Of Anping County's seventy-two townships, the one with the flattest, broadest land and the highest land-tax payments in past years was Great Harvest Township, fifty li south of the county seat.
Since ancient times, it had been Anping County's granary, with vast stretches of terraced fields and low-lying pools.
Yet no matter how fertile ordinary soil was, centuries of cultivation would have exhausted it long ago.
In years past, Great Harvest Township had borne a bountiful name, but its lowly tenant farmers and smallholders toiled all year only to find that, after paying rent to powerful landlords and taxes to the County Yamen, the coarse bran and shriveled grain left over barely kept their families clinging to life through the bitter winter.
But that spring, everything changed.
Ever since the Earth-Lung Golden Lotus at the bottom of the Three-Bath River awakened, spiritual energy and geng metal qi deep within the earth veins had begun seeping outward in every direction, exceedingly slowly yet inexorably.
The soil of Great Harvest Township was among the first to receive nourishment from this mighty power of heaven and earth.
The first to notice the change were not the lofty cultivators, but the old farmers whose families had plunged their hands into the soil for generations.
At dusk, the setting sun was red as blood, staining a stretch of terraced fields west of Great Harvest Township a brilliant golden crimson.
Uncle Fu, a man in his sixties, stood barefoot in a flooded paddy, his trousers rolled high and the water above his calves.
Clutching a rusty sickle, he bent at the waist and deftly harvested the last crop of late rice.
"How strange... why's the water almost hot on my feet this year?"
Uncle Fu straightened and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the ragged