By dawn, the soil was no longer silent.
Every footstep on Ikenna's farmland trembled with quiet power, as if thousands of tiny voices were whispering from beneath, ready to rise on his command. The land recognized him now—not just as a cultivator or caretaker, but as its chosen soul.
Nwachi stood beside the granary, her arms folded, watching him sketch symbols in the dirt using a bone-plow stylus—a gift from the Root Descent. Each line he carved glowed faintly green, and the nearby crops leaned toward it like sunflowers chasing light.
"They'll be coming soon," she said, nodding toward the distant Evergrowth encampment, now cloaked in unnatural fog. "I've seen cultivator patrols probing the border fields. They're scouting."
"I want them to come," Ikenna murmured without looking up. "Because this time, they're the ones who won't understand the terrain."
He stood, eyes sharper than ever. The sigil buried in his soul pulsed once in recognition—he was no longer alone.
The defensive formation he planned wasn't one of swords or spears, but one of living agriculture.
"First line," he said, gesturing to Amara and Jalun, "is the Warding Rows. We'll alternate soulbeans and ghost maize, each laced with decay runes. When Evergrowth steps on them, the crops will rot instantly—poisoning the qi flow in their dantian channels."
Jalun looked hesitant. "Won't that… ruin the crops?"
Ikenna gave him a tight smile. "We're not farming for food this season. We're farming for war."
"Right," Jalun nodded. "Rot it is."
"Second," Ikenna continued, pointing further inward, "we plant Dirtwatchers—the soil spirit trees that awakened last night. Their roots run under the entire valley. Once the first wave is disrupted, the Dirtwatchers will detect the remaining intruders. And if I focus… I can command them to ensnare."
Amara raised a brow. "You'll be directing roots underground while fighting?"
"I'm not the one fighting," he replied. "The land is."
By midday, they had fifteen villagers helping—most of them ordinary folk, too old or too young for war, but trained now in a different kind of cultivation. They tilled using prayer rakes. They whispered to seeds before burial. They marked every planted corner with rune-stakes carved from stormwood.
Nwachi stepped beside Ikenna again. "There's an old technique," she said. "From the Verdant Tribes. A way to turn a field into a prison—where no soul can enter without offering tribute."
"Tribute?"
She nodded. "Blood, food… or memory. It's called the Hunger Field. But it's dangerous. If it's not sated, it consumes everything, even its own creator."
Ikenna thought for a long moment.
Then he said, "Show me how."
The night before the expected Evergrowth strike, the farm transformed.
Rows glowed with sigil light, but not in harsh brilliance—in pulses, like a sleeping beast breathing through moss. The Dirtwatchers stood still and silent, but the tips of their roots quivered beneath the surface.
Ikenna, wrapped in robes of bark-thread and soilweave, stood before the field's central stone. In front of him lay a shallow bowl of his own blood, one drop for every row he had planted by hand.
He dipped his fingers into the bowl and whispered the incantation Nwachi had taught him.
"I feed the land. I ask it to rise, to remember its hunger, to remember me."
The blood sizzled. The ground rippled once—once—and then lay still.
But now Ikenna felt it.
The field was awake.
And it was hungry.
They came before dawn.
No horns. No warnings. Just fog and footsteps, as twenty Evergrowth cultivators marched across the eastern ridge. They wore vine-armor and carried seed-blades—curved, living weapons that could slice through bamboo or bone.
At the front walked their squad leader—a woman with pale, leaf-tattooed skin and an aura of corrupted sunlight.
"Hold," she ordered, lifting a vine-blade. "Scouting team said this place had defensive glyphs. Be wary."
Too late.
The first foot crossed into the Warding Rows. The soulbeans hissed. The ground shuddered.
The crops around the intruder blackened and wilted in a heartbeat. He staggered, clutching his abdomen, veins turning green-black with toxic qi overflow.
"Trap!" shouted another.
"Fall back—"
But the Dirtwatchers reacted.
From beneath, roots exploded upward—wrapping ankles, dragging cultivators into the soil. Screams echoed as they struggled, only to find the very ground turning viscous, like living mud.
From atop the granary, Ikenna raised both arms. "You poisoned the river that fed these fields. Burned the trees that shaded our wells. You want the land? Then let it judge you."
With a pulse of qi, the Hunger Field activated.
The fog peeled back like torn fabric. The clouds swirled.
And from the center rows, the earth opened.
Massive roots, fused with memory and blood, surged upward—not to attack, but to consume. They wrapped around the unlucky, dragged them down screaming into the very soil that had once fed Ikenna's people.
The squad leader leapt forward, slicing at the vines. "Blasphemer! You turn the land into a weapon?"
"No," Ikenna answered, stepping into the field, unafraid. "The land turned itself. I just listened."
The Hunger Field growled.
The final phase began.
The Evergrowth cultivators fled—those who could. The rest vanished into the soil, their qi burned out, their memory absorbed by the field. No bodies. No remains.
Just silence.
Then, a sound.
The slow rumble of rain.
Ikenna looked up. The clouds above had begun to weep—not a storm, but a gentle, cleansing downpour. The kind that healed. The kind the farm hadn't felt in months.
Amara stepped beside him, soaked, eyes wide. "You won."
"No," Ikenna said quietly. "The farm did."
Nwachi stepped forward, handing him a stalk of untouched ghost maize.
"The Hunger Field is sated," she said. "For now."
Ikenna planted the maize in the center of the battlefield.
"No more blood today," he whispered to the ground. "Only growth."