Chapter 9: The Second Harvest
The moon hung low and swollen over the eastern mountains when Wei felt the tree call to him.
It was not a voice. Not words. It was a pull in his chest, like someone had hooked a thread around his ribs and was tugging, gently but insistently.
He'd felt it first at dinner—a weird little flutter he'd dismissed as indigestion from eating too many pickled radishes. His mother had made extra, and he'd gone back for thirds like an idiot, and now he was paying for it. Or so he'd thought.
But by the time he lay down on the kang, the flutter had grown into a steady, pulsing warmth that matched his heartbeat and absolutely refused to let him sleep.
Feels like I've to do something dramatic at midnight. Again. Because apparently I don't get to sleep anymore.
What's next now? Want me to fight a dragon? Wrestle an orc? Host a dinner party for goblins? I'd rather have the goblins, at least they'd bring their own knives.
The fish-shaped knot in the third beam from the door was barely visible in the darkness. He'd been staring at that stupid knot since he was a kid. Li had named it when she was five, her small finger tracing the loops in the wood.
"It's a fish, Wei-ge, see? It's swimming toward the window." He'd told her, with all the wisdom of his eleven years, that it was just a knot in the wood. Nothing special. Just a random whorl in an old ceiling beam.
She'd looked at him like he'd personally murdered her favorite chicken.
That look of pure, disappointed betrayal that only a five-year-old could summon.
Eighteen years old now, and she still brought it up whenever she wanted to win an argument.
"You couldn't even see the fish, Wei. What do you know about anything? Your eyes work but you don't actually see."
She was right. It does look like a fish. Always has. Maybe I was just a dumb kid who couldn't see magic even when it was swimming right at him. Maybe I still am, most days. Maybe that's what the tree's been trying to teach me—how to actually see.
Hao snorted in his sleep and rolled over, one arm flopping across Wei's face with the grace of a dead fish. His elbow caught Wei's nose.
"Get off," Wei muttered, shoving the arm away.
Hao made a sound that might have been "sorry" or might have been "more congee"—fifty-fifty with him—and rolled back the other way, taking the blanket with him.
His bruise was practically gone now, just a faint yellow smear across his ribs. Lucky bastard healed fast.
Hadn't stopped him from milking the injury for extra food and sympathy for three straight days, though. Every meal: "Oh, I shouldn't lift that pot, my ribs." Every chore: "The wall? In my condition?" Every opportunity to avoid work: "Li, could you feed the ducks? It's just... the bending... you understand."
"The hero of the goblin battle," Wei muttered at the ceiling, "felled by a blanket shortage. They'll write songs about him. Tragic ballads sung by generations yet unborn."
Hao, completely unconscious, made a noise that sounded like agreement. Which was honestly impressive.
Xiao Hei lifted his head from his spot on the floor and whined softly.
"Good work guarding my home." Wei patted his head.
His white paw—the one that marked him as different from the other pups—twitched, and his dark eyes caught the gold light seeping through the window and threw it back in two bright spots.
The puppy had appointed himself Guardian of the Bedroom sometime last week and took his duties with enormous seriousness.
Every creak in the old house. Every shadow that moved in the moonlight. Every moth that got too close to the window. All of it required immediate investigation and possibly barking.
He was, Wei reflected, probably the most diligent guard on the entire farm. Also the most easily distracted by beetles. The two things weren't necessarily contradictory.
Diligence and distraction often went hand in hand. Grandfather had said something like that once, years ago, when Wei had asked why he always carried his walking stick even inside.
"Because I'm paying attention," the old man had said, "and paying attention means noticing everything, even the things that don't matter. Especially those. They're usually the ones that end up mattering most."
"Yeah, I know, little man," Wei whispered. "I feel it too."
Xiao Hei wagged his tail so hard his whole back end shook, then immediately stood up, circled three times—because apparently the floor needed to be stamped down in exactly the right configuration before any further action could be taken—and settled into exactly the same position he'd been in before.
The puppy had many talents. Efficiency was not among them. But enthusiasm made up for a lot.
Wei pulled on his clothes in the dark, moving by memory and touch. The trousers with the patched knee—his mother had sewn that patch three winters ago, after he'd caught the fabric on a nail in the tool shed and torn a hole the size of his fist.
She'd grumbled for an hour while she stitched, her needle darting in and out with the precision of long practice. "Twenty-three years old and you still can't walk past a nail without getting tangled."
He'd pointed out that the nail was at eye level. She'd told him that was worse. He'd learned two things that day: his mother could weaponize guilt with surgical precision, and he really needed to watch where he was going. Neither lesson had fully taken.
The jacket she kept threatening to burn if he didn't let her patch the elbows. The elbows were practically transparent now, just a few brave threads holding on for dear life, and every time she saw them she made a sound like a kettle coming to a boil. "I'll fix it tomorrow," he kept saying.
