MTLNOVEL Chapter 226: Beneath Their Feet
The soil here didn't just breathe… It listened.
I knelt in the middle of a sloped rice terrace, my hands pressed to the cold earth as Shadow circled nearby, his pawprints leaving no sound. It had rained two days ago, just enough to soak the top layer, but not enough to wash out the metal buried deep below.
The southern winds bit at the edge of my cloak. I didn't feel it. My fingers moved in slow, patient lines—reading the iron content in the soil like a second language. A blade. A sickle. Three rusted nails from a collapsed grain shed. The earth was full of memory.
And memory was malleable.
I curled my fingers inward, drawing the metal from the ground in silent threads. It obeyed without resistance—coiling like snakes just beneath the surface, waiting. Once set, these threads would slice through ankles, tear through cart wheels, pierce the belly of anyone foolish enough to charge without watching their step.
A beautiful death, buried in the land they thought they owned.
Shadow let out a low huff behind me. I didn't need to look. He'd scented something. I stood, brushing dirt from my hands, and turned to face the soft rustle of worn sandals dragging through the underbrush.
Three villagers.
Two men, one woman, wrapped in threadbare cloaks and carrying sacks too light to be worth the effort. The older man held a broken farming spade, more for pride than defense. They stopped dead when they saw me.
They didn't see a noble. They saw someone dressed in black, alone, unguarded, standing in the middle of their ruined livelihood like a curse.
"You shouldn't be here," I said, my voice quiet.
The younger man stepped forward, cautious. "We're not traitors. We just… we just wanted to harvest what is here before it's gone."
"Baiguang's gone through here," I said, not a question.
He nodded once. "They paid."
"Did they threaten you?"
"No."
"Did you tell them where we keep our water caches?"
The woman's voice cracked. "We didn't say a word. We just… fed them."
I stared at the half-dug furrows behind them. "Then you fed the wrong army."
They went still.
I stepped past them and reached for a low tree branch near the field's edge. With two fingers, I snapped off a dry twig—then pressed it between my palms. A flicker of heat danced across my skin, no brighter than a coal's breath, and the twig ignited.
I touched it to the bark.
The tree caught slow—fire climbing its spine like a whisper. Controlled. Purposeful.
The villagers stared.
"You should leave," I said, willing to give them one final chance. "Before nightfall."
They didn't move. But they didn't argue.
I didn't wait for gratitude. Or explanation.
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By the time I reached the second slope, Shadow was already ahead of me, trotting through the brush like he owned the place. Then again, not much was willing to take on a massive black wolf that was easily twice the size of the ones they're used to.
The terraces below shimmered faintly under the rising moon—still green, still ripe, still useful to the wrong side of the war. I wasn't here to fight with swords. That would come later.
Tonight, I was here to poison the land with certainty. So that there was no doubt about what would happen next if Baiguang and their allies continued to toe my bottom line.
I crouched near a wooden post once used to guide irrigation channels and tapped my palm against the rotting surface. The nails inside shivered—old, bent, forgotten. I coaxed them free, pulling them out one by one with barely a whisper.
They drifted in the air before me, floating like dead leaves.
With a thought, I sent them down into the soft dirt and split them into spines.
When morning came, the field would look untouched.
But the first step too far would spill blood.
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Three terraces in, I stopped at a collapsed storage shed. The roof had caved in, likely under the weight of last season's snow, and the contents had long since been scavenged or rotted. But beneath the debris, I felt something resonate.
Steel. Small. Precise.
I swept the dirt aside and found it—a broken horseshoe pin, buried in soot and straw.
I ran my thumb along its edge, then shaped it slowly, turning it into a narrow hook. It could catch the leather of a boot. The hem of a uniform. A knee tendon.
I set it under the threshold stone and moved on.
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The final field was higher than the others, a narrow crescent cut into the mountain's hip, and it was clear that no one had touched it in weeks. The air was colder here. Cleaner.
I walked the edge once, noting the brittle wood beams, the thin layer of frost already forming where the moon touched stone. The soil here was rich with iron—a natural vein that responded to my presence with a low, humming awareness.
I raised my hand and the metal responded to my demands like a well trained hound.
Tiny fragments—no larger than grain husks—lifted from the ground and spun gently in a slow circle above my palm. They glinted once in the moonlight before falling back into the earth like rain.
I smiled faintly.
This place was ready for what would come next.
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Finally, I marked the trees at the edge of the crescent—three strokes with my blade against the bark. Each line glowed faintly for a moment, then vanished. Not because of magic like most would have believed, but because I'd embedded heated metal slivers in the grain. When Yaozu's men arrived tomorrow, they would see nothing.
But they'd know where to strike.
And Baiguang's soldiers wouldn't see it until their heels snapped open against the iron.
I crouched once more, pressing my palm into the earth.
It felt warm.
Not because of my power, but because I had claimed it.
They would march here with stolen uniforms and twisted flags, thinking they could mimic my country, my soldiers, my rules.
They'd find only fire.
And blades buried beneath their feet.
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On the walk back down the slope, Shadow stayed close to my side. He didn't bark. He didn't growl. He just flicked his tail against my hip, a silent reassurance that even monsters had witnesses.
Halfway back to camp, I looked over my shoulder just once.
The highest terrace flickered.
Just once.
A soft, red glow at its far edge—like the land itself had exhaled.
I didn't stop walking.
No one would remember the names of these fields.
Only the ash that would dance in the wind tomorrow morning.