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Quest Alert --- The Reaping

The Jin family has asked you to participate with them in the Reaping, the harvest of Soma, a powerful spirit fruit. The fruit has natural defenses, but you may be in more danger from other families in search of the fruit than from any environmental factor. Collect as much as you can, and the family may reward you.

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True to his word, Makoto had not allowed Sunwhisper to remain a houseguest for long. Instead, he had placed him with the Jin family, with whom he had shared a long relationship. The Jin had accepted the story that he was a tragically injured cultivator from the Middle Kingdom without question. The border guardian’s word was beyond doubt, and there was no reason for someone to relocate to a place like Fringe Town unless they couldn’t make it somewhere better.

Father Jin had given him a room in their house, requested that he help the women with the gardening, and otherwise left him to his own devices. He had spent most of a week practicing the Children’s Meditation, and in that time increased his Dao Rating a few measly points, not enough to allow him to increase his statistics or learn any techniques. Makoto had lent him a few more scrolls but otherwise seemed to have forgotten him, and his weakness made it seem like he truly was the broken man the Jin believed him to be.

Jin Jammu, their eldest son, was a volunteer observer of the village’s staple crop. Soma fruit was Fringe Town’s sole export, and the entire community revolved around its idiosyncratic growth cycle. Jammu came home one night claiming that they were due for a harvest, and Father Jin came to Sunwhisper’s room to make him an offer.

“I cannot go into the fields any longer,” he had said, “not since my injury. But if you would accompany my children, help them gather the fruit and keep them safe, I would consider sharing our portion of the harvest with you as if you were my own son.”

From what Sunwhisper had read, and the way the Jin family talked about it, eating Soma fruit was the surest means of advancement in Fringe Town. They had to give up most of what they harvested to the village elders, who in turn owed tribute to the clan that guaranteed the sovereignty of the town, and much of the rest would be sold to support the family in between harvests. What was left, however, went to direct consumption, compounding weeks or months worth of channeling into a few days.

Makoto Shishio, a man with a broken core, would never turn such an opportunity down. Sunwhisper and his adopted persona were in accord.

Soma fruit matured atop towering stalks of tough, woody fibers. The stalks themselves were covered in a brown outer casing that secreted sticky, poisonous sap. Letting the sap touch exposed skin was a sure route to drowsiness, and enough of it could stop a heart. A victim would die long before the poison killed them, however, as the smell of the sap attracted the Hachi, a local species of flesh-eating wasps that had a symbiotic relationship with the plants. They crawled out of their burrows, excited as puppies, and about that size, hunting for sleepy prey.

As if the Reaping was not dangerous enough in its own right, those who participated were quick to sabotage each other, going so far as to engage in outright ambush. There was nothing more dangerous than carrying a basketful of Soma fruit out of the reaping fields alone. Gangs of less successful reapers were always waiting among the rows for an opportunity to collect the fruit without having to deal with the sap or the wasps.

Reapings were a regular irregular event. The fruit was ready when it was ready, and that could take a year or a month in accordance with prevailing conditions. Jammu’s presence as an observer gave the family a little warning, but no one was allowed to go into the fields until the First Elder had given leave, and then the whole town was involved.

The plants were sensitive to mana fluctuations in the region. The death of a powerful cultivator in Fringe could trigger a reaping in a matter of hours. It was that sensitivity that made it impossible for anyone rated above three stars to live in the town, it would ruin the harvest. It was impossible to overstate how seriously the people of Fringe Town took the ranking system. Anyone who earned a star had to travel deeper into the Blessed Lands to receive the appropriate tattoo.

Sunwhisper, having no stars on his arm, was considered to be like a child, living out of the forbearance of others. But Father Jin only had one star, and Makoto only had two. It was hard to guess how powerful someone who had earned a third star would be. In all of Fringe Town, the First Elder was the sole recipient of that honor.

The sensitivity of the Soma meant that mostly the young and underdeveloped participated in the reaping. The presence of more advanced cultivators disturbed the plants so severely that they could die to their roots.

Sunwhisper was a perfect candidate. His meridians ran so dry that the plants barely knew he existed, and there was no one to mourn him if he died. The families were allowed to keep a tenth of whatever they harvested, and even that fraction was potentially enough to change the fortunes of a family. Fringe Town would not exist without the Reaping, and everyone knew it.

The Soma fields were a strange forest, as the stalks naturally grew in seemingly curated fashion, the neat rows stretching on for miles. The Hachi that bonded to the plants would kill each other if they felt overcrowded, so there was always room to run between the stalks. They killed other vegetation as well, so the ground was clear of everything but the matted roots that rose to the surface and created a kind of road for the reapers.

Sunwhisper had two adopted sisters and three adopted brothers, and they knew him as Shishio.

The ringing of the harvest bells could be heard all the way to the border where Makoto watched the flags. It was the signal that the Reaping had begun. All along the edge of the fields, children and weak adults dashed forward with wicker baskets strapped to their backs and hope in their hearts. It was a frightful thing, the Reaping, and it was what they lived for.

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"Move!" Jammu, the eldest of the Jin children, urged the rest of them on before taking up his position at the rear. Early in the day, their strategy was to charge ten stalks in, collect as much fruit as they could in the first minutes, and bring it back out as quickly as they could. The Hachi weren’t active yet, and this close to the edge, there wasn’t much risk of being attacked by other families. The Reaping officials frowned on that sort of activity when it happened in the open.

