The dream still clung to Lin Feng like the morning mist as he walked toward the southern field. His boots crushed the dew-covered grass, each step echoing faintly in the quiet dawn. That massive silver-leafed tree from his vision—it wasn't just imagination. It felt like a memory. A calling.
Xu Yuhan was already there, standing beside a cart stacked with harvested herbs.
"You're up early," she said, her eyes scanning his face.
"Didn't sleep much," he replied.
"The tree again?"
He looked at her, surprised.
"You've been mumbling in your sleep lately," she added, half-smiling. "Silver leaves. Jade bark. Whispers."
He didn't deny it. "I think it's part of the space. Or connected to my grandfather."
She grew quiet at the mention. Lin Qiming was a name buried deep in forgotten state documents. A brilliant soil scientist who had vanished during political upheavals in the 1990s. Lin Feng had only vague memories—a kind man who showed him how to hold earth between his fingers and tell if it was alive.
He'd always assumed his grandfather died alone, disillusioned.
But what if he hadn't disappeared?
What if he'd entered the same space?
---
Later that morning, Lin Feng returned to the Inner Realm with a specific task in mind. Deep in the western sector, beyond the camphor grove, lay a cluster of rocks he'd never disturbed. Today, driven by instinct, he cleared them.
Underneath was a flat patch of earth—different from the others. Smooth. Grey. Embedded with strange white etchings.
He knelt and brushed away loose dirt.
Symbols appeared. Circular, mathematical. Like a fusion of crop patterns and organic root systems.
A message?
He activated the Realm's scanning interface—a golden grid projected into his vision—and focused it on the etchings.
A faint pulse answered.
A buried core.
Not technological. Not magical.
Organic.
A living archive.
He pressed his palm to the stone, and for the briefest moment, the scent of old ink and loam overwhelmed him. Words whispered in his mind—not full sentences, but impressions.
"Soil is memory. The root is the record. Grow where you wish to remember."
Then it faded.
---
Back in the real world, the cooperative was reaching a bottleneck.
Sales of SnowTrace Origins produce had quietly expanded. A few elite chefs had created buzz on private food forums. Some bloggers speculated it came from an ultra-luxury urban farm or a biotech start-up.
Orders started pouring in—small, high-paying ones.
Lin Feng capped them immediately.
"We're not scaling yet," he told the core team.
Liu Qiang frowned. "But we could triple output with one more greenhouse."
"And triple risk," Lin Feng said. "Not until we can grow Silverleaf outside the Realm at 70% quality."
"We're close. Uncle Zhao's test patch—"
"Still below threshold," Lin Feng cut in. "We don't chase the wave. We shape the tide."
Liu nodded, chastened. "Understood."
---
Meanwhile, a different challenge emerged.
A local government official from the township visited unannounced. A Deputy Director with sharp eyes and a polite smile. He said he was doing "a rural integration survey."
Xu Yuhan handled him professionally, showing him only the public-facing parts of the operation.
But he asked questions. Too many.
"Where do you get packaging materials?"
"Why no visible logistics fleet?"
"Who signs off on tax filings?"
Yuhan answered neutrally, never volunteering detail.
The man smiled. "Just procedural, of course. We want to spotlight rural innovation."
When he left, Lin Feng reviewed the camera footage. He didn't miss the way the man scanned the property using a pen-shaped device—infrared reader, likely.
"He's not township," Lin Feng said. "He's seconded from the city bureau. Maybe higher."
"Should we freeze all movement?" Yuhan asked.
"No," Lin Feng replied. "Let them see the surface. But from now on, even our shadows need to be decoys."
---
In the Inner Realm, he began working on a project he'd postponed for weeks.
The Decoy Plot.
A small corner of the valley, intentionally cultivated with lesser plants that mimicked the appearance of Silverleaf and Nightroot but lacked their potency. He watered them manually, built fake sensor modules, and allowed basic scanning tools to read false nutrient profiles.
It was agricultural camouflage.
Meanwhile, the true plots were sealed under deeper Realm encryption—rendered invisible to non-authorized consciousness.
Yuhan watched him set up a false compost pile.
"Feels like we're planting lies."
"Lies protect truths," Lin Feng replied.
---
At the nearby university, Professor Meng—one of Lin Feng's old instructors—received a sealed envelope. No sender. Inside was a flash drive.
It contained growth data: Silverleaf's nutrient profile, root behavior, and soil interaction over 90 days.
Anonymous but clean.
Professor Meng ran simulations. The data didn't match any known crop.
"This… this is either a miracle or a hoax," he muttered.
But it was real. And he knew just one student who could pull this off.
He didn't report it.
He backed it up… and waited.
---
That week, an unusual visitor arrived in Chen Valley.
An old woman, wrapped in linen and bamboo hat, riding a donkey cart.
She claimed to be a traveling herb merchant from the southern mountains.
But when Lin Feng saw her, something stirred. Her gaze lingered too long on the greenhouse, her cart too neatly organized.
He approached her personally.
"Selling herbs?" he asked.
"Yes, young master. Dried ginseng, wild shiitake, silver lichen."
He peered at the last item. It wasn't lichen. It was a dried Nightroot blossom—an extremely rare part of the plant.
"Where'd you get this?" he asked.
She looked at him. "I'm not here to sell. I'm here to return."
He froze.
"My name is Tang Suyin," she said. "I was your grandfather's apprentice."
---
They spoke in private.
Tang Suyin told him of the final years before Lin Qiming vanished. Of secret projects to cultivate responsive plant systems. Of political opposition, betrayal, and the creation of the first proto-space—a cultivation pocket carved using intention, not tools.
"I thought he was gone," she said. "Until I saw your label. The silver leaf. That was his mark, once. Hidden in his notebooks."
She had wandered for decades, evading attention, waiting for signs of Qiming's legacy.
Now, she had found it.
"I don't want power," she said. "Only to finish what we began."
Lin Feng, for once, didn't speak. He only nodded—and gave her access to the Realm.
---
Inside, Tang Suyin fell to her knees.
"It's more than we dreamed," she whispered. "He did it. He finished it before… he disappeared."
She walked through the aquaculture ring, the herbal terraces, the camphor groves. At each step, she murmured old incantations—biological mnemonics from forgotten systems science.
And the plants responded.
She turned to Lin Feng, tears in her eyes.
"Qiming didn't just build this. He made it think."
---
Back in the outer world, word spread in secret circles.
A photo leaked.
An anonymous food critic shared a plate of Silverleaf dumplings from a private event, calling it "the future of flavor."
Within hours, food conglomerate scouts began digging.
Who made it? Where was it grown?
Their search hit dead ends, shell companies, and false farms.
But the buzz had begun.
Yuhan warned Lin Feng. "Once the name is out, it can't be taken back."
"We'll change names again if needed," he replied.
She looked at him carefully. "And if someone tries to take it from us?"
He smiled for the first time that day.
"Then let them come."
---
At night, Lin Feng stood by the stone core in the Inner Realm.
He pressed his palm again, and the whisper returned:
"Your hands are ready. Your roots are deep. What will you plant for the world to remember?"
He looked out at the silver trees and the fields beyond.
And answered silently:
"Legacy."
End of Chapter 34