By the time Ji Yuan returned to Qinghe, the howls had already reached the clearing.
They came from the forest in waves.
One voice had begun them—the wounded Qingmu wolf, furious and alive. Then another answered. Then another. Soon the sound moved between the trees like invisible fire, circling the settlement from distances no human eye could measure.
The people of Qinghe did not need the Record of Ten Thousand Eras to tell them what the howls meant.
The wolves knew they were there.
And the wolves were not alone.
Li Qingluan was waiting at the medical stones when the scouting group stumbled back into the clearing. She saw the torn guard first, then Ji Yuan's mud-caked clothes, then the way Han Yue walked beside him like a wall placed between him and the world.
Her face went cold.
"You were attacked."
Ji Yuan nodded.
"You are bleeding."
"Not badly."
"That is not your area of expertise."
Before he could answer, she caught his chin with two fingers, turned his face toward the firelight, and examined the swelling near his temple. There was no tenderness in her touch, but there was care beneath the anger. That somehow made it harder to endure.
Han Yue lowered the wounded guard near the stones. "Wolf. Larger than Earth wolves. Fast. Smart enough to retreat."
"Poison?" Li asked.
Yue Lingxi shook her head. "Claws and teeth. No venom I saw."
"Good," Li said. Then, after a pause, "No. Not good. Better."
The injured guard laughed weakly, then groaned as she cut away his sleeve.
Ji Yuan looked toward the forest.
The tree line had become a black wall. Mist gathered beneath the blue-green trunks, and somewhere within it, green eyes might be watching. The clearing no longer felt like a place where humans had landed. It felt like a place where humans had been permitted to remain for a few hours.
That permission was ending.
"We need a barrier," Han Yue said.
Ji Yuan looked at him.
"Not a true wall," Han continued. "We don't have time. But stakes, sharpened branches, a line to slow them. Anything that turns a leap into a climb and a charge into noise."
Ma Shicheng, who had been marking shelter sites with stones, came closer. His limp was worse from hours of work, but his eyes were clear.
"A palisade," he said. "Crude. Low. Ugly. But possible."
Qin Moxuan arrived with his bark ledger tucked under one arm. "How many workers?"
Ma looked over the clearing. "Everyone who can stand and lift. We need teams: cutting, carrying, sharpening, placing, binding."
Yue Lingxi's expression tightened. "No living trunks beyond the first line. The forest already answered once."
Han Yue snapped, "The wolves answered. We need wood."
"Take the wrong wood, and more than wolves may answer."
Their argument pulled faces toward them.
Ji Yuan raised a hand.
This time, the clearing quieted faster than before.
He felt the change and feared it.
Trust was not yet strong. But dependence had begun.
"Yue Lingxi chooses what can be taken," he said. "Ma Shicheng decides where it goes. Han Yue organizes defense. Mo Tieheng makes points, bindings, and tools. Qin records labor groups. No one cuts without Yue's mark. No one leaves the clearing alone."
Han's jaw tightened, but he nodded.
Yue gave a short breath through her nose. It was not approval. It was acceptance.
Ma Shicheng crouched and began drawing in the mud with a stick.
"Central zone here," he said. "Medical stones, fire, food store, graves behind the slope. We do not try to enclose everything. Too large. Too slow. We make a first ring. Enough to keep children, injured, stores, and fire inside."
Qin said, "What about shelters outside the ring?"
"Move them in or abandon them."
A woman cried out, "My husband's grave is outside that line."
Ma's hand paused.
Ji Yuan looked toward the burial slope. The shallow graves lay just beyond the first practical line of defense. If they widened the ring to include them, the palisade would take hours longer. If they left them outside, the dead would lie beyond protection.
Bai Suyin stood near the graves, her gray bundle of bones in her arms.
She said quietly, "The dead do not need walls more than the living need morning."
The grieving woman began to sob, but she did not argue.
Ji Yuan bowed his head slightly toward Bai Suyin, then turned to Ma.
