The dust of the plateau still clung to Jia-Hao's skin like the touch of a ghost. Behind him, the third Nomad's engine-roar had faded into a pathetic whine, swallowed by the vast, silent expanse of the Gansu wasteland.
But as Jia-Hao and Old Man Han descended the winding, rocky path toward Xi-An Base 4, the air changed. It lost the sharp, metallic tang of the heights and turned into something heavy, stagnant, and sour. It was the smell of a thousand people living in fear, breathing the same recycled despair every day.
"Jia-Hao, listen to me," Old Man Han whispered, his hand trembling as it rested on the boy's shoulder. "What happened on the bridge… keep it inside your heart. The Village Headman, Elder Mao, his eyes are like a crow's. He sees power and he wants to eat it. If he knows you have this… this spirit-magic, he will sell you to the High-Bloods for a bag of clean rice."
Jia-Hao didn't answer immediately. He was looking at his peripheral vision. The golden screen had faded to a faint shimmer, but the data was still there, etched into his mind like carvings on an ancestral tablet.
[CURRENT STATUS: LEVEL 2 (ASPIRANT)][MERITOCRATIC MAP: XI-AN BASE 4 (STABILITY: 12% - CRITICAL)][POPULATION SENTIMENT: DESPAIR/STARVATION]
"I cannot hide it, Grandfather," Jia-Hao said, his voice carrying a resonance that made the old man flinch. "The Mandate is not a secret to be buried. It is a flame to be fed. If Elder Mao is a crow, then I must become the sun that blinds him."
They reached the perimeter of the village. Xi-An Base 4 was a scar on the land. It was a cluster of low, mud-brick hovels reinforced with rusted corrugated iron and scavenged plastic. At its center was a communal courtyard where a single, sickly "Sun-Oak" tree grew—a mutation from the 2025 era that produced oily, bitter acorns instead of fruit.
A crowd had gathered. They were shadows of humans, their eyes sunken, their bellies swollen from eating "Clay-Bread"—a mixture of dirt and sawdust used to trick the stomach into feeling full.
At the front stood Elder Mao. He was a fat man—a rarity in Zone B—wearing a silk robe that was fraying at the edges, a relic of the old world that smelled of mothballs and stale grease.
"Old Man Han!" Mao barked, his voice thin and shrill. "The scouts said you were on the bridge! Where is the tribute? The Iron-Wolves will be here any moment, and if we don't have the tribute, they will burn the kiln!"
"The Iron-Wolves are gone," Jia-Hao stepped forward, his eyes locking onto the Elder's.
The courtyard went silent. A woman holding a crying infant stopped rocking. A man sharpening a dull hoe looked up.
"Gone?" Mao laughed, a wet, unpleasant sound. "The Iron-Wolves don't just leave, you stupid boy. Did you hide like a rat and hope they didn't smell you?"
"I broke them," Jia-Hao said. He held up the rusted rebar rod, now stained with the dark, greasy oil of the Nomad's bike. "Two are in the ravine. One ran back to tell their King that the Han people are no longer for sale."
A collective gasp rippled through the crowd. In Zone B, the Nomads were seen as forces of nature—unstoppable, like the Solar Scourge or the Great Deluge. To hear a fifteen-year-old speak of "breaking" them was either a miracle or a death sentence.
"You… you fool!" Mao's face turned a mottled purple. "You've brought ruin upon us! They will return with fifty bikes! They will slaughter us all because you wanted to play hero!"
[SYSTEM NOTIFICATION: POLITICAL INSTABILITY DETECTED][ACADEMIC REFINEMENT (LOGIC): Elder Mao is using fear to maintain his monopoly on resources. If his authority is not challenged, the 'Great Harmony' will fail before it begins.]
Jia-Hao felt the Academic Pillar pulsing. It was as if his brain was a supercomputer, calculating the social hierarchy of the village in milliseconds. He saw the way the villagers looked at Mao—not with respect, but with the weary habit of the oppressed.
"They won't come back today," Jia-Hao said, stepping into the center of the courtyard. "And by the time they gather their strength, we will no longer be the weaklings they remember. Elder Mao, you talk of ruin, but look around you. The people are already ruined. They are eating dirt while you hide grain in your cellar."
"How dare you!" Mao shrieked. "Guards! Seize him!"
Two men, slightly better fed than the rest and carrying clubs made of reinforced plastic, stepped forward hesitantly. They looked at Jia-Hao, then at the rod in his hand. They remembered the boy who used to struggle to carry a water bucket. But the person standing before them now… his posture was like a mountain.
[PILLAR UNLOCKED: CUISINE (ENJOYMENT REFINEMENT)][Level 1: The Soul's Satiety][New Skill: 'Aroma of the Sovereign' — Using scent and spirit to calm the masses.]
Suddenly, a strange, impossible smell began to drift through the courtyard.
It wasn't the smell of the village. It was the scent of steamed jasmine rice—real, white rice. It was the fragrance of ginger and scallions, of rich soy sauce and braised pork. It was a smell from the ancient history books, a smell that had been extinct in Zone B for three centuries.
The villagers froze. Some began to cry. The crying infant went silent, its tiny nose twitching.
"What is this smell?" someone whispered. "Is it… is it a dream?"
Jia-Hao's hands began to glow with a faint, golden warmth. He walked toward the communal cooking pot in the center of the square—a rusted iron vat used to boil bitter roots.
"The Mandate is not just about the sword," Jia-Hao said, his voice soft but reaching every ear. "It is about the table. A leader who cannot feed his people is no leader at all."
