Three days passed.
The stranger slept like a log, his breathing heavy and rasping. The only movement he made was the occasional twitch of his hand, as if gripping an invisible spear.
The atmosphere in the Li household was tense.
"He's still not awake?" Li Jun whispered over breakfast, glancing nervously at the corner of the room where the man lay on a pile of straw. "Are we sure he's not a corpse? He smells worse than the chickens."
"He's alive," Li Wei said, finishing his porridge. "His fever broke last night."
Li Dazhong didn't speak. He simply ate, his eyes occasionally flicking to the stranger's scarred back. The presence of an unknown, wounded man was a ticking time bomb in a small village. If the yamen officers came looking, the Li family would be implicated.
"Wei'er," Dazhong put down his bowl. "If he doesn't wake by tonight, we move him to the ancestral hall. We can't risk the children."
Li Wei nodded. He understood the stakes. "I'll check on him."
***
**The Awakening**
It was mid-afternoon. Li Wei was in the courtyard, grinding wild herbs the system had identified as anti-inflammatory. He was mixing them with a bit of honey to apply to the soldier's wound.
Suddenly, a low, guttural growl vibrated through the air.
*Grrrr...*
It wasn't Yellow. The puppy was asleep at Li Wei's feet.
Li Wei looked up. The man on the straw mat was awake.
One eye was open—the other was swollen shut. But that single eye was burning with a terrifying intensity. It locked onto Li Wei. The man's hand, calloused and scarred, was gripping a shard of broken tile he must have found on the floor, holding it like a dagger.
"Where..." the man rasped, his voice like gravel scraping iron. "Who..."
Li Wei didn't panic. He didn't shout. He simply raised his hands, showing he held no weapon, only a paste of herbs.
"You're in Willow Village," Li Wei said calmly. "I found you in a ditch by the official road. You were half-dead."
The man's chest heaved. He scanned the room—the mud walls, the simple furniture, the frightened faces of Li Hua and Li Chen peeking out from the inner room. He looked at his injured leg, bound tightly with clean cloth.
"You... saved me?" The man's voice was filled with suspicion, not gratitude.
"I needed the karma," Li Wei lied smoothly, motioning for his siblings to stay back. "I'm a farmer. I found a man. I patched him up. That's all."
The man stared at Li Wei for a long moment, as if trying to pierce his soul. Then, the adrenaline faded. The pain of his leg rushed back, and he groaned, dropping the tile shard. His head fell back onto the straw.
"Useless," the man muttered, closing his eye. "Leg is gone. Can't walk. Can't fight. Waste of food."
Li Wei walked over, kneeling beside him. "The leg isn't gone. The bone is fine. The muscle is torn. If you rest and eat, you'll walk again in a month. Run in two."
The man laughed, a bitter, dry sound. "A month? I don't have a month. They... they might be looking..."
"Nobody looks for a dead man," Li Wei interrupted softly. "To the world, you're just a body in a ditch. If you stay here, you live. If you run now with that leg, you die in the woods."
The man fell silent. He looked at the ceiling beams.
"Name?" he finally asked.
"Li Wei."
"Qin Hu," the man grunted. "Former... guard. Western Frontier."
Qin Hu. The name suited him. It had the sound of iron and stone.
**[System Update: Identity Confirmed - Qin Hu.]**
**[Status: Disabled (Temporary). Loyalty: 5 (Wary).]**
**[Hidden Talent: Horseback Riding (Master), Spear (Master), Logistics (Basic).]**
Li Wei's mind raced. A master of the spear? A frontier guard? This was exactly what the ranch needed later—someone who could teach discipline, someone who could protect the herd. But right now, he was just a starving giant.
"Qin Hu," Li Wei said, dipping a cloth in water and offering it. "Rest. When you can stand, we'll talk about payment."
"Payment?" Qin Hu sneered. "I have no money."
"I don't want money," Li Wei said, standing up. He pointed to the basket of wild clover and the coop in the distance. "I have work. Hard work. When you're well, you'll pay me back with sweat."
***
**The Manure Crisis**
While Qin Hu slept off the exhaustion of waking, Li Wei returned to his immediate problem: Fertilizer.
The clover was growing, but the leaves were paling. The soil was exhausting itself. He needed to feed the earth.
He stood by the family's latrine pit. It was a simple, foul-smelling hole.
"Wei'er, don't tell me you're thinking of..." Li Qiang, who was passing by, wrinkled his nose.
"I need the manure for the river plot," Li Wei said. "Father, can I use the compost from the pit?"
Li Dazhong was smoking his pipe by the door. "That's for the rice seedlings in May. We can't spare it for your weeds."
Li Wei sighed. He expected this.
