At dawn the next morning, a spectacle never before seen in the history of the Great Qian Dynasty unfolded across the twenty miles of public farmlands stretching between Azure-Cloud Prefecture City and Frost-Pine Town!
Old Man Li, a sixty-five-year-old tenant farmer whose two sons had been injured by mountain bandits last autumn. Stood leaning on his chipped iron hoe at the edge of his three-acre barley field outside the western city wall.
Because the late-winter frost had frozen the northern clay soil as hard as iron brick to a depth of two feet, Old Man Li had spent three whole days swinging his hoe. His palms were covered in blood-blisters—yet he had barely chipped open a tenth of an acre.
“If we don’t get the spring barley seeds into the ground before the tenth of the month,” Old Man Li sighed. Wiping the sweat from his wrinkled brow as his elderly wife sat weeping quietly by their broken wooden hand-plow. “Our family won’t have grain to pay the autumn tax or buy winter firewood...”
STOMP-HUMMM! STOMP-HUMMM!
Suddenly, the frozen dirt beneath Old Man Li’s straw sandals began to vibrate with a steady, rhythmic warmth!
Looking up toward the official western highway in astonishment, Old Man Li and hundreds of neighboring farmers across the valley dropped their hoes at the exact same moment!
Marching down the highway in two neat, disciplined columns were thirty twelve-foot-tall obsidian giants with warm golden-orange. Magma veins glowing softly beneath their stone skin—and every single twelve-foot stone giant was wearing a spotless. Freshly starched bright pink cotton apron embroidered with a white bunny and gold lettering reading [GU FAMILY MODEL FARM TRACTOR & DISHWASHER]!
Even more astonishingly, hitched to the heavy stone waist-hook of each twelve-foot Lava Golem was a newly forged. Ten-share black-iron deep-tilling plow that Captain One-Ear Scar’s blacksmiths had welded together overnight under sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu’s supervision!
Walking briskly at the head of the column—wearing his straw sun-hat alongside nine-year-old Gu Nian (who was holding a wooden clipboard of widow and orphan farm plots). Seven-year-old Su Nuannuan (who was riding on Golem Unit #01’s shoulder with a basket of golden spirit-barley seeds)—twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng waved warmly to the stunned old farmer:.
“Good morning, Grandpa Li! Our Frost-Pine Peace Pharmacy Agricultural Brigade is doing free spring soil-thawing and deep-plowing for all elderly and injured farming households in the prefecture today! Nian’er, what plot number is Grandpa Li’s three acres?”
“Plot #14 on the western charity register, Dad!” nine-year-old Gu Nian checked his clipboard neatly with his charcoal pencil and saluted. “Three acres of frozen clay soil, scheduled for eight-inch deep tilling and geothermal frost-thawing!”
“Unit #07, step into Plot #14 and give Grandpa Li’s barley field the two-hundred-degree geothermal foot-thaw and ten-share plow!” Gu Changsheng called out with a smile.
“COMMAND... RECEIVED! COMMENCING...
GEOTHERMAL... SPRING... PLOWING!”
Twelve-foot-tall Golem Unit #07 bowed politely in his giant pink bunny apron, stepped carefully over Old Man Li’s wooden fence without touching a single post. Lowered his ten-share black-iron plow into the rock-hard frozen clay!
SHHHHHHH—WARMTH!
The instant the Lava Golem’s massive stone feet stepped onto the frozen field, its reprogrammed [Geothermal Foot-Warmer Array] channeled a gentle. Two-hundred-degree wave of underground Earth-Fire warmth three feet deep into the frozen northern soil!
Where the golem walked, three months of rock-hard underground ice melted in two seconds flat into soft. Steaming, dark-brown fertile loam—while the mild volcanic mineral ash radiating from its stone heels naturally fertilized the earth and killed off every dormant winter locust egg in the soil!
SWISH-SWISH-SWISH!
Pulling the ten-share iron plow with 10,000 pounds of tireless Rank 2 Peak traction, Golem Unit #07 glided across the three-acre field like a hot knife through butter. Turning over ten straight, eight-inch-deep furrows of warm, steaming soil at every pass!
Right behind the plow, seven-year-old Su Nuannuan leaned down from Golem Unit #01’s shoulder and sprinkled a fine mist from her [Little Fairy Pink Watering Can] over the freshly turned furrows. Infusing the warm soil with a trace of sweet vitality that made the earth smell like spring wildflowers!
