Chapter 10: Uninvited Guests
The coop was a sorry sight. It had been built by Grandfather in the third year of his marriage, which made it older than Wei's father. The wood was grey and weathered, soft in places where the monsoon rains had worked their way into the grain.
The roof leaked in three places—four, if you counted the corner where a tile had slipped during the last typhoon and nobody had bothered to replace it because the chickens didn't seem to mind.
The nesting boxes were cracked, the perches were worn smooth by decades of sleepy hens, and the whole structure listed slightly to the left, as if it was thinking about lying down and hadn't quite committed.
"All right," Wei said, placing his hand on the wall. "Let's see what ten credits can do."
He focused. The warmth in his chest responded—the tree's pulse, steady and golden, flowing down his arm and into the wood.
The transformation began at his palm.
Gold light bled outward like water finding cracks in stone, spreading in slow, deliberate veins. Where it touched, the grey wood darkened, then lightened, then settled into a rich, warm brown that glowed faintly in the morning light.
The grain tightened, the fibers knitting together like healing skin, growing denser, harder, stronger. The tilt corrected itself with a groan that sounded almost grateful.
The roof went next. The missing tile reappeared—not replaced, but regrown, the terracotta emerging from the surrounding tiles like a new leaf unfurling. The three leaks sealed themselves, the thatch thickening and darkening to a uniform gold-brown that smelled of dry summer grass.
The nesting boxes expanded, their interiors smoothing, filling with soft golden straw that hadn't been there a moment ago. The perches reshaped themselves, growing slightly thicker, their surfaces texturing for better grip.
Then the chickens began to change.
It started with the oldest hen—a speckled grey bird with a missing toe on her left foot, the result of an argument with a fox six winters ago.
She was the matriarch of the flock, the one who decided when it was time to roost and when it was time to complain about the quality of the feed. She had outlived three roosters and produced more chicks than anyone had bothered to count.
She fluffed her feathers and let out a long, resonant cluck that silenced the entire yard.
Her comb, which had been pale and slightly droopy, flushed a deep, vibrant red and rose to twice its previous height. Her missing toe—the one the fox had taken—tingled, and a new claw pushed through the scar tissue, small but perfect. Her feathers, which had been a dull speckled grey, began to shimmer. The grey receded, replaced by bronze that caught the morning light and threw it back in sparks. Her eyes, which had been the ordinary orange of a healthy hen, brightened to a sharp, intelligent gold.
She hopped up onto the new nesting box—she had never hopped that high before—and settled in with the unmistakable air of a queen taking her throne.
A panel appeared.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ BRONZEFLAME HEN (Tier 1, Uncommon) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Evolution complete. │
│ │
│ Egg production: +100% (1 egg/day → 2) │
│ Egg type: Sunfleck Egg │
│ – Minor health regeneration (2 hours) │
│ – Shell contains trace gold compounds │
│ (edible, harmless) │
│ Meat: Bronzeflame Fowl │
│ – Temporary minor strength boost │
│ – Mildly spiced flavor when cooked │
│ │
│ Special: Broodmother's Warmth │
│ – Chicks raised by this hen grow 20% │
│ faster and have higher survival rate │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Hao appeared in the kitchen doorway, a half-eaten scallion pancake in one hand. He had been forbidden from eating standing up approximately ten thousand times and had never once listened. Xiao Hei squeezed past his legs and trotted toward the coop, tail wagging.
"What the hell," Hao said, his mouth full. "Did that chicken just get more attractive?"
"She evolved," Wei said. "She's a Bronzeflame Hen now."
"A Bronzeflame Hen." Hao swallowed his pancake. "That sounds like something from one of those novels you used to read in the city. The ones with the glowing swords and the brooding heroes."
"You read those too."
"I read them for the fight scenes. You read them for the romance subplots."
"There were no romance subplots."
"There was definitely a romance subplot. The hero and the ice princess. You cried at the end."
"I didn't cry. I had allergies."
"In winter. Indoors. Sure." Hao walked over and crouched beside the coop, studying the Bronzeflame Hen with the critical eye of a man who had been chased by enough poultry to develop professional respect. "She's got a new toe. That's weird, right? The toe thing?"
"She regenerated it."
"So if I chop off my finger—"
"You're not chopping off your finger."
"I wasn't going to. I was just asking. Hypothetically." He reached toward the hen, then thought better of it. "Does she still recognize us? Or is she going to start giving us quests?"
The hen clucked and pecked at a golden straw, utterly indifferent to the philosophical questions being debated in front of her.
"She's still a chicken," Wei said. "Just a better chicken."
Their mother came out of the kitchen, wiping flour from her hands onto her apron. She stopped when she saw the transformed coop, the bronze-feathered hen, the golden straw glowing softly in the nesting boxes. Her eyes moved from the coop to Wei, then back to the coop, then to the hen.
"That's the same building," she said. It wasn't a question.
"The same building," Wei confirmed.
"The same building that was falling over last week. The same building your grandfather said was 'held together by chicken shit and stubbornness.'"
"His exact words, yes."
"And now it looks like it belongs in a palace."
"The palace of chickens."
She gave him a look—the look that said she was deciding whether to be impressed or exasperated and hadn't made up her mind yet. "The eggs," she said finally. "The ones with the gold shells. What do they do?"
"They heal minor injuries. Cuts, bruises. Eat one and you'll feel better for a couple of hours."
She absorbed this information in silence. Then she walked over to the nesting box, reached under the Bronzeflame Hen—who protested with a single, dignified cluck—and retrieved a warm egg with a shell that glittered faintly in the light.
"This is going to make very good breakfast," she admitted. She looked at Wei, and her expression softened. "You've been busy."
"Someone has to be."
"Don't get smart." But there was no edge in her voice. She tucked the egg into her apron pocket and pointed a flour-dusted finger at his collar. "You've still got blood on your shirt. From last night. Wash it before it sets."
"I will."
"Soon."
"Soon."
