The news that the Li family had hired "Mad Dog" Zhao Feng spread through Stone Roll Village faster than a grassfire in autumn. By the time the sun dipped below the horizon, painting the snow in shades of bruised purple, the Li family's small dining table was thick with tension.
"Are you out of your mind?"
It was the Second Brother, Li Er. He slammed his bowl onto the table, his face pale. "Zhao Feng? The man who broke the blacksmith's arm last year over a copper coin? The man who came back from the border with nothing but a bad temper and a scar?"
"He's strong," Li Wei said calmly, scooping a ladle of mushroom porridge into his mouth. The taste was earthy and plain, but to his hungry stomach, it was ambrosia. "And he knows how to work."
"He's a liability!" Li Er's wife, Liu Shi, whispered fiercely, her eyes darting toward the door as if the man might burst in at any moment. "If he gets into a fight, the authorities will come. They'll question us. We're just farmers, we can't handle that kind of trouble!"
Li Dazhuang sat at the head of the table, smoking his pipe in silence. The old man's face was unreadable, but his knuckles were white as he gripped the pipe stem.
At the foot of the table, squatting near the door because there were no chairs left, Zhao Feng sat with his own bowl. He ate with a mechanical, disciplined efficiency—fast, quiet, and focused. He didn't look up at the family's whispered accusations. He simply ate, as if the food were fuel and the insults were merely background noise.
"Li Wei," Mother Zhao said, her voice trembling. "We barely have enough food for ourselves. Why bring a stranger to the table?"
Li Wei put down his bowl. The room fell silent.
"Father," Li Wei looked at the head of the table. "How long would it take us to clear the thorns and build a perimeter fence on the Barren Slope? Just the two of us?"
Li Dazhuang knocked his pipe against the table leg, thinking. "A month," he grunted. "Maybe more, if the ground stays frozen."
"With Zhao Feng and me, we can finish it in a week," Li Wei stated. "Spring is coming. If we don't have that fence up before the thaw, the villagers' goats will wander in and eat the new grass I'm planting. Without the grass, we have no cattle. Without cattle, we starve."
He looked around the table, his gaze hard. "We don't have a month. We have a week. I hired him for his hands, not his manners."
Zhao Feng finished his bowl. He stood up, towering over the seated family. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"Ma'am," he said, his voice surprisingly low. He didn't look at Mother Zhao directly—a sign of respect in this culture. "I eat a lot. I know it's a burden. But I don't eat free."
He reached into his tunic and pulled out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. He placed it on the edge of the table.
"I set snares while we were working today. Caught a pheasant. It's yours."
The room stared at the dead bird. In winter, a pheasant was worth days of labor.
"I'll work from dawn to dusk," Zhao Feng said. "I won't cause trouble. And if anyone tries to mess with the Li family's land... they deal with me."
He turned and walked out into the cold night to sleep in the shed with the animals, leaving the family in stunned silence.
Mother Zhao looked at the pheasant, then at Li Wei. She sighed, the fight draining out of her. "Cook it for the children tomorrow."
The tension broke.
***
The next morning, the Barren Slope looked different.
It wasn't the land that had changed, but the energy. Li Wei, Li Dazhuang, and Zhao Feng moved like a well-oiled machine.
Li Wei directed the operation. He wasn't just moving rocks; he was engineering.
"We need a windbreak here," Li Wei shouted over the wind, pointing to a cluster of scraggly pines on the ridge. "Zhao Feng, can you haul those fallen trunks down?"
Zhao Feng didn't answer with words. He simply walked up the hill, grabbed the end of a log that would take two normal men to lift, and dragged it down the slope, his boots digging deep furrows in the snow.
Li Dazhuang watched, puffing on his pipe as he took a break. "The boy has the strength of an ox," he admitted reluctantly. "Maybe you were right, Wei."
"He was a soldier, Father," Li Wei said, hacking at a thorny bush with a hoe. "They are trained to endure. We just need to point him in the right direction."
They spent the day constructing a crude but sturdy fence using the deadwood, rocks, and thorny bushes packed between the posts. It was a "living fence" technique Li Wei remembered—ugly, but effective against predators and wandering livestock.
By midday, Li Wei's hands were raw. He wiped the sweat from his forehead and walked to the small plot he had prepared near the center of the slope.
It was time.
He knelt by the patch of dark earth. He had been watering it with melted snow, carrying buckets up the hill. The System had promised acceleration, but seeing was believing.
He brushed away a thin layer of straw he had used as mulch.
His breath hitched.
Tiny, vibrant green shoots were pushing through the dark soil.
**[Brachiaria Decumbens (System Enhanced).]**
**[Growth Stage: Germination.]**
**[Growth Speed: 300% (System Accelerated).]**
**[Current Protein Content: 18%.]**
In the freezing cold, where nothing should be growing, life had taken hold. The green was vivid, almost unnaturally bright against the gray backdrop of the winter wasteland.
Zhao Feng walked over, wiping his hands on his trousers. He looked down at the patch of green. His eyes widened.
"Grass?" he asked, confused. "You're growing grass in the snow?"
"Not just grass," Li Wei said, a fierce pride in his voice. "This is 'Beef Gold'. This is what will make our cattle fat when everyone else's are starving."
He stood up and looked at Zhao Feng. "This is the heart of the ranch. If this dies, we die. I need you to help me build a shelter over it. Not for us, but for the grass. We need to keep the heavy frost off tonight."
Zhao Feng looked at the delicate green shoots, then at Li Wei. A slow nod. He didn't understand the science, but he recognized obsession when he saw it.
"I'll get the wood," Zhao Feng said. "We'll build it like a fort."
They worked until the moon was high. They built a small lean-to structure over the nursery, lined with pine branches to trap heat.
As they walked back down the hill that evening, exhausted and frozen, Li Wei felt a strange sensation. He looked at his muddy boots, the silhouette of Zhao Feng walking ahead, and the distant lights of the village below.
He didn't feel like a stranger in this world anymore. He felt like a builder.
**[System Update: Ranch Level 0 -> Ranch Level 1.]**
**[Current Residents: 2 Humans, 1 Calf, 1 Dog.]**
**[Infrastructure: Rock Fence (10%), Pasture Nursery (Active).]**
**[New Task: Secure 5 more heads of cattle before Spring Festival.]**
Li Wei smiled. Five heads. It sounded impossible. But looking at the back of his first loyal worker, he felt the impossible creeping closer.
"Tomorrow," Li Wei called out.
Zhao Feng stopped. "Yeah?"
"Tomorrow we hunt," Li Wei said. "We need meat for the table, and we need to secure the perimeter. I saw wolf tracks on the north ridge."
Zhao Feng turned, his grin flashing white in the moonlight. "Finally. Something to hit."
They walked into the night, no longer just a farmer and a thug. They were the first cowboys of the North.