A three-acre frozen field that would have taken Old Man Li and a draft ox two weeks of backbreaking labor to chip open was completely thawed, plowed, harrowed, and seeded in six minutes flat!
When Golem Unit #07 reached the end of the third acre, unhitched the plow to pat the boundary ridge neat with its giant stone palm, and bowed ninety degrees in its pink bunny apron—“PLOT... FOURTEEN... COMPLETE!
HAVE... A... BOUNTIFUL...
HARVEST, GRANDPA... LI!”—sixty-five-year-old Old Man Li dropped to his knees in the warm, steaming black soil and wept aloud with both hands raised toward the sky:.
“A miracle! Patriarch Gu and his pink-aproned stone guardians thawed and plowed my whole three acres in six minutes! Feel this dirt, old woman—it’s as warm and soft as steamed sponge cake!”
“Grandpa Li, Grandma Li, don’t kneel on the damp soil!” nine-year-old Gu Nian hopped down from Golem Unit #02’s shoulder in his yellow bunny slippers. Politely helping the elderly farmer up with both hands.
Handing him a small cloth sack of golden spirit-barley seeds and two emerald-green [Jade-Dew Healing Gummies].
“Dad says these two healing gummies will cure the blisters on your hands in ten seconds, and our Peace Pharmacy’s agricultural compact provides the spring barley seeds at zero interest until autumn!”
“And Nuannuan gave your field a full watering-can blessing too!” seven-year-old Su Nuannuan beamed from atop Golem Unit #01’s shoulder. Waving her [Little Fairy Pink Watering Can] as green earthworms poked their heads happily out of the warm soil.
“Grandpa Yao says your barley will grow twice as tall this summer, and when the wheat is ripe, Nuannuan will come back to help you catch field-mice!”
“Bless you, Little Master Nian! Bless you, Little Fairy Nuannuan!” Old Man Li and his wife popped the sweet emerald gummies into their mouths.
Watching in amazement as the painful blood-blisters on the old farmer’s palms vanished before their eyes.
“Next week when my two sons finish their bone-mending treatment at Doctor Qin’s clinic, our whole family will weave straw sandals for the Frost-Pine Elementary School!”
Across the road on Plot #15, Widow Zhang—a mother of three young children whose husband had been lost. In the winter blizzard—watched two twelve-foot pink-aproned Lava Golems not only plow her five-acre turnip field in ten minutes. Also use their massive stone hands to clear thirty tons of river boulders out of her blocked irrigation ditch and stack the boulders into a neat, wind-proof stone wall around her cottage!
When the widow tried to offer Golem Unit #08 a basket of boiled sweet potatoes in gratitude. The twelve-foot obsidian giant politely shook its massive head, patted its pink bunny apron pocket, and rumbled in a gentle, booming voice:.
“THANK... YOU... MADAM...
ZHANG! TRACTOR... UNIT...
EIGHT... RUNS... ON...
EARTH-FIRE... AND... LITTLE...
RED... FLOWERS! PLEASE...
FEED... THE... SWEET...
POTATOES... TO... YOUR...
THREE... SMALL... CHILDREN!”
Hearing a twelve-foot ancient volcano monster in a pink bunny apron politely decline sweet potatoes and tell a widow to feed her children. It ran on “Earth-Fire and Little Red Flowers,” hundreds of watching farmers and townsfolk along the highway burst into cheers and laughter mixed with tears!
By noon that day, all thirty pink-aproned [Lava-Golem Farm Tractors] were working across the twelve counties’ public farmlands at a staggering rate of three hundred acres per hour!
Twenty-five of the golems pulled ten-share plows and dug stone-lined irrigation canals across forty thousand acres of frozen prefecture farmland for elderly widows. Disabled veterans, and poor tenant farmers completely free of charge. While the other five golems—Units #26 through #30—stood behind the newly opened [Azure-Cloud Prefecture Peace Pharmacy & Five-Copper Canteen], using their three-foot wire dish-sponges and geothermal hot-water tubs to wash, sterilize.
Stack 10,000 porcelain noodle bowls per hour without breaking a single dish!
Even Captain One-Ear Scar , at Rank 2 Peak. Poison-Hand Wu , at Rank 2 Mid,—who were leading the [Pink-Apron Crosswalk & Gardening Brigades] along Central Avenue—came over at lunch to admire the five dishwashing Lava Golems with deep professional respect.
“Brother Wu, we can’t slack off on our crosswalk and herb-bed duties!” forty-two-year-old Captain One-Ear Scar whispered solemnly, straightening his own pink bunny apron and polishing his brass whistle on his sleeve. “Did you see how fast Tractor Unit #26 washed ten thousand noodle bowls?!