He'd been saying that for six months. At this point it was a family joke. Hao had started taking bets on whether the jacket or their mother's patience would run out first. So far the jacket was winning, but their mother was a dark horse.
His shoes, laced tight. The scythe off the wall, its blade wrapped in cloth. Just in case. He'd learned that lesson the hard way—no weapon, got jumped by a mutated pig in his own courtyard, nearly died.
The scar on his side was gone now, healed by the tree's blessing, but the memory wasn't. Danger didn't announce itself with trumpets and warnings. Danger came quiet, in the spaces between ordinary moments. Danger just walked in and made itself at home.
He stepped over Xiao Hei—who immediately abandoned his post and trotted after him, tail wagging with the joyful certainty that an adventure was about to happen, probably involving food—and eased the door open.
The cold hit him like a slap. Good cold. Clean cold. The kind of cold that made your lungs feel like they'd been rinsed out with mint water. His breath fogged silver in the moonlight, curling and dissipating like smoke from a dying fire, like all the words he'd never figured out how to say.
The courtyard was silver and grey and quiet. The well stood in the center like a dark mouth waiting to speak. The animal pens were silent. He could see the wall rising dark against the stars, its vines pulsing faintly with the tree's reflected gold.
Somewhere up there on the wall walk, Feng would be standing guard, or sitting, or doing whatever Feng did during the long night watches. The man never said. He never said much of anything. But his presence was steady, reliable, a fixed point in the darkness.
Most of the dogs were asleep. Da and Er lay on the porch, their heads on their paws, their breathing synchronized like they'd practiced it—one long inhale, one long exhale, perfectly matched, a rhythm older than the farm itself.
The three unnamed puppies—Hao was still pushing for Chaos, Destruction, and That One, and their mother was still vetoing all three with increasing exasperation every time he suggested them—were tangled in a pile by the well, twitching in their sleep. Probably dreaming about the goose.
Everyone dreamed about the goose eventually. That bird had left psychological scars on every living creature on this farm. Even the bull gave him a wide berth, and the bull wasn't afraid of anything.
And Hei was waiting for him.
The big dog materialized out of the shadows near the gate like he'd been poured from the darkness itself. His massive body shifted from shadow to solid form in the space of a blink, and his amber eyes glowed faintly, twin points of gold in the night.
Since his evolution, he'd become something more than a dog. Something that walked between the light and the dark. Something that guarded.
Wei sometimes wondered if Hei even slept anymore, or if he just dissolved into the shadows and waited, patient and eternal, until he was needed.
Xiao Hei immediately bounded over and attempted to lick the larger dog's face with the enthusiasm of a creature who had absolutely no concept of personal space or dignity.
His small pink tongue darted out again and again, aiming for Hei's nose, his ears, his eyes, anywhere that might benefit from urgent and thorough cleaning. Hei endured this with the patience of an old soldier watching a raw recruit make a fool of himself on the training ground.
His expression—if a dog could be said to have an expression—was one of long-suffering tolerance mixed with something that might have been affection, buried very deep. When the puppy finally subsided, panting with satisfaction, Hei turned those luminous eyes to Wei and waited.
"You feel it too," Wei said.
It wasn't a question. Hei's tail wagged once, slow and deliberate. Obviously. I felt it hours ago. What took you so long? You humans and your need for sleep. It's very inconvenient.
*****
The Tree of Life stood at the heart of the farm, and it was burning.
Not with fire. With light. Gold light, pulsing up through the trunk in slow, rhythmic waves that Wei could feel in his bones—a deep, resonant thrum, like the bass note of some enormous instrument playing a song that only the earth could hear.
The light spread along the branches in rivers of brilliance, pooling in the thirty fruits that hung like someone had hung thirty tiny suns from the limbs. The whole courtyard was lit up like midday, shadows driven back into corners, every detail sharp and clear.
Wei could see individual blades of grass, the texture of the well's stone, the sleeping forms of the puppies across the yard.
But these were not the uniform amber orbs of the first harvest. In the hours since Wei had last looked at them—just before dinner, when he'd paused under the tree to check the ripening progress and had seen nothing but a bunch of identical glowing balls—they had transformed utterly. The tree had been working on them. Shaping them. Pouring something different into each one, like a craftsman who couldn't stop refining his work.
Wei stopped at the edge of the tree's glow and just stared.
Okay. That's new. Very new. The tree has apparently decided to become an artist in its spare time. What else do you do when you're an ancient magical entity stuck in a courtyard?
The fruits were not scattered randomly among the branches. They hung in distinct clusters, each group separated from the others by deliberate gaps of empty branch, like a librarian had sorted books onto different shelves. And the fruits within each cluster were identical to each other, but completely different from the fruits in the other clusters. Four types. Four purposes. The tree had organized its gifts with a precision that was almost unsettling. Almost beautiful.