He reached into his tattered pouch. He didn't have rice or pork. He had only a handful of dried, mutated "Salt-Berries" he had picked on the plateau. But as he dropped them into the boiling water of the vat, the Cuisine Pillar activated.
[CUISINE REFINEMENT: ALCHEMICAL SUSTENANCE ACTIVE][Converting Molecular Waste into Essential Nutrients…][Enhancing Sensory Profile: 'The Emperor's First Porridge'.]
The water in the pot began to thicken. It turned from a murky, grey soup into a pearlescent white gruel. The steam rose in thick, swirling clouds, carrying the scent of a thousand-year-old civilization.
"Grandfather," Jia-Hao called out. "Bring the bowls."
The villagers surged forward, no longer caring about Mao or his guards. They moved like ghosts drawn to a light. One by one, Jia-Hao ladled the white gruel into their cracked ceramic bowls.
As the first woman tasted it, she collapsed to her knees, sobbing. "It's… it's sweet. It tastes like… like life."
[MUSIC PILLAR (EMOTIONAL REFINEMENT): RESONANCE DETECTED][Village Stability: 12% -> 25%][Population Loyalty: Increasing…]
Jia-Hao watched them. He felt a profound, heavy sadness. These were the descendants of the people who built the Great Wall, who explored the stars, who mastered the atom. Now, they were weeping over a bowl of magically-enhanced water.
"Elder Mao," Jia-Hao said, looking at the fat man who was now standing alone, his guards having joined the line for food. "The grain in your cellar. You will bring it out. All of it. We are going to implement the Dual-Core Strategy. Half for the winter, half for the new planting."
"You… you have no right!" Mao stammered, his authority evaporating like mist in the sun.
"I have the Mandate," Jia-Hao replied.
He didn't need to strike. The villagers, now fueled by the first real nutrition they had tasted in years, turned their gaze toward Mao. It wasn't a gaze of anger, but of a cold, collective realization.
"The cellar, Elder," one of the guards said, his voice low. "Now."
As the sun began to set, casting long, bloody shadows across the Loess Plateau, the village of Xi-An Base 4 underwent a transformation. The despair didn't vanish—that would take years—but it was replaced by a sharp, focused energy.
Jia-Hao sat under the Sun-Oak tree, his body aching from the strain of the System's first real exertion. The golden screen flickered before him.
[QUEST COMPLETE: SECURE THE HEARTS OF THE PEOPLE][REWARD: +1 LEVEL IN ACADEMIC REFINEMENT][NEW FEATURE UNLOCKED: THE MERITOCRATIC GOVERNANCE INTERFACE]
A complex diagram appeared in the air, showing the village's layout and its resource flow.
[THE DUAL-CORE STRATEGY: INITIALIZING][CORE 1: THE AGRARIAN SOUL (ZONE B) — Focus: Food, Tradition, Loyalty.][CORE 2: THE ARCOLOGY BRAIN (ZONE C) — Focus: Tech, Defense, Progress.]
The High-Bloods will notice the spike in energy, Jia-Hao thought, his eyes tracking the white Spire in the distance. They will see the change in the village's bio-signature.
"Jia-Hao."
He looked up to see a young woman, perhaps seventeen, standing before him. Her name was Lin-Na. Her father had died in the Great Deluge's lingering after-shocks. She was thin, but her eyes were sharp, like a hawk's.
"The men are asking what we do tomorrow," she said. "The Iron-Wolves will return. We know this. Even with your… your gift, we are only fifty able-bodied people with hoes. We cannot fight an army."
Jia-Hao stood up, feeling his bones settle into a new, stronger alignment.
"Tomorrow, we don't farm," he said. "Tomorrow, we go to the Old World Graveyard at the edge of the Forbidden Zone."
Lin-Na gasped. "The Graveyard? That is High-Blood territory! The automated drones will kill anything that moves!"
"The drones follow a 2025 protocol," Jia-Hao said, a hint of a smile touching his lips. [Academic Refinement: Level 3] allowed him to see the code in the wind. "They are looking for soldiers. They aren't looking for a Sovereign who knows their secret handshake."
He looked at the small crowd of men who had gathered behind Lin-Na. They were scared, but for the first time, they were looking at him for orders.
"We need steel," Jia-Hao said. "We need the 'Black-Box' tech the Ancestors left behind. If we are to unify Asia, we cannot do it with mud and rusted rebar. We are going to bridge the gap between the Soil and the Spire."
[NEW QUEST: THE SILK AND STEEL EXPEDITION][Objective: Infiltrate the 2025 Tech-Dump. Recover 3 'Micro-Fusion' Cells.][Risk: High. Reward: Breakthrough in Martial Refinement (Level 10).]
As the villagers dispersed to their homes, Jia-Hao stayed under the tree. He looked at his hand—small, calloused, but steady. He felt the Music Pillar humming in the background, a low, constant vibration that told him the world was finally starting to tune itself to his heartbeat.
"Fifteen years old," he whispered to the shadows. "I have no max level. I have no ceiling."
He looked at the Spire.
"One day, I will walk through your front gates, and you will bow not to me, but to the Harmony I bring."
Far away, inside the Dragon's Tooth Arcology, a silent alarm began to pulse in a room filled with liquid-cooled servers. A screen flickered to life, displaying a thermal map of the wasteland. A small, golden spark was burning in the center of Xi-An Base 4.
A voice, cold and synthesized, filled the room.
"System Variance Detected in Sector 7. Evolutionary Probability: Infinite. Recommendation: Immediate Extraction or Eradication."
The Mandate was no longer a secret. The first move on the chessboard of the 3088 World had been made. And the Lad of the Soil was just getting started.