The imperial decree granting management of twenty mu of common pasture was a scroll of profound consequence, heavier than any ingot of silver. It did not grant ownership, but something almost more powerful in the frontier context: exclusive usufruct rights for imperial defense purposes. It was a legalistic sword that cut through generations of village custom and Village Head Li's authority. The pasture was no longer common; it was the Garrison Field, and it was theirs to manage.
The transition was not peaceful. The day after the county clerk posted the notice on the village message tree, a group of villagers—led by the Zhao family (relatives of the disgraced egg-thief) and a few others who had traditionally grazed their few skinny sheep on that land—gathered at the Lin-Yue fence. Their mood was ugly, a simmering stew of resentment and fear.
Lin Yan faced them, flanked by Lin Gang and Er Niu. He did not bring the scroll; he brought his voice, steadied by the 'Public Speaking & Rhetoric' skill.
"This land," he said, pointing towards the rolling, grass-covered slope, "will grow hay for the horses that guard the frontier. The same frontier that keeps bandits from your doors and your children in their beds. The imperial decree is not for my benefit alone. The silver from this contract will flow into Willow Creek—for labor, for supplies. And the methods we prove here can be used on your own marginal lands, as we are doing with Old Man Chen and as we have begun with Bao in Red Clay Valley."
He offered not defiance, but a vision of shared, if indirect, benefit. He offered jobs. "We will need hands to fence, to sow, to cut, to bale. We will pay a fair daily wage in copper." He looked at the younger men in the crowd, their faces etched with the idleness of poverty. "The work will be hard. But the pay will be steady until the first snows."
The anger wavered, diluted by practical need. Grumbling, the crowd dispersed, but the tension remained a live wire in the village air. Village Head Li was conspicuously absent from the confrontation. His power play had failed; his silence now was a deeper, more dangerous strategy.
The work began with a furious, focused energy. The twenty mu of pasture was a kingdom. The first task was fencing. Not a wicker barrier, but a proper, post-and-rail boundary to legally demarcate the imperial grant and keep out stray livestock. Every able-bodied Lin male, plus Er Niu and three hired village youths (including a sullen but strong Zhao cousin), worked from dawn to dusk. The thunk of the digging stick driving posts and the rasp of the two-man saw became the heartbeat of the farm. The new 'Logistics & Supply Chain' knowledge helped Lin Yan organize the work gangs and material flow with an efficiency that impressed even Lin Qiang.
Within the newly fenced kingdom, they began the transformation. The existing grass was poor, sparse fodder. They would not tear it all up. Using principles from 'Ecosystem Engineering,' they designed a patchwork renovation. They ploughed and prepared one-third of the land immediately for sowing the precious Bluestem grass seed, now their most valuable biological asset. Another third they lightly harrowed and oversowed with a mix of clover and deep-rooted meadow grasses, to improve without destroying the existing sod. The final third they left fallow for this season, to be grazed rotationally by their own cattle and the few sheep of villagers they agreed to pasture for a fee—a small concession to community need.
The scale was daunting. The seed required for just the first seven mu of new Bluestem planting was more than their entire previous year's harvest. They used the military's advance silver to purchase every scrap of seed they could find from traders, and dedicated their entire home mu of Bluestem to seed production, not hay. It was a massive, leveraged bet on the future.
Through it all, the domestic enterprise hummed along. Qiao Yuelan and Mei Xiang's apothecary business was a quiet, lucrative engine. The 'Lin-Yue' label was gaining recognition in the prefectural city's better shops. The stonecrop honey, now under forward contract to Merchant Wei, was a celebrated luxury. The smokehouse produced regular batches of bacon and ham for Butcher Gao, the 'grass-finished' story now a known selling point.
Yet, the human landscape within the farm grew more complex. Zhen, the refugee girl, had proven herself indispensable. She had a natural affinity for the delicate work of herb harvesting and a preternatural patience with the chickens. Wang Shi had essentially adopted her. But her presence, and Mei Xiang's formal partnership, created a new dynamic. The Lin-Yue farm was becoming a haven for those who didn't fit the traditional village mold—the orphaned, the clever woman, the ambitious outsider. It was a social experiment as radical as their agricultural one.
One evening, Sergeant Kuo returned, this time with a junior quartermaster to inspect progress. They rode the bounds of the new fence, the sergeant grunting approval at the scale and order. The quartermaster, a pinch-faced man named Fa, asked sharp questions about yield projections, baling, and transport.
"The garrison will send wagons at the end of the summer," Quartermaster Fa stated. "You will have fifty tons of cured hay ready. Dry, sweet, and free of mold. Or the contract is void, and the advance is repaid with penalty."
Fifty tons. The number hung in the air. It was an immense quantity. Failure was not an option; the penalty would bankrupt them.
After the military men left, Lin Yan gathered his core team—family, Yuelan, Mei Xiang, and Er Niu. The mood was sober.
"We have bet everything on this field," Lin Yan said, unrolling a map of the pasture they had drawn. "We need systems. We need to think like the army we now supply."