The largest cluster hung lowest, almost within arm's reach. Seven fruits. Each was the size of a man's heart—his own heart, maybe, or close enough—and their skins were the color of deep amber, that particular shade of honey held up to a candle flame. Veins of crimson ran through them, pulsing with a slow, heavy rhythm that Wei could feel in his own chest, as if the fruits and his heart were beating in time, a duet of blood and light. The air around them was warm, almost hot, and when he breathed it in, he tasted something like cinnamon and something like iron. Like the forge when Jianguo was working. Like the earth after a battle.
Strength fruits. Has to be. Look at them. They're practically flexing. I can almost hear them doing push-ups. "ONE, TWO, THREE, FEEL THE BURN."
Above them, higher in the branches, hung a second cluster. Also seven fruits. These were smaller—no larger than plums—and their color was not fixed. It shifted as he watched, flowing from silver to pale gold to the soft green of new leaves to a blue so deep it was almost black, then cycling back again in a slow, hypnotic loop. They shimmered like opals, like tears held at the corner of an eye, like the surface of a lake just before dawn when the world was still deciding what color to be. When the tree's light pulsed through them, they seemed to hold entire worlds within their skins—tiny landscapes of light, the shadows of birds in flight, the reflection of clouds that didn't exist in the real sky.
Skills. The tree's giving me skills. About damn time I got something besides "hit things with scythe." Although I'm pretty good at that now. I've had practice. Lots of practice. Too much practice.
Higher still, near the crown, hung a cluster of fifteen fruits. These glowed with a warm, steady gold light—not the fierce gold of the tree's trunk, but something softer. Gentler. The color of hearth-fires seen through windows on winter nights, when you're coming home late and the light is the first thing you see, and you know you're safe before you even open the door. The color of his mother's cooking fire, the one she'd been tending since before he was born, the one that had never gone out. The color of the oil lamps his father lit every evening, even now, even after the world had ended, because you didn't stop doing the small things just because the world had ended. Each fruit was shaped like a tiny lantern, slightly translucent, and within them, Wei could see flames flickering—each one a different shade of gold and amber and pale yellow, like a family of fires all burning together.
Not for me. Those are for them. The oath-bound. The ones who chose to stay. The tree made gifts for the people who said yes to this place. That's... actually kind of beautiful. In a weird, tree-ish way. I didn't know you had it in you.
And at the very top of the tree, alone on a single thin branch that seemed to have grown specifically for this purpose—no other branches near it, no other fruit on it, as if the tree had cleared a space just for this one—hung a single fruit.
It was the color of old bronze, dark and burnished, with a weight to it that Wei could feel even from the ground. It did not glow. It did not pulse. It seemed to absorb the light around it, to hold it deep within itself, like a secret that had not yet decided whether to be told, like a decision that had not yet been made. It was larger than the skill fruits, smaller than the strength fruits, and it hung perfectly still while all the others swayed gently in a wind that Wei could not feel. The stillness of it was what made it frightening. Everything else was alive and moving. This one was waiting.
What the hell are you? You look like you contain either great wisdom or great doom. Probably both, knowing this tree. "Here's a gift, Wei! It might save your soul or it might destroy everything you love! Good luck!"
Xiao Hei barked once, sharply. The puppy had found a beetle near the roots of the tree—a big black thing with mandibles that clicked like tiny castanets—and was attempting to befriend it through sheer force of will. He lay flat on his belly, nose inches from the insect, tail wagging in slow, hypnotized sweeps. His whole body quivered with the effort of not pouncing. The beetle, for its part, was having absolutely none of it. Its mandibles clicked with what Wei could only interpret as deep, insectoid annoyance. Go away, small furry predator. I am busy being a beetle. I have beetle things to do.
"That's a beetle," Wei said. "Not food. Not friend. Just a beetle living its beetle life."
Xiao Hei looked up at him, then back at the beetle, then back at Wei. The look on his face clearly said Are you absolutely sure? Because it looks fascinating and I have never seen one before and maybe if I just touch it gently with my nose—
"Pretty sure. Leave it alone. Let the beetle be a beetle."
The puppy whined softly, deeply conflicted, his tail drooping slightly. The beetle, seizing its moment of reprieve, clicked its mandibles one last time—a sound that somehow conveyed both immense dignity and profound contempt—and began a slow, stately retreat under a root. Xiao Hei watched it go with the expression of a child who had just lost a potential best friend over a misunderstanding that could have been resolved with better communication.
Wei walked forward and placed his palm against the trunk.
The tree welcomed him as it always did. Warmth flowed up his arm, into his chest, into that space behind his sternum where the inner tree lived—the mirror of this one, growing in the green field of his soul. He'd first found that inner space after his Tier 2 advancement, and he still didn't fully understand it. It was not a dream. It was not a vision. It was a place that existed somewhere between his heartbeat and his breath, and the tree was there, and so was he. Like having a second home inside his own ribs. Like being two places at once.
