Li nodded out a goodbye to Triple Threat, a slip of paper listing the elixirs they needed wedged in his palm. He watched as they made their way down the main road, Jeanne nudging Sylvie's shoulder teasingly while Azhar walked while whistling, blissfully unaware. 

The image of the three strolling down with their armor and weapons let Li remember a past where he had done just the same, adventuring and questing with friends from a different world. He had liked that life, but at the end of the day, it didn't compare with how fulfilling it was to be able to tend the earth around him. 

To that end, Li went back to training his divine powers with Iona. He wasn't doing this just to balance out the twin natures of life and death housed within him. He had a fair amount of anticipation for this, as he figured that by tapping into his forest-related godhood, he could take his farming into an entirely new realm. He could grow anything he wanted and at will, and the appreciation he felt for the nature around him would only grow and become more sensitive. 

"Let's get started again," said Li as he took his seat on the counter and grasped the duchess's special grain kernel. 

Iona nodded as she went by his side, her hands reaching out for his. Li shook his head and said, "There's no need for you to risk yourself again. I think I've got the hang of it."

Iona raised a brow before she stepped back, bowing her head and watching as Li closed his eyes as he felt for the grain's life song. At first, he could hear the usual static and muted beating, but then he recalled the chill that Iona had imparted on him, recalling how it felt, how it seemed to just numb away all the distractions. 

It wasn't hard. After all, Li wasn't learning anything he didn't have. He was gaining control of abilities already latent within himself and merely ignored up until this point. 

"Can you hear it?" said Iona.

"Yeah." Li nodded as he opened his eyes. He looked down at the gleaming golden kernel at his palm. "The song is very similar to the one from the grain you grew with just a few differences. I thought you said this was alien to you."

"I thought you would say that." Iona smiled. "Allow me to explain. The songs of plants that are related share a common base. The wheat I produced is a mundane winter variant from Duvin, but since the golden grain you were curious about is also wheat, it stands to reason that they share a similar base structure. It is in other intricacies they differ."

"I see, then I'm assuming that even the subtle differences between these two grains is enough for you to call one of them alien to you."

"That is correct, yes." Iona plucked the golden kernel from Li's palm, rolling it around her pale and thin fingers. "Your spiritual ear is yet undeveloped, so you cannot tell, but the differences you hear are centered around growth, hence why one variant grows so strongly compared to the other."

"Interesting." Li nodded. He didn't have a strong attachment to music in his past life, but he knew the concept of training a musical ear to hear for different pitches and tones, and this spiritual hearing was remarkably similar. "This whole system is remarkably ordered, then. There's a consistent basic structure for certain families of plants, and then variations in their qualities are marked by more subtle distinctions demarcated into categories like growth."

Li could feel his more scientific curiosity pique, and he started to theorize.

"As I recall, your method of growing plants from your being involves recalling the song of an individual plant and expending magical energy. Hypothetically speaking, would it be possible to alter these structures? Maybe alter ordinary wheat so that it grows at an accelerated rate?"

Iona held up the golden kernel. "That is precisely what this is. Natural variation in song structure is noticeable. The tune is more mellow, more fluid. This is a little jarring, forced. This is southern wheat that has been directly altered in some manner."

"Altered? But there aren't any forest spirits left aside from us."

"That is another reason why I was particularly surprised. Mere spirits such as I do not have the authority to directly alter the base song of life. It is only guardians that possess such level of access to life." 

"Then there's the possibility there's another guardian out there."

"It is possible, yes, and yet the more I think of it, the less likely it becomes. I have scoured this entire land for signs of guardians, and there were none. Perhaps this grain hailed from many years ago, when the guardians lived and they were kindly disposed to men and their farms, but now?" She emphatically shook her head. "Not possible."

She sighed. "Forgive me, I have veered on a tangent. But yes, it is entirely possible for you as a guardian to both alter and create life. However, we must first work on replication before we move on to creation, and before replication comes foundation building through the memorizing the bases of life songs."

Like this, they spent the rest of the working day until the sun began to set on improving Li's spiritual abilities. Now that he could finally hear life songs even in his human form, he spent much time listening to the songs of various seeds, herbs, and flowers, getting a good feel of their bases. 

