Chapter Two Hundred Eight: Upon the Land — The Hundred Herbs Flourish

Volume Six: Spirit-Life in Dahuang — Dao Grace Everlasting

Life in the water had already grown abundant, but the land remained still and silent.

Until one day, after a rain, Xiwei saw a few specks of green upon a stretch of bare earth.

The green was very faint, as though someone had touched the ground here and there with a brush dipped in the palest green pigment. She crouched down to look closely — they were a few tiny shoots, just breaking through the soil, their leaves not yet fully unfurled, curled tight like an infant's clenched fists.

Those shoots were no larger than her fingernail, their roots already gripping the soil.

The first terrestrial plants had quietly driven their roots into the earth. They had no seeds — they had sprouted from the grass-roots that had once been Pangu's fur and hair. Those grass-roots had not fully perished; they had slumbered for a time in the soil, then been awakened by the rain.

Stems pushed through the earth, reaching upward toward the sunlight. Leaves unfurled at the tips of the stems. Their leaves were pale green, slender ovals, coated in a thin layer of wax to guard against moisture loss.

Xiwei crouched beside those plants and watched them for an entire day. She watched them stretch slowly under the sun, fold slightly at dusk, and draw completely shut at night. She noticed that the plants faced toward her — not deliberately turning, but growing in her direction. Because she was light, and plants needed light.

She took a few steps to the left. With a speed nearly imperceptible to the eye, the stems shifted toward her new position.

She took a few steps to the right. The stems turned back to follow.

"You are following me," she murmured.

The plants did not answer her, but their orientation said everything. She experienced for the first time the sensation of being needed — not by a conscious individual, but by life itself. She stood there, like an unmoving sun, letting the plants grow toward her.

Behind her, more fresh shoots were breaking through the soil. A small patch of new green spread silently across what had once been desolate ground, slowly swallowing the bare gaps between stones and earth.

From that day onward, the Hundred Herbs began to sprout across every inch of land Xiwei's gaze could reach.

The first to spread was a low-growing herbaceous plant that hugged the ground. Its leaves were exceedingly thin, nearly transparent, lying flattened against the surface of the soil like a thin veil of green laid over the earth. Its roots were shallow but dense — countless fine silver threads piercing the topsoil, gripping the ground beneath. When the wind blew, it did not sway like a great tree; instead, it pressed itself flat against the ground in its entirety, letting the wind skim over it without being torn away. It was the first plant to learn the survival strategy of "keeping low" — competing not with the sky for height, but befriending the earth alone.

Close on the heels of the low grasses came a medium-sized fern. Its leaves did not sprout from the sides of a stem but pushed up directly from underground rhizomes — curled tight as they broke through the soil, then slowly unfurling into a full, feather-like compound leaf. Each new leaf was coiled at birth, like an infant wrapped in a green swaddling cloth, and day by day it would stretch until it opened fully into a fan-shaped green frond. Xiwei spent a long time watching this unfurling process — she found that the curled leaves uncoiled with such slowness that she could only detect the change by checking every few hours. Yet the change was happening, urged by no one, aided by no one, driven entirely by the plant's own inner strength.

"You need no one's help," she said softly, watching a fern slowly open its leaves. It simply accomplished everything on its own — driving roots into the soil, curling its leaves into tight bundles, and opening them inch by inch.

On the damp mud of the riverbanks, mosses appeared. Unlike other plants, they had no true roots, stems, or leaves — only a fine, fuzzy green cushion pressed tight against the soil and rock surfaces. They were the humblest of plants — they needed no tall stems, no broad leaves, only a thin layer of green living tissue clinging to the ground to draw up moisture. Yet it was this very humility that let them be the first to claim places no other plant could grow — bare rock faces, sheer cliff walls, the bases of great tree trunks. On any small patch of damp surface, mosses could root themselves and spread their soft green carpet.

Xiwei crouched down and gently touched the surface of the moss with her fingers. The texture was soft and moist, like stroking a fine green velvet cloth. She plucked a small piece of moss and found its underside coated with soil and the faint traces of some minuscule — insect? — life. Those earliest tiny creatures to settle on land had already found shelter within the moss.

"You are moving house, too," she said to the invisible insects. Creatures from the water had begun to crawl onto the land, finding new dwelling places within the dampest patches of moss. A silent migration was underway — from water to land, from that original nurturing bed to this vast and desolate new world.

The roots of plants wove an invisible net through the ground beneath. Those roots came thick and thin, long and short — some drove straight down to pierce the deep soil, some spread horizontally, searching for veins of water and nourishment. They crisscrossed, tangled, overlapped, forming a vast hidden web beneath the earth. This hidden web bound the once-loose soil particles firmly together — the wind could no longer sweep away the topsoil; the rain could no longer wash the mud from the slopes. The roots of the vegetation were the first line of defense, protecting every inch of ground beneath their own bodies.

And so the terrain began to grow more stable. The bare hillsides that had once been scored into gullies by driving rain were now bound together by roots — the rate of erosion slowed dramatically. The yellow dust that had once risen sky-high with every strong wind was now held in place by the roots of the grass, and the airborne dust diminished visibly. The skin of the earth was healing — not with scars, but with a green covering, tenderly wrapping the wounds that had once lain raw and exposed.

The first flowers bloomed quietly in this season as well. They were very small — no larger than a fingernail — and their petals were not bright red or yellow, but the palest white or faintest purple. Unremarkable, nearly invisible among the green leaves. But Xiwei found them. She bent close to a tiny white flower and caught a scent — faint but fresh. It was the first fragrance of blossoms to appear upon the earth.

"You have a scent," she whispered. The flower bloomed in silence, saying nothing. Its petals trembled gently in the breeze, and fine pollen drifted from its stamens, settling on the back of Xiwei's hand. She gazed at those pale yellow granules, and a strange emotion stirred within her — those specks of powder, nearly too fine to see, would one day cause flowers to bloom in countless places.

On the sunniest slopes, grasses began to produce seeds. Those seeds were very small — some carried fine tufts of down, some were enclosed in tough shells. When the wind blew, the down-bearing seeds broke free from their parent plants and were carried to distant places, landing on different soils. Some fell into cracks in stone, some beside streams, some alongside other plants. They lay there quietly, waiting for the next rain to come. Every seed was an adventure — it did not know where it would land, did not know whether the spot would prove suitable for growth. But every seed carried within itself all the information needed to grow, and whenever conditions proved right, it would germinate, put down roots, and grow into a new plant.

The life of the Hundred Herbs spread across the land in the form of seeds. It was not a slow process — after a few rains, the seeds the wind had scattered germinated all at once, and fresh green shoots appeared in places that had been empty before. From hillside to valley, from streamside to plain, from the sun-facing southern slopes to the shaded northern faces — green claimed every corner of the earth with an unprecedented speed.