looks like 'Death'," Xu Tie said bluntly. "She can barely stand. Did you buy a sick animal?"
"I bought a project," Chen Yuan corrected. "Help me get her into the shelter. We need to separate her from the goats. And I need warm water. With salt."
They managed to maneuver the cow into a makeshift stall they had cleared out of the lean-to. She collapsed onto the straw, her breathing labored.
Chen Yuan worked quickly. He didn't have the fancy medicines of the modern world, but he had the System's knowledge of anatomy and nutrition.
He mixed a bucket of warm water, salt, and a handful of crushed dried beans he had brought from home. He added a spoonful of the charcoal powder they used for upset stomachs.
"Drink," he urged, holding the bucket to her nose.
The cow sniffed it. She was dehydrated. The salt tempted her. She lapped at the water, slowly at first, then greedily.
"Good," Chen Yuan murmured. "Rehydrate first."
Then he went to the pile of fresh ryegrass Xu Tie had cut that morning. It was the best feed they had—the young, tender shoots. He didn't give her hay. He gave her the premium stuff.
"Watch her," Chen Yuan told Xu Tie. "If she eats, she lives. If she refuses food by morning... we have a problem."
---
The next morning, the frost was heavier, a thick white blanket over the world.
Chen Yuan rushed to the Wasteland before dawn.
He pushed open the gate of the lean-to. The smell was pungent—animal sweat and manure. But it was warm.
He looked into the stall.
The Yellow Cow was standing.
She was eating. Chewing the ryegrass with a slow, rhythmic motion. She looked up at him, and for the first time, her eyes seemed clear. She let out a low, rumbling moo.
Xu Tie was sitting on a barrel nearby, looking amazed. "She stood up an hour ago. She's been eating non-stop. It's like she's possessed."
"Not possessed," Chen Yuan said, relief flooding through him. "Just hungry. Properly hungry for the first time in years."
**[System Update: Subject 'Hope' (Yellow Cow) status improved.]**
**[Parasite treatment protocol initiated (via charcoal/salt detox). Nutritional uptake increasing.]**
**[Projected recovery time: 2 weeks.]**
Chen Yuan patted the cow's neck. She was still skinny, still ugly. But she was alive.
"We start the treatment today," Chen Yuan said. "High protein feed. Clean water. And we clear more land. Because come spring, this cow is going to give us a calf."
"A calf?" Xu Tie raised an eyebrow. "The butcher said she was barren."
"The butcher was a fool," Chen Yuan grinned. "She was just hungry. We're going to fix that."
He walked out of the shelter and looked at the frost-covered Wasteland. The wind was biting, the work was hard, and his pockets were empty again.
But looking at the three goats and the cow, he didn't feel the cold.
He felt the heat of ambition.
"Let's get to work, Cousin. The winter is long, and we have a herd to feed."