She shook her head and walked back to the kitchen, muttering something that sounded like "stubborn boy" and "just like his father" and "at least the chickens are clean."
---
The rabbit den was next. Ten more credits.
The warren was already larger than it looked—rabbits had been digging under the farm for generations, carving tunnels that spread beneath the orchard like a second root system. Li had always known the layout better than anyone. She said the rabbits told her where the new passages were.
Wei placed his hand on the ground above the main warren entrance and let the warmth flow.
This transformation was quieter than the others. No gold light. No humming. Just a slow, deep settling in the earth, like the ground was taking a long breath and letting it out. The entrance hole widened and smoothed, its edges lining themselves with a soft grey-green moss that glowed faintly in the shadows. The tunnels below—Wei could feel them through the tree's roots—deepened and branched, new passages spiraling downward in elegant curves that seemed almost architectural.
The moss spread through the warren like a carpet unrolling, covering the tunnel floors and walls with a living fabric that released a faint, clean scent—like petrichor, the smell of rain on dry earth. Nesting chambers expanded, filling with dried grasses and soft fur that the rabbits had been saving for months.
Li appeared at his elbow. She hadn't made a sound. She was good at that.
"You're doing the rabbits," she said.
"Yeah."
"Good. They were worried."
Wei looked at her. "The rabbits were worried?"
"They didn't like the old tunnels. Said they were too shallow. Too cold. Especially since the shimmer." She crouched down and peered into the entrance hole. "Mouse told me."
Mouse was the smallest of the new litter—a tiny grey thing with enormous ears that Li had been hand-feeding since its mother stopped producing enough milk. It was currently visible at the entrance of the warren, its nose twitching, its eyes reflecting the moss-glow.
"Mouse talks to you," Wei said.
"All the rabbits talk to me. Mouse just talks the most. She's very opinionated for something that weighs less than a turnip."
The moss pulsed once, brightening, and a panel appeared.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ WHISPERMOSS WARREN (Tier 1, Uncommon) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Evolution complete. │
│ │
│ Rabbits: Glimmerfur Coney │
│ – Breeding rate: +30% │
│ – Fur: Glimmerfelt │
│ – Minor warmth bonus when worn │
│ – Retains heat even when wet │
│ – Naturally repels fleas and mites │
│ – Meat: Glimmerfur Hare │
│ – Lean, slightly sweet flesh │
│ – Provides minor agility boost (1 hr) │
│ │
│ Special: Warrensense │
│ – Rabbits can detect surface threats │
│ from underground and will alert │
│ bonded handler │
│ – Handler: Li │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
"Glimmerfur Coney," Li read over his shoulder. She couldn't see the panel—none of the family could—but she'd learned to read the expressions on Wei's face when system information appeared. "That's a good name. Better than 'the grey one' and 'the brown one.'"
"Mouse is still called Mouse, though."
"Mouse would be insulted if we changed it. She picked that name herself."
"The rabbit picked her own name."
"She bit me when I tried to call her something else. Twice. She's very clear about boundaries."
Wei looked at Mouse, who had emerged fully from the warren and was now sitting on Li's shoe, grooming her enormous ears with the air of a creature who had important things to do and was merely tolerating the humans' presence.
"Boundaries," Wei said. "Right."
Li scooped up Mouse and held her against her chest. The rabbit settled immediately, her nose twitching against Li's collar. "The others will be happy. The new tunnels, the moss. It's warmer now. They'll have more babies."
"More rabbits for the rabbit army."
Li almost smiled. "Don't let Hao hear you say that. He's still convinced the goose is planning a coup."
"The goose is planning a coup."
"The goose has been planning a coup since the day it hatched. That's not news." She stroked Mouse's ears. "Thank you. For doing this. The rabbits matter."
"I know they do."
She nodded once and walked toward the duck pond, Mouse still tucked against her chest, the rabbit's ears swiveling like tiny radar dishes.
---
The sheep yard was next. Ten credits.
The fence posts had been replaced three times in Wei's lifetime—once after the typhoon of '08, once after the Lins' cattle broke through and started a brief but memorable war between the species, and once just last spring when the wood had finally given up. The current posts were sturdy but plain, rough-hewn from the pine stand at the property's edge.
Wei touched the nearest post and let the warmth flow.
The wood darkened immediately—not to the warm brown of the chicken coop, but to a deep iron-grey with silver veins running through the grain like frozen lightning. The posts grew taller, their tops branching into simple, elegant curves that interlaced with the next post in the line. Where the branches crossed, small white flowers bloomed—tiny, star-shaped blossoms that released a scent like clean wool and mountain air.
The sheep, who had been scattered across the yard in their usual loose, woolly chaos, lifted their heads as one. They were not clever animals. They were not brave animals. But they understood, in the way that prey animals always understand, when something fundamental had shifted.
The oldest ewe—a matron with a crooked ear from an encounter with a dog twenty years ago, the same dog who had fathered Hei's father, which made her practically family—walked slowly to the new fence. She was ancient by sheep standards. She had produced more lambs than any ewe in the farm's history, and she had the weary, knowing expression of a grandmother who had seen everything and was no longer impressed by any of it.
She rubbed her shoulder against the fence. The flowers brushed her wool.
And her wool began to change.
The outer layer—the coarse, weather-beaten fleece that had protected her through twenty winters—shed itself in a single, clean fall, pooling at her feet like a discarded coat. What remained was a second layer that had been growing beneath: soft, dense, and shimmering with a pale silver-gold light that seemed to move across the fibers like light on water.
The other sheep bleated in confusion, then excitement, then settled into the comfortable acceptance that was their default state.
