Three hundred acres of possibility stretched before Jin, raw and untamed. Hills rolled toward distant mountains. A stream cut silver through the eastern boundary. The deed rested in his pocket, the paper crisp against his fingers, bearing his name in characters that still looked strange after two years.
Mine.
The word settled somewhere behind his ribs. In the other world—the one with highways and high-rises—he'd owned debts and disappointments. A cubule. A coffeemaker. An apartment lease signed in foolish optimism.
Here, he owned land.
"Big Brother Jin!" A voice shattered his thoughts. "You're doing it again!"
Jin turned. Feng Huang bounded up the dirt path, twelve years old and overflowing with energy despite the early hour. Orange sect robes hung loose on his frame, catching the morning light. Three other disciples followed at a slower pace, their faces showing varying degrees of curiosity and studied neutrality.
"Doing what?" Jin asked.
"Standing still." Feng gestured at the valley. "Staring at nothing. Master says cultivators who do this are either achieving enlightenment or losing their minds. Which is it?"
The other disciples shifted. The tall one—Wei, Jin recalled—cleared his throat.
"Junior Brother, you shouldn't speak to seniors that way."
"He told me to call him Big Brother Jin." Feng's grin could've lit the entire valley. "And he's retired from cultivation, so the normal rules are different. Right?"
Five pairs of eyes fixed on Jin. He recognized the expression. Confusion wrestling with calculation, trying to match the man before them with the legends they'd heard. Jin the Destroyer. Jin the Heaven's Edge. Jin Who Ended the Demonic Alliance in Seven Days.
Titles earned in his previous life, when he'd been someone else. Someone stronger. Someone who'd spent three hundred years climbing to cultivation's peak until the world ran out of challenges and loneliness became unbearable.
The System had offered him a choice: reincarnate with power or reincarnate with peace.
He'd chosen the farm.
"Manners still matter," Jin said. "But yes, call me Big Brother."
Feng beamed. The other disciples relaxed.
"Master sent us to help with morning work," Wei said. He cupped his hands in formal greeting, the gesture precise despite his youth. "We're to assist however you require, as thanks for your... previous generosity."
Previous generosity. Jin suppressed a smile. Two months ago, he'd given their sect master a jar of pickled radishes. Normal pickled radishes, prepared from his garden using a recipe he'd learned from a YouTube video in his first life.
Except nothing grown in his soil came out normal. The radishes had contained enough ambient spiritual energy to advance three disciples through minor bottlenecks. The sect master had appeared at his door the next day, pale and sweating, demanding to know where Jin had obtained "such profound cultivation resources."
Jin had explained crop rotation and fermentation times. The sect master had listened with the expression of someone receiving divine wisdom. The disconnect had been hilarious and faintly terrifying.
"I appreciate the help," Jin said. "The chicken coop needs rebuilding. The old one collapsed last week."
"A chicken coop." The shortest disciple—a girl named Mei—couldn't quite hide her skepticism. "You want cultivators to build a chicken coop."
"I want people willing to build a chicken coop. Cultivation has nothing to do with it."
"But you could rebuild it with a thought." Feng mimed an explosion with his hands. "Boom! Perfect structure! I've heard you once constructed an entire fortress in the time it took—"
"Different life," Jin interrupted. Different priorities. Different man wearing his face. "Here, we build things the normal way."
"Why?"
The question came from the fifth disciple, older than the others, perhaps sixteen. He'd hung back during introductions, watching Jin with eyes too sharp for his years. His robes bore the insignia of an inner sect student.
"Because the chickens don't care about immortal techniques," Jin said. "They need walls and a roof and protection from foxes. Everything else is showing off."
The boy's expression didn't change, but something shifted behind his eyes. Assessment, perhaps. Or disappointment.
They worked through the morning—five disciples and one former immortal, measuring wood and driving nails. Jin had purchased tools from the nearby village. Hammer, saw, nails forged by ordinary blacksmiths using ordinary methods. The disciples kept glancing at them like they might spontaneously transform into mystical artifacts.
"Could you pass the hammer?" Wei asked during a pause.
Jin handed it over. Their fingers brushed. Wei flinched, nearly dropped the tool, and stared at his hand.
"What?"
"Your cultivation..." Wei's voice dropped to a whisper. "I can't sense it."
"I sealed it."
"But why would anyone—" Wei caught himself, ducked his head. "Forgive me. It's inappropriate to question."
Jin drove another nail, the rhythmic impact oddly satisfying. "You can question. I might answer."
Silence stretched between hammer strikes. Finally, Mei spoke from her corner of the construction.
"Is it true you killed the Demon Emperor with a single technique?"
"No."
"Oh." She sounded relieved. "People exaggerate, then."
"It took three techniques. And he wasn't really an emperor, just ambitious."
The hammer slipped from Wei's grip, hitting dirt with a muffled thump. Feng laughed, bright and delighted.
"I knew it! Lin from the outer sect said you were making it all up, but I knew—"
"Feng." The older disciple's voice cut through the boy's enthusiasm. "Control yourself."
Feng deflated. Jin retrieved the fallen hammer and passed it back to Wei, who accepted it like a holy relic.
"What's your name?" Jin asked the older boy.
"Zhi Ruo. Inner sect, third rank."
"Impressive for your age."
"Adequate." Zhi Ruo's tone suggested he found it anything but. "I'll be seventeen soon. Most inner sect disciples achieve third rank by fifteen."
"Most never achieve it at all," Jin said. "Comparison is the thief of contentment."
"From the Peaceful Heart Sutra."
"From someone who learned the hard way."
Zhi Ruo studied him with his too-sharp gaze. "You're different from the stories."
