The pain was different this time.
Lin Yan's consciousness swam up from a deep, cold blackness, not to the familiar, sharp vise-grip of cardiac arrest that had been his end, but to a dull, all-consuming ache. It was a hollow, grinding emptiness that seemed to radiate from the very core of his being, settling deep in his stomach and leaching the strength from his bones. It was hunger—a profound, systemic hunger that his thirty-two years as a modern man had never truly known.
He was cold. A damp, penetrating chill that seeped through the thin, scratchy fabric covering him. The air he dragged into his lungs was heavy with the scents of old woodsmoke, packed earth, the metallic hint of frost, and a faint, sour tang of unwashed bodies and despair.
He forced his eyes open.
A ceiling of blackened, rough-hewn beams and woven thatch swam into focus. Pale slivers of dawn light cut through gaps in the roof, illuminating drifting motes of dust and a single, patient spider weaving a web in the corner. This was not the sterile white of a hospital ceiling, nor the familiar cracked plaster of his apartment. This was primitive, ancient, and achingly real.
Where…? What…?
A flood of images, sensations, and memories that were not his own crashed into his mind like a rogue wave. A youth, also named Lin Yan. Seventeen winters. A body slight and frail from a lifetime of near-starvation, lungs that burned too easily, limbs that lacked the sturdy strength of his brothers. A family—a huge, sprawling, desperately poor family—in a remote frontier village called Willow Creek, in the harsh border province of Xiyuan of the Great Xu Dynasty. The memory of staggering under a meager bundle of twigs on a windswept hillside yesterday, the world tilting, a younger brother's cry of alarm, then nothing.
Transmigration? Rebirth? The clinical terms from the web novels he'd skimmed during rare, bleary-eyed breaks felt absurd and yet terrifyingly concrete. The last thing he—Lin Yan the agricultural engineer—remembered was the blinding, tearing pain in his chest, the frantic, flatline shriek of the ECG machine, the shouts of his colleagues fading into a silent, rushing void. He had died. Overwork, the doctor would later say. A preventable tragedy. He'd given everything to the soil, and it had claimed his life.
And now… this. A different kind of poverty. A different kind of earth.
"Yan'er? Son, can you hear me?"
A woman's face, worn and lean but etched with immediate, raw concern, appeared above him. Her hair was tied in a simple, greying knot at the nape of her neck, strands escaping to frame a face that might have been handsome once, before years and hunger carved their tracks. Her eyes were the colour of dark, rain-soaked earth, shadowed with exhaustion so deep it looked permanent. Wang Shi. Mother. The knowledge came unbidden, accompanied by a sudden, fierce surge of protective affection that was both foreign and instinctive.
"Thank the ancestors and all the little spirits," she whispered, her voice a dry rustle like autumn leaves. A calloused hand, its skin cracked and warm, touched his forehead with surprising gentleness. "The fever's broken. Don't try to move, just lie still. You need to drink."
A clay bowl, chipped at the rim and stained from long use, was pressed to his lips. Lin Yan obeyed, sipping automatically. It was warm water with a scant, gritty handful of millet grains suspended in it. Porridge so thin it was essentially flavored, slightly thickened water. No salt. No fat. No nourishment to speak of. Yet, to the ravenous, screaming void inside him, it was a lifeline. He swallowed, the act itself tiring.
As the lukewarm liquid settled, his eyes adjusted to the dim, smoky light of the hut. The space was larger than he'd first thought, but crammed with the evidence of too many lives lived on the very edge. The floor was hard-packed earth, swept clean but uneven. The walls were of wattle and daub—woven sticks plastered with mud and straw, with cracks patched haphazardly with more mud. In one corner, a low, stone-lined hearth held the faintest red glow beneath a layer of ash. Above it, a soot-blackened iron pot hung empty.
Pallets of worn straw and patched, faded cloth were spread across the floor. Figures stirred in the gloom, rising from their own meager beds.
