The transition from a "frail youth" to a "ranch leader" wasn't a sudden leap; it was a grueling, inch-by-inch crawl. While the golden eggs provided a trickle of silver, the reality of the Lin family remained one of hard labor and calloused hands.
The morning air was thick with the scent of thawing earth—a smell that was half-sweet, half-rot. Lin Yan stood on the designated "Waste Land" at the foot of the North Slope, holding a sharpened wooden stake.
"From here, sixty paces east," Lin Yan directed, hammering the stake into the rocky ground. "Then forty paces north. This is where the Big House starts."
Lin Da and Lin Er looked at the stakes, then at each other. They were used to the cramped, smoky confines of their current hut. The dimensions Lin Yan was marking out were nearly four times larger.
"Yan'er," Lin Da said, wiping sweat from his brow despite the cold. "Building a house this size... we'd need ten thousand bricks. We'd need a master carpenter. Where will the coin come from?"
"We aren't building with fired bricks yet, Brother," Lin Yan explained, kneeling to show them the soil. "We're going to use Rammed Earth. We mix the local clay with the straw from the North Slope and the 'Stone Dust' from the quarry. If we compress it right, it'll be harder than wood and warmer than silk."
He wasn't just guessing. The System had provided a [Basic Structural Blueprint: Northern Ranch House]. It utilized a passive solar design—thick walls to the north to block the Siberian winds, and large openings to the south to catch the winter sun.
The Arrival of the "Broken"
As they began the back-breaking work of digging the cellar—the "cool room" where Lin Yan planned to store dairy and meat—a shadow fell over the trench.
A man stood at the edge of their property. He was gaunt, his ribs visible through a tunic that was more holes than cloth. Behind him stood a small, hollow-eyed boy clutching a rusted bucket. They were refugees from the drought-stricken southern provinces, part of the "Broken People" who wandered the dynasty looking for a handful of grain.
Lin Shun, the father, stopped digging. His first instinct was to reach for his empty pockets. "We have nothing to give, traveler. We are barely holding on ourselves."
The man didn't beg. He looked at the deep, straight lines of the foundation and the way Lin Yan had organized the stone piles. "I don't want a handout," the man rasped. "I saw the way you're turning the earth. You're using a four-point lever to move those boulders. You need more hands. I'll work for a bowl of whatever your dogs eat."
Lin Yan climbed out of the pit. He looked at the man's hands—they were thick with the scars of a mason.
> [System Scan: Refugee]
> Name: Zhang He
> Skill: Masonry (Level 4), Irrigation (Level 2).
> Condition: Severe Dehydration.
> Loyalty Potential: High (Gratitude-based).
>
"We don't have dogs," Lin Yan said, his voice quiet. "But we have a pot of porridge and a need for a man who knows stone. Brother Da, go to the house. Tell Mother we have a guest. Double the water in the pot and add a handful of the dried wild mushrooms."
Zhang He collapsed to his knees, not in prayer, but in relief. This was the first "Ranch Hand." Lin Yan didn't hire him out of pure charity; he hired him because a ranch is built on the backs of loyal men, and loyalty is cheapest when bought with a full stomach during a famine.
The First "Meat" Lesson
While Zhang He and the brothers worked the foundations, Lin Yan took Lin San and their pet dog—a scruffy, local cur they'd named 'Stider'—to the edge of the woods.
"The mountain goat we bought is for milk and breeding," Lin Yan told his younger brother. "But if we want to grow, we need protein. Real protein."
Strider suddenly froze, his ears pricked toward a thicket of brambles. With a sharp woof, he dived into the brush. A moment later, a fat, mountain hare—nearly fifteen pounds of muscle and fur—burst out.
Lin San moved to throw a rock, but Lin Yan stayed his hand. He stepped forward, the rawhide lariat he had spent nights braiding singing through the air. The loop snapped shut around the rabbit's neck mid-leap.
"A clean kill," Lin Yan noted, checking the animal.
That night, instead of boiling the meat into a flavorless gray stew, Lin Yan introduced the concept of Dry-Aging and Brining. He used a portion of his 'Snow Salt' and some wild peppercorns to rub the meat, then hung it in the drafty, cold corner of the shed.
"If we eat it now, it's tough," Lin Yan explained to his skeptical family. "If we let the cold and the salt work on it for two days, the flavor deepens. This is how we will treat our cattle later. We won't just sell meat; we'll sell luxury."
The "Slow" Progress
By the end of the week, the cellar was four feet deep. Zhang He had proven his worth, showing them how to line the walls with flat river stones to prevent collapse. The Lin family's courtyard was no longer a place of quiet despair; it was a construction site.
The neighbors, including Zhao Fugui, watched from the fence. They saw a family of "beggars" hiring workers and eating meat. The jealousy was festering, but so was a strange kind of awe.
Lin Yan sat on the edge of the foundation pit as the moon rose. His hands were blistered, his back ached, and he was still wearing the same ragged tunic. He wasn't "rich" by any stretch of the imagination. But as he looked at the blueprint in his mind, he saw the future: the walls of the Big House rising, the mountain goat giving birth, and the first "Iron-Hoof" bull being brought to heel.
"Slow and steady," he whispered to the night air.
[System Notification: Infrastructure Progress 5%. Family Harmony +10. Reputation in Stone Creek: 'The Strange Provider'.]
The foundation was laid. Now, it was time to build upward.