When Lin Yue woke up, her fingernails were full of river mud.
Those were not her hands, not her time. The beach on the north bank of the Wei River is so dry that you can fit two fingers into it. The severe drought has lasted for more than half a year. Starvation is everywhere, and troops are ruthless. Then a green light lit up on her wrist——
"The Shen Nong system has been activated. Anti-gravity rice seeds x 3 can be grown on dry land. It matures in fifteen days, and a single plant can produce 3,000 grains."
Three seeds were buried in dry soil, and within fifteen seconds the seeds were ready for earing and grain filling. The grains burst through the rice husks, and the ears stretched upward, as if some invisible force was supporting them to grow upwards. The defeated soldiers came over smelling the aroma of rice and surrounded her with their knives raised. She did not run away, but stood on the spot and flicked the flames under her feet - within three feet, the fire wall of hay and vines "growing" from the soil blocked all those people out.
She knelt down and looked at the man who was kneeling outside the fire ring shouting "Xiangu, please spare your life" and said, "Call Ji Lord."
Starting from the river beach, she dug up the land step by step, led the canal over, and collected the grain. The Prime Minister of Yueyang County came to ask for food, the Lu family business delivered iron and salt, Zhang Han wrote a letter asking "can I provide food", and Liu Bang asked someone to ask "can I give you some seeds". When others were fighting for territory, she was paving grain roads; when others were claiming the throne, her grain stamps had become hard currency.
What she sows is not the ground. It is the lifeblood of this era.
Many years later, a new grain-road apprentice asked her what to call her on the ridge of the field. She squatted on the ground pulling weeds without looking back:
"Just call me Lord Ji."
This is the story of a woman who relied on a handful of seeds, a food route, and a set of rules to make all the overlords in the troubled times of the late Qin Dynasty inseparable from her.