A panel appeared.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ STARSHEAR EWEL (Tier 1, Uncommon) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Evolution complete. │
│ │
│ Wool: Starshear Fleece │
│ – Minor health regeneration when worn │
│ – Regulates body temperature (±5°C) │
│ – Dyes beautifully in any color │
│ – Does not shrink when washed │
│ – Fire-resistant (smolders, won't burn) │
│ Meat: Starshear Lamb │
│ – Provides temporary stamina boost │
│ – Mild, sweet flavor │
│ │
│ Special: Matriarch's Blessing │
│ – Lambs born within this yard have │
│ +15% chance of inheriting Starshear │
│ traits │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
His grandmother appeared at the fence, her small frame barely visible behind the ewe's bulk. She didn't speak. She rarely did. But she reached out and touched the ewe's new wool with her gnarled fingers, her expression unreadable.
"Soft," she said. It was the first word she'd spoken directly to Wei in days.
"Health regeneration," Wei said. "If you wear it, it helps your body heal. And it won't burn."
She nodded slowly. Her fingers worked through the wool, testing its texture, its weight, its warmth. She had been spinning thread and weaving cloth since she was a girl. She knew fiber the way Grandfather knew trees—intimately, instinctively, without needing to think about it.
"I'll shear her tomorrow," she said. "Make a scarf for your mother. Her neck has been bothering her."
She turned and walked back toward the house, already planning the project, her hands moving in small, unconscious gestures that Wei recognized as the motions of spinning—muscle memory from a lifetime of working wool.
---
The cow shed was the last. Fifteen credits.
It was the newest building on the farm, relatively speaking—Uncle Jianguo had helped his father build it when Wei was ten, replacing the old shed that had been too small and too drafty and too close to the pig pen for the cows' liking. It was solid but plain: concrete floor, wooden walls, a corrugated metal roof that pinged in the rain.
Wei placed his palm against the wall and pushed the warmth through.
The transformation was immediate and dramatic.
The roof rose half a meter with a groan of stretching metal, the corrugated panels smoothing into something that looked more like dark slate. The walls thickened, the wood grain deepening, the knots turning into intricate whorls that almost looked like writing. The concrete floor warmed underfoot, then cracked in a neat grid pattern, soft green moss filling the cracks and releasing a faint, sweet fragrance like crushed mint.
The stalls expanded, each one widening until the cows had room to turn, to lie down, to stretch their legs. Fresh straw appeared in the feeding troughs—golden and fragrant, the kind of straw that cows dreamed about. The water in the drinking troughs cleared to crystal, then took on a faint golden shimmer.
The cows lowed—a deep, resonant sound that vibrated through the floor.
And then Wei saw her.
The heifer with the gold mark on her forehead. The one his father had been milking every morning. She was standing in the largest stall, her head raised, her nostrils flaring.
She was changing.
Her shoulders broadened, the muscles shifting under her hide with a sound like stones grinding together. Coarse brown fur bristled along her spine, thick and dense, rising in a ridge from her neck to her tail. Her horns—which had been small, blunt nubs—lengthened and curved, taking on a polished ivory sheen with faint golden rings near the base. Her hooves darkened to obsidian, clicking against the moss-covered floor.
But her eyes were the same. Warm. Brown. Intelligent. She looked at Wei, and there was recognition in that gaze—not the blank acceptance of an ordinary cow, but something deeper. Something that understood what was happening and had chosen it.
A panel appeared.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ MEADOWHEART COW (Tier 2, Uncommon) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Evolution complete. │
│ │
│ Milk: Meadowheart Cream │
│ – Major health regeneration (6 hours) │
│ – Production: +150% (2L → 5L per day) │
│ – Can be churned into Meadowheart Butter │
│ (extends regeneration to 8 hours, │
│ adds minor strength boost) │
│ – Can be fermented into Goldvein Cheese │
│ (mana restoration over time, │
│ luxury food item) │
│ Meat: Meadowheart Beef │
│ – Permanent +0.05 Strength on first │
│ consumption (once per person) │
│ – Exceptionally tender, marbled flesh │
│ │
│ Special: Herdmother's Calm │
│ – All bovines within 50m are immune │
│ to fear effects │
│ – Calves gain +20% growth rate │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Wei's father came out of the tool shed, wiping grease from his hands with a rag that had probably been white at some point in the previous century. He stopped when he saw the shed. Then he saw the heifer.
"What the hell happened to her?" His voice was caught somewhere between awe and the particular anxiety of a man who had spent decades managing livestock and was now confronted with something that did not fit into any of his mental categories.
"She evolved," Wei said. "She's a Meadowheart Cow now. Her milk heals major wounds. She produces more than twice as much. And she makes the other cows braver."
His father stared at the heifer. The heifer stared back, her golden-ringed horns catching the light. "Can we still milk her?"
"She'll probably let you."
"Probably?"
"She's still the same cow. Just... more."
His father approached slowly, his hand extended. The heifer watched him come, her brown eyes calm. When his palm touched her forehead—right on the gold mark—she lowed softly and leaned into him, nearly knocking him over.
"Same girl," his father said, steadying himself. His voice was quieter now, the anxiety fading into something like wonder. "Same stubborn, contrary girl. You used to kick over the milk bucket every morning for a year. Remember that? Your mother said you were doing it on purpose."
The heifer lowed again. It was not a denial.
"Wei." His father didn't look at him. He was still stroking the heifer's forehead. "This is real, isn't it? All of it. The tree. The upgrades. The things you can do."
"Yes."
"And there's more coming. More of those things from outside. More goblins. More... whatever that thing was you killed last night."
"Probably."
His father nodded slowly. Then he turned, and his face was set in the way Wei had seen a hundred times—the way it looked before a difficult planting, before a harvest that might fail, before a storm that might take the roof. The face of a man who had decided something.
"Then we'll be ready," he said. "Whatever you need to do—whatever the farm needs—you do it. I won't understand half of it. Your mother won't understand any of it. But we'll be here." He paused. "Just don't scare your grandmother. She worries."
"Grandmother doesn't worry."
"She worries more than all of us combined. She just does it silently." He gave the heifer one last pat and walked back toward the tool shed. "And wash that blood off your collar before your mother sees it."
"She already saw it."
"Then wash it before she sees it again."
