Internal Time: Year 2, Month 4
The problem with being a Lord in a magical world was that magic didn't dig trenches.
Ji Han stood waist-deep in the earth, wiping mud from his eyes. He held a primitive wooden level he had fashioned from a hollowed-out reed and a drop of water. He squinted at the bubble.
"0.5 percent grade," he muttered. "Gravity does the work."
He was building an aqueduct.
Carrying water by hand from the well to the fields was inefficient. It cost him 400 calories a day and two hours of daylight. Over five years, that was 3,650 hours of lost labor.
So, he dug.
He lined the trench with flat stones he had pried from the hardpan, cementing them together with a mixture of clay and crushed rice husks. It was Roman technology applied to a Xianxia hellscape.
"You are wasting your Qi," Lin Qinghe said. She was walking along the edge of the trench, balancing effortlessly on the narrow lip of the excavation. She wore a set of grey work robes Ji Han had woven from dried rice fibers—rough, ugly, but functional.
"I am investing it," Ji Han grunted, hoisting a heavy slate slab into place. "Civilization is just efficient plumbing."
"A sword cuts the river," she countered, looking down at him. "It does not build a ditch for it."
"Can you cut the river so it flows uphill into my rice paddy?"
She paused. "No."
"Then let me dig."
He placed the slab. He focused. Breathe. Sink the mercury.
He didn't just place the stone; he pushed a tiny sliver of his meager Qi into the clay mortar.
[System: Skill - Earth Construction (Level 2) Active][structural Integrity Increased by 5%]
Ji Han grinned. He had discovered this by accident. If he cycled his Qi while building, the structures became unnaturally durable. The mud dried harder than concrete. The wood resisted rot. He wasn't just a laborer; he was a magical mason.
"The water flows today," he said, climbing out of the trench.
He walked to the wellhead. He had built a simple shaduf—a counterweight lever system—to lift the water into the aqueduct's reservoir.
He pulled the lever. Water gushed into the stone channel.
They watched in silence as the brown stream trickled down the trench, winding through the dry earth, bypassing the rocks, and finally spilling into the network of smaller channels he had carved through the expanded rice fields.
The dry soil drank it up. The green shoots of the second harvest seemed to perk up instantly.
"Efficient," Lin Qinghe admitted, watching the water flow. "You have saved yourself the walk."
"I saved myself time," Ji Han corrected. "And time is the only currency we have."
Internal Time: Year 3, Month 8
The domain had changed.
Where once there was only a crater and a single crate, now stood a compound.
The Lord's Manor (a generous title for a three-room adobe house) sat in the center. It had a solid roof of thatched rice straw and reinforced mud walls that could stop a heavy arrow. Inside, there was a dedicated meditation room, a storage cellar filled with sacks of grain, and a kitchen with a clay oven.
But the pride of the territory was the Mill.
It was a large, circular stone platform. In the center sat two massive grinding stones Ji Han had spent six months carving from a boulder he found near the barrier edge.
He didn't have a donkey to turn the stone. He had himself.
Ji Han stripped off his shirt. His body had transformed. The starvation-thin frame was gone, replaced by dense, corded muscle. His skin was tanned like leather. Scars from slips of the pickaxe and cuts from sharp rocks crisscrossed his arms.
He placed his shoulder against the wooden yoke.
"Push," he whispered.
He drove his legs into the ground. Ma Bu stance. He channeled his Qi into his thighs.
Grind. Rumble.
The massive stone turned.
Lin Qinghe poured the golden grain into the center hole.
"Smoothly," she instructed, watching the flour spill out from the sides. "Your rhythm is erratic. Your breathing is shallow."
"It's... heavy," Ji Han gasped, sweat pouring down his back.
"It is training," she said, picking up a handful of the white powder. She rubbed it between her fingers. "Fine. Good quality. This will make better bread."
She looked at him, her eyes softening. "You have built a sect foundation, Ji Han. Alone. With nothing but dirt and sweat."
"We're not a sect," Ji Han panted, keeping the stone moving. "We're a farm."
"Every sect starts as a farm," she said, dusting her hands. "The Sword Sect began as a blacksmith's shop. The Heavenly Palace was once a collection of tents."
She walked over to the edge of the grinding platform. She looked out at the barrier.
"But a farm attracts wolves."
Ji Han stopped pushing. The stone rumbled to a halt. He wiped his face with a towel.
"The barrier," he said.
"Three years remaining," Lin Qinghe said. "Internal time. Outside... it has been four days."
She pointed to the fog swirling against the translucent wall.
"They are gathering."
Ji Han walked to the edge of the territory. He looked closely at the fog.
Usually, it was grey and formless. But now, he saw shapes. Shadows moving in the mist. Elongated limbs. Glowing red eyes that blinked and vanished. Claws scraping against the other side of the barrier, making a sound like nails on a chalkboard.
[System: Warning. Hostile Entities Detected.][Entity: Void Stalkers (Level 5)][Note: Novice Barrier deteriorating. 50% opacity.]
"Level 5," Ji Han muttered. "I'm Level 2."
"And I am... recovering," Lin Qinghe said. She drew the rusted iron sword Ji Han had given her. She had sharpened it on a whetstone until it gleamed, but it was still a piece of junk compared to her legendary weapon. "I can fight. But I cannot protect the entire perimeter."
Ji Han looked at his fields. He looked at the aqueduct. He looked at the house he had built with his own blood and Qi.
He realized he had made a mistake.
He had built a paradise of food and water in a hell of starvation. He had made himself the juiciest target in the Azure Vastness.
"I need a wall," Ji Han said.
"A wall of mud will not stop Void Stalkers," Lin Qinghe said. "They phase through solid matter unless it is reinforced with spirit arrays."
"I don't know arrays," Ji Han said.
"I do," Lin Qinghe said. She turned to him. "But I need materials. Spirit Stones. Monster cores. Blood of beasts."
Ji Han looked at his empty hands. He had rice. He had water. He had mud.
"We don't have those."
"Then we improvise," Lin Qinghe said grimly. "Or we die on the seventh day."
She looked at the thriving rice paddy.
"The rice absorbs Qi," she mused. "The stalks... they contain the energy of the domain. If we weave them... if we soak them in your blood..."
Ji Han looked at his arm.
"My blood?"
"You are the Lord," she said. "The domain is bound to your soul. Your blood carries the authority of the Anchor."
Ji Han looked at the shadows clawing at the barrier. He looked at the comfortable house he had just finished.
"Fine," he said. "How much blood?"
"Enough to paint the perimeter," she said.
Ji Han sighed. "I'm going to need to eat a lot more rice."
Internal Time: Year 4 Begins
The engineering phase was over. The era of fortification had begun.
Ji Han stood on the roof of his manor, looking out over his domain.
The aqueducts shimmered with water. The fields were gold. The mill sat silent, waiting for the next harvest.
But around the edge of the territory, a new structure was rising. A fence of woven spirit-straw, staked into the ground with ironwood posts, and glowing with a faint, ominous crimson light.
He had built a home. Now, he had to build a fortress.
"Three years," he whispered. "Come and get it."