(Restoring the Scorched Valleys and Weeding Terraces)
The spring thaw arrived across the eastern borderlands not as a gentle whisper, but with the steady, rhythmic rumble of marching stone titans.
Walking down the winding mountain pass of Black Pine Valley, Da Shi, the Chief Obsidian Golem of the First Epoch, stepped with thunderous grace. Each of his massive, twenty-foot dark rock steps left deep impressions in the muddy switchbacks. But his ancient sapphire eyes glowed with gentle, focused intelligence. Behind him marched the eleven guardian golems of his cohort, their broad black glass shoulders laden with massive squared timbers, bundles of cedar shingles, and iron-banded casks of lime mortar.
And walking right alongside Da Shi’s left knee. He pushed a heavy, iron-rimmed wooden wheelbarrow, was former Crown Prince Zhao Lie.
The change in the young prince was striking.
There was no trace left of the dazzling five-clawed dragon armor that had gleamed upon the Nine-Dragon War Chariot. Zhao Lie wore rough, undyed hemp trousers tied at the waist with a coarse hemp rope, a sleeveless gray cotton vest stained with sweat and river clay. A pair of ten-copper straw sandals that let cold mountain mud squelch between his toes. His once-pale, high-born skin was already darkening to a healthy bronze under the early spring sun. Across the palms that had only ever held jade cups and polished saber grips, thick, golden calluses were forming like tough tree bark.
