The morning after the proclamation, a fresh, brisk wind swept through the Clear Stream River Valley. It scattered gold and crimson leaves across the cedar porch of the Willow-Bank Pavilion.
Su Ling’er sat cross-legged at the long table, her three white tails swaying gently behind her as she unrolled a wide sheet of oiled paper covered in neat ink diagrams. Beside her, Lin Xiao floated in a polished shallow stone basin filled with crisp morning dew, lazily nibbling on sweet dried persimmon slices.
“Lord Xiao,” Su Ling’er began, tapping the paper with the tip of her brush. “Our census currently stands at six members. However, based on the reports brought by Xiao Hei’s outer patrols, the Crimson Flame Pavilion and several rogue fighter gangs are actively burning outer beast warrens thirty li to the north. Displaced woodland beastfolk—badgers, rabbits, deer, and minor spirit clans—are already fleeing into the outer fringes of the Grand Desolate Forest.”
Lin Xiao’s azure surface rippled with thoughtful interest. “You anticipate an influx of refugees?”
“An certain one,” Su Ling’er affirmed, her amethyst eyes shining with sharp office foresight. “The emerald ward anchored by the Primordial Spirit Willow radiates peace across fifty li. Beastfolk possess a gut sensitivity to ancient benevolence. They will drift toward our valley like autumn leaves seeking calm water. But benevolence without grain is merely slow starvation. If fifty or a hundred hungry mouths arrive next month, our wild yam patches will be stripped to the bedrock within two weeks.”
Tie Shan walked onto the porch. He held a five-foot iron crowbar on his broad shoulder. His golden titan arm shone in the dawn light.
“The girl is right, Lord Xiao,” Tie Shan rumbled, resting the heavy iron tool against the rail. “A warrior can fast for a few days, but young pups and elder folk need solid grain. Wild hunting can’t sustain a proper clan. We need farmland.”
Lin Xiao bounced up onto the table, his eye crescents crinkling with enthusiasm.
“In my old life,” Lin Xiao said with a floating chuckle, “we used to say: Food is heaven for the people. Hunting is fine for an afternoon barbecue. But a real great realm is built on agriculture. If we want this safe hall to flourish, we must plant our own crops.”
“The question is where,” Su Ling’er said, gesturing toward the surrounding ground shape. “The valley floor is narrow, shaded by the great willow, and prone to seasonal river surges. The northern cliffs are barren granite. The only suitable land is the southern mountain ridge across the river.”
All three turned their gaze across the singing current of the Clear Stream River.
Rising from the southern bank was a broad, sweeping hillside spanning nearly sixty acres. It enjoyed unbroken southern sun exposure from dawn until dusk, shielded from bitter northern gales by the main mountain ridge. The earth was thick, black fiery loam enriched by hundreds of years of fallen leaves, bursting with dormant fertility.
However, there was a major deep-rock obstacle: the slope was steep.
At an incline of nearly thirty-five degrees, the hillside was a dramatic slope of rocky soil and wild brambles.
“A thirty-five-degree slope,” Tie Shan muttered, scratching his braided beard. “If we till that earth, the first autumn storm will wash every seed and pound of topsoil straight down into the riverbed, leaving behind nothing but bare shale.”
“Not if we carve the mountain into stairs,” Lin Xiao replied with a wide, confident grin.
Su Ling’er tilted her head, her fox ears perking in curiosity. “Stairs, Lord Xiao?”
“Terrace farming,” Lin Xiao explained. He used a slender azure tendril to sketch a stepped diagram on the cedar wood. “In the ancient mountain regions of my homeland, ancestors turned upright mountains into the most fertile grain baskets on earth. We carve the slope into a row of dropping level steps. Each step is supported by a massive dry-stack stone retaining wall that locks the earth in place. The planting beds are graded fully flat, so rainwater doesn’t rush down in erosive torrents—it sits gently in shallow, controlled sheets, soaking deep into the roots before trickling down to the tier below.”
Su Ling’er’s [Divine Governance Mind] processed the concept in an instant.
Lines of sky light flickered through her violet eyes as the exact elegance of the terrace system unfolded in her mindscape: gravity load spreading, high-pressure slope management, and surface-area spreading.
“It’s brilliant...” she whispered, her breath catching in awe. “A thirty-five-degree barren cliff becomes twelve tiers of arable farmland! By staggering the tiers, every single terrace receives twelve hours of direct sunlight without shading the crop below! And the stone walls will absorb daytime solar heat, streaming warmth back into the soil during cold mountain nights, protecting tender spirit sprouts from frost!”
Tie Shan slammed his golden titan fist onto the crowbar. That let out a booming laugh that shook the cedar roof edges.
