Crops grow from seeds — so what did 'we' grow from? Where did we come from? Where do we go when we die?

— A child's voice

We grew from the earth, and when we die, we return to the earth. Whether it's a person or a plant, everything is part of the cycle.

— A gentle woman

The Vast Wilderness sits at the northern edge of Yan, a precious land with unusually little Originium contamination. Its people have built it into Yan's finest granary region, and every summer harvest they hold a festival honoring "Shennong," who is said to have first cultivated this land.

Legend says Shennong set off north a thousand years ago in search of new seeds, and never returned. Even so, people say he descends from the sky each harvest season to check on the year's crop. Most everyone just treats it as an old folk tale.

But Zuo Le, a Candle-Bearer of the Bureau of Generations newly assigned to the Vast Wilderness, happens to read a record suggesting Shennong was a real person. And he can't shake the feeling that the eyes described in that record keep overlapping with those of the gentle angel who waters the paddies beside him every day.

1. A demoted young lord arrives, gets fed, and immediately loses his nickname

Having been sternly scolded by his father Zuo Xuanliao, Zuo Le is sent to the Vast Wilderness as punishment for a mistake he made at the Jade Gate. Instead of a written apology, his assigned task turns out to be, of all things, "spring planting."

The moment he arrives, Zuo Le just stands blankly in the paddy — and Xiaoman, the cheerful girl who chats freely with livestock, treats him like a scarecrow that hasn't even had lunch, shoving a lunchbox into his hands.

Shu, the gentle angel who tends the paddies, introduces him to Hesheng, and Zuo Le's nickname is set in stone almost instantly: "Mr. Candlestick." It was Xiaoman's doing, once she learned that Candle-Bearer (持燭人) literally means "one who holds a candle." His ever-present attendant Yun Qingping, frail since birth and trained in recordkeeping instead of martial arts, gets his own nickname too — everyone calls him "Mr. Brush."

One night, the four of them are chasing fireflies when they spot a shooting star. Xiaoman genuinely believes that wherever a star falls, a bountiful harvest follows, and begs everyone to go find the spot with her.

Even if we never find it, I'll keep looking — until we're old and gray.

— Xiaoman

2. Shennong, a figure of legend? No, actually just the angel next door

On the day of the Shennong Festival, Zuo Le watches the play *The Contested Heavens* and hears the legend of Shennong from Hesheng, the young agriculture angel said to have been born in a paddy field — the story of someone who reclaimed a land ruined by Catastrophe, then set off in search of new seeds and never came back.

But as Zuo Le digs through the records, he finds something unsettling. In the very seat of the "Shennong" who is said to have established the 24 solar terms, appeared during the great famine, and stayed for a thousand years — he keeps seeing Shu's face overlap.

What the three of them are building day and night is the mobile fortress that will protect the entire Vast Wilderness — the "Five-Star Twelve Towers." With the court pushing them to prepare for Catastrophe and war at once, the construction deadline is always brutally tight.

Meanwhile, Shu slips out to the riverbank every night. She brings food to a "mute man" no one else goes near, and tells Xiaoman only that he's someone who's ill.

3. A real bolt from the blue strikes in the middle of the festival

In the middle of the Shennong Festival, a sudden downpour hits and a dam breaks. Muddy floodwater mixed with Originium debris surges into the paddies.

Hesheng proposes personally piloting the still-unfinished mobile sector to redirect the water, overriding the earth angels who insist it can't be done.

What are you all standing around for! Get it moving, now!

— Hesheng

In the end the water recedes and everyone is safe. But no one knows that, that same night, someone collapsed alone on the riverbank. It was Shu.

4. A suspicious traveler sells a girl her own wish

In the wake of the flood, a vagrant who'd been napping in a paddy appears before Xiaoman and the others. He claims to be a merchant — one who'll buy and sell anything.

Xiaoman tosses out a wish as a joke — that the Vast Wilderness would have a bountiful harvest every year — and he takes one of Xiaoman's songs as payment for it. His name is Ji. Shu's younger brother.

Hesheng finds him nothing but suspicious, but Zuo Le recognizes him immediately — a flagged Agent the Bureau of Generations has been watching for a long time.

5. No one died, yet one stalk of rice turned blood-red

In the middle of a paddy left in ruins after the flood, Xiaoman finds a single stalk of rice as red as blood. All the rice around it has fallen over, but this one stands upright — and even the Burden Beast circling nearby has turned bright red.

A student from the angel corps secretly asks her to gather these stalks of rice, but won't say what they're for. Around this time, Hesheng sees, in a vision, an old farmer who's never once harvested a single seed despite a lifetime of farming, and countless nameplates hung from a tree across the river.

In place of an answer, Shu tells an old story instead — of a companion who once helped settle the Vast Wilderness with her, who set off north in her place amid the Catastrophe.

In the end, we couldn't protect any of it.

— Shu

6. As it turns out, the god was exhausted

Ji keeps coming back to see Shu. He tells her to leave this heavy land behind already — that staking her life on the "heart" Nian is building is far too dangerous a bargain.

Shu refuses every time. But once Ji leaves and she's alone, the smile drops from her face — she's the one who, for a thousand years, has felt this land's Catastrophes in her own body before anyone else.

Zuo Le doesn't miss one thing Ji lets slip: a question about how many angels have died at the Bureau of Heavenly Records in just the last three months. And among the siblings, rumors keep surfacing about a second brother who hasn't shown his face in ages — the one they call the "Go player."