But this time, the connection was deeper.
He felt the tree's awareness brush against his own. It was old. Ancient. Not in a threatening way—in the way of mountains, of rivers, of things that had been here long before humans and would be here long after. It had been a seed in a dying world, a voice that had spoken without words, a presence that had asked him—not commanded him, asked him—to plant it. "Plant me before the sky breaks. I will hold the ground. You will hold the gate."
He'd held the gate. The tree had held the ground. And now it was offering him something more, because that's what the tree did. It gave. It nurtured. It protected. And in return, it asked only that he do the same. Not a bad deal, really. Not bad at all.
You've been busy, he thought at the tree. Making all these fancy fruits. Organizing them by type. You didn't have to go to all this trouble, you know. I would've figured it out eventually. Probably. Maybe. After eating a few by accident.
The tree didn't answer in words. It never did. But he got the impression of something vast and patient and almost... affectionate. Was that weird? Feeling affection from a tree? Probably. But the world had ended and his dog could turn into a shadow now and he'd just eaten seven fruits that tasted like sunlight, so "weird" had packed its bags and moved to another country a long time ago. Weird was the new normal. Weird was practically a family member at this point.
A panel flickered into view, the characters larger and more ornate than usual, written in gold that shimmered like it was made of liquid light. The script was elegant, deliberate, each character drawn by a hand that had all the time in the world. Whoever—or whatever—designed these panels had an eye for aesthetics. Wei appreciated that. It was a small thing, but small things mattered.
```
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ THE SECOND HARVEST │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ The Tree of Life offers its bounty. │
│ │
│ 30 fruits. 4 types. 4 purposes. │
│ │
│ 7 Fruits of the Guardian's Strength │
│ 7 Fruits of the Guardian's Wisdom │
│ 15 Fruits of the Hearth │
│ 1 Fruit of Sovereignty │
│ │
│ The Guardian's fruits are for the Guardian │
│ alone. The Hearth fruits are for those who │
│ have bound themselves to the land. │
│ │
│ The tree remembers all things. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Wei read it twice. Three times. He looked up at the bronze fruit, alone at the top, patient and dark.
Sovereignty. That sounds ominous as hell. Like something out of an old story where the hero gets absolute power and immediately makes a terrible decision and everyone dies and the moral is "be careful what you wish for." Thanks for the vote of confidence, tree. Really feeling the trust here.
Well. Only one way to find out. He reached up and touched the first amber fruit.
---
The skin was warm against his fingers, almost hot, and it pulsed with a rhythm that matched his heartbeat exactly. For a weird moment, he imagined he could feel the fruit breathing—or maybe that was the tree breathing, or maybe that was him breathing, and they were all breathing together. Like a three-part harmony made of lungs.
Focus. You're stalling. Eat the magical fruit, Wei. It's not going to eat itself. And you've got twenty-nine more to go after this one.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE GUARDIAN'S STRENGTH │
│ (1 of 7) │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ Tier 2 | Legendary │
│ │
│ Effect: Permanently increases all basic │
│ stats by +1.0 │
│ Mana: +150-180 per fruit (random) │
│ │
│ ⚠ For the Guardian alone. No other soul │
│ may consume these fruits. │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────┘
```
Seven fruits. Seven points to every stat. His mind, sharper now than it had ever been, did the arithmetic without conscious effort. Seven to Strength. Seven to Agility. Seven to Physical Resilience. Seven to Intelligence. Seven to Stamina. His Mana pool, already deep at 468, would deepen further with each one.
By the time the night was over, he'd be somewhere around fourteen points in everything. Which was, frankly, absurd. A week ago he'd been barely above two. If he kept growing at this rate, he'd be able to arm-wrestle the Smolderhorn Bull. And win. And then apologize, because the bull had dignity.
Here goes nothing. And if I die, Hao gets my boots. He's been eyeing them for months.
He bit into it.
"Holy—"
The taste was sunlight. Not a metaphor. Not a poetic comparison. It tasted like what sunlight would taste like if you could put it in your mouth—honey and ozone and the copper tang of a thunderstorm and something wild and green underneath, something that tasted like growing things and deep soil and the first rain after a drought, when the earth cracked open and drank and drank.
The flesh dissolved on his tongue before he could chew, turned to liquid warmth that poured down his throat and exploded outward into his chest, his arms, his legs, his spine, his goddamn fingertips.
Every muscle in his body clenched at once. His bones creaked—he could hear them, a sound like green wood settling into a fire—and his vision went white, then gold, then white again. For a single, terrifying, exhilarating moment, he was absolutely certain he was about to come apart at the seams. Just unravel like cheap thread and scatter across the grass in a million glowing pieces.
