Chapter [B5] 13 — Fertilizer

Chapter [B5] 13 — Fertilizer

I stared at Labby. “So this is the underground pathway that leads straight toward the divine tree?”

Labby nodded fervently.

Sheldon had gone back to their house, perhaps to continue his duties, and Ash had given me an apologetic look, saying Zhang might appreciate his help. That left Labby as my sole companion.

I looked over the tunnel system with a flicker of pride. It resembled the old mines I’d seen in films—the bracing, the ribs of mortal metal holding the rock in place. Good choice: if they’d trusted cultivator formations, the recent fluctuations in ambient chi might have shaken the whole warren apart.

Formations all over the city were straining; if not for Liuxiang’s craft and the old man’s and Granny Lang’s efforts, with the occasional assist from my pets, the barrier would have already failed.

“I’m very proud,” I said, and ruffled Labby’s hair.

She bounced in place, pleased. “Yes, Master should be proud. Labby is amazing!”

I couldn’t help but chuckle.

The entrance she chose was a low stone arch braced by riveted beams. Fresh drill marks lined the rock, neat and straight. The air smelled of oil and chalk. Distances were chalked on the wall—100 paces, 200, 300—and every fifty paces a side niche held crates of lanterns, waterskins, and talismans for panic sealing.

“Labby and the miners,” she said, pointing at a crude chalk map with obvious pride. “We used the old aquifer veins. Less brittle. We left the bad rock alone. Also, Labby put warning bells.”

A copper thread hugged the ceiling, clipped to hooks, with tin bells at intervals. “You did well.”

She preened. “We tested collapse with sacks of sand. No crush.”

Chi pulsed unevenly in the deep earth, a tide pulled both directions. Metal braces didn’t care. They held.

I lifted off the ground and drifted forward; Labby dashed to keep up.

We made quick time, levitation letting me skim past. I examined joints, culled the few demon beasts that showed themselves, claimed their souls, and pressed on.

A faint buzz grew ahead.

“Two hives split,” Labby whispered. “Scouts smelled the tree. We burned one yesterday. One regrew.”

I sent my spiritual sense down the passage. A knot of small auras clustered near a vent. Their poison wasn’t strong, but the miasma in their cores scaled badly for mortals. “Mark it.”

Labby squeezed a clay pellet and slapped it to the wall. It spread into a chalky sigil, pulsed, dulled. Her color code—red for swarm, orange for brood, yellow for stragglers—glowed orange. Good enough.

We rounded a bend; the stone darkened, moisture beaded on the ceiling. A branch tunnel sloped left, barred by welded iron. A sign dangled: DO NOT OPEN. BREACH TO OLD SEWER, complete with a dramatized skull and crossbones.

“Anyone try to come up through this?” I asked, peering at black water licking broken tiles.

“Rats with extra legs,” Labby said, wrinkling her nose. “Tasted bad. We sealed it.”

The buzz swelled. The first bee clung to a pipe seam; it jerked at me, and a flick of chi pinned and snuffed it. The soul curled into my inner world, a private counter ticking up. Two more crawled from a vent; another from a crack. I cut them all, quick and clean.

“Master’s control got steadier,” Labby said, eyes bright.

“Practice. And I have a lot to practice on.”

The bells stayed silent. The metal held. Twice we passed ancient doors leading to palace vaults, old wood banded with newer bars. Chalk notes scarred them: GRAIN—EMPTY. RIFLES—MOVED. CHARCOAL—LEAVE. Organized chaos, but still organized. �

Another hundred paces and the air changed: cooler, cleaner. The buzz faded. Even the damp-rock smell thinned.

“Tree breath,” Labby whispered.

The tunnel widened at a landing. A short stair climbed to a chamber of squat columns. The walls were smoother here, cut by an older hand. A mural had sloughed from the stone and lay in colorful shards. I skimmed threats, found none, and instead noted the long, pale roots threading through joints like tendons stitched into bone. Where they entered, the masonry seemed sounder; where they passed, everything around them steadied.