When Iona left that day, she laid out a rather comprehensive curriculum tailored to his needs that would bring his spirithood to a level where he was not a stranger to it but not advanced enough that it would significantly erode his humanity. 

Already, Li could feel a difference in himself. His eldritch powers left him increasingly callous and distant, but his spiritual abilities were warmer, allowing him to feel closer to the life around him, to appreciate it slightly more. Though, he could tell even now that he would never be the one to save everyone around him. 

Because, at the end of the day, he was a god, not a hero. 

_________________________

Early on into the night, while Li looked at the fields that Old Thane had managed to plough over despite his hangover, Sylvie came. 

Li was kneeling on the dirt, thanking the Myrmeke that hummed underground for helping Old Thane. If the old man had to actually get out there and manually dig up all the dirt while having to tear out each and every empty wheat husk, then Li was sure the old man would never have managed it in the span of a single day. 

But because Li had directed the Myrmeke to follow Old Thane's bidding, all the old man had to do was lead the ant where he wanted to upturn the earth like some kind of advanced tractor. The soil was now fresh and rich again, smelling deeply of moist earth that had never felt the harsh light of the sun. 

"Easy now," said Li to Zagan as the demon stiffened up beside him, sensing Sylvie's presence.

Sylvie stood several meters away from Zagan, feeling obvious unease at the demon's aura. 

Li looked back to Sylvie and waved her closer. "He doesn't bite. Unless you make him."

As if on cue, Zagan sighed before lying down, eyes closing in a lazy stupor. Sylvie took this as a good sign and approached. She also knelt at the dirt, right beside Li.

"It is incredible how much passion you have for this," said Sylvie as she picked up a handful of dirt, letting it sift through her fingers in wonder.

"Sometimes, a simple life is best.," said Li. "And here you go."

Li had expected her to come, and he had carried with him the bag of scrolls and manuals she had given him. He returned it to her, and she hugged it dearly to her chest like it was a bag of precious gold. 

"How much could you decipher?" she said, ever curious.

"All of it."

Sylvie sighed in relief. "Did they maybe awaken some of your memory? I would be so very happy to know they helped you in any way."

Li shook his head. "Like I said, maybe it's better I don't remember."

"Still, if there is any way I can help-"

Li raised a hand to stop her. "You shouldn't worry about me. Let's talk about what I found. First off, let me ask you, how much of these could you read?"

Sylvie cocked her head. "The scrolls, I was able to mostly decipher. There is an eastern novel, the Journey to the Sun, that holds an Eldenian translation. I was able to learn much of the language through it. The manuals, however, seem to be of a different language, or at the least, the writing form is significantly different."

"Impressive," said Li. She had managed to learn an entire language from using a novel as a sort of Rosetta stone, speaking volumes of her effort and passion. Full time linguists would have difficulty doing that over a decade, and she had functionally managed to learn an entirely foreign language in the span of what must have been just a few years. 

Sylvie smiled and perked up at the compliment. "Thank you."

Li nodded. "You're also right: the manuals are written in a different language."

Though Allspeak meant he could read and write universally, he could still tell when a writing system was different from another. The scrolls had characters that were small and easily written, each character indicating a vowel or consonant sound. In contrast, the manuals had few but elaborate characters where each one represented not merely a sound, but also an entire concept.

"I thought so!" Sylvie nodded with understanding. "Both languages seem to write in ink and bark-based paper, so their cultures shared land, and yet were distinct. Quite interesting. I must note that down for when I meet them. It would be awful to not recognize differences among the people in Xia."

"That's a topic I wanted to approach." Li knew he was going to essentially crush her dreams, but there was no way to delicately say this. "There is no East anymore. Or at the least, not like you think it. Where did you find the scrolls and manuals?"

"I bought them at an auction in Trieste," said Sylvie, concern gracing her brows. "Sailors found them locked within a box floating at sea, far east, right where the Whirling Oceans and their impassable tempests begin."

"Figures. That box was a kind of final message. The manuals have notes in them talking about the end of the empire. About widescale collapse and irreversible destruction. If they got desperate enough to send some of their culture out just so that someone might remember it, then it's pretty reasonable to say that the vision of the east you have in your mind is no longer. 

I know your dream was to visit the east, but there is no east anymore to see."