Brother Wang walked at the front, and his buckets were the first to fill.
He slid the carrying pole through the handles, hoisted both buckets onto his shoulder, and slowly pivoted around. He had to move gently—too sharp a turn and he might spill even a single drop. In a drought year like this, losing water was enough to break a man's heart for days.
But the moment he turned back toward the path… he froze.
At some unknown time, a strange mound of tiny white spheres had appeared right behind him.
His jaw hung open. The buckets slipped from his shoulder, crashed to the ground, and both barrels of precious water splashed away instantly.
The villagers beside him nearly sobbed.
"Brother Wang! How could you drop it? That was two whole buckets of good water…"
He looked as though he might fall to his knees and try scooping the water out of the dirt with his bare hands.
Still stiff as wood, Brother Wang croaked,
"Everyone… look… behind us…"
The villagers turned.
The first man froze solid.
The second turned—froze as well.
Within moments, an entire line of water thieves stood rooted like statues, all staring at the mysterious mound of white pellets.
One villager was about to gasp aloud, but Brother Wang lunged over and clapped his hand over the man's mouth.
Only then did the rest regain their senses—
Right, this was Gaojia Village. They were here stealing water. Make a sound and they'd be beaten to death out of sheer embarrassment.
Brother Wang stepped carefully toward the mound, pinched a pellet, smelled it, and whispered,
"This… is flour, isn't it? I can't be mistaken. Smells exactly like flour—but the grains are huge. Maybe it got damp and clumped into balls?"
Another villager nodded.
"That must be it. Earlier I thought I smelled flour and wondered if hunger was making me hallucinate."
Brother Wang frowned.
"But how did this flour pile appear here?"
"I didn't see anything!"
"Neither did I!"
"I was drawing water!"
Brother Wang gritted his teeth.
"Then it must have been someone from Gaojia Village. They must've placed it behind us while we weren't looking. That's the only explanation."
The villagers exchanged doubtful looks.
"Gaojia Village is this generous?"
"Where did they even get so much flour?"
"Why make it into pellets?"
"No one gives away food for no reason…"
"And to do it secretly in the middle of the night…"
Brother Wang looked left, right, front, back, searching the entire area. Not a soul in sight.
He tossed a flour pellet into his mouth, chewed—and immediately nearly sneezed it out.
Raw flour tasted absolutely awful.
But he whispered,
"It really is flour. And it has to be from Gaojia Village. They must know we come to steal water. For the sake of our dignity, they didn't expose us. Seeing how poor we are, they quietly left flour for us to take."
The villagers looked doubtful, but besides this ridiculous explanation, they couldn't think of any other possibility.
Brother Wang said,
"Pour all the water back into the pond and use the buckets to load the flour. Take as much as you can. Be careful—if anyone spills even one pellet, I will beat him to death."
The villagers waved him off.
"You don't have to say it! If one of us spills flour, we'll beat ourselves to death. No need for you to do it."
One by one, they dumped their hard-earned water back into the pond.
But they couldn't scoop flour with wet buckets—it would paste into a useless lump.
They held the empty pails into the night wind, waving them wildly to dry them completely before even daring to approach the flour mound.
Only after the buckets were bone dry did they rush over and fill two buckets each—moving with the delicacy of midwives carrying newborn children. A single misstep, a single bounce, and a flour pellet rolling into the sand would be enough to make a grown man weep.
Once they finally escaped the village border, Brother Wang suddenly set down his load.
He turned toward Gaojia Village, clasped his fists in the most formal salute, and bowed deeply.
"Your generosity today, I—Wang Er—will remember. One day, I will repay this debt."
He didn't know who he was thanking—only that some hidden master in Gaojia Village had shown mercy, refrained from exposing them, and even gifted them food. Tonight he was nothing but a thief. The benefactor did not wish to meet garbage like him face-to-face.
But one day, he would return openly and give proper thanks.
Hearing this name, Li Daoxuan—watching from outside the diorama—paused.
Wang Er.
Why did that name sound familiar?
His heart skipped. He quickly opened the Ming-dynasty historical texts he'd been reading these past few days.
He found it at last, buried in an old chronicle Luqiao Jiwén:
"In the first year of Chongzhen, famine swept through Qin territory.
The land lay barren for a thousand li.
A man named Wang Er of Baishui gathered the starving, painted their faces with soot, stormed into Chengcheng, and killed the magistrate."
Another text, Liehuang Xiaoshi, described it even more vividly:
"In the year Dingmao of Tianqi, Shaanxi suffered a great drought.
Magistrate Zhang Yaocai of Chengcheng relentlessly pressed for taxes.
The people could endure no more.
One Wang Er gathered several hundred men on the mountain, all with faces blackened by soot.
Wang Er shouted, 'Who dares kill Magistrate Zhang?'
The crowd roared, 'We dare!'
Thrice they cried it, then stormed the city.
The guards dared not resist.
They seized the county office and killed Yaocai.
Thus the rebels formed their band."
Historians later called Wang Er's revolt the first spark of the late-Ming peasant uprisings—the beginning of the movement that would eventually topple the dynasty itself.
Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong—those legendary rebel kings—were all considered his successors.
Li Daoxuan quietly closed the browser and stared back into the diorama.
Wang Er and his people had already disappeared beyond the miniature horizon.
Only their footprints remained—along with a scraped patch of earth where they had dug out every last grain of flour.
Daoxuan exhaled softly.
"So… you're the first flame of the Ming's peasant wars. Then it won't be long before rebellion sweeps across this land. You'll come back again, I'm sure."
He turned back toward Gaojia Village—the fragile huts, the broken walls, the flimsy thatched roofs.
Once the uprising started, the village would inevitably be dragged into it. If he stayed at the diorama day and night, he could reach in with a single hand and swat away an entire army.
But what if he fell asleep?
What if he stepped outside for groceries?
These tiny people would be vulnerable to the slightest neglect.
The Hakka walled compound he was planning would take at least another month to finish.
But Wang Er's uprising… was imminent.
He couldn't just sit and wait for the walled fort.
He needed something now—something to protect them.
His eyes swept across his apartment.
Then he spotted it: a rusted piece of metal peeling off the clothes rack.
His eyes lit up.
Scrap iron. Perfect for making armor for the little villagers.
But armor alone wouldn't be enough. These villagers had almost no combat ability. Even with iron plating, they probably couldn't stand against roving bandits or government soldiers.
He scanned the room again.
His gaze landed on a colorful pile beside the desk.
LEGO bricks.
A grin spread across his face.
Yes—before the Hakka fortress was done, this could buy them time.
A temporary fortress of plastic.
And a miracle for the miniature world.