A man sat on a low, three-legged stool by the heavy wooden door, shoulders slumped in a posture of defeat that seemed bone-deep. He was working a length of split bamboo, his thick fingers moving with a slow, methodical patience as he tried to mend a broken woven basket. Lin Dashan. Father. His face was a landscape of quiet hardship—deep lines around his eyes from squinting into sun and wind, a jaw perpetually clenched against disappointment, but his hands, though scarred, were careful. He glanced over, and for a fleeting moment, Lin Yan saw a flicker of profound relief before the mask of weary resignation settled back into place.
Near the cold hearth, a young woman—Lin Xiaohui, his nineteen-year-old elder sister—was carefully pouring the last dregs of thin porridge from the pot into two smaller wooden bowls. Her movements were economical, ensuring not a drop was wasted. Two small children huddled close to her skirts. A boy, Tie Zhu, maybe eight, with serious eyes that were too old for his face, and a girl, Xiao Lian, about six, who sucked her thumb and watched the bowl with a focus that was heartbreaking. His eldest brother Lin Gang's children.
From another pallet, a taller, broader-shouldered youth of about fourteen sat up, rubbing his eyes. Lin Xiaoshan, his younger brother. His face was a paler, thinner copy of Lin Yan's new one, marked by the same frailty. He looked over, his expression instantly alert with concern. "Second Brother? You're awake!"
The title 'Second Brother' echoed oddly in Lin Yan's mind. In his old life, he was an only child.
More stirrings. From a slightly partitioned area at the back of the hut, his eldest brother Lin Gang emerged, a solid, quiet man in his late twenties, followed by his wife Qin Hua. From another corner, his second brother Lin Qiang and his wife Zhang Mei began to rouse their own small children. The hut, which had seemed still, was suddenly full of soft sounds—rustling cloth, whispered questions, the quiet coughs of the hungry.
This was utter destitution. The kind he'd only read about in historical texts or seen in stark documentary stills. It was one thing to study agrarian poverty; it was another to feel its cold breath on your neck, to smell its particular scent of smoke, earth, and fragile hope decaying.
A wave of despair, both his own and a lingering ghost of the former Lin Yan's, threatened to drown him. He had traded one life of relentless, soul-crushing work for another of hopeless, back-breaking scarcity. Had the universe simply recycled him into another version of the same grinding struggle?
Just as the darkness seemed to thicken at the edges of his vision, threatening to pull him back under, a soft, crystalline chime sounded in the depths of his mind. It was a clear, pure note, utterly alien in this world of mud and straw.
Before his eyes, light coalesced.
A rectangle of translucent blue text, edged with a subtle, shifting silver light, hovered in the air just beyond the tip of his nose. It was perfectly legible, superimposed over the sight of his mother's worried face.
[Ranch Development System Activating…]
[Scanning host's biological and environmental parameters…]
[Energy Source Detected: Host's Coalescing Will to Survive. Initiating Binding Protocol…]
[Binding Complete. Syncing with host consciousness.]
[Welcome, Host: Lin Yan.]
[System Mission: To Foster Sustainable Growth, Cultivate Prosperity, and Build a Legacy from the Soil Up.]
[Current Status Assessment:]
· Physical Condition: Malnourished, Physically Weak (Stage 3), Recovering from Febrile Illness. Recommendation: Immediate caloric and protein intake.
· Assets: Barren, Alkaline Land Plot (1 mu). Dilapidated Family Hut (Leaking Roof, Poor Insulation). Basic Hand Tools (Worn).
· Wealth: 0 Copper Coins. Family Debt: Approximately 350 Copper Coins (To Village Head Li, for seed loan and last winter's grain).
· Prestige in Willow Creek: Negligible (Seen as Frail, A Burden on the Lin Family).
[Initial Environmental Scan Complete. Host's location is classified as 'Frontier – Marginal Agricultural Zone.' Soil quality poor, climate semi-arid with harsh winters. Potential for pastoral development assessed as: HIGH, given proper management and system guidance.]
[Primary Objective: Ensure Host Survival and Establish a Sustainable, Foundational Livelihood within One Calendar Year.]
[Starter Quest Issued: 'The First Seeds of Hope']
· Objective: Secure a sustainable, replicable source of nourishment for the host's immediate family unit within the next 24 hours.
· Success Conditions: Source must provide ongoing nutritional value, not be a one-time windfall.
