Fleeing into the Mountains: I Use My Space to Clear Land and Build a Home

At sixteen, Ah Heng fled into the mountains on a stormy night. Behind her were the betrothal gifts her stepmother and grandmother had schemed to collect. Before her lay vast, endless mountains and an uncertain road ahead. On the brink of death, the ancestral pendant her mother had left her saved her life and opened up a tiny pocket realm: a spring of spiritual water and three mu of poor farmland, nothing more. There was no System that could turn stone into gold, no all-powerful helper. From a leaky shack to a sturdy wooden house, from wild greens that barely filled her stomach to a barn full of grain, Ah Heng relied on her own two hands to carve out a place for herself amid wild beasts and snowstorms. Later, a taciturn hunter appeared in the mountains. He taught her how to recognize traps, and she taught him how to pickle vegetables. They went from confrontation to cautious testing, from keeping out of each other's way to sharing a bowl of hot soup. Their days flowed slowly but steadily, like a mountain stream. Until bandits' flashing blades and the greed of her relatives shattered that peace once more...