They devised a plan. Lin Gang would head Security & Fencing, ensuring the perimeter was inviolable against both animal and human tampering. Lin Qiang would take Water & Irrigation, using the micro-watershed analysis to plan simple ditches to capture every drop of rain for the new seedings. Lin Yan would oversee Crops & Seeding, his 'Passive Observation' critical to monitoring germination and health. Wang Shi, Yuelan, and Mei Xiang would manage the Home Enterprise—the apothecary, honey, pigs, and chickens—the financial lifeboat if the hay project faltered. Xiaoshan and Zhen were promoted to 'Scouts & Foragers,' tasked with monitoring the far edges of the property for pests, signs of disease, and gathering supplemental wild fodder.
Er Niu was given a critical role: Labor & Morale. He was the bridge to the village hires, his honest, boisterous nature perfect for keeping the work gangs motivated and sniffing out discontent before it festered.
It was a corporate structure born of necessity, a far cry from the desperate unity of a family fighting starvation. It was efficient, but it created new distances. Lin Yan spent less time with his hands in the soil and more time walking the boundaries, clipboard in hand, making notes, solving problems.
A week after the military inspection, the first act of sabotage occurred. A thirty-foot section of the new fence on the western edge, where it bordered Zhao family land, was found cut and trampled in the night. Three of their sheep had wandered into the newly seeded Bluestem plot and grazed a ragged scar through the tender seedlings.
It was a petty, damaging act. The message was clear: We can hurt you, even with your imperial scrolls.
Lin Gang wanted to confront the Zhaos directly. Lin Yan stopped him. Instead, he went to Village Head Li. He reported the damage factually, presenting the cut ropes and the hoof prints.
"This is damage to imperial property," Lin Yan said, his voice cold. "Obstructing the production of fodder for the frontier garrison is not a village matter. It is a matter for the magistrate. And for Sergeant Kuo."
Li's face was impassive, but a muscle twitched in his jaw. He understood the escalation. If Lin Yan brought in the magistrate or, worse, the military, it would show Li had lost control of his village. "I will speak to the Zhao family," Li said tightly. "The fence will be repaired. At their cost."
"And a guard will be posted at that section at night," Lin Yan added. "Paid from the village labor fund. To ensure the Empire's interest is protected."
It was a checkmate, forcing Li to use village resources to protect the very project that undermined him. The guard was posted—a bored teenager from a neutral family. The sabotage stopped. But the resentment deepened, buried now beneath a layer of enforced compliance.
As the Bluestem grass germinated, a pale blue-green mist on the prepared earth, a new opportunity and challenge arrived. A group of three farmers from neighboring villages, having heard of the "Demonstration Farm" and the military contract, came to see. They were not hostile like the Zhao's, but cautiously curious. They had similar marginal land. They saw the scale, the organization, the obvious investment.
Lin Yan showed them everything, holding nothing back. He explained the patchwork renovation, the check dams on the Three Brothers, the sulfur compost, the selective breeding. He spoke of the Cooperative Partnership with Bao as a model. "The empire needs hay. The methods work. You can grow it too. Not on this scale, perhaps, but enough to sell to the garrison, or to improve your own herds. We can share seed. We can share knowledge. For a fair share of the first few harvests, to repay our risk."
It was the 'Scale the Model' quest evolving into a franchise system. He was offering them the 'Lin-Yue method' as a package: seeds, plans, and guidance, in exchange for a cut of their success. It was how the cell would truly divide—not just once, but many times.
The farmers were intrigued but non-committal. They took samples of Bluestem grass and clover seed, promised to think on it, and left. But the seed of an idea was sown.
That night, exhausted, Lin Yan sat with Yuelan on the bench outside her cottage. The air was fragrant with lavender and the distant, earthy smell of the turned pasture.
"We are building an empire within the Empire," Yuelan murmured, staring at the star-dusted outline of the new fence on the hill.
"We are building a system that can survive us," Lin Yan corrected wearily. "The farm, the apothecary, the partnerships… they are becoming institutions. They have their own logic, their own needs." He missed the simple, brutal clarity of keeping five chicks alive.
"That is the price of the dream," she said, her hand finding his in the dark. Her touch was a grounding wire. "You wanted to change more than a plot of land. You are. But change has friction. It creates heat. And shadows."
He looked at their linked hands, then out at the sleeping land. The Garrison Field, the Dragon's Field as some of the hired men had started calling it, was a vast, dark shape under the moon. They had sown it with grass, with ambition, and with the seeds of profound social change. The harvest would not be just hay. It would be a new reality for Willow Creek, for themselves, and for the shape of their lives together.
The foundation they had laid in poverty was now supporting a structure of daunting complexity. And as Lin Yan sat there, feeling the calluses on Yuelan's fingers against his own, he understood that the hardest work was no longer in the soil. It was in navigating the human heart, the labyrinth of power, and the heavy, beautiful responsibility of a dream that had taken root and was now, inexorably, growing towards the sun.
[System Note: Large-scale land management initiated under military contract. Social friction and sabotage encountered and managed via political maneuvering. First external inquiries about franchise model received. Host's role evolving from farmer to entrepreneur and community leader.]
['Garrison's Hay' Quest: IN PROGRESS. Fencing: 100%. Seeding: 33%. Irrigation: 20%. Security: Stable.]
[Points Total: 303. Awaiting major milestone completion.]