Word runs like vinegar through water: thin, sharp, and everywhere by morning. News of the Willow Child's garden and guardian spread beyond Stone Village in hours that felt like lifetimes. Traders mentioned the spectacle in passing; a traveling monk told his order; a fishmonger's apprentice who had once sold a feather to a wandering noble later told his master — and the noble's curiosity kindled fast.
Two envoys came first. One carried delicate, gold-inked paper from a minor immortal clan — polite, flattering, offering training and patronage. The second arrived like thunder: a small regiment of cloaked men with faces like stone, sent by a middling sect with a reputation for grave expedience.
The midwife who had once cradled Qingmu held her breath when the cloaked men offered a wrapped trunk. "A gift from our house to the Willow Child," they intoned. The elder's hand touched the box and the hair on her arms rose; something inside screamed like a trapped thing. She recoiled.
Liu Shen let a single vine curl toward the trunk. It trembled and died at her touch; pale smoke seeped from the cracked wood. "No tricks," she said, but her voice carried temper and distances. The men bowed, stiff. In the next moment, when the acts of the polite turned toward greed, Liu Shen unlatched the willow's hidden bark and a tendril lashed like a whip. The trunk blackened to ash. The men's commander staggered and laughed — then fell silent, his expression small. He had misread the tree's temper.
By afternoon, the sky above the village darkened. Messengers from farther afield arrived with offers that smelled of silver and prisons shaped as fortunes. The system chimed with urgent disapproval.
[Warning: Increased Heavenly Attention. Probability of abduction or forced patronage: 37%. Recommendation: Increase protection nodes.]
Shi Hao tightened his jaw. "We won't hand him over for tokens."
"But what of our safety?" the elder asked, voice trembling. "If clans quarrel, villages bleed. Liu Shen, you cannot fight kingdoms."
Liu Shen's branches drew close, a slow, near-ancient worry in their movement. "True. But I will not cede my child to bargains." Her leaves shivered like cooled swords. "If they come with force, let them try. Their greed will feed the roots."
Huo Ling'er, who had been watching the whole scene with fascination, stepped flatfooted into the center of the village and threw her cloak aside. "Then they'll need to come in full," she said, hands on hips. "Which would be most inconvenient."
Shi Yi, still bristling, added, "Unless we put measures in place."
Measures took the form of watch rotations and whispered lessons from Shi Hao. The boy with a blade taught those who would stand with him how to hold anger and how to wield steel. Bai'e, the silver wolf, walked the treeline and left ghostly tracks no scout could follow. Plants grew in thorned circles and hedges that would catch a thief's wrist with a prick.
Still, even a village bristling with thorns cannot block the gaze of a lord. That night, as the watch changed and embers glowed, a shadow slid across the outer road — a single figure throwing a net that smelled faintly of the sea. It was a probe, nothing more, but the probe yielded a name no one wanted to hear: Clan Lord Runan.
Someone in the world was taking notes. The child, the garden, the squadron of guardians — to hungry eyes, it was all a ledger of value. And value, like wind, calls gulls.
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