The imperial footnote was a quiet earthquake. In the days following the rider's visit, the Lin homestead existed in a state of suspended animation. The frantic energy of preparation was gone, replaced by a watchful, almost brittle calm. They worked—the cattle needed moving, the gardens weeding, the smokehouse maintained—but their eyes kept drifting to the road. The promised inspector was a question mark, a potential critic of their entire existence.
Village Head Li's reaction was a masterpiece of controlled ambiguity. He made no official visit, but he was seen walking the path bordering the Three Brothers fields more than once, his gaze lingering on the check dams and the stonecrop-stitched gullies. His expression was unreadable. The Lin family's success had always been a useful curiosity; now, with the touch of imperial interest, it became a potential rival power center, however small. The dynamic had shifted, and Li was recalculating.
The Tier 3 System Shop hung in Lin Yan's mind like a constellation of new suns. The categories were profound: Livestock Genetics, Soil Microbes, Water Mapping, Basic Metallurgy. These were not tools for survival, but for transformation. He spent his 315 points with a strategist's care.
First, 50 points for 'Targeted Trait Selection: Drought/Forage Efficiency' under Livestock Genetics. This wasn't a magic wand; it was deep knowledge. It taught him how to identify and breed from the animals that showed innate advantages—like Shadow's Brahman-derived heat tolerance and ability to thrive on coarse forage. It was about shaping their herd's future with every breeding decision.
Next, 80 points for a 'Soil Microbial Inoculant Starter Culture.' This was a tangible, if microscopic, asset. The system provided a ceramic crock containing a live culture of beneficial fungi and bacteria that formed symbiotic relationships with plant roots, helping them extract nutrients and water from poor soil. It was the hidden, teeming life that turned dirt into earth. Its application required careful timing and specific conditions—it needed to be brewed into a "tea" and applied to prepared seedbeds.
He saved the remaining 185 points. The Water Mapping and Metallurgy would wait. They had enough to digest.
The knowledge from 'Selective Breeding Principles' merged with what he already knew. He looked at their animals with new eyes. Splotch, due to farrow again soon, was a proven, hardy mother. Their young boar from the first litter, a solid red-gold male they'd kept aside, had good conformation. But the star was the livestock they didn't own: the Zhang estate's Duroc boar, and now, the genetic potential sleeping in Onyx and Shadow. The future was in strategic breeding, creating animals perfectly suited to their land.
Ten days after the rider's visit, the inspector arrived. He was not what they expected. No imperial livery, no haughty demeanor. He was a slight, scholarly man in his forties named Undersecretary Wen, with ink-stained fingers and eyes that held a genuine, hungry curiosity. He arrived on a donkey, accompanied by a single young scribe carrying a stack of blank paper and surveying tools.
He introduced himself to Lin Yan with a short bow. "I am here to observe and record. Please, show me your… system."
Undersecretary Wen was a revelation. He asked questions not to test or trap, but to understand. He spent hours on the Three Brothers fields, measuring the gullies before and after the check dams, sketching the stonecrop's growth pattern, taking small soil samples from treated and untreated areas. He examined the Bluestem grass minutely, comparing it to samples of common pasture grass. He interviewed Lin Yan not as a superior, but as a colleague in inquiry.
"The principle is biomimicry," Lin Yan found himself explaining, using a term from his old world that felt natural here. "We don't fight the land's nature. We find plants and animals that match it, and then help them do what they do best. The stonecrop holds the earth. The clover feeds the soil. The Brahman-cross cattle eat the tough forage. Our job is to connect them in a cycle."
Wen's scribe's brush flew across the paper, recording every word. Wen himself nodded, his eyes alight. "A philosophy of management, rather than domination. This is… uncommon. Most reports speak of yields per mu. You speak of resilience per season."
He was particularly fascinated by the smokehouse and the concept of "value-added" production. "You take a common pig, feed it on uncommon grass, preserve it with careful technique, and it becomes a product worthy of a Deputy Minister's table. You have multiplied value without increasing land. This is the kind of efficiency the Imperial Treasury dreams of."
His stay lasted three days. He ate with the family, tasting their simple food—a stew with their own vegetables, a slice of their own smoked bacon. He asked Wang Shi about her herb garden, Lin Qiang about irrigation ditch angles, Lin Gang about cattle temperament. He treated Xiaoshan's observations about bird sounds and insect life with serious attention.