Wei tallied the costs in his mind. Beehive, chicken coop, rabbit den, sheep yard, cow shed. Fifty-five credits total. His balance had dropped from two hundred and twelve to one hundred and fifty-seven.
The farm felt different now. Fuller. Richer. The animals moved with more confidence. The buildings hummed with a low, steady energy that resonated with the tree's pulse. Every structure on the property had been touched by the blessing, and the blessing was spreading, deepening, taking root.
Not bad for a morning's work.
And there was still the orchard.
***
While Wei worked on the farm, the world outside continued to burn.
The Lin family had survived the apocalypse. Not gracefully. Not nobly. But they had survived.
When the shimmer came, Old Lin had been in the fields, checking his vegetable patch, pulling weeds, muttering to himself about the Zhangs and their good fortune, their wall that had appeared from nowhere.
He saw the green light spreading across the sky. He felt the pressure in his chest, like someone was sitting on his ribs. And he ran.
He didn't run toward his house. He ran away from it.
His wife was in the kitchen, preparing lunch. His son was in the yard, fixing a fence. His daughter-in-law was hanging laundry on the line. His grandchildren were playing in the dirt, chasing a grasshopper.
He didn't think about them. He just ran.
The shimmer caught him at the edge of the property. He fell to his knees. His body convulsed. His bones cracked. His skin turned grey.
Then it stopped.
He was still human. Barely.
He crawled back to the house.
His wife was dead. Her body lay on the kitchen floor, her eyes open, her mouth frozen in a scream. The stove had tipped over. Oil had spilled across the tiles.
His daughter-in-law was dead. The laundry line had snapped. The clothes lay in the mud.
His grandchildren were dead. They lay in the dirt, their small bodies still, their faces peaceful, as if they were sleeping.
His son was alive. But changed. His son's eyes were white. His teeth were sharp. His mind was gone. He stood in the yard, swaying, staring at nothing.
Old Lin took the kitchen knife and did what had to be done.
He never talked about it. Not to anyone.
The days that followed were hunger and fear. The goblins came. The jiangshi came. The Lin property was small—a few mu of vegetables, a chicken coop with six birds, a pig pen with one pig that had died in the shimmer.
No wall. No protection. No miracle.
They ate the chickens first. Then the pig. Then the vegetables. Then the rats that crawled through the walls at night.
By the sixth day, they were starving.
Old Lin sat in the dark of his kitchen, listening to his son cry in the next room. His son had stopped speaking after the shimmer. He just cried. All day. All night.
"We need to do something," his son said one evening. His voice was raw from crying.
"What do you want me to do?" Old Lin asked. He sounded tired. He was tired.
"There has to be food somewhere. The Zhangs—"
"What about the Zhangs?"
"They have a wall. They have food. They have to have food." His son's voice cracked. "While we're out here eating rats and scraping bark off trees, they're sitting behind their wall with full bellies. Every night I see the smoke from their chimney. Every night I smell their cooking. It makes my blood boil, Father. It really does."
Old Lin was quiet for a long time. Then he said, "They have a wall because they had the money. They have food because they hoarded it. That doesn't make them better than us."
"So what? We just starve? We just watch our children die while they eat?"
"No." Old Lin stood up. His legs were weak, but they held. "We go to them. We tell them we need shelter. They have plenty of room."
"You think they'll just let us in?"
"They have to. We're neighbors. We've lived next to them for decades. They can't turn us away."
His son laughed bitterly. "After everything? After the fire? After the dog?"
Old Lin's face hardened. "That was years ago. And there's no proof it was us. They can't hold that against us forever."
"They will."
"Then we make them." Old Lin picked up his coat. "We have children. They have space. They owe us."
The Lins were not the only ones.
The Wang family from the next farm had lost everything. Their house had burned during the goblin attack. They had been living in their root cellar for a week, eating pickled vegetables and drinking rainwater. The children were thin. The mother had stopped speaking entirely.
The Liu family had survived by hiding in their attic. They had three children. The youngest was sick—a fever that wouldn't break, a cough that rattled in his chest like stones in a can.
The Chen family had locked themselves in their basement. They had heard the scratching above them. They had heard the screaming. They had stayed quiet. They had run out of food two days ago.
Four families. Twelve adults. Seven children.
Old Lin gathered them in the ruins of the town hall. The building was half-collapsed, the roof open to the sky. Rats scurried in the corners. The wind blew through the broken windows, carrying the smell of smoke.
"I've been thinking," Old Lin said. He stood in the center of the room, his hands in his pockets. He looked smaller than he used to, but his voice was hard. "The Zhangs have a wall. They have food. They have space."
Wang looked up from where he was sitting on a pile of rubble. His face was hollow, his eyes dark. "They're not going to share. Not after everything."
"They don't have a choice." Old Lin's voice was flat. "We're neighbors. We've lived here all our lives. They can't turn us away."
"They can do whatever they want. It's their wall."
"Then we make them see reason." Old Lin looked at each of them. "We go to the gate. We tell them we need shelter. We don't ask. We tell."
Liu shifted his sick son in his arms. "And if they say no?"
"Then we don't leave." Old Lin's eyes were hard. "They can't throw us all out. There are too many of us. And we have children."
Chen shook his head. He was a quiet man, had always been quiet. "This isn't right."
"Right doesn't matter anymore." Old Lin's voice rose. "Survival matters. Our children matter. The Zhangs have been hoarding food behind that wall for years. It's time they shared."
***
The Zhang family knew nothing of this.
Wei was exploring the vast orchard.
Nearly two and a half li from east to west, and two li deep from north to south, it covered almost half the farm's total land—an expanse of trees so wide that from the center, you could barely see the wall in any direction. Grandfather had planted the first saplings sixty years ago, carrying the cuttings from his father's land after it was taken, and the orchard had grown with each generation.
