Autumn deepened, painting the Azure Hills in a pyre of gold and crimson. The Lin Ranch, its annual bounty counted and secured, settled into the season's most crucial, inward-turning work: the harvest of life itself. The heavily pregnant mares—Mist, Sumac, Whisper, and Rime—dominated the rhythm of the days. Their needs were a silent, urgent command that overrode all else.
Lin Yan moved his cot back into the stable tack room. The air was thick with the smell of hay, horse, and anticipation. This foaling season was different from the first. Then, it had been a miracle. Now, it was a high-stakes production. Four foals. They needed four strong, healthy foals to keep their imperial contract on track. The pressure was a quiet hum in the back of his mind, a counterpoint to the mares' slow, deliberate movements.
Zhao He took charge of the stable's atmosphere. "Calm," he insisted, his own movements becoming more fluid, his voice a low murmur. "They feel everything. Our worry is a storm to them. Our patience is a still pond." He had Lin Xiao sit for hours in the straw with the mares, not doing anything, just being present, a small, familiar, unthreatening piece of the scenery. The boy's stillness was a lesson to them all.
The first to go was Sumac, the strong, no-nonsense mare. Her labour was like her—efficient and straightforward. In the deep silence of a frost-touched night, she delivered a robust, seal-brown colt with a splash of white on his forehead like a dash of paint. He was on his feet and nursing within the hour, all business. They named him "Anvil," for his solidity.
Two nights later, Rime, the speckled mare, foaled. Hers was a longer, more anxious labour. She paced and groaned, lying down and getting up repeatedly. Lin Yan watched, his system knowledge and Zhao He's experience merging into a shared, silent diagnosis: the foal was positioned right, but Rime was a first-time mother and fearful. It was Wang Shi who made the difference. She entered the stall not as a herdsman, but as a matron. She spoke to Rime in the same low, singing tone she used to soothe sick children, her hands steady as she offered sips of honeyed water. The mare finally settled, and a delicate, leggy filly slid into the world. She was the colour of frosted rosewood, with Rime's distinctive white speckles scattered over her coat like snowflakes. They named her "Drift."
The successful births eased the tension, but doubled the workload. The stable became a nursery and a school. Lin Yan and Zhao He began the imprinting process with Anvil and Drift—gentle handling, picking up tiny hooves, getting them used to human touch and smell. The two older yearlings, Dawn and Summit, watched from their adjacent paddock with curious snorts.
Then, the storm hit.
Whisper, the sensitive grey, went into labour on a night when a true autumn gale screamed down from the mountains. Rain lashed the stable roof. The lanterns swung, casting crazy shadows. Whisper was in clear distress. Her contractions were powerful but ineffective. Too much time passed with no sign of the amniotic sac.
"Breech," Zhao He hissed, his hand on her flank. "Or twisted."
Lin Yan's blood ran cold. A malpresentation. The quiet, clinical knowledge in his mind now had to guide his trembling hands in a storm-lashed stable, with a beloved animal's life—and their future—in the balance.
"I have to go in," he said, his voice barely audible over the wind.
Wang Shi had the kit ready. Lin Yan stripped off his tunic, washed his arms to the shoulder in the boiled water and strong herb wash. He coated his hand and arm in rendered lard. "Talk to her, Mother. Keep her calm."
He approached Whisper's rear. The mare was sweating, her eyes rolling white. At his touch, she flinched violently.
"Easy, girl," Zhao He murmured, holding her head, his body a wall of calm against her panic. "Easy. He's here to help."
Lin Yan took a deep breath, pushed past his own fear, and gently inserted his hand into the birth canal. It was a hot, tight, muscular world. He felt the foal's legs, but they were folded back, the spine curved the wrong way. A true breech. His mind flashed to the textbook procedure: Repulsion, rotation, traction. He had to push the foal back slightly into the uterus to create space to turn it.
It was a battle fought by inches in the dark. He pushed against the foal's rump, feeling the immense, resistant pressure of Whisper's contractions. He wedged his fingers, found a hock, gently pulled it forward, guiding the leg into the correct position. Then the other. Sweat dripped from his brow, mixing with rain and lard. Whisper groaned, a deep, ragged sound of effort and pain.
"Now the head," Zhao He urged, his own face taut. "Find the head, guide it around."
Lin Yan's arm was cramping. He felt the foal's neck, then the curve of its jaw. He cupped his hand around the tiny head and, with Whisper's next contraction, pushed and turned, a minute adjustment of life and death. He felt something give, a subtle alignment.
"Now! Tie!" he gasped.
Lin Tie, a silent mountain of strength at the ready, took the now-present front legs. At Lin Yan's nod, he pulled with a steady, immense pressure, following the direction Lin Yan guided from within.
With a final, wet rush, the foal was born. A filly. She was limp.