"Build the first ring. We will mark a path to the graves within sight of the fire."
Ma nodded once and drew the line.
After that, Qinghe moved.
It did not move gracefully.
It moved like a wounded animal learning how many legs remained.
Yue Lingxi led small teams to the forest edge, marking deadwood, fallen branches, and thin growth she judged safe to cut. Zhang Bei went with one team, face grim and silent. No one mocked him now. Fear had made workers of nearly everyone.
Mo Tieheng stationed himself beside the flat stone that had become his workshop. With a warped strip of metal and a stone hammer, he shaped points, split wood, and cursed at anyone who wasted material. The young men who had asked for weapons now found themselves shaving stakes until their hands blistered.
"This end goes into the ground," Mo growled at one of them. "If you sharpen the buried end again, I will assign you to stirring porridge with your fingers."
Han Yue formed watches before the wall existed. He placed people in pairs, then drilled them in calling directions.
"North line!"
"North line!"
"Fire point!"
"Fire point!"
"No one runs alone!"
"No one runs alone!"
At first the replies were ragged. By the tenth repetition, they sounded less like frightened people and more like a line that might hold for one breath.
Yin Meiniang turned the cooking area into a supply station. She handed out watered broth in mouthfuls, not bowls. Each worker received enough to keep moving, not enough to feel fed.
Qin recorded names beside assignments until the bark surface filled. Then he used cloth scraps. Then flat stones.
Li Qingluan fought the work as much as the wounds.
A boy carrying stakes collapsed near the fire.
Then a woman.
Then one of Ma Shicheng's carriers dropped to his knees, vomiting thin water into the mud.
Li rose from the medical stones with fury in her eyes.
"Enough."
Ji Yuan turned from where he had been helping drive stakes into the ground. "We cannot stop."
"I said enough, not abandon it." She pointed toward the collapsed boy. "They crossed worlds today. They buried family today. They bled today. You are using shock as if it were strength."
Han Yue said, "If the wolves come tonight—"
"They will come to corpses if you keep this pace."
The clearing listened.
Ji Yuan wiped mud from his hands. His palms shook. He had not noticed until then.
Li stepped closer and lowered her voice, though not enough that others could not hear.
"You are afraid that if they stop, they will fall apart."
He said nothing.
"You are right," she said. "But if they do not stop, their bodies will do it for them."
Ji Yuan looked at the unfinished palisade.
It was barely a broken circle of stakes. Some leaned outward. Some were too short. Gaps yawned between sections. A determined man could climb through it. A wolf could leap parts of it.
But it was more than they had possessed before.
"Rotating shifts," he said at last.
Han Yue frowned.
Ji Yuan raised his voice. "No one works longer than two turns without rest. Children carry only light branches. Injured do not work unless Doctor Li clears them. Food workers and medical support are exempt from stake labor. Han Yue, keep half the able defenders resting at any time."
Qin Moxuan said, "That slows completion."
"It prevents collapse," Ji Yuan replied. "The palisade must stand. So must the people building it."
Li Qingluan held his gaze for a moment.
Then she returned to the wounded.
The work resumed, slower and steadier.
By dusk, Qinghe had changed.
There was still mud. Still fear. Still hunger.
But now the clearing had shape.
A crude storage pile beneath torn plastic. A smoking kitchen fire. A medical zone under leaning stones. Shallow graves on the slope. Mo Tieheng's flat-stone workshop. Ma Shicheng's marked paths. Han Yue's watch points. Stakes rising from the earth in an uneven ring like the ribs of some newborn beast.
At nightfall, the unfinished palisade cast long shadows against the fire.
Ji Yuan stood beside the weakest section and stared into the dark.
A small hand tugged his sleeve.
He looked down.
A child pointed beyond the stakes.
"There," the child whispered.
Ji Yuan followed the trembling finger.
Beyond the incomplete wall, between two blue-green trunks, green eyes shone in the darkness.
Then another pair opened beside them.
And another.