Walking with a Swift Breeze

Time passed in the blink of an eye.

Before long, late autumn had arrived.

As the autumn winds began to rustle through the countryside, turning the leaves yellow and scattering them across the village paths, the distant mountains were dyed with patches of crimson maple.

All kinds of animals in the hills and fields began to stir. This was the season for gathering provisions. How much they could harvest would determine their chances of surviving the coming winter.

The common folk, who followed the age-old cycle of harvesting in autumn and storing away supplies for winter, were no different.

After the villagers of Clearbrook Village had hurried through the autumn harvest, they wasted no time planting winter wheat.

Only after every task necessary for making a living had been completed did everyone finally have time to take stock of this year’s harvest.

Thanks to the Immortal Ascension Sect, the people of Clearbrook Village had enjoyed decent incomes over the past two years. Nearly every household had brought in a considerable amount.

Farmers who placed their trust in the land used most of their earnings to purchase what they considered the most reassuring things of all: deeds to farmland.

In previous years, quite a few people in Clearbrook Village had still been tenant farmers, making a living by cultivating land belonging to others.

Most people became tenant farmers because their families owned too little land—or none at all—and had no other way to survive.

In this era, after cultivating the land, tenant farmers not only had to pay the taxes imposed by the imperial court, but also hand over a portion of what remained to the landowner.

Human strength was limited, after all. Thus, no matter how hard these tenant farmers worked throughout the year, the grain they ended up with was barely enough to keep them fed.

And if a natural disaster struck, life became even more difficult.

So once their incomes rose over the past two years, the villagers’ first reaction was almost always to buy land.

By now, most of the people in Clearbrook Village owned enough farmland to cultivate themselves, with some left over. They had completely ceased being tenant farmers.

The occasional households that still rented land were saving money with all their might, waiting for the day they had enough to purchase fields of their own.

As a result, many villagers now owned more land than they could farm.

Their owners consequently leased the excess fields to people from nearby villages.

This delighted the many tenant farmers in the surrounding villages who had plenty of strength to spare but had previously been unable to rent much land.

Once the winter wheat had been planted, the grain harvested in autumn had been dried and weighed, part of it paid as tax, and the rest stored in granaries, the people of Clearbrook Village welcomed another event that filled them with excitement.

It was something they had never once dared to imagine before.

Clearbrook Village was about to be built into Clearbrook Town!

The village chief and several clan elders had already hinted at this possibility to the heads of the households at the beginning of the year.

But at the time, nothing had been finalized, so they had never stated it clearly.

Everyone had felt that it sounded rather unrealistic. After all, neither they nor even their ancestors had ever witnessed a village becoming a town.

Even so, once word of something they had never dared to dream about began to circulate, and with all the changes the village had undergone in recent years, they could not help but harbor a little hope.

Then, just yesterday…

Early in the morning, the head of every household was summoned by the village chief to the threshing ground.

In front of everyone, the village chief solemnly announced the news.

When the thing they had been hoping for actually came true, the whole village erupted in joy!

The village chief also openly informed everyone about the Immortal Ascension Sect’s funding and loans, an arrangement that all the clan elders had approved.

The villagers of Clearbrook had no objections whatsoever.

In these times, any landowner willing to lend money was considered a great benefactor. What was more, the Immortal Ascension Sect had directly provided them with a sum of money as well.

Once Clearbrook became Clearbrook Town, all of them would transform into townspeople!

Just imagine how impressive that would sound when they told people about it!

From then on, every girl who married into their village—no, their town—could proudly say that she had married into a superior household!

For the people of Clearbrook Village, who had once boasted that their home was blessed with beautiful scenery and remarkable people simply because it lay beside a mountain stream and North Mountain, this was an irresistible temptation!

They would have one more thing to brag about when they went out from now on!

“Look at this—our village was directly upgraded into a town! Ever seen anything like it? Our Clearbrook Village is one of a kind!”

Although the arrival of the Immortal Ascension Sect had previously made the villagers feel honored by association, it had ultimately been nothing more than a connection at the edge of their lives.

This time was different. They were the true protagonists of the story.

As a result, the villagers had been walking with a spring in their steps these past few days.

The bleak sensation of the autumn wind lifting the hems of their clothes seemed to have transformed into a backdrop highlighting their graceful, radiant, and carefree bearing.

News of this naturally reached the ears of the influential and wealthy people who had settled in Clearbrook Village over the past few years.

Less than two days later, Village Chief Du received another batch of donations.

The total amount was almost equal to the sum provided by the Immortal Ascension Sect.

With this additional funding, the original construction budget for Clearbrook Village could be raised considerably.

It was easy to imagine that once Clearbrook Town was successfully built, it would soon become the grandest town under the jurisdiction of the entire prefecture.

Good fortune put a spring in one’s step.

Village Chief Du sat in a wicker chair at home and waved over his son, who was splitting firewood in the courtyard.

“Changsheng, I just remembered something. Don’t forget to build a new shelter where the old one stands on the western side of the village. That shack isn’t fit for winter anymore. It’s far too difficult to get through the cold season in there.”

The shelter on the western side had been built two years earlier.

At first, it had been constructed because, as the population of Clearbrook Village gradually increased, some destitute elderly people and children began drifting there in search of enough food to survive.

Some had come from villages and townships where they had neither land nor anyone to rely on. Others had been driven out by powerful beggars in the towns.

After arriving in Clearbrook Village, they did not block people’s paths to beg for money or food. Instead, they quietly hid themselves away in corners. If a kindhearted person happened to notice them and offered them a little money or something to eat, they could just barely get by, day after day.

At the time, some villagers saw that these people had no shelter at all and mentioned to the village chief that they ought to find a secluded place and put up a small shack for them.

The elderly and the young were poorly clothed and had nowhere to live. It was a pitiful sight.

So after receiving the village chief’s approval, several villagers found an empty plot in a remote corner on the western side and built them a simple shack where they could eke out an existence.

If this had happened three years earlier, when most of the people in Clearbrook Village could barely feed and clothe themselves, no one would have had the energy to pity these beggars.

It was only because they had stopped worrying about food and clothing in recent years that they were able to show such compassion.

The beggars were deeply grateful to the villagers of Clearbrook. In their daily lives, they often helped the villagers with whatever small tasks they were capable of doing.

Later, more people in the village learned about the matter. Under the village chief’s organization, each household contributed what it could, and together they rebuilt the shack to make it larger and sturdier.

They even used mud-and-straw bricks to build walls around it, making it half a house by then. It had remained in use ever since.

The seven or eight elderly people and children living there cherished it dearly. Whenever they had nothing else to do, they would even gather stones and stack them along both the inside and outside of the walls.