7. An ambitious vice minister joins hands with Catastrophe

Vice Minister Wan, the young official put in charge of the Five-Star Twelve Towers construction, was a man consumed by ambition. He was always sharpening his edge against his rival Ling Sichu, dispatched from the Board of Rites, but he'd stake his life on holding the construction deadline no matter what.

Ji appears before him and offers a deal: supplies, in exchange for something in return. Rather than deny any wrongdoing, Vice Minister Wan accepts, gladly.

No need to be alarmed. I know full well that Vice Minister Wan climbed from a mere clerk all the way to the second rank.

— Ji

In the end, on the day the core runs out of control, it's Vice Minister Wan who steps forward alone to try to stop the runaway device — all because of the one thing he'd hated hearing his whole life: "out of control."

They'd always been snarling rivals, but Ling Sichu couldn't let even his death be exploited.

8. When the crimson dusk rises, the world turns upside down

The core's energy suddenly spirals out of control, and unidentifiable monsters pour endlessly out of the ground — the result of Ji forcing Nian and Dusk to activate the "heart" against their will.

The monsters' true nature is the fear born of Catastrophe itself — beings that grow stronger the more people fear them. Rather than flee, Hesheng and Zuo Le call out for everyone to gather and stand together.

Right before the fight, Xiaoman quietly confesses to Hesheng what's really on her mind — she doesn't even know why she's saying it, but she tells Hesheng not to assume that having no family means no one cares about her. Sheer terror had loosened words she'd never normally say.

I told you not to be afraid... but I know full well that's asking the impossible.

— Hesheng

9. Silence by the river, and those who never came back

Amid the swarm of monsters, a silent woodcutter who's lived alone by the riverbank for years holds the line with nothing but an axe. Xiaoman risks the danger to seek him out and plays him a tune on her flute.

The woodcutter uses his last strength to protect Xiaoman, but as he reaches his limit, the Progenitor stops him and pulls him to safety, urging him to make it back alive for his daughter's sake. That he was a father who chose to stay behind on this riverbank long ago, leaving a daughter behind, is a truth that never gets told to anyone in the end.

At the very same moment, inside the core, Vice Minister Wan is holding back the device alone. He never comes back out — but the dream of a "boundless city" he carried is one Shu picks up in his place.

10. A kite that never got to fly, yet still survives

To rescue the people still trapped in the test fields amid the monsters, Hesheng and Zuo Le race across the gaps of a collapsing sector. Zuo Le carries people one by one, leaping across the widening cracks.

In the final moment, Hesheng is badly hurt. Even so, she turns her angel robe — which holds her research data — into a kite, and sends Zuo Le flying up into the sky alone.

I've said a lot of harsh things to you, but honestly, you're a good kid.

— Hesheng

Left alone, Hesheng finds herself surrounded by closing monsters. Fortunately, she's saved by "Fluffy," a Stock Beast that Xiaoman had been raising.

11. The god closes her eyes one last time, and becomes human

Shu walks straight into the consciousness of "Sui," the source of the monsters. She's there to gently tell that childlike shadow, which has carried this land's fear on its own for a thousand years, that the world isn't a frightening place.

You're afraid because you've never truly lived.

— Shu

As Shu finishes speaking, the sky clears and the core's rampage finally stops. Amid the collapsing mobile sector, Zuo Le and Hesheng push each other up and barely make it back alive.

Hesheng confirms that the Originium-resistant rice she'd searched so long for — "Wanqing" — has survived. But Shu, who had raised that rice alongside her, is nowhere to be found anywhere in the Vast Wilderness once the Catastrophe ends.

Epilogue. No one remembered her

In the wake of the Catastrophe, Shu wakes up in an unfamiliar village with no memory of who she is. Hesheng finds it odd how much this "teacher" knows about rice farming — but even Shu herself has no idea who she really is.

Meanwhile, Dusk sets down her brush and quietly disappears, leaving behind only the words that the thousand years felt like a dream — and that having them all around made it never lonely.

Ji leaves the Vast Wilderness carrying the fabric he spent a thousand years weaving — a cloth woven not just with the history of the Vast Wilderness, but with the hearts of people all across Yan. He's off to meet his second older brother, the one who's spent all this time hidden away, playing nothing but Go.

Nian and Dusk join forces to corner Ji, but he slips away unharmed in the end. And in that very moment, the second brother long known only as rumor — the "Go player," Wang — appears before Shu for the very first time.

If you trace it back, all of this started a thousand years ago.

— Wang

Wang says what he's after is a "greater good" for this entire world. Rather than stop him, Shu hands him a handful of seeds — telling him that if he's really walking the right path, these seeds will sprout someday too.

Before leaving, Dusk paints a fitting scene for each and every one of her siblings — the eldest brother who guards the border, the free-spirited poet sister, Nian wandering the mulberry roads, and even the sister who has already passed on.

And for Shu, she leaves her exactly as she already is now, living the life she's already chosen.

So this is what it's like to be "human"? Somehow... it feels good.

— Ji

Zuo Le, too, has changed a little. He gets word from his father that he's been reinstated, and that his next assignment is keeping watch over Rhodes Island, given how often it comes into contact with Agents. This time, instead of rushing off in fear like before, he packs his bags calmly.

Even something you'd call an 'enemy' isn't beyond understanding — so there's no need to be afraid.

— Zuo Le

Where did we come from, and where do we go when we die? Just as that old saying goes — grown from the earth, and returned to the earth — Shu has now gone back to being part of this land, without a name, without a face.

The people of the Vast Wilderness still hold a festival honoring Shennong every summer. Only now, starting with this harvest, the Originium-resistant rice is placed on the altar too. Where the god once stood, what remains instead is fruit that people themselves planted, and people themselves harvested.