The snow did not stop at flurries.
By morning, Dust Creek Village was buried under a hand's breadth of white—not yet deep enough to be catastrophic, but enough to transform the world into a monochrome silence. The fields, the roofs, the crooked fences—all softened, all made equal under the blanket.
Lin Yan woke to the sound of his mother stirring the fire, coaxing warmth into the frozen house. His breath fogged the air above his mat. Beside him, Lin Wen slept curled tight, his book tucked under his chin like a talisman.
The gloves Old Zhang had given him lay beside his mat. He picked them up, the leather stiff with cold. When he pulled them on, they felt like someone else's hands at first—thicker, clumsier. But as he flexed his fingers, the leather warmed and settled.
At the field, the snow had drifted against the stone wall they'd built, smoothing its jagged edges. The cleared earth was now a dark, wet stain against the white. The remaining stones poked through like the bones of a buried beast.
Old Zhang was already there, sweeping snow from a large, flat stone with a worn broom. He looked up as they approached, his face grim.
"The inspector won't come in this," he said without preamble. "Magistrate's men don't ride in snow unless it's tax collection or rebellion."
Lin Tieshan nodded, his expression resigned. "The permit stays pending."
"And your days to find a calf shrink." Old Zhang leaned on his broom. "You can't clear stones in this either. The ground's frozen. You'll break your tools and your backs."
It was true. Lin Yan drove his lever into the soil near a half-buried stone. The impact sent a shock up his arms, and the tool barely penetrated. The earth had turned to iron overnight.
"Then what do we do?" Lin Fu asked, frustration edging his voice. "We lose days we don't have."
Old Zhang looked at Lin Yan. "You said you needed grass seed from the south slope. The deer grass."
"Yes."
"Snow's lighter up there. The slope faces the sun. The seed heads might still be reachable." The old man's gaze was assessing. "It's a half-day's walk. And steep. And cold."
Lin Yan met his eyes. "I'll go."
"I'll go with you," Lin Lu said immediately. "Two pairs of eyes. Two bags for seed."
Their father hesitated, looking between his sons and the sky. "Be back before dark. The mountain has its own rules in snow."
As they turned to leave, a small figure emerged from the white haze between the village houses. Zhao Erniu, wrapped in a coat too large for him, the sleeves rolled multiple times. He carried a cloth sack and a determined expression.
"I heard," he said, slightly breathless. "I can climb. I'm light on my feet."
Lin Yan studied him. The boy's face was pale with cold, but his eyes were clear. "Do you have proper boots?"
Zhao Erniu looked down at his feet, wrapped in layers of rags and tied with cord. "They keep the cold out."
They wouldn't. Not on a mountain. Lin Yan hesitated, then looked at his father. Lin Tieshan's jaw tightened, but he gave a short nod.
"Come," Lin Yan said.
The three of them set out—Lin Yan and Lin Lu with hemp sacks and walking sticks, Zhao Erniu with his ragged bag and a quiet intensity. They left the village behind, the snow muffling their footsteps, the world reduced to the sound of their breathing and the crunch of their passage.
The south slope rose ahead, a dark hump against the grey-white sky. The snow was indeed lighter here, dusting the rocky outcrops and evergreen shrubs rather than burying them. As they climbed, the cold sharpened, biting through clothing, finding every gap.
Lin Yan's modern memories surfaced unbidden: central heating, thermal gloves, the comforting hum of a car heater. He pushed them away. This was his reality now. The cold. The climb. The need.
"There," Lin Lu said, pointing.
Ahead, in a sheltered dip where the slope curved and caught the thin sunlight, stood patches of the tufted grass Lin Yan had seen from a distance. Mountain Bristlegrass. Even under snow, it stood taller than the surrounding vegetation, its seed heads—pale and feathery—still clinging to the stems.
They worked quickly, brushing snow from the seed heads, then stripping them carefully into their sacks. The seeds were tiny, dark, and countless. Each handful felt like potential.
Zhao Erniu proved surprisingly adept. His thin fingers moved with delicate precision, harvesting without damaging the plants. "My mother," he said quietly when Lin Yan glanced at him. "She gathered herbs. Before she died. She taught me how to take without killing."
It was the most he'd said about himself.
"How long ago?" Lin Lu asked, not unkindly.
"Three winters." The boy's voice was flat. "Fever. Like yours, Third Brother, but… she didn't wake up."
The words hung in the cold air. A common story. A village story.
Lin Yan placed a hand on the boy's shoulder—a brief, clumsy gesture. "She'd be glad you remember her lessons."
Zhao Erniu nodded, his eyes bright, and returned to his work.
They harvested for two hours, moving from patch to patch, their sacks slowly filling. The work kept them warm, but Lin Yan's feet were growing numb despite his leather boots. He glanced at Zhao Erniu's rag-wrapped feet, now dark with wet snow.
"We should head back," he said when Lin Lu's sack was half-full and his own nearly so.
As they turned to descend, Lin Yan's eye caught something else—a low, spreading plant clinging to a rocky overhang, its leaves a surprising green against the snow. Red clover. Not much, but enough to collect a few seed heads to supplement what Old Zhang had given them.
He was carefully picking the dry seed pods when a sound made him freeze—a low, pained bleating, muffled by snow and distance.
Lin Lu heard it too. "Goat? Wild?"
"Injured," Zhao Erniu said, his head cocked. "That way."
Against better judgment, they followed the sound, picking their way across a scree slope to a shallow gully. There, half-buried in a snowdrift, lay a young goat—a nanny, maybe a year old. One of her back legs was twisted at an unnatural angle, clearly broken. Her sides heaved with panicked breaths, her eyes wide with pain and terror.
