Spring in the Azure Hills did not arrive—it attacked. The tentative thaw gave way to a riotous, unstoppable surge of life. The snow vanished almost overnight, replaced by a shock of green so vivid it seemed to hum. The creek, once a silent ribbon of ice, became a boisterous, foaming torrent, its voice a constant roar in the valley. The air warmed, thick with the scent of wet earth, blooming wildflowers, and the rich, grassy perfume of growth.
On the Lin Ranch, the quiet intensity of winter shattered into a symphony of coordinated chaos. This was the season of the green tide, where opportunity and work raced each other across the land, and every hand was pressed into service.
The primary front was Barren Vale. The twenty mu of hardy grass and clover, dormant under the snow, exploded with life, growing almost visibly in the long, warm days. It was time for the first major harvest. But this was not a crop to be consumed; it was a crop to be multiplied. Under Lin Yan's direction, the crew didn't cut the grass for hay. They cut it for seed.
Teams of men moved through the lush growth with hand sickles, carefully cutting the seed heads of the canyon grass and the hardy clover at their peak. The work was meticulous, slow, and back-breaking. The precious seed was collected in cloth sacks, to be cleaned and stored—the genetic capital for reclaiming another fifty mu this year.
Simultaneously, another crew, under Lin Zhu's command, began the season's great earthworks. Using the new four-wheeled wagon, they hauled stone and lumber to the vale's upper reaches. Their task: to build the first of the "high pastures" Lin Yan had mapped over the winter. It was a terrace on a south-facing slope, sheltered from the north wind, with a small spring they'd enhanced. This would be the summer home for the Blackcloud cattle, a place where the sweeter, thinner grass would shape the quality of their meat.
At the home ranch, the focus was on training and conditioning. The eleven young horses could no longer be treated as a single group. They were stratified. The oldest—Dawn, Summit, and Ember—began serious saddle training. Zhao He worked them on long lines in the big pasture, building stamina and responsiveness. The four youngest foals—Cinder, Haze, Slate, and Smoke—stayed with their dams, learning the basics of halter and handling from Lin Xiao. The middle group—the four weanlings from last autumn—Anvil, Drift, Tempest, and Steel—were a boisterous gang, started on ground manners and simple obstacle courses.
And then there were the cattle. The success of Onyx, the first Blackcloud cross heifer, had electrified them. Midnight, the young black bull, was put to work. He was introduced to a small group of selected heifers from their original herd. The careful breeding program was in full swing. Every mating was recorded, every expected calving date circled on the lambskin calendar. They were no longer just raising cattle; they were conducting a generations-long experiment in taste and hardiness.
This explosive growth required not just labour, but leadership. Lin Yan found himself stretched thin, pulled between the vale, the training grounds, the breeding charts, and the ever-present logistical needs of feeding and housing their growing workforce. He was the strategist, but he was also becoming a manager of people.
The test of this new role came not from outside, but from within. One of the hired hands from the county, a man named Da Ping who had been with them since the first vale crew, got into a heated argument with Lao Li's son over the proper way to stack cut seed grass. It escalated to shoving. In the old days, Lin Tie would have simply stepped in and glowered until they stopped. But they were not a family and a few helpers anymore; they were an operation with nearly thirty men between the two sites.
Lin Yan was summoned from the high pasture construction. He found the two men standing apart, chests heaving, a circle of others around them watching intently. The work had stopped.
He didn't shout. He walked between them, his face calm. He listened to both sides—Da Ping insisting on speed, Lao Li's son on careful drying to prevent mold. Both had valid points born of different experiences.
"The seed is our future," Lin Yan said, his voice carrying in the sudden quiet. "Da Ping is right that we must work with the weather. Young Li is right that haste now can waste all we've cut." He looked at both men. "You will work together. Da Ping, you are crew leader for cutting. You decide the pace and the order of the fields. Young Li, you are overseer of drying and storage. You decide when the cut grass is ready to move and how it is stacked. You answer to each other for your part. If the seed is lost, you have both failed."
