The Magistrate's carriage had disappeared in a cloud of yellow dust, but his offer hung in the air of the Lin Ranch like a tangible thing—heavy, glittering, and sharp-edged. The family gathered in the main room, the evening lamp casting wavering shadows on faces etched with thought.
"Ten years," Lin Dahu said, breaking the silence. He stared at the rough map Magistrate Gao's clerk had left—a crude outline of the next valley over, labeled "Barren Vale." "Ten years is a lifetime. Or the blink of an eye, if the land refuses us."
"Favourable terms," Lin Zhu mused, tapping the financial details. "No rent for the first three years. A token rent after that, tied to a percentage of profits. But the condition… employing twenty county men for the first two years of development." He shook his head. "That's a wage bill that could swallow our hay profits before we see a single blade of grass."
Wang Shi looked from her husband to her sons. "It is a chain," she said quietly. "A chain of silver and obligation. But also a bridge. To what?"
Lin Yan had been silent, listening. He understood every angle of fear. They had clawed their way to stability. This was a leap back into the chasm of risk, but with higher stakes and far more witnesses. Failure would not mean mere hunger; it would mean public disgrace, financial ruin, and the loss of everything they'd built.
"The magistrate doesn't care about the land," Zhao He spoke from his customary place by the door, his voice a dry rasp in the quiet. "He cares about a report. A line in his annual submission to the prefecture: 'Initiated reclamation project in Barren Vale, utilizing innovative methods from the Lin Ranch observation site, generating local employment and future tax revenue.' Our success is his political capital. Our failure is our own."
"Then we must not fail," Lin Tie stated, his voice simple and final.
"But can we do it?" Lin Zhu pressed. "We have our methods. But this valley… Father, you've seen it. It's not a slope. It's a bowl of stone and dust. The creek is seasonal. The soil is… is there even soil?"
That was the question. Lin Yan stood up. "We won't know from a map. Tomorrow, Zhao He and I will go. We will walk it. We will see what the land is, and what it might be. Then we decide."
The next morning, they set out on horseback, leading a pack mule with supplies for two days. The path to Barren Vale was little more than a goat track winding over a steep, wooded ridge that separated Willow Creek's watershed from the next. As they crested the pass, the valley unfolded below them.
It was stark. A broad, flat-bottomed bowl several miles across, ringed by steep, treeless hills of crumbling grey rock. A dry, pale riverbed snaked through its center, holding only a trickle of water. The land was a patchwork of bare stone, gravel fans, and patches of tough, grey-green scrub that looked more like lichen than grass. The air was still and hot, holding the scent of dust and heated stone. It was a landscape that spoke of exhaustion.
"By the ancestors," Zhao He murmured, reining in his horse. "He wasn't lying about it being poor."
But Lin Yan was looking with different eyes. His 'Advanced Soil Analysis' and 'Pasture Management' knowledge activated, scanning not just the surface, but the potential. He dismounted, walking to the edge of the vast flat. He knelt, digging through the dusty crust with his fingers. Beneath the top layer of wind-blown grit, the substrate was a mix of fractured rock and compacted, mineral-heavy clay. Very poor. But not dead.
He saw patterns. The dry riverbed indicated water during the spring melt and storms. The gravel fans spoke of erosion from the hills, which meant there was soil somewhere, just washed away. The scrub growth, however tough, proved something could live here.
"It's not barren," Lin Yan said, dusting his hands. "It's abused. Eroded. Compacted. Starved." He pointed to the hills. "The topsoil is all up there, or washed down the river and out of the valley. Our job wouldn't be to grow grass here. It would be to heal the land first. To catch the soil, hold the water, rebuild life from the ground up."
It was a monumental task. A generational task. The kind of task the system was built for.
They spent the day exploring. They found a few seeps at the base of the northern hills where water trickled out year-round—potential sites for developed springs. They found areas where the clay was thicker, which could hold water if managed. They saw the sheer scale of it—hundreds of mu, perhaps over a thousand. It was terrifying. It was also the most compelling blank slate Lin Yan had ever seen.
That night, camping by one of the seeps, they discussed it under a vast canopy of stars.
"The methods are the same," Lin Yan said, thinking aloud. "But magnified. We'd need a nursery for compost, on a huge scale. We'd need to terrace the lower hillslopes to catch runoff and soil. Plant deep-rooted pioneer plants—some of Borjigin's grasses would be perfect. Then legumes to fix nitrogen. Then, after years, maybe pasture."
"Water is the key," Zhao He said, poking the fire. "You can have all the compost in the world, but without water, it's just dirt. These seeps are a start. But for a valley this size…" He looked toward the dry riverbed. "We'd need to slow the river when it flows. Build check dams. Spread its water out, let it sink in, not run away. That's not farming. That's… engineering."
