š¬ļøChapter 44: Wind and Water
š June 1, 96 BCE ā Early Summer āļø
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Back when the village was still new, water had to be hauled the old-fashioned way. Every courtyard had its own hand pump linked to a well, and while that was better than trudging down to the river, it still meant sore backs and wasted hours. Buckets banged knees. Ropes frayed. Children groaned under loads far too big for them.
Now, with workshops humming, mills spinning, and the population swelling, those days already felt ancient. They needed something betterāsomething scalable.
That meant harnessing the wind.
š¬ļø The Wind Catchers Rise
It was Junjie, of course, who had the idea. He'd seen sketches in old scrolls of western contraptionsāgreat wooden towers with sails that turned grain to flour or lifted water from deep wells. With Nano's simulations flickering in his mind's eye, he set about reshaping the design into something leaner, sturdier, and suited to the mountain winds.
Instead of massive horizontal windmills, they built vertical-shaft towers, compact enough to perch on the valley's ridges. When the wind caught their latticework sails, they turned like giant fans, driving gears and shafts hidden below.
One bright morning, Claudia stood with him on a slope, watching the first set of sails unfurl in the breeze.
"They look like banners," she said, smiling.
"Not banners," Junjie answered. "Engines."
The sails creaked once, then spun smooth, almost silently, as water surged up from the depths into a stone cistern. The crowd gasped as the first gush of clear water spilled into a holding trough. Children cheered. Old women wept.
From that moment, the Wind Catchers became part of the valley skyline.
šļø The Infrastructure Boom
The water itself was only half the battle. Trenches had to be dug, pipes laid, and cisterns lined.
Masons, bent double under the summer sun, plastered the insides of massive stone tanks with a Nano-treated lime that resisted mold. Teams of youths carried ceramic pipes on their shoulders like soldiers bearing spears. Every clang of hammer against stone echoed through the valley like music.
"Careful with that joint," barked Chengde, balancing on a ladder above a trench. "If it leaks, we'll flood your grandmother's house before the month is out!"
The villagers laughed, but they also worked harder. By midsummer, the pipes snaked under courtyards and workshops, hidden veins carrying life.
For the first time, some lucky homes had indoor tapsāpolished copper spigots feeding basins. A laundress turned hers on, squealed, and immediately splashed the neighbor's boy in the face.
"NowĀ thisĀ is civilization!" she shouted, to general laughter.
Each wet-fed building received a colored tile marker near its entrance. Before long, those tiles became points of pride, with children boasting: "Our house has the blue mark!"
And everywhere, time was being freed. Brewers doubled their batches. Smiths cooled the hot iron in steady streams instead of wasting buckets. Even the bakers, who needed constant washing, sang as they worked.
š§ Managing the Flow
Of course, water had a mind of its own. Too much wind, and the cisterns threatened to overflow. Too little, and the pumps slowed to a trickle.
Junjie and Nano solved the problem with an overflow marsh: a hidden stone duct carried excess water into a low field, where reeds, mint, and medicinal herbs took root. It became a thriving greenbelt, buzzing with bees and dragonflies. Children played there in the afternoons, weaving reed whistles.
"This isn't a waste," Claudia told a group of curious elders. "It's a garden that drinks for us."
Nano monitored the system constantly, tweaking flows, balancing pressures. To the villagers, it was invisible, but to Junjie, it felt like he had given the valley a nervous systemāone that carried not messages, but life itself.
š„ Water and Fire
Still, the planners knew better than to trust perfection. Gears could break. Winds could falter.
So the old wells were kept as backups, retrofitted with lever-assisted, dual-piston pumps so light a child could raise water. Every workshop received its own reserve tank, and public water points were placed near the square and training groundsābroad stone basins with wooden dippers.
And for the first time, the village had firefighting capacity. Dedicated cisterns stood near the walls, each with buckets and coiled hoses. The blacksmiths drilled with them one afternoon, dousing a pile of burning straw in seconds. The crowd applauded as if it were a theater.
"Imagine," Claudia whispered, watching the steam rise, "a fire that doesn't take the whole valley with it."
š A Turning Point
The night the system first ran across the entire village, the people gathered in the square. They stood in small groups, listening, almost in disbelief, as water whispered beneath their feet through the new pipes.
"Do you hear it?" a boy asked his mother.
"Hear what?"
"The valley breathing."
Junjie and Claudia stood together at the edge of the crowd. A little girl ran past them, laughing, her hands wet from splashing at the public basin.
"This changes everything," Claudia said softly.
Junjie nodded. "Food fills the stomach, but waterāwater builds a city."
The Forgotten Valley had crossed a threshold. They weren't just surviving anymore. They were inventing, shaping, thriving.
Thanks to a little wind and a lot of thought, the hidden village had become something new: a blueprint for permanence.