Rin-Hua stepped back, pulling her gaze away from the faint ripple on the south ridge of her garden. Her eyes darted to Jin-Hai, whose amber scales seemed duller under the strain of anchoring the veil. He gave a low rumble, a sound like distant thunder trapped in a teacup. The blind crane, Cui-Yu, huddled closer to Rin-Hua’s leg, its feathered head tucked beneath her hand. The three-legged turtle, Bi-An, drew its head into its shell, sensing the shift in the air. “Maintain composure, child,” Elder Pang Su-Yin murmured, her voice a low thrumming against Rin-Hua’s ear. “They seek only what they expect to find.” “And what is that?” Rin-Hua whispered. “Despair,” Pang Su-Yin replied, her gaze hardening. “Utter, complete, and uninteresting despair.” The door to Rin-Hua’s humble hut, long since stripped of its original paint and now little more than sun-warped planks, burst inward with a resounding crash. Shao Feng-Jiao stood framed in the opening, his silk robes rustling, a smug sneer twisting his features. Behind him, two thick-shouldered Tithe Enforcers in crimson-stitched robes crowded the threshold, faces impassive. One carried oiled hemp rope, the other an iron stamp still reeking of charcoal. Shao Feng-Jiao’s gaze raked across the room, dismissing the cracked clay hearth, the overturned stool, and the beasts huddled by the straw. They lingered on Rin-Hua for a moment too long, a glint of satisfaction in their depths. “Mao Rin-Hua,” he drawled, his voice dripping with condescension. “Still clinging to this pathetic hovel, I see. And still collecting the sect’s cast-offs, like a common scavenger.” He kicked at a loose plank on the floor. “One would think losing your stipend would have taught you a lesson.” He pulled a small, intricately carved jade orb from his belt pouch, no larger than a child’s fist. It pulsed with a faint, verdant light, humming as it scanned the spiritual resonance of the surroundings. “The Grand Arbor Eye,” he announced, brandishing the artifact with a flourish. “It measures the vitality of all flora and fauna within a hundred paces, assessing their potential for cultivation. A pity, then, that it finds nothing but dust and decay in your miserable patch of dirt.” As the jade sphere flared, emerald light washing across the threshold, Rin-Hua pressed her soles hard against the dirt floor. Elder Pang’s concealment held, but the Arbor Eye was a Heaven-Tier artifact built to pierce outer wardings. Rin-Hua’s gaze fell on the orb, then to Jin-Hai, who gave another low rumble, a sound of warning this time. Jin-Hai’s tail fin dragged against the terracotta rim; she had to act before the scan expanded. Rin-Hua focused her intent. Gilded brushstrokes surfaced across the sphere, unseen by Shao Feng-Jiao as he turned toward his guards. Rin-Hua extended her mental reach, recalling the pure warmth of aiding Cui-Yu and Bi-An, the satisfaction of making their tiny haven. The quiet heat of her accumulated merit sparked in her chest, and she pushed it outward. [Demote: Grand Arbor Eye (Heaven Tier Spiritual Sensory Artifact) –> Dull Quartz Stone (Common Tier Decorative Object)] The celestial characters flared, then dissolved into the jade. The jade orb, which had been pulsing with vibrant green light, flickered. Its verdant glow dimmed, then guttered, leaving behind a dull, milky-white luminescence, like a piece of polished river stone. The soft hum died. Shao Feng-Jiao frowned, shaking it. “A minor calibration issue, perhaps,” he mumbled, dismissing it. “It still registers nothing, which is the pertinent detail.” He swept a hand towards Rin-Hua with disdain. “Mao Rin-Hua, by the decree of the Winter Tithe, you are deemed unproductive and a drain upon the sect’s precious resources. You are to be exiled to the Frost-Blight Woods at once. Gather your few, pathetic belongings.” He glanced at the cowering animals. “Leave the vermin, they will starve in due course.” “Wait,” Elder Pang Su-Yin interjected, her voice surprisingly steady, though her knuckles blanched against her coarse linen sleeves. “Rin-Hua is under my tutelage. She assists in my alchemical preparations. She is productive.” Shao Feng-Jiao laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “Elder Pang, your ‘alchemical preparations’ haven’t produced anything of value since your disgrace a decade ago. Don’t waste our time. This girl is useless, as are her… companions.” He made a sweeping gesture at the hidden yard, as if to encompass all its perceived emptiness. “This entire terrace is a blight. I will see it stripped clean after the Tithe. Not a single trace of spirit qi remains.” He turned to the Tithe Enforcers. “Take her. And ensure she doesn’t try to ‘promote’ any more of our sect’s prized flora into… vegetables.” He snickered at his own joke, oblivious to the way Elder Pang Su-Yin’s face had drained of color. As Shao Feng-Jiao turned to leave, a small, pale green object, no larger than his thumb, slipped unnoticed from the folds of his silken sleeve. It bounced once on the hard-packed earth floor, then rolled towards Rin-Hua’s feet. It was a fragment of a cabbage leaf, slightly withered, but still unmistakably a piece of the Moon-Silk Lotus that Rin-Hua had demoted weeks ago. The leaf landed just at the edge of the subtle demotion field that permeated Rin-Hua’s yard, a lingering residue of the Ledger’s influence. Upon touching the dirt, a faint golden gleam pulsed through the leaf's dried veins. It hummed with an odd, earthy vibration. Shao Feng-Jiao, his back still turned, froze. His brow furrowed, a flicker of suspicion crossing his face. He turned slowly, his eyes narrowing as they settled on the insignificant scrap of green at Rin-Hua’s feet. He bent down, snatched up the cabbage fragment, and brought it close to his face. The faint resonance was still there, a whisper of the peculiar, transformative energy that had plagued his pond. His mouth thinned, teeth grinding together as he stared at the scrap. He looked from the leaf to Rin-Hua, then out toward the empty dirt boundary, veins knotting at his temples. “This… this is the same,” he hissed, his voice low and menacing. “The same signature. It’s here. You did this, didn’t you? You cursed my pond from this… this pit!” Before the enforcers could advance, Shao Feng-Jiao lunged. He lunged forward, no longer caring about decorum or the Tithe’s protocol. He struck the dead quartz against the boundary line of Pang Su-Yin’s ward. There was no grand explosion, only a sickening tear, like ancient silk ripping apart. The screen fractured like thin ice, collapsing inward to reveal the courtyard beneath. Sun-Flare Ginseng blazed with amber fire, Moonlight Dew-Vines spilled over the stone troughs, and the fat spirit beasts looked up from their dense beds of green.

The Winter Tithe