· Reward upon Completion: 5 Healthy Chickens (Brown Egg Layer Breed, System-Enhanced Vitality), Basic Poultry Husbandry Knowledge Packet (Lv. 1).
· Additional Hint: Utilize the system's temporary, invisible storage buffer upon reward receipt to avoid suspicious phenomena.
· Failure Condition: Host death or failure to meet objective within timeframe.
· Failure Consequence: System energy depletion. Reversion to baseline survival probability: 12%.
[Accept Quest? Y/N]
Lin Yan stared, his heart hammering a frantic, weak rhythm against his frail ribs. A system? A literal, interactive interface? This was beyond hallucination, beyond fever-dream. It hovered, persistent, the text cool and logical against the backdrop of his desperate reality. He blinked rapidly, turned his head slightly. The screen moved with his field of vision, fixed in space relative to him. It was real. It was there.
"Yan'er? What is it? Does your head still pain you? Are you seeing spots?" Wang Shi's voice was laced with fresh, maternal worry. She saw him staring blankly, his pupils dilated. Her hand came back to his forehead.
The reality of her touch—the rough skin, the genuine warmth—the sound of his nephew Shitou's quiet crying from across the room, the palpable, gut-twisting hunger that hung in the air like a second smoke… these were not hallucinations. This was his new, brutal reality. And this system… it was an impossibility. A miracle. A single, slender thread of hope in a world woven from despair.
He had nothing. No tools worth the name, no strength in this wasted body, no money, no credit, no leverage. Just this flickering blue screen and a family of twelve souls on the precipice of a long, hungry winter.
His modern mind, trained for analysis, hypothesis, and pragmatic problem-solving, kicked into gear despite the weakness. Accept the data point. Formulate a hypothesis. Design an experiment. The hypothesis: this system is real and operates on a cause-and-effect logic. The experiment: accept the quest.
The consequences of failure were stark: 'Host death or failure… Reversion to baseline survival probability: 12%.' He looked at little Xiao Lian, carefully licking her empty bowl. Their baseline was this. A 12% chance of making it to spring.
With a thought that felt both utterly foolish and the most sane thing he'd ever done, he focused his intention on the shimmering, pulsing 'Y'.
[Quest Accepted.]
[Timer Initiated: 23 Hours, 59 Minutes, 58 Seconds…]
[Reward will be delivered at dusk today. Please prepare a suitable, discreet location for material transfer. Storage buffer will hold items for 5 minutes post-transfer.]
The main screen minimized to a faint, glowing blue dot in the lower left corner of his perception, like a persistent afterimage. A strange warmth, not physical but mental, spread through his consciousness. It was knowledge, basic but clear and organized, slotting into place: chickens needed clean water daily, more than people realized. They required shelter from wind, rain, and cold, preferably dry and draft-free. They needed grit in their gizzards to digest food—crushed eggshells, small stones. They were vulnerable to rats, weasels, foxes, and birds of prey. A balanced diet of grains, greens, and occasional insects produced the best eggs. The eggs themselves were a near-perfect food.
It was simple, foundational knowledge, but to a peasant family that had never kept more than a single, scrawny rooster for luck, it was revolutionary. And it was now his.
It was real.
A fierce, defiant energy, one he hadn't felt since presenting the final, successful yield data for his first independent sustainable farm project a lifetime ago, surged through his weariness. It burned away some of the lethargy. He pushed himself up on his elbows, ignoring the wave of dizziness and the protest of his muscles.
"Mother," he said, and his voice was still a dry rasp, but it carried a new, unfamiliar layer of firmness, a certainty that startled even him. "I'm alright. Better than alright."
Lin Dashan looked up from his mending, his weary eyes tracking his son's movement. "Rest, Yan'er. Conserve your strength. We'll… we'll think of something after first light. Maybe I can get a day's labor at the Zhang estate if their mill needs help…" The words held the hollow, brittle echo of a promise he had made too many times before, a hope that had crumbled to dust season after season.
