The mud of Lingnan was a greedy thing. It sucked at Li Chen's boots with every step, trying to pull him down into the grey sludge. His new body was a hollow shell of what he used to be. Every breath felt like a chore, and his heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. But as he stood on the ridge overlooking the North Dike, the exhaustion vanished. In its place came the cold, sharp clarity of a man who saw the world in vectors and loads.
Beside him, Uncle Chen struggled to keep a heavy paper umbrella steady. The wind whipped the old man's robes, and the rain lashed against them in sheets. "Your Highness, please," the old man pleaded, his voice cracking. "The fever has barely left you. If you fall here, the river will take you before I can even reach out my hand."
Li Chen didn't hear him. He was looking at the Jade Serpent river. To the locals, it was a dragon waking up from a long sleep. To Li Chen, it was a massive volume of moving mass, and it was currently violating every law of safe fluid management.
The river was a thick, brown soup of silt and debris. It didn't just flow; it punched. He watched the way the water hit the bend in the bank. Instead of sliding past, the current was slamming into the soft earth, creating a violent swirl that dug deep into the foundation of the dike.
"They are building a wall of sand to stop a mountain of water," Li Chen whispered.
Below them, the scene was one of pure, unorganized panic. Hundreds of peasants were running through the rain, carrying woven baskets filled with loose dirt. They were dumping the dirt directly onto the top of the dike, hoping that making the wall taller would stop the breach. But as soon as the fresh earth hit the water, the river stripped it away in seconds. It was like trying to patch a wound with salt.
"Stop! All of you, stop!" Li Chen roared.
His voice didn't have the volume of a warrior, but it had the tone of a man who had commanded thousand man construction crews. It was a voice that expected to be obeyed. A few workers near the top of the ridge slowed down, looking up with confusion at the mud covered Prince.
A man in a stained silk robe pushed his way through the crowd. This was Head Builder Zhou. He was the man responsible for the province's defenses, and right now, his face was a mask of frustration and fear. He looked at Li Chen with a sneer.
"Prince Lu," Zhou shouted over the wind. "The Governor said you were coming, but we have no time for royal games. The river will breach this bank in less than two hours. If you want to help, pick up a basket. Otherwise, get back to your palace before you catch a cold."
Li Chen didn't move. He reached out and snatched the long wooden measuring rod from Zhou's hand. The builder gasped, but before he could protest, Li Chen jammed the rod into the mud at his feet.
"You are an idiot, Zhou," Li Chen said. His voice was quiet now, but it carried a weight that made the men around them fall silent. "Look at what you are doing. You are adding weight to the top of a saturated slope. Every basket of dirt your men dump up there is pushing the base of the wall further into the river. You aren't building a dam. You are building a landslide."
Zhou blinked, his face turning red. "The water is rising! We must make the wall higher! That is the way it has been done for a thousand years!"
"And for a thousand years, this province has drowned," Li Chen snapped. He knelt in the mud, ignoring the way the cold water soaked into his silk trousers. Using the tip of the rod, he drew a sharp, deep line in the clay. "The problem isn't the height. The problem is the toe. The river is eating the bottom of your wall. When the bottom goes, the top follows. It is simple physics."
Li Chen traced a triangle in the mud. He showed them how the weight was pressing down and how the water was pushing in. "The wall is leaning, Zhou. Can't you see it? The internal pressure of the water has turned this dirt into liquid. If one more man walks along that crest, the whole section will unzip and slide into the abyss."
A few of the workers stepped back, looking at the dike with new eyes. They could see it now— a slight, terrifying bulge at the center of the bank. It looked like a belly ready to burst.
"Then what do we do?" Lao, the massive laborer from the palace, asked. He had followed Li Chen down the hill, and he was the only one who didn't look at the Prince with doubt.
"We stop defending the top and start reinforcing the bottom," Li Chen said, standing up. He pointed to a large grove of bamboo near the edge of the woods. "I want those bamboo stalks cut down. We are going to weave them into cages. Rectangular boxes, six feet long and three feet wide."
"Cages?" Zhou laughed nervously. "To catch the fish while we drown?"
"To catch the rocks," Li Chen said. "We fill the cages with heavy river stones. We link them together with rope and sink them at the base of the dike. We build a toe berm. If the base of the wall is heavy enough, the river can't push it. We give the wall a foot that it can't lose."