Then it stopped.
He was on his knees. He didn't remember falling. The grass was cool under his palms. The world was spinning gently, the way it did after you stood up too fast, except he hadn't stood up. His heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his teeth. In his actual teeth. That couldn't be normal. Nothing about this was normal.
"Okay," he said out loud. His voice came out rough, scraped. "Okay. That's one. Six more to go. No problem. I'm fine. Everything's fine. I've never been better. This is a completely reasonable thing to be doing at midnight."
```
Strength: 7.6 → 8.6
Agility: 7.3 → 8.3
Physical Resilience: 7.4 → 8.4
Intelligence: 7.4 → 8.4
Stamina: 7.4 → 8.4
Mana: 468 → 651
```
Xiao Hei, who had abandoned the beetle and was now standing a few feet away with his ears flat against his skull and his tail tucked between his legs, let out a low, worried whine. His whole small body was trembling visibly.
"I'm fine," Wei said. His voice was getting steadier. "Really. Just... give me a second. I need to... process whatever the hell that was."
"I hope I won't be sleeping under the tree tonight."
Hei padded over and pressed his massive head against Wei's shoulder. The gesture was unmistakable. You are definitely not fine, but I will stay here anyway just in case you're not fine in a way that requires me to do something. That's literally my job.
"Good dog. Best dog. You're the best dog who ever lived and I don't tell you that enough."
Hei's tail wagged once. I know. Now eat the next one and stop being dramatic.
The second fruit. The third. The fourth.
By the fifth fruit, Wei had stopped reading the numbers. His body was too busy processing the changes to care about arithmetic. The warmth had settled into a constant, steady pressure, like being held underwater by a gentle current—not drowning, just submerged.
Every cell in his body was humming a single note. His bones felt denser. His muscles felt like they'd been rewoven from the inside out by someone who actually knew what they were doing. His skin tingled with a sensation he couldn't name.
By the sixth fruit, he was on his back in the grass with his hands pressed flat against the earth, and he could feel the roots beneath the soil. Not just the tree's roots—all of them. The orchard, stretching out in long lines like green arteries, every tree connected to every other tree.
The vegetable garden, the herbs, the weeds growing between the cobblestones. Every living thing that anchored itself to the ground was suddenly visible to him, a vast underground web of life and mana and slow, patient growth.
He could feel the worms moving through the dirt, digesting and aerating and living their small, essential lives. He could feel the water seeping through the aquifer, clean and cold and endless. He could feel the slow, patient hunger of the soil itself, always reaching, always growing, always making more life from death.
What the fuck, he thought, but it was distant, abstract. His mind was too full of roots to properly panic.
By the seventh fruit, he wasn't sure where his body ended and the tree began.
He swallowed the last bite and collapsed completely, his arms spread wide, staring up at the branches. The leaves rustled above him, a sound like whispered conversation. The gold light pulsed. The world was a single, breathing thing, and he was part of it, and that was terrifying and beautiful and completely insane. All of it. Every last bit.
Hei lay down beside him, a wall of warmth against the cold night air. Xiao Hei—bravery restored now that Wei wasn't actively glowing like a small, unstable sun—climbed onto his chest and sat there, looking down at him with an expression of deep and solemn concern. His little pink tongue darted out and licked Wei's chin. Then again. Then a third time, just to be thorough.
"Yeah," Wei said, reaching up to scratch behind the puppy's ears with a hand that felt like it belonged to someone else. "I'm really fine. Better than fine. I'm... whatever the opposite of dead is. Super alive. Mega alive. Alive squared."
```
Strength: 7.6 → 14.6
Agility: 7.3 → 14.3
Physical Resilience: 7.4 → 14.4
Intelligence: 7.4 → 14.4
Stamina: 7.4 → 14.4
Mana: 468 → 1637
```
He stared at the numbers. Fourteen-point-six Strength. Fourteen-point-four for the other stats.His Mana pool had shot up sky high—468 to 1637 in the space of an hour. He could probably lift the Smolderhorn Bull now. He could probably lift the bull and carry it around the farm like a very large, very confused pet.
What the hell am I turning into? Some kind of farming demigod? Is that a thing? Is there a council of farming demigods somewhere that I'm supposed to report to? "Hello, my name is Zhang Wei, and I can make radishes grow really fast."
He pushed himself up slowly. His muscles responded with an ease that startled him—no stiffness, no ache, no residual pain from the transformation.
The bruises from the goblin attack had vanished entirely. The thin scar on his cheek was gone. He flexed his fingers, made a fist, released it. The strength in that simple motion felt like it could crack stone.
Later. Test it later. There's more to do. The tree isn't done with me yet. And honestly, neither am I.
He looked up at the second cluster. The seven wisdom fruits shimmered through their endless cycle of colors, silver to gold to green to blue, and in each one he could see the glint of possibility waiting to be unlocked.