It already has two Little Red Flowers pinned to its apron bib!
If we don’t help at least fifty grandmas carry their groceries across the street this afternoon, the stone golems are going to beat our brigade on Principal Gu’s monthly merit chart!”
“Tell all eighty brothers of the Gardening Squad to double-time the dandelion watering!” Poison-Hand Wu barked back competitively. “We are living Rank 2 martial artists—we cannot lose the Little Red Flower championship to thirty rocks in pink aprons!”
When fifty-two-year-old Prefecture Lord Qin Zheng , at Rank 3 Mid. The sixty-year-old Prefecture Minister of Agriculture rode out to the western fields at two o’clock in the afternoon and saw forty thousand acres of steaming. Freshly plowed spring barley fields—and thousands of weeping.
Cheering farming families offering woven flower-garlands to the thirty bowing pink-aproned Lava Golems—the Minister of Agriculture was. So moved he personally carried a twenty-foot purple-and-gold silk plaque to hang above the Gu Family’s gates:.
[BENEVOLENT PROTECTOR OF TEN THOUSAND FARMS — PILLAR OF AZURE-CLOUD PREFECTURE]!
“Patriarch Gu!” the Minister of Agriculture bowed deeply with tears in his silver beard as thirty thousand citizens cheered in the streets. “Every spring, frost-famine takes hundreds of lives in our northern counties!
By turning thirty ancient war-golems into public farm-tractors and feeding the poor at five coppers a bowl, your Gu Clan has saved fifty thousand people from spring hunger!”
Watching another 8,000 prefecture farming households surge past 75/100 Warmth in a single afternoon—bringing his total protected citizen count across Frost-Pine Town. Azure-Cloud Prefecture to 28,000 people!—twenty-nine-year-old Gu Changsheng smiled warmly and accepted the plaque alongside Auntie Qin, Grandpa Fu, Gu Nian, and Su Nuannuan.
Better still, as soon as the forty thousand acres of spring barley were finished at sunset. The thirty twelve-foot Rank 2 Peak Lava-Rock Golems neatly washed the mud off their stone feet in the irrigation canal. Marched in two polite single-file lines back to the Gu Family’s five-branch [Frost-Pine Loving-Heart Canteen] kitchens.
Tied clean white dish-towels around their giant stone wrists!
Within fifteen minutes, twenty-four-year-old Auntie Qin and sixty-two-year-old Grandpa Fu watched in amazement. Golem Units #01 through #15 stood behind the giant soup cauldrons keeping twelve thousand gallons of mutton broth bubbling at a constant, fuel-free geothermal simmer with their warm stone palms. Golem Units #16 through #30 scrubbed, rinsed, and heat-sterilized ten thousand porcelain soup bowls an hour without chipping a single rim!
“Master, we just saved another forty silver taels a day on firewood and charcoal alone!” Grandpa Fu beamed. Hugging his black-iron abacus to his chest as nine-year-old Gu Nian and seven-year-old Su Nuannuan went down the line of thirty kneeling twelve-foot stone giants after dinner.
Carefully stuck a shiny [Little Red Flower Sticker] onto every single golem’s pink floral apron!
“THANK... YOU... YOUNG...
MASTER... NIAN! THANK...
YOU... LITTLE... MISS...
NUANNUAN! GOLEM... BRIGADE...
HAPPINESS... LEVEL... ONE...
HUNDRED... PERCENT!”
All thirty twelve-foot stone giants blushed a warm, rosy volcanic orange and cradled their little paper stickers with both massive hands as if holding priceless imperial jades.
Yet as the evening lanterns lit up the joyful streets and the children headed inside to wash up for bed. Gu Changsheng felt the [Frost-Phoenix Jade Hairpin] and the leftover golden fragments of the [Heavenly Script Surveillance. Eye] humming softly inside his sleeve pocket—ready for a 10,000-DP midnight upgrade in his study that would reveal.
The next piece of his wife’s trail lay!
[ DING! AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION — 28,000 PROTECTED CITIZENS! ]
* Farmland Tilled: 40,000 Acres of Frozen Northern Soil Thawed &.
Planted by 30 Pink-Apron Lava-Golem Tractors!
* Citizen Warmth : +8,000 New Peasant Households at 75+ Warmth!
* Official Honor : [Pillar of Azure-Cloud Prefecture] Silk Plaque!
* Daily Income : +265,000 DP/day -> +272,000 DP/day!