He looked at the crowd of exhausted, terrified men. They were looking for a leader, and for the first time in his new life, Li Chen gave them one.
"Lao! Take fifty men to the bamboo. Zhou, if you want to keep your head when the Governor finds his province underwater, you will tell your men to start gathering every heavy stone within a mile of this spot. We are going to build a stepped wall from the bottom up. Now move!"
The authority in his voice was absolute. It was the same voice he had used to move billions of dollars in Shanghai. Lao didn't hesitate; he grabbed a machete and headed for the bamboo. Slowly, the other workers followed. The panic began to turn into a process.
For the next five hours, the riverbank became a site of brutal, organized labor. Li Chen didn't stand under his umbrella. He was in the mud, his hands raw and bleeding as he showed the men how to lash the bamboo together. He taught them the "over under" weave that would keep the cages from bursting under the weight of the stones.
His body screamed at him to stop. His vision blurred, and his breath came in ragged gasps. But he couldn't stop. He watched the river like a hawk. He was calculating the speed of the water, watching the way it swirled around the new obstructions they were placing.
"Not there!" he shouted, pointing to a group of men trying to drop a cage into a deep pool. "The current is too fast there. Drop it ten feet to the left. We need to break the flow, not fight it! We are redirecting the energy, not stopping it!"
It was a slow, agonizing victory. One by one, the heavy bamboo cages were filled with rocks and dragged into the water. They sank with a dull thud, disappearing into the brown soup. But as more were added, a solid base began to emerge. The cages were linked together, creating a heavy, immovable "toe" at the bottom of the dike.
As the sun began to set behind the grey clouds, the rain finally slowed to a drizzle. The river was still high, still angry, but the dike had stopped bulging. The water was no longer eating the bank; it was being pushed back by the massive weight of the stone filled cages.
Li Chen stood at the edge of the water, his chest heaving. He was covered in grey silt from head to toe. His royal silks were rags. He looked like a beggar, but he felt like a king.
Builder Zhou walked up to him, his face pale. He looked at the reinforced bank, then at the Prince. He had spent his whole life building with dirt and tradition, and in five hours, this "weak" exile had shown him a world of logic he couldn't even dream of.
"The bulge... it's gone," Zhou whispered. "The wall is solid."
"Gravity is a constant, Zhou," Li Chen said, his voice raspy and tired. "It doesn't care about your traditions. It only cares about the math."
He looked at his hands. They were shaking. The adrenaline was leaving him, and the cold was starting to seep into his bones. He knew he would pay for this tomorrow. His new body was not ready for this kind of work. But he didn't care.
"This is only the beginning," Li Chen muttered to himself. He looked out over the vast, flooded marshland. The dike was just a patch. To truly win, he needed to drain the entire province. He needed pipes. He needed pumps. And most of all, he needed a material that didn't rot or wash away.
He needed stone that he could pour like water.
"Uncle Chen," Li Chen called out, his voice barely a whisper.
The old man rushed to his side, wrapping a dry cloak around the Prince's shivering shoulders. "I am here, Your Highness. Please, let us go back. You have done enough. You have saved the city."
"I haven't saved anything yet," Li Chen said, leaning heavily on the old man as they began the slow walk back up the hill. "I've just bought us some time."
He looked back at the river one last time. The brown water was still hissing against the rocks, but the dike stood firm. It was a small victory of geometry over chaos. Tomorrow, he would find the limestone. Tomorrow, he would build the kilns. And the day after that, he would give this world a miracle it wasn't ready for.
As they reached the palace gates, Li Chen looked at the sagging roof of his home. He didn't see a ruin anymore. He saw a project. He saw the start of an empire. He closed his eyes for a moment, and in his mind, he wasn't seeing the mud of Lingnan. He was seeing the blueprints of a city made of glass and light.
He just had to survive the mud first.
Li Chen stumbled into his room, falling onto the bed without even taking off his wet boots. His body was finished, but his mind was already calculating the temperature needed to burn lime. As he drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep, the last thing he heard wasn't the rain. It was the sound of his own heartbeat, steady and strong, like a hammer hitting a stone.
He was no longer just an exile. He was the architect of a new world, and the foundation had finally been poured.