Lin Yan looked at his father's defeated posture, the quiet despair in his mother's eyes as she scanned her empty pot, his sister's hunched shoulders as she tried to shield the children from the worst of it. He saw the future here with a terrible clarity—a slow, grinding decline, the strong growing weaker, the weak perishing quietly in the cold. His new little brother, Xiaoshan, might not see next winter.
"No," Lin Yan said, the word coming out sharper, more commanding than he intended. He saw his father flinch slightly, a flash of confusion and pain in his eyes. Lin Yan softened his tone, but let the steel remain. "Father, Mother. Listen to me. While I was fevered… I had a dream. Not a jumbled nightmare. A clear vision. The ancestors… or perhaps the Earth Spirit of our land… they showed me a path."
It was the best explanation he could fabricate on the spot, the only kind that might be accepted in this world of spirits, ancestors, and omens. A sudden burst of practical knowledge from a formerly frail boy would raise questions; a divine dream or ancestral blessing could be a shield.
Wang Shi's hands flew to her mouth. "A vision? What… what did you see, son?" Her voice was a mix of awe and desperate hope.
Lin Dashan set down his bamboo strip, his full attention now captured. Dreams were serious portents. "A path to what, Yan'er?"
"To food," Lin Yan said simply, his gaze going to the empty, soot-stained pot. "Not just a handful of grain today. Not just a charity meal tomorrow. A source. Something that gives, and keeps giving. Something for all of us." He gestured weakly, taking in the whole cramped hut.
He swung his legs slowly off the sleeping pallet, his bare feet touching the cold, packed earth. The shock of the cold was bracing. The world swayed for a moment, but the solid knowledge in his mind—the promise of five living, breathing chickens, of eggs that could be eaten or traded, of manure that could start healing the barren soil—formed a foundation that steadied him. It was a plan. A first, fragile step in a plan.
"Today," he said, meeting his father's eyes and holding them, forcing a conviction he was still building into every syllable, "we stop just surviving. Today, we start changing our fate."
A stunned silence filled the hut, broken only by the crackle of the last ember in the hearth. Lin Gang, who had been listening quietly from the doorway to the back partition, stepped forward. He was a man of few words, built thick and strong like their father, but his eyes, usually as impassive as stone, showed a flicker of something—not quite belief, but a willingness to grasp at any straw. "What do you need us to do, Second Brother?"
It was the first vote of confidence, however small.
Lin Yan took a deep, steadying breath of the chill, smoky air. "First, I need to see our land. The plot by the hut. Then, I need Xiaoshan to help me gather some specific things." He looked at his younger brother, who jumped up, his frailty forgotten in a burst of excitement. "Mother, do we have any leftover straw, the driest we have? And any bits of old wood, even broken?"
Wang Shi, her face still pale with shock, nodded mutely. They had little, but they had some of those things.
Lin Dashan stood up, his joints creaking. He looked at his second son—really looked. The boy's eyes were different. The familiar, gentle haze of sickness and resignation was gone, replaced by a focused, calculating light that Dashan had never seen before. It was unsettling. It was… it was like seeing a stranger wearing his son's face. But in that stranger's eyes was a fire that had been extinguished in Dashan's own heart years ago.
"Alright," Lin Dashan said, the word heavy. He wasn't convinced, but the sheer force of Lin Yan's declaration had carved out a space for possibility. "Let's see this path."
---
The dawn outside was brittle and beautiful. A hard frost silvered the brown grass and clung to the thatched roofs of Willow Creek's scattered huts. Smoke from morning fires began to curl into the still, cold air. The village nestled in a shallow valley, with forested hills rising to the north and the vast, rolling expanse of the Grass Sea steppes visible as a golden-brown haze to the west.
Their hut was on the poorer, northern edge of the village, closer to the woods than the central stream. Attached to it was a small, fenced plot of land, maybe one mu—about one-sixth of an acre. It was a sorry sight. The soil was pale, almost chalky in places, cracked into a web of fissures. A few stubborn, yellowed weeds clung to life, but nothing edible. It was exhausted, leached of nutrients, and heavily alkaline. This was the land they had been trying to grow millet and beans on for years, with diminishing returns. It was their inheritance and their prison.