"Alright," he muttered. "Round two. Let's see what else you've got, tree. Hit me with your best shot."
*****
The first wisdom fruit was silver, smooth as a mirror, and when he held it up, he could see his own reflection in its surface—his face distorted slightly by the curve, his eyes wide and gold-ringed, his expression somewhere between anticipation and the particular sort of exhaustion that came from eating seven magical fruits in rapid succession.
He bit into it. The taste was cool and clean, like mint and morning dew, like the first drink from the well after a long day in the fields when you hadn't realized how thirsty you were until the water touched your lips. The knowledge flowed into him not as words or images, but as instinct. Like remembering something he'd always known but somehow forgotten, like a word on the tip of his tongue that finally surfaced.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE GUARDIAN'S WISDOM │
│ (1 of 7) │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ Grants skill: HAND OF THE FARMER │
│ │
│ Effect: Channel mana into soil to │
│ accelerate crop growth by 200%. │
│ Mana cost: 30 per activation. │
│ │
│ The land knows the hand that tends it. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
```
Suddenly, he understood soil. Not as dirt. Not as a medium for roots. As a living system—a web of fungi and bacteria and minerals and mana, all interacting in patterns so complex and beautiful they made his breath catch in his throat. He could feel the vegetable garden thirty meters away, every plant distinct.
The cabbages needed more nitrogen—he could sense the deficiency like a color that was slightly wrong. The tomatoes had been overwatered for three days now; someone had been too enthusiastic with the watering can and the roots were starting to complain. The radishes were ready to harvest, and if they waited another day they'd start to split, their flesh cracking open like overripe fruit left too long on the vine.
He knew these things the way he knew how to breathe. The way he knew his mother's voice in a crowd. The way he knew that Li's fish was still swimming toward the window.
"Hand of the Farmer," he said, testing the name. It felt right on his tongue. He'd always been a farmer—born to it, raised in it, shaped by it even when he'd tried to leave for the city, even when he'd convinced himself that the soil was just dirt and the work was just work. The tree had made it official. Gave him the title and the power to match.
The second wisdom fruit was pale gold and hummed faintly against his palm, a vibration like a cat purring, like a beehive at the height of summer.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE GUARDIAN'S WISDOM │
│ (2 of 7) │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ Grants skill: PULSE OF LIFE │
│ │
│ Effect: Emit a 20-meter aura that gradually │
│ restores health to all allies and plants │
│ within range. Mana cost: 10 per minute. │
│ │
│ Life calls to life. The Guardian sustains. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
```
The flavor was rich, almost meaty—bone broth that had been simmering since morning, the kind his mother made when someone was sick and needed strength. When the warmth reached his mind, he understood immediately what the tree was giving him. He could project his own vitality outward in a steady, gentle field. Wounds would close faster within it. Plants would recover from blight. The exhausted would find their strength returning. It wasn't dramatic—not the sudden, targeted burst of Touch of Restoration—but it was steady. Reliable. The kind of thing that kept people alive during long sieges, during hard winters, during all the slow, grinding crises that weren't dramatic enough to be called battles but killed just as surely.
Pulse of Life. I like that. I'm a walking, talking bandage now. A very manly bandage. With a scythe. This is definitely going on my resume.
The third wisdom fruit was the color of new leaves in spring—that pale, almost translucent green that meant winter was finally, finally over.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE GUARDIAN'S WISDOM │
│ (3 of 7) │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ Grants skill: EYES OF THE LAND │
│ │
│ Effect: Extend senses beyond the wall, │
│ perceiving movement, mana signatures, and │
│ threats within a 50-li radius. │
│ Mana cost: 40 per activation. │
│ │
│ Nothing passes unseen. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
```
Wei ate it slowly, savoring it—the taste was complex, layered, like every season compressed into a single bite, like the first rain after a drought and the first frost of autumn and the first warmth of spring all at once.
This was the one he'd been hoping for, the skill he hadn't dared to name even in his own thoughts. Long-distance sensing. The ability to see threats before they reached the walls. The ability to scout without leaving the farm, without risking anyone's life.
When the knowledge settled, his awareness flickered outward like a candle flame catching in a draft.
And for a single, terrifying, ecstatic moment, he could see everything.
The farm spread out below him like a living map—the wall, the buildings, the animal pens, every detail sharp and clear. The orchard, each tree distinct, each piece of fruit glowing faintly with its own mana signature. The rice paddies, water shimmering. The vegetable garden, the duck pond, the well. He could see Feng on the wall walk, a steady presence in the darkness, his mind a calm hum of vigilance. He could see his family sleeping in the house, their dreams warm and quiet.