"The magistrate's men," Lin Yan said. "Twenty of them. That's not a wage bill. That's an army. For earthworks. For hauling stone for terraces. For digging ponds." A vision was cohering, daunting but clear. "We wouldn't pay them from our existing profits. We'd use the magistrate's own advance—the 'development grant' he mentioned. We'd turn his manpower into our landscape."
Zhao He looked at him, a flicker of respect in his eyes. "You see a siege. Not of a fortress, but of a wasteland."
The next afternoon, they returned to Willow Creek. The family was waiting, their faces tight with anticipation. Lin Yan didn't give a speech. He laid out their findings, their assessment, and then he laid out the plan. Not a plea, but a campaign strategy.
"It is possible," he concluded. "But it is a ten-year war, not a season's battle. The first two years would see no animals, no income from the land. Only investment—of our time, our knowledge, and the magistrate's silver and men. We would be managers, teachers, and generals of dirt. Our reward would not be immediate, but it would be vast: a valley of our own making, ten times the size of what we have now. A legacy that could support herds of Blackcloud cattle, bands of horses, flocks of sheep—a true ranch, not a homestead."
The room was silent as they absorbed the scale of it.
Lin Dahu spoke first. "You ask us to trade the security we have fought for, for a promise written in dust."
"I ask us to use the security we have built as a foundation to build something no one in this county thought possible," Lin Yan replied. "The ranch here is proven. It can run itself with Zhu and Tie and the hired hands. Mother and the girls can manage. That is our fortress. Barren Vale would be our… our kingdom."
It was a word that shocked them all into stillness.
Wang Shi looked at her son, seeing not the frail boy of memory, nor even the clever rancher, but a visionary with mud on his boots and a terrifying gleam in his eye. She took a deep breath. "A kingdom needs a queen who knows how to store grain and heal wounds. If you lead this war, my son, I will ensure the home fortress does not falter."
One by one, they came aboard. Lin Tie, for the challenge of the work. Lin Zhu, for the engineering puzzle. Even Lin Xiao, wide-eyed, pledged to be the "best scout for grass."
Two days later, Lin Yan returned to the county seat. In Magistrate Gao's office, he did not accept the offer. He negotiated it.
"The grant must cover tools, not just wages," he stated. "We need picks, shovels, carts, lumber for sluices. We need authority to quarry stone on site. We need a written guarantee that the water rights to any springs we develop are attached to the lease, in perpetuity. And we need the employment clause reduced to fifteen men after the first year, as the initial earthworks are completed."
Gao listened, his fingertips steepled. He saw not a desperate farmer, but a counterparty. A man who understood value, risk, and leverage. It was what he respected. After an hour of tense, precise haggling, they had an agreement. The "Barren Vale Reclamation Project" was born, with Lin Yan as its master, accountable only to the magistrate and the land itself.
The news spread through Willow Creek like a summer fire. The Lin family was taking on the cursed valley. Some shook their heads, predicting ruin. Old Chen was heard to mutter that pride came before a fall. But others, especially younger men without land, looked toward the Lin compound with new hope. Jobs. Steady work.
A week later, the first contingent of fifteen county men arrived at the Lin Ranch, escorted by a minor clerk. They were a mixed lot—some strong and eager, others looking defeated by life. Lin Yan assembled them in the yard.
"You are not here to labour blindly," he told them, his voice carrying. "You are here to build. You will learn methods that can heal land. You will be fed, housed fairly, and paid on time. But the work will be hard. The sun will be hot. The stone will be heavy. Those who cannot bear it may leave now. Those who stay, will help make something from nothing."
A few men shuffled, but none left. The promise of steady silver and a full belly was powerful.
Lin Yan and Zhao He split them into crews. One crew, under Lin Tie, began the back-breaking work of building a permanent camp in the valley—barracks, a cookhouse, storage. Another, under Lin Zhu's direction, started quarrying stone for the first series of small check dams across the dry riverbed. A third, under Lin Yan and Zhao He, began the sacred, unglamorous work of making soil—creating massive compost windrows from gathered scrub, manure hauled from their home ranch, and any organic matter they could find.
Standing at the edge of the vast, dusty bowl, watching the tiny figures of men move like ants, beginning the impossibly slow work of convincing stone to hold water and dust to hold life, Lin Yan felt a profound humility. This was no longer about a system mission or a family's survival. This was an act of faith in the land itself, and in the stubborn, hopeful will of people to make it bloom.
He had accepted the chain and the bridge. Now, they had to forge the links and lay the planks, one heavy stone, one shovelful of compost, one captured drop of water at a time. The Valley of Stone had met its promise: the promise of backbreaking labour, of patience tested to its limit, and of a legacy measured not in acres, but in the transformation of a wasteland into a cradle for generations of life. The war for grass had begun on a new, epic front.