Lin Yan stood at the edge of the plot, his thin clothing inadequate against the morning chill. He surveyed it not with despair, but with the analytical eye of an agronomist. Poor drainage likely. No organic matter. pH is probably through the roof. Compacted subsoil.
But the system had assessed potential for pastoral development. Pasture. Grass. He wasn't going to fight this soil to grow crops—not yet. He was going to use it to support life that would, in turn, heal the soil. The chickens were the first step. Their manure, properly managed, would be the first infusion of organic nitrogen.
"It's barren, son," Lin Dashan said quietly, coming to stand beside him. The hope that had flickered in the hut seemed to dim in the face of this familiar, bleak reality.
"It's not barren," Lin Yan corrected softly, his breath making plumes in the air. "It's sleeping. And we've been trying to wake it up the wrong way." He pointed to the far corner, near the rickety fence bordering the woods. "There. That's the most sheltered spot, protected from the north wind by the hut and from the west by the treeline. That's where we start."
"Start what?" asked Lin Xiaoshan, bouncing on his toes beside him, his curiosity overwhelming his usual timidness.
"A new kind of farm," Lin Yan said. He turned. "Xiaoshan, I need you to gather two things for me. First, dry leaves—lots of them. The driest you can find in the woods. Pile them here. Second, small stones. Smooth, clean ones about the size of your thumbnail or smaller. A bowlful."
Xiaoshan nodded eagerly and darted off towards the trees.
"Gang, Qiang," Lin Yan addressed his older brothers. "Can you help me move those old logs from behind the woodpile? And any planks we have, even short ones."
The brothers exchanged a glance, a silent communication born of shared labor and hardship. They shrugged. It was pointless work, but it was work, and it was their brother asking. They moved to comply.
Wang Shi and the sisters-in-law brought out a meager pile of relatively dry straw and a few pieces of weathered, split wood that had been part of a broken cart.
For the next few hours, under Lin Yan's direction, the Lin family became a small, confused construction crew. Using the old logs as a base frame against the fence, they wove a lattice of thinner branches between them. Lin Yan showed them how to thickly thatch one side and the sloped roof with the straw and leaves, creating insulation and waterproofing. It was crude—far from the neat coops in his system knowledge—but it was enclosed, dry, and sheltered. They used the planks to create a raised floor inside, keeping it off the damp earth, and fashioned a simple, hinged door from woven twigs.
To Lin Dashan and the others, it looked like a small, poorly-made shed. To Lin Yan, it was a prototype. A life-support module for his first investment.
By mid-morning, the strange activity had attracted attention. Old Man Chen from two huts over hobbled by, leaning on his stick. "Dashan! What in the earth spirits' name are you building? A house for field mice?"
Lin Dashan flushed, embarrassed. "The boy's idea," he muttered, not knowing what else to say.
Lin Yan stepped forward, offering a respectful nod to the elder. "Good morning, Grandfather Chen. Just trying a new method for storing… garden things. Keeping them dry."
Old Man Chen sniffed, peered at the crude structure, and shook his head. "Waste of good sweat. That plot's cursed, I tell you. Nothing good will come of it." He shuffled away, muttering about young people and foolish dreams.
The comment hung in the air. Lin Yan saw his father's shoulders slump again. The weight of village opinion was heavy.
"Ignore him," Lin Yan said firmly, more to himself than anyone. "We're not doing this for him."
He sent Xiaoshan, who had returned with a impressive pile of leaves and a wooden bowl full of small, smooth stones, inside the new coop to spread a thick layer of leaves and straw on the plank floor. "This is their bedding. It'll absorb moisture and can be composted later."
"Composted?" Xiaoshan asked, unfamiliar with the term.
"Turned into soil food," Lin Yan simplified. He placed the bowl of small stones in a corner. "And these are for their guts. They need them to grind their food."
Xiaoshan's eyes were wide. "You know so much, Second Brother! Was it all in the dream?"
"Yes," Lin Yan said, the lie becoming easier. "It was very detailed."
As the sun reached its zenith, weak and pale, the structure was complete. It looked absurd sitting in the corner of the barren field—a small, shabby hut within a hut. The family gathered around it, their breath fogging, their faces a mixture of exhaustion, skepticism, and a fragile, tentative curiosity.
