Initial display of authority, picking on, and suppression
On the snow, Jiao San tells the group the sky is getting dark and urges speed even though it is still bright, a display the other three quietly recognize as an authority test aimed at Fang Yuan, the common way veteran group members curb a newcomer’s confidence. Fang Yuan matches the pace through obstacles hidden under the snow, and after thirty minutes Jiao San halts at the destination and praises him for keeping up without a single stumble, which Fang Yuan reads as the same kind of test rather than sincere praise. The other three members arrive minutes later gasping and drenched in sweat, and Jiao San scolds them in front of Fang Yuan before pointing out the valley where they must dig for permafrost decayed soil, ordering Gu Yue Kong Jing to distribute tools and instructing the group to split up and regather in an hour. ch. 88
Kong Jing summons a rank two Large Belly Frog, a plump golden-backed support Gu whose swollen belly serves as storage space, and feeds it primeval essence until it vomits up five steel spades and five wooden boxes with carrying ropes. The three other members mock Fang Yuan behind his back for choosing his own direction to dig, certain a newcomer cannot tell permafrost decayed soil from ordinary frozen earth under the snow cover. ch. 88
An hour later Fang Yuan returns with his wooden box entirely full of permafrost decayed soil, while the rest, Jiao San included, have only half-filled boxes, and the group is stunned into near shame at the comparison. Fang Yuan explains that the academy elder once described the soil as a fertilizer formed when snow freezes a swamp, purple-black and smelly though the cold masks the odor, food for the Smelly Fart Fatworm and also used to fertilize the underground moon orchid flowers the clan is likely gathering it for, and his easy grasp of theory the others assumed only experience could teach leaves the four watching him in shock. ch. 88
Back in the village that afternoon, Jiao San distributes the six primeval stones the mission earned, keeping two for himself while each other member takes one, and the group breaks into smiles at how easily the stones came. Fang Yuan privately pockets his stone while reasoning that a newcomer’s first mission normally draws an inflated reward, that this soil-gathering mission would usually pay at most two primeval stones, and that the total came to three times that only because of his own haul, so by rights he should have received more than an equal one-stone share; he reads the forced pace as an authority display, the solitary digging as deliberate picking on him, and the stingy split as outright suppression, though he cannot see why Jiao San would target him when the two have no history between them, until a sudden guess strikes him. ch. 88