"Then I'll go to the town," Li Wei decided. "I'll buy manure."
"Buy manure?" Li Qiang laughed. "Who sells manure? The city collects it and dumps it outside the walls. It's free, but you have to haul it."
Li Wei's eyes lit up. "Free?"
"The city night soil collectors dump it in the pits outside the South Gate," Li Qiang explained. "But it's raw. It burns the roots if you use it directly. And the stink... no one goes near it."
**[System Knowledge: Composting.]**
*Raw manure is dangerous. It generates heat and releases ammonia, which kills plants. It must be fermented or composted with plant matter to become safe.*
"Raw is fine," Li Wei muttered. "I just need to process it."
He turned to the house. "Qin Hu is sleeping. Chen'er, watch him. I'm going to town."
***
**The Night Soil Deal**
Li Wei borrowed the family's handcart—a rickety, two-wheeled wooden cart usually pulled by their aging ox.
"Are you crazy?" Li Hua asked, pinching her nose as Li Wei prepared to leave. "You're going to the city... for poop?"
"It's gold," Li Wei grinned, though he tied a cloth over his own nose. "Wish me luck."
The walk to Qingyang Town was long with a heavy handcart. By the time he reached the South Gate, the sun was setting. The area outside the gate was a desolate stretch of land where the city dumped its refuse. It was a mountain of filth, swarming with flies.
A few ragged beggars lingered, picking through the trash for scraps of food. They watched Li Wei with hollow eyes as he approached the manure mountain.
He found a worker, a lowly servant of the city sanitation bureau, sitting on a rock, looking miserable.
"Hey," Li Wei called out, pulling his cloth mask tighter.
The worker looked up, startled to see a relatively clean villager approaching. "What do you want? The dump is closed."
"I want the manure," Li Wei pointed to the fresh pile. "I want to take it."
The worker blinked. Then he laughed. "You want it? Take it! Please! It saves us the trouble of moving it. Just don't dump it on the road."
"I need bags," Li Wei said. "I can take about... ten carts full."
"Ten carts?!" The worker stared at him like he was insane. "You're going to haul ten carts of night soil back to your village? At night?"
"Right now," Li Wei said. "Help me fill the bags, and I'll give you two coppers."
The worker's eyes widened. "You'll pay me? To help you take shit?"
"Two coppers. And you help me tie the bags so they don't spill."
"Deal!"
For the next hour, under the dying light of the sun, Li Wei and the worker shoveled the foul-smelling mixture of human and animal waste into old, torn sacks Li Wei had brought. The smell was eye-watering. It was the hardest, most disgusting work Li Wei had ever done. Even in his past life, he had never imagined doing this.
But the system was cheering him on.
**[Resource Acquired: High-Nitrogen Organic Matter (x10 Carts).]**
**[Processing Suggestion: Mix with soil and straw. Ferment for 15 days to kill pathogens and stabilize nutrients.]**
By the time Li Wei started the long trek back to Willow Village, the moon was high. The handcart groaned under the weight. It was piled high with sacks of waste.
He was sweating profusely. His arms were trembling. Every bump in the road sent a jolt of pain through his shoulders.
"Why... am I doing this..." he panted, wiping sweat from his eyes.
He thought of the lush pastures he wanted. He thought of the Brahman cattle, heavy and majestic, grazing on grass as tall as his waist. He thought of the money to send Li Chen to school.
"Because this is the foundation," he gritted out. "Grass grows from dirt. Dirt grows from shit. Empires grow from grass."
***
**The Return**
It was past midnight when the creaking wheels of the handcart woke the village dogs.
Li Wei stumbled into the courtyard, exhausted, smelling like a sewer. He nearly collapsed.
Li Dazhong came out, holding a lantern. He took one whiff and recoiled, his face turning green.
"Wei'er! What is this?!"
"Fertilizer," Li Wei wheezed, untying the ropes. "For the river plot. I got... a lot."
Qin Hu, who had been roused by the noise, hobbled to the doorway, leaning against the frame. He looked at the mountain of filth, then at Li Wei, who was covered in muck but standing tall.
The soldier's lips twitched. A hint of respect flickered in his one good eye.
"You are... a strange farmer, Li Wei," Qin Hu rasped. "You work harder than a convict."
Li Wei laughed, though it turned into a cough. "Get used to it, Big Qin. This is just the start."
He looked at the pile. It smelled terrible. It looked ugly. But to Li Wei, it was the fuel that would launch his ranch.
"Tomorrow," Li Wei said, dragging a sack off the cart. "We mix this with soil and straw. We're going to make the hottest compost pile Willow Village has ever seen."
He looked at his family, who were watching from a safe distance, and grinned beneath his mask.
"Come on. The night is young. Let's get to work."