"Wolf trap," Lin Lu said grimly, pointing to the rusted iron jaws half-concealed under the snow nearby. "Old ones. From when they tried to clear the wolves out ten years back."
The goat stared at them, too exhausted to struggle further.
Lin Yan knelt in the snow. The animal was skin and bone beneath its matted coat—a stray, perhaps, from a herd that had wandered too far. Her milk bag was small but not entirely dry. She'd had a kid recently, maybe lost to predators.
"We should put her out of her misery," Lin Lu said quietly. "Meat's meat. And the hide…"
But Lin Yan was already thinking. A goat. Not a calf, but livestock. Milk-producing if she recovered. Hardy enough to survive on poor forage. And alive now, when they needed proof—to themselves, to the village—that they could care for something beyond their own hunger.
"We take her back," he said.
"Her leg's shattered, Third Brother. She'll never walk right."
"Then we splint it. She doesn't need to run, just to stand and eat."
Lin Lu stared at him. "We don't have feed for a goat. We don't have a shelter. We don't even have the permit yet."
"We have grass seed," Lin Yan said, his voice low but firm. "And we will have shelter. And the permit will come." He looked at the goat, at the desperate will to live in its eyes. "We can't leave her here."
It was Zhao Erniu who moved first. He shrugged off his oversized coat and laid it carefully over the goat's head, calming her. Then, with surprising gentleness, he felt along her broken leg. "The bone's not through the skin. If we splint it straight, it might knit."
Lin Lu looked between them, then sighed—the sigh of a practical man surrendering to something beyond practicality. "Fine. But you carry her. My back's already complaining."
They fashioned a crude stretcher from two sturdy branches and Lin Lu's outer tunic. Lin Yan and Zhao Erniu carried the goat between them, her weight surprisingly light, her breathing quick and shallow against Lin Yan's shoulder. Lin Lu carried both sacks of seed, his steps careful on the slippery descent.
The journey back was slow, agonizing. The snow began to fall again, thicker now, obscuring their tracks. The goat grew still, her eyes closed, and for terrible moments Lin Yan thought she had died. But then her flank would flutter with another shallow breath.
By the time they stumbled into the village, the short winter day was fading into blue twilight. Smoke rose from chimneys, and the smell of cooking—what little there was—hung in the air.
Heads turned as they passed. A goat. A broken goat, being carried like a dying emperor on a makeshift litter.
Old Zhang was waiting at his gate. He took in the scene—the seed sacks, the goat, the exhausted men—and his face did something complicated. "Well," he said finally. "That's one way to get livestock."
They carried the goat into Old Zhang's small stable—really just a lean-to against his house, but it was out of the wind and dry. Old Zhang's wife, propped on her pallet just inside the house, called out weakly, "Is it alive?"
"Barely," Old Zhang called back. Then, to Lin Yan: "You know how to splint a leg?"
"I've seen it done."
"Seeing and doing are different." But the old man was already gathering materials—straight sticks, strips of cloth, a pot of warm water. He worked with a calm efficiency, cleaning the wound, aligning the bone as the goat cried out weakly, then binding it tight.
"She'll need warmth," Old Zhang said when he was done. "And milk if you can get it. Goat's milk would be best, but we have none."
"We have the broth from the chickens left," Lin Yan said. "Thinned. With some grain soaked in it."
Old Zhang nodded. "Try that. And stay with her tonight. If she makes it 'til dawn, she might live."
Lin Yan looked at his brother, at Zhao Erniu. "You two go home. Tell Father what happened. I'll stay."
They left reluctantly. Old Zhang brought a battered oil lamp and a thin blanket. "For you, not the goat. She has her own coat."
Then he was gone, leaving Lin Yan alone in the stable with a broken animal and the smell of hay and snow and pain.
The goat lay on her side, her splinted leg sticking out awkwardly. Her eyes were open now, watching him. In the lamplight, they reflected gold.
Lin Yan sat beside her, his own exhaustion settling deep into his bones. He warmed some of the chicken broth over a small brazier Old Zhang had left, then soaked a handful of grain in it. When it was cool enough, he held it to the goat's mouth.
At first, she refused. Then, perhaps sensing the nourishment, she began to lick weakly, then to eat.
It was something.
Outside, the snow fell steadily. The village slept. Somewhere, Sun Dahu was warm in his brick house. Somewhere, the magistrate's inspector waited for clear roads. Somewhere, a sick calf breathed in a cold pen in the county town.
But here, in this stable, a goat ate from Lin Yan's hand.
The system updated quietly:
[LIVESTOCK ACQUIRED: FEMALE GOAT (INJURED, SURVIVAL PROBABILITY: 40%)]
[GRASS SEED COLLECTED: MOUNTAIN BRISTLEGRASS (SUFFICIENT FOR 1 MU INITIAL PLANTING)]
[CLOVER SEED SUPPLEMENTED]
[NEW OBJECTIVE: NURTURE GOAT TO STABILITY]
[TIME REMAINING FOR LIVESTOCK ACQUISITION: 26 DAYS (OBJECTIVE TECHNICALLY MET WITH QUALIFIER)]
Technically met. With a broken goat instead of a calf. With a forty percent chance instead of certainty.
Lin Yan looked at the animal, at the careful splint on her leg, at the way her ears twitched at the sound of the wind.
It wasn't what he'd planned.
But it was alive.
And for now, in the silent heart of a snowbound night, that was enough.