Now there were thousands upon thousands of trees, their branches heavy with fruit that glowed faintly in the afternoon light. Peaches. Pears. Plums. Persimmons. Apples. Pomegranates. Figs. Apricots. Loquats. Jujubes. Mulberries. More varieties than Wei could name, spreading in all directions like a living library of everything his family had ever grown.
"At least these trees didn't get corrupted, time to harvest the fruits."
There was no way he could harvest even a fraction of it in one afternoon. But he could make a start.
He took a deep breath and walked to the first tree—an old peach tree, its branches bent low with fruit. The peaches were warm from the sun, their skins blushing pink and gold. He reached up and twisted one gently until the stem snapped. The fruit came away easily, and he placed it in his inventory.
A panel flickered.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PEACH (Tier 1, Common Medium) │
│ Harvest credit: 0.5 │
│ Harvest experience: +1 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Half a credit. Most of the orchard's fruit was like this—common, nourishing, but worth almost nothing in system terms. The tree's blessing had touched every branch, but it hadn't transformed everything into gold. Not yet. Most of the fruit was simply better than it had been before—sweeter, firmer, more vibrant—but still fundamentally ordinary.
Wei didn't mind. He hadn't come here for credits. He had come because the fruit needed picking, and because the work itself was calming. The rhythm of it. The smell of ripe peaches and warm leaves. The way the sun filtered through the branches and dappled the ground with light.
He worked tree by tree, row by row. The common peaches came away easily, each one a small pulse of warmth in his palm. He picked dozens, then scores, his arms moving in a steady rhythm. The notifications piled up in the corner of his vision—0.5 credits, 1 experience, over and over—but he stopped reading them after the first twenty. The numbers would add up. They always did.
After an hour, he moved to the pear trees. The pears were firmer, their skins blushing gold. He climbed into the branches to reach the highest fruit, balancing carefully, the scythe strapped to his back. Most were common like the peaches—0.5 credits each—but halfway through the third row, he found something different.
A cluster of three pears glowing with a soft amber light. Not the pale gold of the common fruit—a deeper, richer glow, like honey held up to the sun. He picked one and held it in his palm. The skin was warm, almost hot. The fruit pulsed faintly.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ AMBER PEAR (Tier 2, Uncommon Low) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Effect: Temporary stamina boost │
│ (+0.15 for 2 hours) │
│ Harvest credit: 8 │
│ Harvest experience: +4 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Eight credits. Not a fortune, but better than half a credit. He picked the other two and added them to his inventory, then continued through the pear trees. The Amber Pears were rare—he found only those three among hundreds of common fruits—but each one felt like a small victory.
The persimmon trees came next, their fruit hanging like orange lanterns. Most were common, soft and heavy, yielding half a credit each. But near the top of the oldest tree—a gnarled giant that had been bearing fruit since before Wei's father was born—he saw them: three fruits glowing with a brilliant gold light, larger than the others, their skins shimmering like molten metal.
He climbed carefully, testing each branch before putting his weight on it. The tree groaned under him. He reached up, his fingers brushing the first fruit's warm skin, and plucked it.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ SUNSTONE PERSIMMON (Tier 1, Common High) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Effect: Temporary strength boost │
│ (+0.2 for 2 hours) │
│ Harvest credit: 6 │
│ Harvest experience: +3 │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Six credits each. He picked all three and tucked them carefully into his inventory. They glowed even in the dim light of the tree's canopy, small suns caught in his hands.
The afternoon wore on. Sweat soaked through his shirt. His arms ached. His fingers grew sticky with juice. He moved through the plum trees—common fruits, half a credit each—and the fig trees—the same—and the pomegranate bushes near the southern wall. The orchard was so large that he barely covered a tenth of it, zigzagging through the rows, picking whatever was closest and ripest. The common fruits blurred together after a while, an endless procession of peaches and pears and plums and persimmons, each one a tiny addition to his credit total.
Then, in a grove of ancient apple trees near the southern wall, he found something extraordinary.
The tree was one of the oldest in the orchard—planted by Grandfather's own hands, its bark dark and gnarled, its branches twisted with age. Moss grew on the north side of the trunk. Most of its apples were small and green, not yet ripe.
But at the very top, nearly lost in the leaves, hung a single fruit.
It was an apple. But unlike any apple he had ever seen.
Its skin was deep crimson, almost black, shot through with veins of gold that pulsed faintly, like a heartbeat. It glowed from within, casting a soft red light on the leaves around it. The air around it seemed warmer, thicker, as if the fruit was breathing.
Wei climbed slowly, carefully. The branches creaked under his weight. He tested each one before moving higher. The tree was old, but it held.
He reached up, his fingers trembling, and touched the fruit.
The moment his skin made contact, warmth flooded through him—not the familiar warmth of the tree's blessing, but something deeper. Something permanent. It spread from his fingertips to his palm, up his arm, into his chest. His heart beat faster. His breath caught.
He plucked the apple and held it in both hands. It was heavy—heavier than it should have been. The gold veins pulsed against his palms.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ HEARTSTONE APPLE (Tier 2, Uncommon High) │
├─────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Effect: Permanently increases │
│ Strength by 0.1 │
│ Harvest credit: 40 │
│ Harvest experience: +15 │
│ │
│ ⚠ This fruit's blessing is permanent. │
│ Consume with care. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Forty credits. Permanent strength. He held it gently, almost reverently, and added it to his inventory. His heart was still pounding. The warmth lingered in his chest like a promise.
He climbed down slowly and sat at the base of the old tree, catching his breath. The sun was beginning its descent toward the western mountains, the shadows stretching long across the orchard floor. He had been picking for hours. His inventory was full of fruit—hundreds of common peaches, pears, plums, and persimmons, plus a handful of the rarer varieties. It was only a tiny fraction of what the orchard held. Most of the trees were still heavy with fruit, their branches untouched. But it was a start.
He pulled up the harvest summary.
