The weather grew warmer by the day. Tender green buds quietly pushed out along the branches, and clusters of pink wildflowers bloomed luxuriantly on the gray-brown crags.
Wild greens had sprouted, and Daoist Jiang and Huang Xing dug for them on the slopes near the Medicine King Temple.
Huang Xing especially liked one sour-tasting wild green, stripping off its leaves and eating only the stalk. After a whole winter of dried vegetables, eating it made her feel comfortable all over. Days at the Village School passed leisurely. The courtyard was warm, and the branches outside the windows budded earlier than those elsewhere.
The pupils quietly grew taller. Only Jin Si, sitting in the last row, remained a short, skinny little Daoist boy with a big head. His build had not changed, as though time had forgotten him.
Fortunately, not much time had passed yet, so it was not particularly noticeable.
During the midday break, the older children gathered to chat, deliberately showing off and boasting.
They said the fighting outside the city might take a new turn. Spring planting was imminent, and if the fighting continued, they would miss the sowing season. Then they brought up the Dragon-Suppressing Stakes in the rivers, a story that grew stranger with every telling.
In truth, Jin Si did not need to visit the riverbank to vaguely sense that something was wrong with the rivers. Deep within their channels, everything felt heavy and sluggish.
Like wedges, the Dragon-Suppressing Stakes were driven firmly into the joints of the water veins, throwing the entire stretch of water into disorder.
The nearby dragon veins had been damaged and tangled with the disordered water veins. With these two imbalances compounding each other, Jin Si could not work out what calamity might arise. Whatever it was, it would not