“Wait,” Labby said, darting to a half-hidden shrine. She set a sliver of spirit wood at its base and tapped it twice. “For the workers who died long ago. Labby promised to bring something good next time.”

We moved on. The last stretch was short and sloped upward. The ceiling broke open into a jagged shaft. Daylight dropped in a bright spear, dust swirling in its path. The air pressed gentle and alive, like standing beside a vast lake and feeling the weight of water simply existing.

The roots thickened and braided into a trunk that had burst through floors and kept going until it split ceiling and sky. Stones lay around it like broken teeth. The floor near the base was dry and clean. The castle above had given way and then adapted, the way everything on this peak kept learning to do.

I laid a hand on the divine tree and looked up at the glory of it—the backup seed I’d planted, now a sovereign presence. At my touch, it pulsed recognition, a quiet hello that felt like greeting another part of myself. Before I could ask anything, a high branch looped down through the ragged opening. Sun glare caught in its leaves as it curved toward my outstretched hand.

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Twilight’s voice soft in my mind. Take them, Master.

“How have you been, Twilight?” I asked aloud.

Qilin is very nice,

Up close, the leaves were thick, glossy, and cool, their energy a steady pulse through channels pre-etched for mortal hands.

Labby stood with clasped hands, waiting eagerly. The branch nudged closer. I twisted, leaves stacking in my palm like green talismans. When I took too many, a faint ache tugged at my chest where the tree and I touched. I slowed. The ache eased; the tree eased with me.

Twilight drifted out of the bark, a warm-gold wisp circling my head. She had become part of the tree, and the rightness of that made me smile. “Take care, Twilight,” I said, tapping her gently.

Yes, Twilight answered. Would you like to follow me?

I considered asking Qilin to let her roam; she caught the thought and brightened. Twilight has been watching everything Master and Senior Sister have been doing from within the tree. Twilight is enjoying herself.

“All right,” I said, and she dissolved into sparks, sinking home.

I passed the leaves to Labby. She stared, wide-eyed. “Master, these leaves, these leaves…”

“Yes?” I tilted my head.

“They are two times stronger than what Labby gathers. Some are three. With these, Master’s master and Granny can do a lot.” She fanned them, delighted. “Higher purity. No grit. Even the veins are smooth. The tincture won’t need filtering. We can skip two steps. The fertilizer will be…” Quick finger math. “Mm. Spirit beans in half the time. Tonics too if we cut clean, no boiling off everything.”

I weighed a leaf on my palm. “How much can we safely cut today?”

“Tree gave. It’s okay,” Labby said, then fixed me with Zhang’s scolding look. “But Master will still pace himself.”

“Master will pace himself,” I echoed. The link made it simple to feel the line between generosity and greed. I gathered another careful stack, stopping when the small tug returned.

“Do you think the tree knows what we need?” Labby asked, voice soft.

“It knows what to give,” I said. “And we’re close enough that, for now, those match.”

We set the leaves on clean cloth. Labby sorted by grade with quick, neat hands. Two piles glowed a shade brighter; she chalked them A and S, with the rest tagged B. She had trained a whole team of mortals to do this, but today she wanted to handle it herself. I let her.

A thought flickered. Maybe the strength came because

I bent, hoisted Labby, and set her on my shoulders. She burst into giggles, incoherent and happy. It felt like the old days when she’d coil around my neck, all warmth and mischief.

“Home?” I asked.

“Home,” she said, hugging my head.

We dove back into the tunnel, the bells quiet, the braces sure, the divine tree’s steady breath at our backs as we headed toward the city.

—

Sound filled the workshop and bounced off brick, wood, and clay. We had cleared three benches to lay everything out but the room still felt crowded. Baskets of dried leaves sat stacked by size on the floor, the stems bundled tight with thread so the grades wouldn’t mix.