```
┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ HARVEST SUMMARY │
├──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Common Peach ×68 — 34 credits, 17 XP │
│ Common Pear ×54 — 27 credits, 14 XP │
│ Common Persimmon ×42 — 21 credits, 11 XP │
│ Common Plum ×35 — 17.5 credits, 9 XP │
│ Common Fig ×28 — 14 credits, 7 XP │
│ Amber Pear ×3 — 24 credits, 12 XP │
│ Sunstone Persimmon ×3 — 18 credits, 9 XP │
│ Heartstone Apple ×1 — 40 credits, 15 XP │
│ │
│ Total credits earned: 195.5 │
│ Total experience gained: 94 │
│ │
│ Credits before: 157 │
│ Credits after: 352 (rounded) │
│ Experience: 162 → 256/2000 toward Tier 3 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Three hundred and fifty-two credits. He stared at the number, hardly believing it. A single afternoon in the orchard—picking only a fraction of what the trees held—had more than doubled his savings. The wall upgrade was five hundred credits. He was more than halfway there.
And the experience—two hundred and sixty-three points, pushing him past four hundred toward Tier 3. He could feel the difference in his body, the slow accumulation of strength and speed and resilience. It wasn't just the numbers. It was the ache in his muscles that faded faster than it should. The way his eyes tracked the movement of leaves in the wind. The way he could hear the bees humming in their new hive, clear across the property.
He stood up slowly, brushing the dirt from his knees. The orchard stretched around him, vast and full and waiting. Tomorrow, he would come back. The day after that, too. There was enough fruit here to keep him busy for weeks—and enough credits, if he was patient, to buy everything the farm needed.
But for now, the sun was setting. And there were survivors at the gate.
***
The survivors arrived at dusk.
Wei was on the wall, watching the sun set. The sky was orange and red, streaked with smoke from the distant town. The fields below were empty, the grass brown and dry.
Then he saw them.
Figures. Moving slowly, stumbling, coming up the road from the east. There were many of them—thirty, maybe more. Adults, children. They carried nothing. No bags, no supplies. Just the clothes on their backs.
Wei's father climbed up beside him, his face grim.
"Here they come," his father said.
Wei didn't answer. He was already counting. Four families. The Lins, the Wangs, the Lius, the Chens. Neighbors. Some of them had lived on the next farm over for decades.
Some of them had stood by while the Lins burned their rice field. Some of them had said nothing when Hei came home with a broken leg.
And now they were here, at the gate, asking for help.
The survivors reached the wall. Old Lin stood at the front, his face grey, his eyes sunken. He looked older than Wei remembered—much older.
His hands were shaking, but his jaw was set. Beside him, his son Lin Tao stood with his arms crossed, glaring at the wall.
His face was twisted with resentment. Behind them, the other families huddled together—Wang with his hollow eyes, Liu clutching his sick child, Chen staring at the ground.
Old Lin spoke first. His voice was hoarse, but there was no pleading in it. "Open the gate."
Wei's father stood on the wall above them. He didn't move. "What do you want?"
"What do you think?" Lin Tao spat, his voice carrying across the evening air. "Food. Shelter.
You're sitting in there with your full bellies and your high walls while we're out here starving. Open the fucking gate you bastard."
"Watch your mouth," Wei's father said quietly. "There are children present."
"The children are starving too!" Lin Tao old Lins son took a step forward, his fists clenched. "You think I care about polite language? My mother is dead. My brother is dead. My niece and nephew are dead. We've been eating rats. Rats! And you're standing there telling me to watch my mouth?"
Old Lin put a hand on his son's arm. Lin Tao shook it off violently.
"No!" Lin Tao shouted. "I'm not going to stand here and beg. They owe us. They've always had more than us—better land, better harvests, that wall that appeared out of nowhere while our house was falling apart. Where did you get the money for that wall, huh? Where did you get the food you're hoarding in there?"
"We built the wall with our own hands and our own savings," Wei's father said. "After you burned our rice field."
Old Lin's face didn't change. "You have no proof it was us."
"I have the ashes in my soil and the memory of my dog limping home with a broken leg. That's proof enough."
"That was years ago!" Lin Tao screamed. "And we didn't—"
"Enough." Old Lin's voice cut through his son's rage. It was quiet, but it carried. He looked up at Wei's father. "Whatever happened between us, whatever you believe we did—those children are hungry. The Liu boy has a fever. He hasn't eaten in two days. Are you going to let a child die to settle an old grudge?"
Wei's father was silent for a long moment. The other survivors had started to murmur—Wang saying something about how they had nothing, Liu clutching his son tighter, a woman Wei didn't recognize starting to cry. The Liu boy coughed, a wet rattling sound that cut through the evening air like a blade.
"We can't take you in," Wei's father said finally. "We don't have the space. We don't have the food. But we can give you something for the children. And a place to sleep for one night."
"One night?" Lin Tao's voice rose again. "One fucking night? What good is one night?"
"It's one night more than you had this morning."
"Go to hell! You selfish—"
"Tao." Old Lin gripped his son's arm again, and this time he didn't let go. His grip was iron, his knuckles white. "Take what they're offering. For the children."
Lin Tao's jaw worked. He looked like he wanted to spit, wanted to launch himself at the wall and tear it down with his bare hands. But he didn't. "Fine," he said finally, his voice dripping with contempt. "One night. But this isn't over."
"It is for tonight." Wei's father nodded to Wei. "Open the gate."
The gate swung open. The survivors filed in—slowly, warily, some of them looking around at the walls and the vines and the distant glow of the Tree of Life with expressions that mixed awe and resentment.
The Wang children stared openly at the blessed vines. The Liu mother clutched her sick boy closer, as if afraid the magic would reach out and touch him.
Wei's father led them toward the barn—the old one, at the far end of the property, as far from the warehouse and the vegetable garden as possible. It was a deliberate choice. They had discussed it that morning, before any sign of survivors had appeared.
If people came seeking shelter, they would be kept where they couldn't see the abundance of the farm. Where they couldn't count the sacks of rice in the warehouse or the rows of thriving vegetables in the new garden. Where they couldn't get ideas.