On his final morning, Undersecretary Wen stood with Lin Yan at the edge of the Three Brothers, looking out over the terraces where the steers grazed. "My report will be favorable," he said quietly. "More than favorable. It will recommend your methods be studied for possible adaptation in other marginal frontier prefectures. There may be a small stipend for continued… documentation. A few silver taels a year."
It was beyond their wildest hopes. Not just recognition, but support. A trickle of imperial silver to fund their experiments.
"There will be others who come after me," Wen warned, his tone turning grave. "Not all will be curious. Some will be envious. Some will seek to take credit, or to find flaws. Your village head… he watches. Success draws light, and shadows."
It was the same warning Qiao Yuelan had given, from a different source. The message was clear: they were out of the shadows themselves, and now had to deal with the glare.
After Wen left, bearing his detailed notes and sketches, the atmosphere settled into a new normal. The imperial eye had blinked, and found them worthy. The stipend arrived a month later—five silver taels, delivered by a county clerk. It was wealth beyond their experience. They spent it with surgical precision: one tael to purchase a sturdy, young Jersey cow calf from a dairy herd (for milk and future breeding), two taels to secure a five-year lease on an additional five mu of slightly better, adjacent slope land (the 'Little Sister' field), one tael on quality metal tools—a proper scythe, a two-man saw, and a set of farrier's tools for basic hoof care. The final tael they buried with the gold nugget, their expanded emergency reserve.
The Jersey calf, a fawn-colored, gentle creature they named 'Butter', integrated seamlessly. She provided rich milk for the family and surplus to make cheese and feed piglets. The new land gave them room to experiment with a proper crop rotation on slightly better soil, while the original Three Brothers continued their slow transformation into permanent pasture.
The stonecrop, meanwhile, revealed an unexpected secret. Qiao Yuelan, on her next visit for the autumn lavender harvest, noticed something. The bees from the beekeeper's hives, drawn to the buckwheat and lavender, were also visiting the stonecrop's tiny pink flowers in great numbers.
"Stonecrop honey," she murmured, watching the busy insects. "It's pale, delicate, but with a… mineral quality. Very rare. Prized by certain connoisseurs." She looked at Lin Yan, a speculative gleam in her eye. "You planted it to hold the earth. But it seems to want to give back more."
It was the way of their journey. Every solution seemed to blossom into multiple benefits. The stonecrop held soil, fed bees, and now promised another unique, high-value product: Lin Family Stonecrop Honey. They made a deal with the beekeeper to place two dedicated hives at the edge of the stonecrop patch the following spring, for a share of the honey.
As autumn deepened, the family gathered the harvest. Buckwheat grain filled a sack. Turnips and beets were stored in sand in the cool root cellar they'd dug. The Bluestem grass yielded a final, magnificent hay crop that filled their new, larger hayloft to bursting. Splotch farrowed again, this time with nine healthy piglets—the result of the village boar, but all robust. They would be their next generation of market and breeding stock.
One evening, with the first frost silvering the ground, the family sat around a table that now held a ledger book purchased with imperial silver. Lin Yan recorded the year's final entries. Not just debts and desperate sales, but investments, stipends, leases, and future contracts. The Lin Family was no longer a subsistence unit; it was a small, but growing, agricultural enterprise.
Lin Dashan, looking older but straighter than he had in years, spoke as Lin Yan wrote. "The inspector saw a system. But what I see… is a family. A family that learned to listen to the land, and to each other."
It was the truest assessment. The stonecrop's secret wasn't just in its roots or its flowers. It was in its quiet, collective action. A single plant did little. But a spreading mat of them could change the fate of a hillside.
They had started as isolated, frail individuals in a barren plot. Now, they were a matted, resilient network—rooted in their land, connected to a wider world of trade and ideas, and slowly, steadily, holding their future secure against whatever erosion time and fortune might bring.
The foundation was no longer just under their feet. It was within them, and it was spreading.
[System Note: Imperial audit passed successfully. Stipend acquired, enabling capital expansion. Tier 3 knowledge applied (Genetics, Microbes). New revenue streams identified (Stonecrop Honey). Host's operation now recognized as a formal 'model farm' within imperial bureaucracy.]
[New Quest: 'Scale the Model.' Replicate one core technique (e.g., check dam/stonecrop erosion control, Bluestem hay establishment) on a neighboring landholder's property within one year. Reward: 'Knowledge Diffusion' bonus, increased regional prestige, Tier 4 unlock hint.]
[Points Total: 185. Resources accumulating.]