The morning after watering the two-acre plot, Lin Feng's alarm blared at 5:30 AM. He groaned, slapped it silent, and for a moment considered the warmth of his thin blanket. Then he remembered the land. The seedlings. The pendant.
He swung his legs out of bed, his body protesting less than usual. A small, persistent energy hummed beneath the fatigue—a gift from the nightly cup of altered water, he was sure.
His morning routine was quick: a splash of cool water on his face, two steamed buns grabbed from a street vendor downstairs, a glance at the jade pouch on his nightstand. He touched it for a second, a new habit, feeling its steady warmth. Then he was out the door, his delivery app already pinging with morning breakfast orders.
The morning rush was a blur of apartment complexes and office towers. He moved efficiently, his mind only half on the GPS directions. The other half was by the river, wondering if the droplets of Spiritual Spring water had done their work.
At 11 AM, between the lunch order surge, he took a risk. He rode his bike fifteen minutes out of his usual zone, toward the eastern suburbs. He told himself he just wanted to check.
Pushing through the overgrown path to the riverbank, his heart hammered against his ribs. He wasn't sure what he expected. Overnight forests of vegetables? That was for the controlled balcony boxes. This was raw earth.
He reached the cleared plot and stopped, breath catching.
The change was subtle but undeniable. The tomato and cucumber seedlings, which should have been struggling to establish themselves, stood upright and firm, their leaves a healthy, deep green. The bok choy and spinach in the leafy section looked fuller, as if they'd been growing for a week, not a day and a half. Nothing was magically ripe, but everything looked vibrantly, unnaturally healthy.
A laugh, sharp with relief and triumph, escaped him. It worked. On a larger scale, it worked.
He didn't have time to linger. He noted a few spots where the soil looked dry and made a mental promise to bring a proper watering can tonight. Then he was back on his bike, racing to make up for the detour, a grin plastered on his face that wouldn't fade even when a rude office worker snapped at him for being two minutes late.
That evening, he finished his last delivery by 8 PM. Instead of heading home, he stopped at a discount store and bought a large plastic watering can and two empty five-gallon buckets. He filled the buckets from the river, then, hidden by the twilight and the tall reeds, he took out the jade pendant.
He dipped it into one bucket for a count of thirty seconds. The water shimmered faintly. He stirred it with a stick, then carefully poured half of it into the second bucket of plain river water. A safe, diluted mix for a larger area.
Watering two acres by hand with a single can was madness. He only managed to cover about a quarter of the plot before full darkness fell and his arms screamed in protest. But it was a start. He focused on the seedlings that looked most thirsty.
"Patience," he told the silent plants, as if they could hear him. "Just grow steady and strong."
The next three days fell into a brutal but satisfying rhythm. Up at dawn for the breakfast delivery shift. Late morning, a quick, anxious check on the field—each visit showing remarkable progress. The cucumber vines had begun their climb up the bamboo poles. Tiny tomato fruits, no larger than peas, were visible. The leafy greens formed dense, green rosettes.
Afternoons were for more deliveries and managing his growing online customer base. Word was spreading. The young mother, Mrs. Chen, had become his best advertiser in her parenting WeChat groups.
"Try this farmer's strawberries! My picky eater actually asks for them!"
"His bok choy has no bitter taste at all.Baby-friendly!"
Lin Feng's phone buzzed constantly with new orders. He raised his prices slightly—strawberries to forty-five yuan per half-kilo, tomatoes to fifteen—and people still paid. The balcony operation was now completely inadequate. He harvested every other day, but the tiny boxes could only supply five or six families.
The river plot was his hope.
On the evening of the fourth day after planting, under the beam of his phone's flashlight, he made his first real harvest from the land. The bok choy and spinach were ready—crisp, perfect heads that looked like they'd come from a high-end organic farm. He filled two of his delivery thermal bags.
The next morning, instead of accepting any delivery orders from 9 AM to 11 AM, he became a vegetable delivery man. He had ten orders to fulfill, all from his WeChat clients, scattered across the city. It was inefficient, but it was pure profit.
Mrs. Chen met him at her door, her toddler clinging to her leg. "You brought more! And the tomatoes?"
"Next time, for sure. These are the first leafy greens from the new plot. Try them." He handed over her bag.
She peeked inside, inhaling the fresh, green scent. "They look incredible. How is your new plot? You said it was by the river?"
Lin Feng felt a tiny spike of alarm. Keep it vague. "Yeah, out east. Good, clean soil and water." It wasn't a complete lie.
"Wonderful. We need more honest local farmers." She paid him, her little boy waving a chubby hand. "Bye-bye, veggie uncle!"
The title, so simple and sincere, stuck with Lin Feng all day. Veggie Uncle. It was better than "Delivery Guy."
By the time he completed his vegetable rounds and got back to his food delivery app, he had missed the lunch peak. His daily earnings from deliveries would be lower. But as he counted the cash from the vegetable sales—nearly four hundred yuan from just one morning—the trade-off felt worthwhile. For the first time, his income wasn't tied directly to how many hours he spent racing against the clock.
That night, as he soaked his aching shoulders in a basin of warm water (enhanced with just a drop from the jade, a luxury he now allowed himself), he did the math. At this rate, if the fruiting vegetables came in as expected, he could match his delivery income within two weeks, working a fraction of the hours. The thought was dizzying.
A new problem presented itself, however. Storage and transport. His bike's delivery box could hold maybe twenty orders of vegetables before they got crushed. And he couldn't keep running all over the city; it wasted time and gas.
He needed a system. A central pickup point? Too risky—people might ask too many questions about his "farm." He needed wheels with more space.
Scrolling through second-hand websites on his phone, his eyes landed on the listing: "Electric Tricycle, cargo model. Good battery. 1200 yuan."
He stared at the number. That was all his remaining savings, plus most of what he'd just earned from the vegetables. A massive gamble.
He looked at the velvet pouch on his nightstand. He thought of the plants by the river, growing silently under the stars, fueled by a secret he carried in his pocket. He thought of the boy calling him "Veggie Uncle."
Lin Feng clicked "Contact Seller."