It was a lesson in shared responsibility. It acknowledged their expertise and bound their success together. The men, expecting a reprimand or a favouring of one over the other, were taken aback. They glanced at each other, then back at Lin Yan, and nodded. The tension dissolved. Work resumed.
Later, Zhao He grunted in approval. "You made them partners in the problem, not rivals. That is an officer's trick."
"It's just common sense," Lin Yan said, though he felt a flicker of pride. He was learning to wield authority not as a blunt force, but as a tool for alignment.
The green tide brought other challenges. The explosion of plant life included less welcome varieties. Weeds, some toxic to livestock, sprang up in the newly disturbed earth of the vale and the edges of their home pastures. Wang Shi organized the women and older children into weed-pulling parties, teaching them to identify the dangerous plants. It became a communal activity, another thread tying the village to the ranch's well-being.
And with the new growth came new mouths. A fox den was discovered near the chicken coop, and a young bear was seen fishing in the creek, too close for comfort. The perimeter was not just for human threats anymore. Zhao He set simple, non-lethal traps for the fox and organized a rotating night watch with fire pots and noisemakers to discourage the bear. The ranch was a beacon of concentrated food, and the wild world was taking notice.
Amidst this beautiful, demanding chaos, a moment of pure, distilled purpose arrived. The first of the yearling horses, Dawn, was deemed ready for her first real test. Not in the arena, but on the land. Zhao He proposed a scouting ride to the highest alpine meadow, the one they'd found the previous autumn. It was a two-day journey, a test of endurance, trust, and terrain for both horse and rider.
Lin Yan would go with him, riding Summit. It was a chance to see the summer pastures, to scout for signs of the unrest Borjigin had warned of, and to prove their horses in the environment they were bred for.
They left at dawn, the world dripping with dew. Dawn, under Zhao He, moved with a floating, tireless gait, her ears constantly swivelling, taking in the expanding world. Summit, beneath Lin Yan, was a steady, powerful engine, eating up the miles with a calm, ground-covering trot. They climbed out of the green valley, through pine forests still cool and dark, and up into the rock and wind of the high places.
When they broke through to the alpine meadow, the sight was, as always, breathtaking. A sea of short, emerald grass and tiny, bright flowers under an immense bowl of sky. The air was thin and clean. It was a kingdom above the clouds.
They made camp by the same spring. As the sun set, painting the peaks in impossible colours, Zhao He unsaddled Dawn and let her roll in the sweet grass. He stood watching her, then turned to Lin Yan.
"This," he said, gesturing to the meadow, the horse, the vast silence. "This is what we are selling to the empire. Not just a horse. This." He meant the combination: an animal capable of reaching such a place, of thriving here, of carrying a rider who could see horizons others could not. "They want remounts for the frontier. The frontier is not a flat field. It is this. It is rock and height and thin air. A horse that is born and trained in the lowlands will never have this in its heart. Ours do."
It was the articulation of their ultimate advantage. Their "Lin Ranch Method" wasn't just about grass and breeding; it was about environment as a co-teacher. It was about forging horses in the crucible of the mountains themselves.
The ride back the next day was filled with a quiet, shared certainty. They had seen no signs of bandits or refugees, only the pristine, powerful land. Their horses had performed flawlessly.
Returning to the ranch was like diving back into a warm, noisy river. The green tide of work and growth surged around them. But Lin Yan carried the high meadow's clarity back with him. He saw the frantic activity not as chaos, but as a manifestation of the same iron will that had driven them up the mountain—the will to cultivate, to build, to excel.
They were not just weathering the spring. They were harnessing it, directing the green tide with the same focus Zhao He had used to guide Dawn over the high pass. The ranch was a living, breathing expression of a single, unwavering intention: to carve a legacy of quality and resilience from the very bones of the land. And as the days lengthened and the grass grew taller, that intention grew stronger, rooted as deep as the hardy grasses themselves, ready to face whatever storms or sunshine the season might bring.