My gaze snagged on a tiny flicker, barely a pinpoint of light amidst the gathering gloom. It was the emerald shine from the Moon-Heart Cabbages that little A-Bao loved to snitch from the edge of my beds, the ones I had replanted yesterday after Fenghai’s oafish disciples trampled them. He always came back with dirt on his nose and a grin like a freshly split melon. My plots, my autumn yield, the translation of my past self’s cryptic journals—all of it felt suddenly hollow compared to the thought of that small, dirty-nosed boy turning into ash. My teeth ground. This was no choice at all. Not for a farmer with good blood, even if it churned in pure fury. “The orchard can rot,” I declared, my voice a low rumble. I ignored Wusheng’s gasp while my pulse pounded against my temples, demanding I prioritize my life’s work. “My crops will grow again. Those people won’t.” I gripped the mud-stained tilling brush, its coarse bristles stiff with the essence of good earth. With a single flick, I began to write, not on the soil, but in the churning, inky air itself, directly above the distant lowlands. My brush moved with a speed that blurred, a precise dance learned from a lifetime of coaxing stubborn seeds from the earth. Each stroke pulsed with raw peasant vigor, devoid of refined cultivation, built from something far older and heavier. I painted the character for ‘HARVEST’. The strokes had no elegance. It was blunt, forceful, almost crude. A broad, sweeping stroke for the field, a jagged line for the sickle, a final, emphatic dot for the yield. As the last bit of ink coalesced, the character flared into existence, an emerald glyph that dwarfed the entire basin. A deep, resonant hum vibrated through the air, shaking the very bones of the mountain. Below, in the rows I had chosen to save, the Moon-Heart Cabbages, the Jade-Vein Radishes, the Whispering Wheat—every single stalk and bulb tore free of the soil. They erupted roots and all, a green wave of produce that slammed into the ethereal shield guarding Mud-Wallow hamlet. The ink dome above us shimmered, then shattered, bits of fading darkness dissolving into the oppressive grey sky. The vigor stripped from the uprooted greens supercharged the hamlet's ancient boundary, a network of warding glyphs I had stirred with my daily hoeing. It flared white just as the first crack appeared in the heavens, a searing fissure ripping across the sky that spat fire and raw heavenly authority. The celestial storm slammed down like an anvil, but the villagers stood secure, their roofs encased in a shimmering jade shell of field-born pressure. A thick wall of airborne greens held the line. But the core… the core array, which I’d forsaken, shrieked. A bone-jarring groan echoed from the Western depths of the Verdant Inkstone Terraces. It signaled no mere cave-in, but something being violently unmade. A blinding white light, pure and absolute, erupted from the ground where the Iron-Root Orchard once stood. It carried none of the usual Daoist refinement, only raw, undiluted memory. It lanced into me, an unstoppable torrent. My head exploded. Images, sensations, truths I’d buried so deep I’d forgotten their very existence, slammed into my consciousness. I was no simple tiller. I was not merely an ordinary former Sovereign. I was Zong Qingshan, the architect. The very foundation of the Heavenly Decree Bureau. And the Purification Array—the world-ending device I had spent centuries drafting to grind all mortal life into unrefined celestial fuel—had been mine. I had designed it. My vision fractured further, revealing the cold, calculating smile of Shen Rujiang, my supposed disciple, twisting my life’s work, my masterpiece, into a tool for his own selfish ascension. He hadn’t just stolen it; he had corrupted its purpose. The Purification Array was meant to cleanse, not to slaughter. It had a kill-switch, a fail-safe, a way to undo its devastating power. And I, Zong Qingshan, had hidden that kill-switch, woven it into the very fabric of mortal existence, disguised it as the most mundane, overlooked skills: farming, painting, calligraphy. My own memories were the key, scattered like seeds across the Azure Terrace Realm, waiting to be unearthed by my own hands. I collapsed, gasping, the light receding, leaving behind a searing clarity in its wake. The world felt different, sharper. My intent, once bounded by the simple dream of an autumn reap, had sharpened into obsidian. “Shen Rujiang,” I snarled, a name tasting like ash and betrayal on my tongue. My hands clenched into fists, not with the farmer’s frustration, but with a Sovereign’s righteous wrath. “That treacherous, backstabbing snake. He stole my legacy. He will pay. The Ministry will burn.” Wusheng stood over me, his face pale, his legendary sword, the Sky-Cleaver, still clutched in a trembling hand. He had witnessed the flare, felt its echoes, and seen the truth behind his masters. His rigid worldview, already cracked, now lay in irreparable shards at his feet. “Our masters… they are butchers,” he whispered, his voice rough. He looked from the spared settlement to the raw, unmade crater where the grove had stood, then stared at my face. “You… you sacrificed everything. Your past, your future, your own land… for those mortals.” Then, with a decisive clang that echoed across the ravaged fields, Wusheng dropped the Sky-Cleaver. The magnificent weapon, a symbol of his authority, thudded into the churned earth, its blade sinking deep as if ashamed. He didn’t pick it up. Instead, he reached for a tool I’d dropped earlier, a simple, curved sickle, its edge glinting dully in the dim light. He clutched the humble farm implement like a sacred relic, his eyes, no longer shadowed by dogma, fixed on mine. A new fire, fierce and unyielding, burned within them. “Teach me, Zong Changhe,” he demanded, his voice trembling with a nascent, terrible resolve. “Teach me how to plant death.”

The Cabbage Patch Rebellion