Chu Yang nodded. Just as he was about to say something, the ground beneath their feet gave a slight tremor.
It was not the violent shaking of an earthquake, but an extremely faint pulse, almost imperceptible. As if something beneath the earth had turned over in its sleep.
Then, a tiny crack appeared in the dirt before them.
The crack swiftly widened—not by bursting apart, but as though the soil itself were silently separating, splitting into a gap about two feet long.
A scent of earth billowed out from the crack.
Then—a dusty gray square cap emerged from the gap.
Beneath the cap was a wrinkled little face.
The face was tiny, only as large as an adult's fist. Its skin was rough and cracked, like a piece of dried tree bark. Its eyes were small but bright, like black beans embedded in deeply sunken sockets, gleaming with a faint yellowish light.
Below the little face was an equally small body—just over two feet tall, dressed in a grayish-brown homespun robe, with a grass rope tied around its waist and a tiny wooden cane no thicker than a chopstick in its hand.
It was an Earth God.
More precisely, an Earth God who looked extremely weak.
As the Earth God crawled out of the crack, his body swayed unsteadily, like a lamp about to go out trembling in the wind. His homespun robe was covered in dust and mud stains, and the little wooden cane shook faintly against the ground. He clearly struggled even to stand upright.
After he emerged from the ground, the crack closed on its own, returning to a smooth stretch of dirt as though nothing had happened.
When the old farmer squatting on the ridge saw the Earth God crawl out of the ground, his mouth