The first request did not come with coins.
It came with embarrassment.
A middle-aged woman stood at the Gu Clan gates just after dawn, hands clasped tight around a cloth-wrapped bundle. Her clothes were clean but mended too many times, the fabric soft with age.
"I heard," she said, eyes fixed on the ground, "that you have grain that doesn't make children sick."
The guard hesitated and glanced back toward the compound.
Gu Hao happened to be walking past.
He stopped.
"What did you hear exactly?" he asked gently.
The woman flinched at his voice and bowed quickly. "Only that it fills the stomach. That it lasts."
Gu Hao studied her for a long moment.
Not her clothes.
Her posture.
She stood straight. Tired, but not desperate yet.
"Who told you?" he asked.
"A salt-boiler's wife," she said. "She traded roots here. She said your people don't faint in the fields anymore."
Gu Hao nodded.
"Wait," he said.
He did not give her the new grain.
Not directly.
Instead, he brought out two small sacks. One of ordinary grain. One of the darker, denser variety.
"Cook them the same way," he said. "See which your family finishes first."
The woman blinked. "I don't have spirit stones."
"I didn't ask for them," Gu Hao replied.
She left confused, grateful, and slightly afraid.
That afternoon, Gu Jian found Gu Hao in the courtyard.
"You're giving it away," he said.
"Testing," Gu Hao corrected.
Gu Jian frowned. "People will come back."
"Yes," Gu Hao said. "That's the point."
They did.
Not in groups.
Not loudly.
One by one.
A hunter with shaking hands who complained his legs gave out too quickly.
A father whose son never gained weight no matter how much he ate.
A woman whose husband worked clay and came home hollow-eyed every night.
Gu Hao gave each of them the same instruction.
Eat first.
Come back later.
No prices.
No promises.
The elders were uneasy.
"This is how shortages begin," Elder Gu Yuan warned. "Word spreads faster than supply."
Gu Hao listened carefully.
"What happens when supply is controlled but demand is hidden?" he asked.
Gu Yuan hesitated. "It… leaks?"
Gu Hao shook his head. "It concentrates."
He gestured toward the fields. "We are not selling yet. We are learning who needs it, and why."
"And when they ask to buy?" Gu Yuan pressed.
"Then we'll know what they value," Gu Hao replied.
One evening, the woman from the gate returned.
She looked different.
Not healthier.
More certain.
"My children slept through the night," she said. "No coughing. No stomach pain."
She opened the cloth bundle and pushed it forward. Inside were dried fish strips, carefully prepared.
"I don't have stones," she said again. "But I can trade."
Gu Hao accepted the bundle.
"Next time," he said, "bring someone else with you. Someone who needs it."
The woman froze. "Why?"
"Because," Gu Hao replied, "I want to know how fast need travels."
That night, Gu Hao did not activate the simulator.
He didn't need to.
On Earth, he had seen this pattern before.
You did not create demand by shouting.
You created it by solving a problem quietly and letting people speak for you.
He wrote a short note in the ledger:
Before price, there must be trust.
Outside, the Gu Clan gates closed for the night.
But beyond them, in dim kitchens and tired homes, people talked.
Not about the Gu Clan.
About a grain that made life a little lighter.
And that, Gu Hao knew, was how markets were born.
Demand arrived before Gu Hao was ready for it.
That was always how it happened.
By the eighth day, the sacks he had set aside for "testing" were gone. Not emptied at once, but claimed steadily, deliberately, by hands that returned with trades instead of excuses.
Salt.
Dried meat.
Simple tools.
Information.
Need had a way of organizing itself.
Gu Hao stood in the storage room, looking at the remaining grain, when Gu Yuan entered with a tight expression.
"They're asking what to call it," the elder said.
Gu Hao turned. "Who is 'they'?"
"The people," Gu Yuan replied. "The mortals. The traders. They say they can't keep saying 'that grain from the Gu Clan.'"
Gu Hao considered that.
Names mattered.
On Earth, he had seen identical products succeed or die based purely on what people remembered them as when they talked to others.
"What do they call it now?" he asked.
Gu Yuan hesitated. "Some say 'the full-belly grain.' Others call it 'the grain that lasts.'"
Gu Hao smiled faintly.
"Too long," he said.
He walked to the table and dipped his brush in ink.
On a blank slip of bamboo, he wrote two simple characters.
稳粮
Steady Grain.
Not rich.
Not powerful.
Just… dependable.
"This," Gu Hao said, placing it down, "is what we call it."
Gu Yuan stared. "That's it?"
"That's enough," Gu Hao replied.
They marked the sacks with a simple stamp. No emblem. No flourish. Just the name.
Steady Grain.
The effect was immediate.
People stopped asking whether it worked.
They asked whether it was available.
The laughter came two days later.
A junior disciple from the Liu Clan arrived openly at the gates, robes clean, expression amused.
"I heard you've started selling food to mortals," he said, loud enough for others to hear. "Is that true?"
Gu Jian's hand rested near his sword.
Gu Hao raised a hand slightly.
"Yes," Gu Hao said calmly.
The disciple laughed. "Mortals? Patriarch Gu, do you know how many spirit stones a mortal eats in his entire life?"
Gu Hao nodded. "Very few."
"Exactly," the disciple said, grinning. "They're worthless."
Several Gu Clan members stiffened.
Gu Hao tilted his head. "How many mortals live in this region?"
The disciple blinked. "What?"
"Roughly," Gu Hao continued. "How many?"
The disciple scoffed. "Who counts mortals?"
Gu Hao smiled, but there was no humor in it.
"I do," he said.
The disciple left still laughing.
The elders were less amused.
"You're drawing attention," Gu Yuan warned. "For scraps."
"For roots," Gu Hao corrected gently.
He gestured toward the compound walls, beyond which lay dozens of hamlets.
"Cultivators are few," he said. "Talented ones even fewer. They are fought over, monopolized, guarded."
"And mortals?" Gu Yuan asked.
Gu Hao's gaze was steady.
"Mortals are everywhere," he said. "They are the largest segment in this world. And no one serves them properly."
Gu Yuan frowned. "Because they can't pay."
"They pay differently," Gu Hao replied. "And more reliably."
That night, Gu Hao activated the simulator.
Fifty spirit stones.
Consent given.
[Legacy Simulation Complete]
Duration: 1 Year
Clan Status: Surviving
Population: 73 → 46
Positive Indicators:
Mortal Affiliation Increased External Trade (Low but Stable) Food Differentiation Established
Negative Indicators:
Elite Interest (Dismissive)
Dismissive.
Gu Hao leaned back.
Good.
On Earth, the most dangerous markets were never the ones crowded with competitors.
They were the ones everyone laughed at.
He wrote a new note beneath the name.
If they don't respect the buyer, they'll never see the market.
Outside, a group of mortals waited quietly, sacks in hand, asking for Steady Grain by name.
And somewhere in the distance, cultivators laughed.
Gu Hao let them.
He had learned something important a long time ago.
Empires were not built by impressing the powerful.
They were built by becoming indispensable to everyone else.