In a decent sandbox game, clearing weeds was easy. You held down a button, listened to a cheerful popping sound, and watched the plants vanish into your inventory.
Here, Austin had to swing a real hoe with weak, skinny arms.
“No stamina recovery. No auto-harvest. No food bonus.” He rolled his sore shoulder and gripped the rough ash handle. “You can’t make a player do site prep with stats like these.”
He tapped the handle against a rotten stump. The iron head wobbled. Only dry rot and luck held it in place.
“Spit and baling wire,” he muttered. “One hard hit and the blade flies into the bushes.”
He planted his feet, checked his line, and brought the hoe down.
SHING!
The blade struck a thick patch of iron-thorn briars. Down in the valley, outer disciples needed days, spirit cleavers, and blister salve to clear a single patch. Their stems were as tough as bamboo, and their roots could split rock.
Austin’s hoe cut through without slowing.
White heat flashed. The briars turned to pale ash before they could burn. Under them, the dirt glowed red and melted into smooth black glass.
Austin rested his hands on the handle and frowned at the glossy patch.
“Look at that texture bug. The ground disappeared, so the engine filled the hole with shiny black paint. Lazy fix.”
He tapped it with his sandal. It rang like a plate.
“At least it’s flat.”
Austin kept working. Once a construction foreman got upset about bad grading, everything else could wait. You didn’t build on loose, uneven ground, and you didn’t leave a slope that sent rainwater toward the front door.
For four hours, he worked across the courtyard in overlapping eighteen-inch grid lines. Chop. Flash. Ash. Step forward. Chop again.
He melted high spots and dragged the liquid rock into low ones with the back of the hoe. Every twenty minutes, he knelt, closed one eye, and checked the surface against the horizon.
“High spots gone. Low spots gone. The pad is level.” He brushed ash from his knuckles. “I’ll cut a drain around the edge later.”
By noon, the front yard had become a four-hundred-square-meter plaza of polished black glass. Its edges were straight and square. Not a weed or pebble remained.
Austin wiped sweat from his face and looked at his reflection. Deep satisfaction settled over him.
“Now that’s a proper base. Zero seam tears. Level, square, and clean.”
A chime sounded.
Austin opened the blueprint. “A stone well. Basic, but it beats hauling water from the creek. No pipes, no pump. I guess I’m building the whole supply chain from dirt.”
***
Three miles down the ridge, sixteen-year-old Li Xiaoyao was having the worst morning of his life.
He was thin as a willow switch, and his weak spiritual root barely earned him a place among the outer disciples. He had no rich family and no silver for bribes. In Clear Sky Sect, that meant every miserable chore landed on him.
Today’s chore was hauling the monthly grain sack to Sunset Peak.
“Ancestors preserve me,” he wheezed. The sack’s rope handles dug into his shoulders as he climbed the broken steps. “They say Senior Brother Chu lost his mind from the cold. If he’s dead, Steward Wang will take the cost of a pine coffin out of my pay.”
He stopped on a limestone ledge to wipe sweat from his eyes.
The hairs on his arms stood up.
Something was wrong.
Sunset Peak was called Freezing Ridge for a reason. The wind should have been biting his face. Instead, the last five hundred paces had grown steadily hotter. By the final bend, the breeze felt like air from a forge. The mist was gone, and heat shimmered around the stunted pines.
The mountain also smelled wrong. There was no wet stone or pine. Only the sharp smell that followed lightning.
Li Xiaoyao swallowed.
Did a fire beast make a den up here? Or a demonic elder?
He dropped to his hands and knees and crawled the last twenty paces, dragging the grain sack behind him. Then he peeked through the burned bamboo gate.
His jaw fell open.
The muddy, weed-choked yard was gone. A flat field of black stone filled the courtyard. It shone like dark water and looked deep enough to swallow the mountain.
Chu Yuan stood in the center.
He wore the same frayed gray rags as any starving outer disciple, but the air rippled around him. In one hand, he held an ordinary iron hoe.
There was nothing ordinary about the blade. It glowed white, and a single glance made Li Xiaoyao’s spiritual senses scream.
To him, it looked like an ancient weapon forged inside a dying star.
The elders were wrong, he thought. Senior Brother Chu isn’t helpless. But why is he using all that power on a yard?
His foot slipped. A pebble clicked against stone.
Austin turned.
He saw Li Xiaoyao first. Then he saw the blob of mud the boy’s left sandal had pressed onto his clean black floor at map point [X: 14, Y: 08].
A vein pulsed in Austin’s temple.
“You.” His voice went low and flat. The spark in his dantian flared. “Do you see a mud mat by that gate? Do you see a boot scraper?”
The pressure made Li Xiaoyao’s knees buckle.
“N-no, Senior...”
“Then why are you tracking wet clay across a finished slab?” Austin stepped toward him, the glowing hoe still in his hand. “I spent four hours getting this yard level. Four hours. Then you walk in and drop six pounds of road muck on map point fourteen-eight.”
Li Xiaoyao fell to his knees. The impact sent pain shooting up his thighs, but he barely noticed.
I dirtied the sacred altar. He’s going to burn my soul away.
“Senior Ancestor, mercy!” he screamed. He struck his forehead against the black stone. “This blind student failed to recognize Mount Tai! Spare my worthless life!”
Austin blinked and lowered the hoe.
The teenager had dropped his sack. Now he was banging his head on the courtyard and shouting like an actor in a cheap historical drama.
“Great,” Austin muttered. “The terrain is broken, and the NPCs get stuck in dialogue loops. This game never should have left closed alpha.”