Beyond the wall, the goblin camp in the hills. Torches guttering. Tents made of hide and bone. Goblins sleeping, goblins sharpening knives, goblins squabbling over something that might have been food. The Scarred One, sitting apart from the others, its orange eyes open and staring toward the farm. It didn't know he was watching—he was sure of it—but it knew something was happening. He could see the tension in its shoulders, the way its claws tapped restlessly against the stone it held.
Further out. The ruins of Qinghe. A basement beneath what had been a department store, where a small group of survivors still huddled in the dark—the same group, maybe, that he'd glimpsed once before, still alive, still holding on. The crack in the sky above the town hall, still open, still bleeding that sickly purple light like a wound that refused to close. And somewhere in the distant city, miles and miles away, a darkness that made his breath catch in his throat—something vast, something organized, something building.
He yanked himself back, gasping. The world snapped into its normal dimensions like a rubber band released from tension. Hei was beside him, solid and warm. Xiao Hei was barking, high and anxious, his small body rigid.
"Sorry," Wei managed. His voice was shaking. "Sorry, sorry. That was... that was a lot. That was way too much. Fifty li is insane. Who needs to see fifty li? Nobody needs to see fifty li. That's too many li."
He sat down heavily, his back against the tree trunk, and let his heartbeat slow. The skill worked. He could see threats before they reached the wall. He could scout without leaving the farm. But he'd need to learn control—serious control—before using it in an actual crisis. The flood of information was overwhelming. Paralyzing. He couldn't afford to freeze when something was actually coming.
Note to self: practice that one. A lot. Preferably sitting down. With a wall behind me. And maybe Hei sitting on my legs so I don't float away into the sensory abyss.
The fourth wisdom fruit was the color of storm clouds—dark grey, shot through with threads of silver that flickered and vanished like lightning in distant skies.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE GUARDIAN'S WISDOM │
│ (4 of 7) │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ Grants skill: TOUCH OF RESTORATION │
│ │
│ Effect: Channel mana into a single plant │
│ or animal to accelerate natural healing │
│ by 500% for 1 hour. Cure minor diseases. │
│ Mana cost: 25 per activation. │
│ │
│ What withers may bloom again. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
```
The taste was bitter at first, like the herbal medicine his grandmother used to brew when he was sick as a child—that dark, viscous tea that tasted like regret and made him gag every single time.
She'd stand over him with her arms crossed until he drank every last drop, her face impassive, her eyes betraying nothing. "All of it," she'd say.
"The bottom is the strongest part." He'd never known if that was true or just something she said to make him finish it. Probably both. With Grandmother, it was always both.
Then the bitterness shifted, became sweet, became warm, like honey stirred into that same dark tea, transforming it from punishment to comfort. Like the world was saying: yes, healing hurts, but it's worth it.
He thought of Hei's leg. All those years ago, when the Lins had broken it with a rock or a club or whatever they'd used, and there had been nothing he could do but sit in the dust with the dog and wait. He'd been younger then.
Softer. He hadn't known how to heal anything. He'd just sat there with his hand on Hei's head, watching the afternoon light move across the courtyard, feeling useless and small and full of a rage he didn't know what to do with.
He thought of Hao's ribs, cracked twice now in defense of the farm.
"We'll if he got beat up by stray goblins again, I can let him heal faster."
"So he can get beaten up again." Wei smiled dramatically, imagining 3 goblins were beating up Hao outside the gate.
Hao felt something ominous, "fuck, is there a monster outside !?".
He thought of Bai Jun, still recovering in the barn, Song Na's stitches holding him together while his body did the slow work of mending. He thought of his mother's hands, gnarled from decades of work, aching in the cold.
He could help them now. He could be more than a guardian who killed threats. He could be a guardian who mended what was broken.
That's what Grandfather meant. Farmer, not gardener. We don't just make things beautiful. We make them survive. And sometimes surviving means healing.
The fifth wisdom fruit was the color of rich black soil—the kind that crumbled in your hand and smelled of earth and time and all the things that had grown and died and grown again in an endless cycle.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE GUARDIAN'S WISDOM │
│ (5 of 7) │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ Grants skill: SHIELD OF ROOTS │
│ │
│ Effect: Summon roots from the earth to │
│ create a temporary barrier (10m wide, 3m │
│ high). Requires proximity to the Tree. │
│ Mana cost: 60 per activation. │
│ │
│ The earth defends its own. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
```
The taste was ancient. Woodsmoke and incense, the smell of old temples and older forests, the particular scent of a place that had been sacred for so long that the holiness had soaked into the stones themselves.
He understood what the tree was giving him. A wall within a wall. A defense he could summon anywhere the roots reached—and the roots reached everywhere now, threading through the soil like veins, connecting every corner of the farm.
If the wall was breached—he could hold the gap. He could buy his family time. He could make the invaders pay for every inch of soil they tried to take.
"They'll find another wall waiting for them. And another. And another. This farm has teeth now. When they are exhausted, I'll beat em up"
Wei bared his teeth and smiled hilariously like a crazy demon.
