There is power in doing small things openly. A ribbon tied in public becomes a ritual that invites witness and makes betrayal clumsier. Shi Hao proposed, with the blunt practicality of his kind, that the villagers create a visible mark of unity. "If Runan thinks of us as a prize, then let us look like the kind of prize that has teeth."
They chose a slender offshoot from Liu Shen, a sapling that had been coaxed from one of the willow's ancient branches—young, flexible, and full of promise. Each villager brought a scrap of cloth, a trinket, a handful of soil from a beloved plot. Huo Ling'er painted hers with ash and flame, an ember fingerprint. Shi Yi carved his name into the ribbon's edge in a sloppy, boyish hand, then tried to hide the awkwardness by pretending indifference. Granny Cheng tied a bundle of seeds and whispered a lullaby into the knot.
When Qingmu toddled forward, he pressed his small palm to the bark. The sapling shivered like a child surprised by praise and then began to glow. Not blindingly, but an inner light suffused the trunk and seeped into the ribbons. Vines twined the cloth like fingers, stitching each pledge into a living web.
The system, which had watched the village grow in tiny increments, marked the action with something like satisfaction.
[Village Unity Constructed: +15% Blessing Resistance (Local). New Passive: Vow Ward — minor protective amplification triggered by unanimous ties.]
A dome of warm light shimmered around the village for a speechless minute. The effect was subtle but undeniable: passersby felt a strange urge to slow their pace, traders found their bargains kinder, and the small predators who had once tested the village's boundaries for easy kills avoided the perimeter without knowing why.
Runan's eyes narrowed when a scout returned and reported a "strange field" around the village. He rubbed his palm along the jade signet, tasting frustration. "They bind themselves together," he said. "Yet a bound thing can be unbound. Find me their weak tendons."
Within the village, the Tree of Vows became a genuine place. It was where lovers met in shy confession, where elders told new stories to the children, and where women left small bowls of rice for a forgotten god. It was also where the children learned loyalty for the first time. Qingmu was deputized, half by custom and half by mischief, as the tree's smallest guardian. He would press his ear to its bark and proclaim the day's duties in a voice that was still mostly baby giggles.
The Tree of Vows did not make the place impregnable. It did something more useful in the short term: it made the village public. It gave the villagers a single, shared thing to defend. And in a world of lordly appetites and hungry eyes, that would be the difference between being plucked and being rooted.
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