The cabbage bobbed placidly in the center of Shao Feng-Jiao’s jade-lined pool, a brazen knot of crinkled leaves where sacred petals had drifted moments before. Rin-Hua pulled air into her lungs, the mountain breeze bitter with pine sap and frost. This was not a dream. The Dragon’s Ledger, in its terrifying benevolence, was real. Gilded brushstrokes gathered in the empty air, burning sharp against the gray gravel. [Displaying Balance: 7.3 units of Virtue’s Mark] Seven point three units remained. Demoting a supreme treasure had sheared away barely a tenth of the merit earned from bandaging the wounded cub. The Winter Tithe still approached, but the ledger offered a real defense against exile. She fled the peak’s perimeter, scrambling down the dusty terraces, the image of the ordinary cabbage seared into her mind. Let Shao Feng-Jiao scour the upper gardens in fury; he would never look down toward the servant ditches for his lost lotus. Back in her desolate yard, the crippled fox, its fur still matted with grime, watched her with intelligent, wary eyes from its makeshift nest of dried leaves. Jin-Hai, the Ink-Carp, nudged the side of his cracked basin, a low hum resonating from the water. Drafts whistled through the split-bamboo walls, frosting the dirt threshold. Her gaze drifted across the cracked silt to a cluster of yellow-topped stalks. Wind tore their downy puffs away each autumn before seed could set, leaving dry fibers clinging to stone. Not a trace of ambient qi touched their stems; even low-rank medicine disciples ground them under wooden clogs without a glance. “Jin-Hai,” she whispered, kneeling by the earthenware basin, “can I elevate a ditch-weed?” The murky water stirred, rimmed by a faint bronze ring. “The balance ignores ancestral decrees, little Rin-Hua. It weighs only your intent and the merit offered.” The carp's voice grated like grinding river stones. “Such scrub-growth carries no inner sap. The cost will bite deep. Are you certain?” “They endure,” she murmured, running a rough fingertip along a notched stem. “They split stone where jade orchids rot. They only need water and light.” She fixed her eyes on the luminous characters suspended above the root. [Object: Wild Dandelion (Low-Tier Flora)] [Action: Promote? (Cost: 2.5 units of Virtue’s Mark)] The toll took a third of her remaining balance, but the threat of the Frost-Blight Woods brooked no hesitation. She pictured the ragged growth transformed into hardy, enduring medicine. “Promote,” she thought, her conviction ringing out in her mind. A surge of amber heat uncoiled from her collarbone, driving the frost from the floorboards. Radiance wrapped the small plant like an ember blown to life. The jagged foliage broadened, turning leathery and deep jade. Below, the stalk swelled into a thick, wrinkled taproot that forced pale gravel aside as it anchored into the soil. At the crown, yellow petals broadened, their hue darkening to fierce cinnabar. When the light settled, no trace of wayside scrub remained. Heat rolled off the swollen root, baking the damp earth around it dry. Fresh characters coalesced above the crown. [Object: Sun-Flare Ginseng (Heaven-Tier Flora)] Sun-Flare root! Ancient scrolls mentioned it only in rumors of sun-baked crags, an herb capable of sealing broken meridians and rejuvenating withered organs. A single sliver commanded mountains of spirit-stones from grand alchemists. Yet here it sat, rooted in hard clay. Heat soaked the perimeter of the lean-to, drying the moss on the posts. The wounded fox raised its chin, dark nostrils flaring toward the spicy vapor. In the cracked basin, Jin-Hai circled, his whiskers twitching as ripples took on an orange sheen. With a dull bronze knife, Rin-Hua pared a thin shaving from the lower root. It throbbed in her palm like a freshly caught coal. She set the sliver on a clean slate before the fox. The beast snapped it up without hesitation. A low rumble rose from its throat, and the crust of old dried mud began sloughing from its coat, revealing clean russet fur underneath. She dropped another sliver into the basin. Jin-Hai sucked it beneath the surface. The woody fiber dissolved on contact, spreading bronze clouds through the water. His black scales threw off deep scarlet reflections, and the hairline fractures in the clay bowl ceased leaking. Rin-Hua leaned back against the dry timber frame, letting the herbal warmth sink into her bruised palms. For the first night in three winters, her teeth did not chatter. Outside, through the weathered planks, the amber flare did not remain hidden. Down the steep terraces came an old woman wrapped in coarse hemp robes, carrying an iron rake used to sift ash from the sect's discard ditches. Elder Pang Su-Yin walked with head down, searching for scorched root-ends left behind by inner court furnaces, until a sudden draft hit her face. It carried notes of crushed ginger and molten honey—a concentrated medicine fragrance that had no business lingering above barren shale. Such pungent qi belonged only behind the warded gates of the mountaintop glasshouses. She abandoned her rake against a terrace wall and scrambled down the rocky slope, boots sliding on loose gravel. She tracked the heat straight to the lowest outbuilding on the ridge, where fiery illumination leaked through chinks in the rotting wood. Pang Su-Yin shoved the wicker door aside, her cloak catching on the frame. She ignored the black carp and the quiet fox, her stare locking onto the blazing orange tuber anchored in Rin-Hua’s floor. Decades of memorizing forbidden alchemical texts left no doubt as to what burned before her: an ancient sovereign medicine, thriving without jade cauldrons or spirit soil. Trembling, the disgraced elder dropped hard to the packed earth, pressing both palms flat against the cold stones. “Please,” she choked out, her voice raspy, broken, “teach this unworthy one the true Dao of flora!”

Weeds and Miracles