Sunwhisper had the most to prove, and he was also the most expendable, so he was at the head of the pack, and he was already wearing the spiked gloves that would help him ascend the stalks. He didn’t actually need the gloves to protect him from the sap, a biological toxin like that wouldn’t have any meaningful effect on him, but he wore them to help with the climb and to avoid drawing attention to himself.

Thin stalks could be bent with ropes, and the fruit collected from their bowing heads, but the older stalks had to be climbed. Sunwhisper had no trouble clambering up the first trunk, but he slowed when he reached the upper third, as it became difficult to pull his hands and feet free from the viscous sap.

Soma fruit was clearly visible above him, a pair of bright globes. Soma could present as any of the twelve mystic colors, but these two were red, each about the size of a fist. Moments later, he was collecting them with a hoop-staff, a wooden tool that avoided getting one’s hands stuck to the valuable and vulnerable fruit.

He descended to the ground again, richer than when he had begun his climb, and took up position with Jammu, who was charged with everyone’s safety.

"Should I go up again?" Sunwhisper asked. Jammu quickly transferred the fruit to his own, larger basket, and grunted agreement. They needed to clear this area before returning to their parents at the edge of the field.

This first half hour was the easiest work, the least dangerous, and some families contented themselves with what little reaping they could achieve in that short period. Either they were already wealthy enough not to have to risk their own children in the harvest, or content with being poor.

The Jin family was neither wealthy nor content. Fringe village produced little aside from Soma fruit and products refined from the fruit’s juice. Aside from the windfall of the Reaping, they were subsistence farmers. Father Jin was clapping out a running pace for them as they returned Jammu’s first full basket.

"Better than last year," he said proudly. He would have joined the harvest himself, but his nervous system had been ruined by repeated Hachi stings in Reapings past. The family hadn’t shared all the details of the incident with Sunwhisper, but Father Jin suffered from seizures, and they would make him a liability in the field.

"We are still slower than the Gomen," Jammu said.

"Stay clear of them," his father replied, depositing the fruit in a porcelain bowl for his wife to clean and prep. "We are here to reap, not to fight."

Jammu grunted his assent. In the previous year, he’d had an altercation with one of the Gomen boys, and it hadn’t gone well for him. He was itching to prove himself, but he would respect his father’s wishes.

"How did Shishio do?" Father Jin asked, not looking at the young man in question.

"So far, so good." Jammu said, and then they were running again.

As the morning wore on, some of the children began to lag behind. The Cultivation System ranked statistics on a nine star scale, with nine steps within each star. His physical capabilities were already ranked on the low end of what would be expected from a one-star cultivator, as even a very underdeveloped mechanoborg was still physically superior to a base human. His System couldn’t show him the relative statistics of other people, but it was plain that Jammu, who had his first tattoo, was stronger than he was, while the other children displayed varying degrees of athleticism and stamina below both of them.

The difference between a one-star cultivator and a two-star, however, was dramatic. Sunwhisper knew he needed the Soma if he was going to make any real progress. Otherwise, he would have to waste years meditating to even approach the power level of someone like Makoto, and probably far longer before he was ready to seek the Quintessence. Earth could not wait that long.

The first Hachi bug attacked Suna, the youngest Jin sister. Her scream brought the collection to a halt as Jammu and all the siblings rushed to her defense. The wasp was about a foot in length, not counting the venomous spine on its tail, which was as large as a child’s finger. It scuttled out of the roots and charged her, its wings still wet and crumpled, not yet able to fly.

She had the presence of mind to bring her basket around as a shield, and as the bug dug its mandibles into the wicker, Jammu was there with a flying kick that knocked it away. Then the others stomped it until it stopped buzzing.

The bug’s remains went into Suna’s basket, as the smell of a dead wasp made others less likely to attack, and the venom could be used in a few valuable tinctures their mother knew how to brew.

After that, despite their precautions, wasp attacks became more frequent. The Hachi had awakened, and the screams of unlucky reapers could be heard echoing across the forest of stalks. They were deep enough at that point that the teams were not always visible to each other, and if not for the shouts and screams, they could have imagined that they harvested alone.

Sunwhisper continued to contribute, but he was no prodigy, and Jammu, who was slightly younger than Sunwhisper appeared to be, begrudged him for his inexperience.

It was around midday when the Gomen boys ambushed. There were only three of them, but all three had a star tattooed on their forearms.

"Quite the harvest," Gomen Ji said. He was the eldest of the trio, and while he was not as tall as his younger brothers, he was the most sturdily built. Sunwhisper thought the muscles on display looked tougher than his own high-density cabling.

"Move along," Jammu said, "we are about to go back."

"Not with our fruit," Gomen Ji grinned at them. "You were so nice to collect it for us, why hold back your generosity now?"

Jammu unstrapped his back and handed it to Suna. "I gave you a beating last year, are you so eager for another?"

Gomen Ji’s grin vanished. "That’s not how I remember it."

Jammu snorted coldly. "Then I must have hit you harder than I thought."

The family had already discussed what to do in this situation. Jammu and the two other sons, Teku and Meku, would hold off the ambushers while Sunwhisper and the girls ran as fast as they could for the edge. Whoever wasn’t holding the basket was charged with protecting whoever was, no matter what.

Gomen Ji assumed a martial stance, stomped once, and a ball of flame burst into being hovering ahead of one of his fists. Sunwhisper and the girls didn’t wait around to see what would happen next.