The barn was clean but sparse. Straw on the floor. A few old blankets that Wei's mother had brought out—the worn ones, the ones with holes, not the good wool blankets from the house. Nothing that would suggest prosperity.
"Stay here," Wei's father said. "We'll bring food."
"What kind of food?" Lin Tao demanded.
"Rice porridge. Plain. Some pickled vegetables."
"That's it? No meat? No eggs?."
"The chickens have all mutated, most of them died when things changed" Wei's mother said, appearing beside her husband with a basket of plain congee and a pot of weak tea.
Her voice was calm, but her eyes were hard. "Well if you want contaminated meat, you can have as much as you like, if you survive the first mouthful that is."
"Bullshit," Lin Tao muttered, but he took the bowl of congee when it was offered.
The children ate first. The Liu boy, feverish and weak, could barely hold the spoon, but his mother fed him slowly, patiently, her own bowl untouched beside her.
The Wang girl—the same little girl who had been whining since they arrived—looked at the plain congee with disgust. "This is just rice water," she complained, her voice shrill. "I want meat. I want eggs. Don't you have eggs—. Why won't you give us eggs?"
"The eggs are for the sick, and we don't know they are good or spoiled" Wei's mother said. "Your brother is sick. The Liu boy is sick. They need the eggs more than you do."
"It's not fair! You're hoarding everything! My mother said you're all greedy pigs who don't care if we die!"
A sudden, sharp silence fell over the barn. The Wang mother grabbed her daughter's arm and yanked her back, her face with a fake smile. "She doesn't know what she's saying—"
"She's repeating what she's heard." She looked at the Wang mother, then at the other adults, her gaze steady and unblinking. "We're giving you what we can spare. If that's not enough, the gate is right there."
No one moved. The Wang girl burst into tears and buried her face in her mother's side.
Lin Tao sat apart from the others, his back against the barn wall, his bowl untouched. He was watching everything—the way the adults whispered, the way the children cried, the way Wei's father stood at the barn door with his arms crossed. His eyes were calculating.
Wei walked over to him. "You should eat."
"I'm not hungry."
"You've been eating rats. You're hungry."
Lin Tao looked up at him. His eyes were flat and cold. "You think you're so much better than us. Sitting behind your wall. Judging us. You don't know what we've been through."
"I know you burned our rice field."
Lin Tao shrugged. "We did what we had to do. You had everything. We had nothing. It wasn't fair."
"So you burned forty mu of rice. Days before harvest. Our best yield in years."
"It was just rice. You've got plenty more. Look at this place." He gestured at the wall, the distant tree. "You're not starving. You were never starving."
"That doesn't make it right."
"Right?" Lin Tao laughed bitterly. "Right doesn't matter anymore. Survival matters. And you're going to find that out soon enough.
When those things out there—the goblins, the jiangshi, whatever else is crawling out of that crack in the sky—when they come for your wall, you're going to need every pair of hands you can get. And you just pissed off half your neighbors."
Wei didn't answer. He turned and walked away.
Behind him, Lin Tao called out, "We'll see who's still standing when the goblins come back!"
The other survivors were whispering now. Some of them looked uncomfortable—Chen shaking his head, Wang staring at the ground. But others were nodding.
The Liu father, who had been silent until now, suddenly stood up. His face was gaunt, his eyes burning with a desperate, feverish light.
"He's right," Liu said, his voice cracking. "We've lost everything. Our houses, our fields, our families. And you're giving us rice water and a barn floor? We deserve better than this."
"You deserve what you've earned," Wei's father said. "And what you've earned is one night of shelter and a bowl of food. Tomorrow, you leave."
"And if we don't?" Tao took a step forward. "What are you going to do? Throw us out? Fight us? There are more of us than there are of you."
Wei's father didn't flinch. "There are more of you. But we have the wall. We have the weapons. We have the food. Think carefully before you start a fight you can't finish."
The silence stretched. Liu's hands were shaking. His wife was pulling at his sleeve, trying to get him to sit down, but he wouldn't move.
Then Old Lin spoke. "Sit down," he said quietly. "All of you. Sit down and eat. We'll discuss this in the morning."
Liu stared at him for a long moment. Then, slowly, he sat.
Lin Tao smirked, but he didn't say anything else. The tension in the barn was thick enough to cut with a knife, a living thing that pulsed in the flickering shadows.
Wei's mother set down the last of the congee and straightened up. Her face was calm, but Wei could see the tension in her shoulders—the way her hands were clenched at her sides. "We'll bring more food in the morning," she said. "Before you go. For now, rest."
She walked out of the barn, and Wei followed her.
Outside, the sky was dark now, the stars coming out. The Tree of Life pulsed with its steady golden light. From the barn, the murmur of voices continued—low, angry, plotting.
Wei's mother didn't speak until they were back at the house. Then she said, very quietly, "We can't let them stay."
"I know."
"Lin Tao is going to be a problem. The Liu father, too. They're desperate enough to do something stupid."
"I know that too."
She looked at him, her eyes tired. "What do we do?"
"We do what we said we'd do. Feed them. Shelter them for one night. Send them away in the morning." He paused. "And if they refuse to go—"
"We'll deal with that when it happens."
***
That evening, after the survivors had settled into a restless, murmuring quiet, Wei's father gathered the family in the main room.
The oil lamps flickered on the scarred old table. Everyone was there—Wei's mother, Grandfather with his cane across his knees, Grandmother with her hands folded in her sleeves, Hao slouched against the wall with Xiao Hei in his lap, Li sitting cross-legged on the kang. Uncle Jianguo stood by the door, his arms crossed, his face unreadable.
Wei's father sat at the head of the table. He didn't speak for a long moment. When he did, his voice was heavy.
"The rice paddies are dead."
The words hung in the air. No one moved.