“Stone retaining walls!” Tie Shan roared with relish. “That’s bear work! That’s titan work! Lord Xiao, tell me where to cut the stone. I’ll build walls that will stand until the mountains crumble!”
“Then let’s build the Southern Terraces!” Lin Xiao announced.
The construction of the agricultural backbone began right away.
Crossing the shallow river rapids, the council assembled at the foot of the southern slope. Su Ling’er took charge of surveying. Holding a weighted drop-line and a carved cedar sighting compass, the fox maiden walked along the natural contours of the mountain, marking out twelve level contour lines with stakes of white pine.
“Tier One through Tier Twelve,” Su Ling’er instructed, her clear voice carrying across the hillside. “Each terrace shall span four hundred paces in length and thirty paces in depth. The retaining walls must rise eight feet in height, battered inward at a five-degree angle against the slope to counter the lateral crushing pressure of soaked soil.”
Tie Shan stepped up to the granite bluffs flanking the eastern ridge.
With his awakened Divine Titan bloodline, the seven-foot bear was in his ultimate element. He plunged his golden titan claws into the living bedrock, channeling earth-elemental qi that shook through the natural faults of the granite.
CRACK! BOOM!
Massive, box-shaped giant pillars of dense grey granite snapped cleanly from the cliff face. Tie Shan carried two three-ton stone blocks beneath his arms as easily as loaves of bread, striding across the slope with earth-shaking footsteps.
With masterly care, Tie Shan laid the foundation stones. He didn’t use mortar. Instead, he dry-stacked the dressed granite blocks, linked the stones with alternating header-and-stretcher courses. Behind each wall, Xiao Hei hauled wagonloads of coarse crushed quartz and river gravel using swirling cushions of silver wind, packing the drainage layer behind the stone to ensure groundwater could cry freely without building dangerous deep water pressure.
Meanwhile, Lin Xiao handled the grading and earthmoving.
Floating above the slope, Lin Xiao swelled his non-Newtonian fluid body into a broad, level flat sheet twenty feet wide. Applying his [Hydro-Kinesis] and internal mass conversion, he drove his tough, high-pressure azure surface into the mountain slope like a heavy-duty bulldozer:
RUMBLE-SWISH!
Tons of rich, black fiery loam were pushed, leveled. Then he compacted across the newly erected stone tiers. Lin Xiao moved with fluid grace, his flat base smoothing the earth until each forty-pace-wide terrace was as level as a temple courtyard.
Whenever a terrace showed the slightest imperfection, Lin Xiao paused. Floating upon the freshly graded soil, he allowed his semi-clear body to settle into water-pressure balance, acting as a living spirit-level that could detect a slope error of less than three tiny fractions of an inch across a hundred yards.
“Drop the western corner by two inches, Uncle Tie!” Lin Xiao called out.
Tie Shan delivered a gentle, tuned stomp with his massive foot. It sent a nearby ground-shaking pulse through the soil that dropped the corner exactly two inches into place.
By late afternoon, the exhausting labor bore fruit.
A bronze chime chimed softly in Lin Xiao’s mind, with the Dao Spirit’s stone-built confirmation:
Lin Xiao bounced up to the crest of the highest terrace, looking down upon their creation.
The once-wild, overgrown thirty-five-degree hillside was gone.
In its place stood twelve massive, stepped tiered arena terraces. He rose from the riverbank up the mountain face like a huge stairs carved for the gods. Each terrace was a sweeping expanse of dark, crumbly fiery soil, bordered by towering, iron-hard granite retaining walls that gleamed with majestic grey permanence in the setting sun.
Su Ling’er stood beside Lin Xiao, brushing a stray wisp of black glass hair from her brow, her chest heaving with gentle, satisfied tiredness.
“Forty-five mu of clean arable land,” Su Ling’er murmured, her amethyst eyes shining with pride. “When planted with high-yield spirit tubers and spirit rice, this hillside alone can produce over eighty thousand pounds of food per harvest cycle. We can feed three hundred residents for an entire year without fear of shortage.”
Tie Shan leaned his massive back against the top retaining wall. He wiped thick sweat from his beard, letting out a booming rumble of satisfaction.
“Aye... The earth is ready,” Tie Shan said, looking down at the dark, dry soil. “The retaining walls will hold against an army. But Lord Xiao... Look at the soil. It’s dry as bone. The river flows forty feet below the lowest terrace. How do we bring water up to the twelfth tier?”
Lin Xiao turned his gaze toward the towering, misty northern cliffs across the valley. There, the faint, underground rumble of deep mountain water rang through the bedrock.
“We don’t pump water uphill, Uncle Tie,” Lin Xiao replied with a confident, joyful ripple. “Water naturally wants to flow downward. Tomorrow, we go up into the northern karst peaks... And we bring the mountain spring down to our doorstep!”