"Good."
They framed the walls as the sun climbed higher. Jin had sketched rough plans the previous evening—basic measurements, simple construction. Nothing fancy. The disciples worked with varying competence: Wei careful and precise, Mei quick but sloppy, Feng enthusiastic but easily distracted. Zhi Ruo moved with the efficiency of someone who'd done manual labor before, his hands finding the right grip without hesitation.
"You've built things," Jin observed.
"My family were carpenters before I was recruited." Zhi Ruo didn't lift his eyes from the beam he was securing. "My father said cultivation was a path to honor. My mother said it was a path away from home. Both were right."
The words carried weight, old pain worn smooth by time. Jin recognized the shape of it—family abandoned, previous life discarded for power and prestige. How many times had he witnessed this? How many disciples had he trained who barely remembered their parents' faces?
"Do you visit them?" Jin asked.
"Once a year, if assignments permit." Zhi Ruo drove a nail with perhaps more force than necessary. "My father tells everyone his son is an inner sect cultivator. My mother makes dumplings and asks when I'm coming home for good."
"What do you tell her?"
"Cultivation is my path now. I can't abandon it."
Jin held the beam steady while Zhi Ruo secured the opposite end. "Can't, or won't?"
The boy's hands stilled. For a moment, Jin thought he'd pushed too far, crossed some invisible boundary. Zhi Ruo spoke, voice quiet beneath the morning birdsong.
"I don't know anymore."
They finished the frame by midday. It stood crooked—one wall slightly off-angle, the roof beam sagging in the middle—but it stood. Jin walked the perimeter, checking joints and testing supports. Sturdy enough. The chickens wouldn't complain about aesthetics.
"It's imperfect," Mei said. She sounded apologetic.
"It's functional. Different things."
"But if you used your cultivation—"
"I'd have a perfect chicken coop and no understanding of carpentry." Jin ran his hand along a rough-hewn board. "This way, I have both."
Feng flopped onto the grass, sprawling dramatically. "Big Brother Jin, I'm dying. We need food. Spiritual energy can only sustain the body for so long, and my stomach is eating itself."
"You're always dying of hunger," Wei said.
"And yet I never actually die. Medical miracle."
Jin led them to the main house—calling it a house felt generous, given its size—where he'd prepared lunch. Rice, pickled vegetables, steamed buns filled with wild mushrooms he'd foraged from the forest edge. Simple food, prepared simply.
The disciples approached the meal like it might explode.
"It's safe," Jin said.
"You said the same about the radishes," Wei muttered.
"And they were safe. Helpful, even."
"Senior Brother Liu broke through to Foundation Establishment and accidentally launched himself through the training hall roof."
Jin paused mid-reach for a bun. "Through the roof?"
"Clean through. Master said it was the most violent Foundation Establishment breakthrough he'd witnessed in forty years." Wei's expression remained carefully neutral. "We had to fish him out of a tree."
Feng grabbed three buns, seemingly unconcerned about potential transcendence. "Worth it, though. He'd been stuck at peak Qi Condensation for six months."
"Still," Mei said, eyeing the food. "Maybe we should eat slowly. Just in case."
They ate. Slowly at first, picking at the food with caution. Minutes passed without spontaneous enlightenment, and they attacked the meal with the focused intensity of teenagers who'd been doing manual labor all morning. By the time they finished, only crumbs remained.
"Amazing," Feng said, leaning back with a satisfied groan. "Big Brother Jin, you should open a restaurant. You'd make a fortune."
"I have a fortune. I don't need another."
"What do you need, then?"
The question hung in the air, genuine and curious. Jin studied the four young faces turned toward him, expectant. What did he need?
Peace, he'd told the System. A chance to start over. A life measured in seasons and harvests instead of breakthroughs and battles.
"Chickens," he said finally. "For the coop."
Feng laughed. Mei smiled. Wei shook his head with fond exasperation. Zhi Ruo watched Jin with his assessing gaze, like he was a puzzle to be solved.
They worked through the afternoon, adding roof tiles and mixing clay for the coop walls. The sun tracked across the sky, warm on Jin's shoulders. Honest warmth, earned through honest work. His muscles ached—a strange, novel sensation after centuries of a body sustained by spiritual energy.
He liked it.
"Master wants us back before evening meditation," Wei said as the sun touched the western hills. "We should go."
The disciples gathered their things, brushing dirt from their robes. Feng bounded over to Jin, bouncing on his toes.
"Can we come back? This was fun!"
"If your master permits."
"He will! He said we're supposed to learn from your wisdom." Feng's grin turned sly. "I think he wants more radishes."
"Feng!" Mei hissed.
"What? It's true!"
They departed in a cluster of orange robes and youthful energy, Feng's voice carrying back across the valley as they descended the path. Jin stood in his crooked chicken coop, surveying the day's work.
Imperfect. Functional. His.
The sun set slowly, painting the sky orange and gold. Jin walked his land as darkness gathered, checking the garden plots and the irrigation channels he'd dug the previous week. Tomatoes coming in well. Lettuce needed thinning. The herb garden required weeding.
Ordinary concerns. Ordinary problems.
Perfect.
He returned to the house as stars emerged, pinpricks of light in the vast darkness. Inside, he lit a single candle and sat at the rough wooden table he'd purchased from a village craftsman. The deed lay before him, characters sharp in the flickering light.
Three hundred acres. A chicken coop. A garden. A beginning.
Jin blew out the candle and sat in comfortable darkness, listening to night sounds filtering through the window. Cricket song. Wind through grass. The distant call of something hunting in the forest.
This was enough.
This was everything.
Tomorrow, he'd buy chickens.