The sixth wisdom fruit was the color of deep water, blue so dark it was almost black, and when he held it, it felt cold against his palm.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE GUARDIAN'S WISDOM │
│ (6 of 7) │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ Grants skill: FLOW OF ABUNDANCE │
│ │
│ Effect: Bless a water source, increasing │
│ purity and volume by 300% permanently. │
│ Mana cost: 100 per water source. │
│ │
│ Water is the blood of the land. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
```
The taste was clean and cold, like drinking from a mountain spring after a long climb. He thought of the well, whose water had always been good but never abundant—they'd had to ration it during dry summers, measuring every bucket like it was gold dust.
He thought of the duck pond, which Li tended with such devotion, clearing the algae and checking the water quality every morning.
He thought of the irrigation channels that fed the rice paddies, designed by his father decades ago, maintained by three generations of careful hands.
He could bless them all. The farm would never want for water again. In a world where clean water was scarcer than food, the tree had just handed him the keys to an endless supply.
This alone would be worth everything. Everything else is just... extra. This is life. This is the difference between surviving and thriving.
The seventh wisdom fruit was the smallest of all—no larger than a cherry, its color a deep, vivid green, the green of the first leaves pushing through snow in early spring, the green of new life asserting itself against all odds, against all logic, against the entire weight of winter.
```
┌──────────────────────────────┐
│ FRUIT OF THE GUARDIAN'S WISDOM │
│ (7 of 7) │
├──────────────────────────────┤
│ Grants skill: GIFT OF FERTILITY │
│ │
│ Effect: Ritual at the Tree to permanently │
│ increase soil fertility by 100%. │
│ Mana cost: 200 per ritual. │
│ │
│ From dust, life. From life, abundance. │
└──────────────────────────────┘
```
"Fertility, aah, it's not what I thought by hearing the name." Wei blushed.
Wei held it in his palm, this tiny thing that contained so much potential it made his head spin. The taste was green—not a metaphor, not a comparison, but actual, literal greenness.
It tasted the way new leaves smelled after rain. The way spring air felt on your skin when you'd been inside all winter and had forgotten what warmth was like.
The way the first shoots of rice looked when they broke the surface of the paddy water, pale and fragile and absolutely determined to live.
He swallowed, and the knowledge settled into him like a seed settling into soil. Not done. Not finished. Just beginning.
Seven skills. Hand of the Farmer. Pulse of Life. Eyes of the Land. Touch of Restoration. Shield of Roots. Flow of Abundance. Gift of Fertility.
Not a warrior's arsenal. A farmer's arsenal. The kind of skills that built things rather than destroyed them. The kind of skills that nurtured life rather than ending it.
"The tree knows me. Better than I know myself, maybe. It didn't make me a weapon. It made me a better version of what I already was."
"But still, at least I could've got a cool attack skill"
Wei tightened in fist and had a tear on his left eye with a dramatic smile.
He sat back against the trunk, breathing slowly, letting the new instincts find their places in his consciousness.
His mind felt crowded, full of knowledge that was not his own but was now part of him forever. It would take time to sort through it all. Time to practice. Time to learn control.
Well. At least I won't be bored. Terrified, probably. Overwhelmed, definitely. But not bored. Never bored.
***
Xiao Hei had fallen asleep against Hei's side, the puppy's small body rising and falling with each breath. The big dog had not moved from his position beside Wei, a silent sentinel with amber eyes that reflected the tree's light.
The moon had shifted, climbing higher. The stars had wheeled through their slow, indifferent patterns.
Wei looked up at the remaining fruits. Fifteen little lanterns of gold light, each one a gift for someone who had chosen to stay. And above them, the bronze fruit, alone and patient, still waiting.
The Hearth fruits first. They're the easy part. The good part. The part where I get to give instead of take.
He reached up and began to pluck them, one by one, placing each gently into his spatial pocket. The warmth of them pulsed against his palms through the pocket's connection, and he could feel the tiny flames inside them flickering with what he could only describe as anticipation.
They wanted to be given. They wanted to bind. They wanted to strengthen the bonds between the people who had chosen to make this farm their home.
The arithmetic was simple. His father. His mother. His grandfather. His grandmother. Hao. Li. Uncle Jianguo. That was seven. Liu Wei had already sworn the oath three days ago—he'd take a fruit without hesitation.
Cheng Wei, Mei, Song Na, Feng, Bai Jun. That made thirteen. Two fruits left for whoever came next. Jun would get one when he was old enough to understand what the oath meant, when he could make the choice for himself.
Thirteen oath-bound. Fifteen fruits. A little buffer for the future.
The farm is growing. Not just in size, but in people. In heart. We're becoming something. I don't know what yet. But something.
Then only the bronze fruit remained.