"It's done," Lin Gang stated, wiping his brow. "Now what?"
"Now," Lin Yan said, his heart beginning to beat faster as he checked the ethereal timer in his vision—12 hours, 7 minutes to dusk—"we wait. And we prepare one more thing." He looked at his mother. "Do we have any container, any pot, that can hold water and won't tip over easily?"
Wang Shi thought, then nodded. "There's the old, cracked water jar. It's too leaky for storing, but if we keep it filled…"
"Perfect. Can you clean it and bring it out here? We'll set it inside, full of fresh water."
As his mother went to fetch it, Lin Yan felt a wave of dizziness. The exertion had cost him. He leaned against the rough wall of the coop, closing his eyes.
"You've pushed too hard," Lin Dashan said, his voice thick with concern. "Come inside. Rest."
"Soon," Lin Yan whispered. The plan was in motion. The stage was set. All that was missing were the actors. Five feathered, clucking actors.
The afternoon passed with agonizing slowness. Lin Yan rested inside the main hut, but his mind was racing. The system knowledge had given him basics, but the practicalities loomed. What would they eat? The family's grain store was a single, half-full sack of millet. They couldn't spare it. He'd have to forage, find insects, glean from harvested fields. It would have to do until the chickens started laying and could pay for their own feed.
He also watched his family. Lin Qiang, his second brother, was the most openly doubtful. He whispered to his wife Zhang Mei, gestures toward the strange little shed. "He's sick in the head. Fever left him addled." Lin Yan heard it but didn't react. Results would be the only answer.
Lin Xiaohui, ever practical, sat near him mending a torn jacket. "This… vision of yours, Yan'er. Did it say how long before we see this 'food that keeps giving'?"
"It starts small," Lin Yan said. "And it starts tonight."
She gave him a long, searching look, her needle pausing. "I hope so," she said softly. "For all our sakes."
---
Dusk crept across Willow Creek, painting the sky in shades of purple and bruised orange. The temperature dropped swiftly. Frost began to reclaim the world.
Lin Yan insisted on going outside alone. "Part of the… ritual," he told his perplexed family. "From the dream. I need to be at the spot alone at dusk."
They let him go, worry etched on their faces. He was still so weak.
He stood before the small, dark coop. The old water jar sat inside, filled to the brim. The bedding of leaves and straw looked dry and inviting. The bowl of grit stones was in place.
In his mind, he watched the timer count down.
00:00:10… 9… 8…
He held his breath.
…3… 2… 1…
[Starter Quest: 'The First Seeds of Hope' – COMPLETE.]
[Assessing objective… Sustainable nourishment source identified: Poultry husbandry system initiated. Conditions met.]
[Dispensing Reward…]
There was no flash of light, no dramatic sound. One moment, the raised plank floor of the coop was empty save for bedding. The next, there was a soft, rustling thump, as if a light bag had been dropped.
And then, a confused, tentative cheep.
Lin Yan's knees almost buckled with relief. He scrambled forward, pulling open the twig-door.
There, huddled together in the center of the straw, were five chicks. But not the scrawny, pitiful balls of fluff he'd half-expected. These were sturdy, alert, covered in a rich, downy brown fluff speckled with gold. Their eyes were bright black beads, already looking around with curiosity. They cheeped again, louder, a healthy, vibrant sound in the twilight silence. They were larger than day-old chicks should be—the size of small apples. System-enhanced vitality.
[Reward secured. Temporary storage buffer active. 5:00 minutes until materialization stabilizes.]
Lin Yan let out a breath he didn't know he was holding. It was real. It was all devastatingly, wonderfully real. He quickly reached in, his hands gentle. The chicks were warm, surprisingly solid. They pecked at his fingers without fear. He arranged them near the water jar, tapping his finger beside it. One brave chick stumbled over, dipped its beak, and took a drink. The others followed.
"There you go," he whispered, a smile breaking across his face for the first time since his awakening. "Welcome home."
He had to get his family. The buffer time was ticking down. He backed out of the coop, closed the door, and turned toward the hut, where the glow of a single rushlight shone through the hide-covered window.