For a terrible second, she lay still in the straw. Then Whisper, with a ragged cry, turned and began frantically licking her. Lin Yan cleared the filly's nostrils, rubbed her chest. A shudder. A gasp. Life flooded into the small, dappled-grey body.
They named her "Tempest."
The battle left everyone drained. Whisper was exhausted but began to mother her filly with fierce tenderness. Lin Yan's arm throbbed, but his heart soared. They had faced a disaster and wrestled it into a victory.
Two days later, as if in reward, Mist, the calm grey mare, delivered without incident. A handsome, steel-grey colt, tall and elegant like his mother but with Granite's sturdy bone. They named him "Steel."
Four foals. Four healthy, promising foals. Anvil, Drift, Tempest, Steel. The contract's number was now seven. The stable was a riot of new life and careful management.
In the midst of this focused intensity, the sample of wool came back from the Maritime Prefecture. The report, conveyed by an excited Scholar Zhang, was a revelation. The "Azure Hills Stone-Wool" was not a myth. Its fibers were uniquely scaled, making them naturally water-resistant and more durable than ordinary wool when treated with fish oil. The prefectural naval supply office was interested. Very interested. They proposed a small, exclusive contract: twenty bolts of treated wool cloth per year, at a price that made their eyes water.
It was a niche market, but a lucrative and prestigious one. It required scaling their small flock, building a proper shearing and washing station, and learning the treatment process. Another branch on their growing tree.
But with success came the inevitable, envious gaze. The proof arrived not as a letter, but as a mark. Lin Zhu, checking the fence line near the road one morning, found it. Burned into a gatepost, crude but unmistakable: a stylized wolf's head.
It was a brand. But not their LR brand. It was a threat. A claim.
"The Wolf's Head Gang," Zhao He identified it grimly when shown. "Deserters, bandits, sell-swords. They operate in the border marches. They mark territory, or targets. This says they've looked. And they'll be back."
The festive atmosphere of the new foals evaporated, replaced by a cold vigilance. The wolf's head was a different kind of predator than the revenue officers or the lone watchers. This was organized, brazen.
Lin Yan didn't panic. He used the system points he'd been hoarding—over 300 now from months of steady management—to make two critical purchases: 'Defensive Perimeter Design & Tactics' (80 points) and 'Crisis Management & Negotiation for Rural Enterprises' (70 points).
The first gave him plans for reinforced gateways, night-fighting positions near key buildings, and alarm systems more sophisticated than tin cans. The second was darker knowledge: how to assess a threat's motives (theft, extortion, destruction), the value of appearing prepared to negotiate from strength, and when to appeal to higher authority.
He called a council of the entire adult workforce, including the foreman from the vale and Lao Li. He showed them the brand.
"We have a choice," Lin Yan said, his voice flat. "We can be a fortress that looks soft, inviting a siege. Or we can be a fortress that shows its teeth, hoping to deter the attack altogether. We choose teeth."
Under Zhao He's direction, they implemented the new defensive measures. They built raised platforms at the two main entrances, with roofs for all-weather watch. They installed a heavy, iron-bound bar for the main gate. They cleared fields of fire around the stable and house. They also made a show of it. When the village men came for their weekly patrol drill, they practiced repelling an attack on the gate, making noise, showing cohesion.
Simultaneously, Lin Yan sent a carefully worded message to Magistrate Gao, with a copy to Undersecretary Wen. He reported the find of the "bandit marker," expressed concern for the safety of the "imperial priority site and its personnel," and respectfully requested "guidance or increased patrol presence." He was not crying for help; he was formally registering a threat to imperial interests. It was a bureaucratic shield.
A week after the brand appeared, the answer came. Not from the magistrate, but from the Wolf's Head itself.
A single rider, his face scarred and his eyes empty, trotted up to the main gate in broad daylight. He carried no weapon in his hands. He tossed a small, cloth-wrapped bundle over the gate. It landed in the dust with a soft thud.
Inside was a sheep's knuckle bone, carved with the same wolf's head, and a scrap of parchment with two characters: Tribute?
It was an extortion demand. Pay, or be visited.
Lin Yan stood in the yard, the carved bone cold in his hand. The peaceful, life-giving work of the stable felt a million miles away. This was the other side of prosperity: the blood in the dust, the brand on the gate, the cold calculus of tribute.
He looked at the bone, then at the watchtower they'd built, where Lin Tie stood, an arrow nocked loosely on his bowstring. He looked at the main house, where his mother and sisters were, and at the stable, where four new lives tottered on wobbly legs.
The harvest had brought life. Now, it was time to defend it. The Lin Ranch had built its brand of grass and horseflesh. Now, they would have to defend it against a brand of blood and fear. The choice was not whether to fight, but how. And Lin Yan, the programmer turned rancher, began to calculate the variables of violence, diplomacy, and survival with a cold, clear focus he hadn't known he possessed. The ranch was no longer just a business. It was a citadel. And the siege had begun.