"I checked them this afternoon," he continued. "After the survivors arrived. I wanted to see if there was anything we could harvest. Anything at all." He shook his head. "The plants are all dead. Every stalk. The water in the fields has dried up—completely. The irrigation channels from the canal are blocked, and the canal itself is barely a trickle. The shimmer didn't just corrupt the soil. It's changing the water. The whole system is failing."
Hao sat up straighter. "All of them? All eight mu?"
"All of them. Forty mu of rice. Gone." His father's voice cracked, just slightly. "We have what's in the warehouse. Maybe three months' worth, if we ration carefully. After that..." He trailed off.
"After that, no rice," Grandfather said quietly.
"No rice." Wei's father stared at the table. "I've eaten rice every day of my life. Every single day. My father ate rice every day of his life. His father before him. Rice is what we are. It's not just food—it's... it's civilization. It's the center of every meal. It's the first thing you learn to cook and the last thing you forget how to grow." He speaked with a dramatic expression.
He looked up, and his expression was somewhere between despair and absurdity. "What are we supposed to do? Eat potatoes? Potatoes are not rice. Potatoes are what you eat when you've given up on life."
"Potatoes are perfectly good food," Wei's mother said, but there was a hint of a smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.
"Potatoes are lumps of starch that happen to be edible. Rice is poetry. Rice is tradition. Rice is—" He struggled for words. "Rice is home!"
"We have the enhanced seeds," Wei offered. "Maybe we can—"
"The enhanced seeds are for vegetables. For fruits. For everything except rice. The rice fields needed the old irrigation system, and the old irrigation system is dead." He slumped back in his chair. "Three months. Three months of rice, and then we're reduced to eating wheat noodles and millet porridge like... like northerners."
Hao snorted. "The horror. Northern food."
"You laugh now," his father said, pointing a finger at him. "But when you're eating buckwheat for the tenth day in a row, you'll understand. Rice is the soul of a meal. Everything else is just... accompaniment."
Grandfather chuckled—a dry sound like leaves rustling. "Your father once refused to eat for two days when we traveled to the north and the only rice they had was that short-grain sticky kind. Said it was an insult to the ancestors."
"It was an insult," Wei's father muttered. "Sticky rice. What's the point of rice if it sticks together? You can't even pick it up properly with chopsticks. It clumps. It's undignified."
Li, who had been quiet until now, said, "Father, we have bigger problems than rice."
"I know we have bigger problems." He sighed heavily. "The wall. The goblins. Those people in the barn who want to take everything we have. But I can face all of that as long as I know there's a bowl of proper rice at the end of the day. Take away the rice, and what's the point of surviving?"
"That's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard," his wife said, but she was definitely smiling now.
"It's not ridiculous. It's cultural."
"It's dramatic."
"Rice is dramatic. Rice has sustained our civilization for five thousand years. You don't survive five thousand years without being a little dramatic." He looked around the table.
"We need to find a solution. New seeds. A new water source. Something. Because I am not going to face the apocalypse eating nothing but potatoes and wheat. I have standards."
Hao, grinning now, said, "I'll put 'find rice' on the list. Right below 'don't get killed by goblins' and 'deal with the angry neighbors.'"
"Put it above the neighbors," his father said seriously. "The neighbors will sort themselves out. Rice is forever."
Wei's mother shook her head, but she was laughing. Grandfather was chuckling. Even Grandmother's lips had curved into the faintest of smiles. Xiao Hei, sensing the shift in mood, wagged his tail and barked once.
And for a moment—just a moment—the weight of the day lifted. The survivors in the barn. The dead rice fields. The orc camp in the forest. All of it faded, and they were just a family, laughing at the absurdity of a man who loved rice more than he feared death.
Then the moment passed, and Wei's father stood up. "Tomorrow," he said, "we deal with the survivors. And the day after that, we figure out the rice. But tonight, we rest."
He walked to the door and paused. "And someone check on the barn before dawn. Make sure they haven't decided to explore."
Jianguo nodded. "I'll take the first watch."
"Good." Wei's father looked back at his family—his wife, his children, his parents, his brother. "We'll get through this," he said quietly. "We always do."
Then he went outside, and the night closed around him.
***
Wei lay on the kang, staring at the fish-shaped knot in the ceiling beam. The house was quiet. Hao was already asleep beside him, his breathing slow and even, one arm flung over his face. Xiao Hei was curled up on the floor in his usual spot, twitching as he chased something in a dream.
But Wei wasn't ready to sleep. Not yet.
He pulled up his status panel one more time.
```
┌──────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ STATUS │
├──────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Strength: 7.5 │
│ Agility: 7.3 │
│ Physical Resilience: 7.4 │
│ Intelligence: 7.3 │
│ Stamina: 7.4 │
│ Mana: 468 │
│ Credits: 352 │
│ Experience: 256/2000 toward Tier 3 │
└──────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Three hundred and fifty-two credits. Almost halfway to the wall upgrade. The orchard had given him more than he'd expected—but it had also shown him how much work remained. Thousands of trees, still heavy with fruit.
Days of harvesting ahead. And beyond the farm, the orc camp was still out there. The goblins were still regrouping. The crack in the sky above Qinghe was still bleeding monsters into the world.
But the farm was stronger now. The beehive hummed in the darkness. The chickens clucked softly in their upgraded coop. The heifer lowed in her expanded shed. The rabbits slept in their deep, moss-lined warrens. The sheep dozed against their vine-woven fence. Every animal on the property was blessed, evolving, growing stronger.
And so was he.
He closed the panel and let the darkness settle over him. From the barn at the far end of the property, a single voice rose in argument—sharp, angry, then silenced. The survivors were still awake. Still plotting.
Tomorrow would be hard. But tonight, there was still peace.
The tree pulsed at the edge of his awareness, steady and gold. Xiao Hei stirred, yawned, and settled back into sleep. The stars wheeled overhead, indifferent and eternal.
Wei closed his eyes. The warmth of the kang seeped into his bones, and for the first time since the orc's club had come within inches of his skull, he let himself rest.
End of Chapter 10