He took a deep, shuddering breath of the cold, clean dusk air. The first step was taken. The first life was entrusted to his care.
He walked to the door, pushed it open. The warm, smoky interior felt different now. It felt like a command center.
Every eye turned to him. Expectant. Fearful. Hopeful.
Lin Yan looked at his mother, his father, his brothers, his sisters, the curious faces of the children peeking from behind adults' legs.
"Mother, Father," he said, his voice clear and steady in the quiet hut. "The dream was true. The blessing has arrived. Come and see."
He stepped back, holding the door open. For a long moment, no one moved. Then, Lin Xiaoshan, unable to contain himself, darted forward. Wang Shi followed, then Lin Dashan, then the others, a hesitant procession into the deepening twilight.
They gathered around the little coop. Lin Yan opened the door and held the rushlight close.
The light fell on five healthy, busy chicks. One was pecking at a leaf. Two were drinking. One was trying to flap tiny wings. They cheeped greetings to the circle of stunned faces.
A profound silence descended, broken only by the soft sounds of the chicks.
Wang Shi's hand flew to her mouth again, her eyes filling with sudden tears. Not tears of sadness, but of a shock so profound it bypassed thought and went straight to emotion. "Spirits above…"
Lin Dashan simply stared, his mouth slightly open. The reality of the chicks—healthy, here, in the shed they had built—shattered his worldview. He looked from the chicks to his second son's calm, assured face, and something long-frozen inside him gave a painful, hopeful crack.
"Chickens…" Lin Qiang breathed, his skepticism evaporated in the face of tangible proof. "Five of them…"
"They're so fat!" Xiao Lian squealed, clapping her hands.
"In a few months," Lin Yan said, speaking into the awed silence, "they'll start laying. An egg, almost every day, from each of them. That's… that's over thirty eggs a week. Some we eat. Some we trade for grain. Their manure we mix into the soil to make it live again." He painted the future in simple, vivid strokes. "This is the first seed. This is the path."
Lin Dashan finally found his voice. It was thick, trembling slightly. "But… how? Yan'er, how?"
Lin Yan met his father's gaze. "The dream, Father. The ancestors gave us a chance. But the dream is over now. The work," he said, looking at each of his family members in turn, "is just beginning. It will be hard. They need food, protection, care. We all have to learn."
Lin Gang knelt down, peering into the coop with the first genuine smile Lin Yan had seen on his face. "They're good stock. Strong. I'll make a proper door tomorrow, one that latches tight against foxes."
It was a commitment. It was belief.
Wang Shi wiped her eyes, and a new, fierce light replaced the tears. "We'll find food for them. There are insects in the rotten log by the stream. Gleanings in the Zhang family's harvested millet field, if we ask politely."
The family was mobilizing. The spark had been lit.
Lin Yan looked up at the first stars pricking through the violet sky. In his mind's eye, the system interface glowed gently.
[New Daily Quest Available: 'First Feeding.' Ensure chicks have adequate food and clean water before sunrise. Reward: 10 System Points.]
[System Points can be used in the Shop (Unlocked at 100 points).]
[Long-term Milestone: 'The First Clutch.' Successfully raise all five chicks to laying age (20 weeks). Reward: Enhanced Rooster (1), Basic Coop Blueprint (Improved), 50 System Points.]
A long, difficult road lay ahead. Debts, the coming winter, village skepticism, the immense labor of turning nothing into something.
But as he stood there, surrounded by his family's newfound, fragile hope, listening to the healthy cheep of five small lives in a coop he had willed into existence, Lin Yan, the agricultural engineer reborn, felt something he hadn't felt in years.
Purpose.
He wasn't just cultivating crops or managing land anymore.
He was cultivating a future.
[System Note: Host has successfully completed initiation. Foundation Phase is now active. The Ranch Development System wishes you prosperous growth.]
The blue dot pulsed steadily in his vision, a silent partner in the vast, ancient darkness. Lin Yan smiled, a real smile that reached his eyes, and turned to lead his family back inside, the first chapter of their new story already being written in straw, hope, and the promise of eggs at dawn.