Two mortar sets rested near the window where the light was strongest at this hour. The pill furnace hissed softly as it released the last of its heat, a thin ribbon of steam rising from the exhaust valve.

The vent crystals in the ceiling pulsed, shifting from bright to dull as they balanced the air. On the nearest table, nine fresh pills cooled on a lacquered tray, each one the pale green of new shoots with darker veins running through their centers. The smell coming off them was sharp and clean, like crushed leaf and wet soil after rain, only stronger, enough that it tickled the back of the throat.

Old Man didn’t move right away. He bent over until his breath fogged the tray’s cover, then lifted the lid with practiced care so the temperature wouldn’t shock the coating. He didn’t reach for a measuring tool first. He watched. He always watched before he touched. The pill skins had set smooth and firm, free of excess binder on the surface, no warping from uneven heat.

When he finally took the testing pick and pressed one capsule, the imprint rose back out in a slow, steady return. He nodded once, pleased, but he still didn’t speak. He closed his eyes and inhaled, drawing the Qi into his nose and mouth to taste it directly, moving it along his tongue and across his palate.

“With just these new leaves, the effectiveness has doubled,” Granny Lang remarked, looking at me with wide eyes. “What did you do, boy?”

“Trade secrets.” I grinned, making the members of the room chuckle.

“This is going to be very helpful for the next few weeks,” the old man remarked. “Practically a boon. But we still need to keep amending the recipes and making them more effective, because the effectiveness will taper off. The ground will grow more depleted and the Chi in the air more sparse.”

He set the lid back on the tray with care and straightened, the lines around his mouth easing for just a moment before settling again.

His statement made me frown. I knew it was true. Every batch we made bought time. The first week after a new mix, growth surged, then it leveled, then declined. The miasma would creep back at the edges of the rows if we stopped.

The atmosphere fell back into somberness. It was disheartening. The longer we went on, the more leaves we had to use, the weaker the divine tree would get, and the stronger the demon god would become. A toxic cycle.

Granny Lang pulled her hands from her hips and folded them, as if tucking away the part of herself that wanted to celebrate. Her voice, so quick with jokes most days, went quiet. “The fields near the east road asked if we could spare more next week,” she said. “The melons took this time, but the soil faded again by the end. They’ve been hauling water since dawn and still lost a quarter to rot.”

“I’ll revise their ratio,” the old man said. “More soil stabilizer, less direct stimulant. It’ll hold the structure longer if we slow the front-end push.” Saying it was easy, I knew. Finding the balance was where the work came in. You could make a field’s productivity spike with a sharp dose and get a good week out of it, then pay with six weeks of collapse. People couldn’t eat a week for long. They needed a season.

The workshop door creaked. Zhang stood in the frame with his spear strapped across his back and his hair tied cleanly out of his face. His boots left wet marks on the threshold; the snow outside never did melt. He took in the room at a glance—the cooling tray, the steam from the vent, the ledger with its sloped lines. His eyebrows furrowed, not at us, but at the world, as if he could pull it tighter with a thought.

“More people are infected with miasma corruption now,” Zhang said, eyebrows furrowed. “After the recent battle, quite a few humans are suffering symptoms.”

Granny’s head turned sharply. My master’s shoulders stiffened. I felt my eyes widen as I asked, “Really?”

“Really,” Zhang said. “The outer hamlet... Four men from the night watch. One girl in the kitchen quarter. No deep lesions yet, but the discoloration patterns match what we’ve seen on the lesser spirits when the miasma binds to blood.”

“I’ll have to get into trying to make the purification pills right now, then. Could you call for Yin, Zhang?”

Zhang nodded. “I will.” He was already turning back into the corridor as he said it, steps quick but not frantic.

I needed to make the purification pills as quickly as possible. That had always been the plan, of course, but now the need was very immediate. Not only for the spirits—and now the humans—but it would also be a good base to work from, for the Shie Matriarch and even potentially the old man’s cultivation.