'Hey, Tianshi Shu, there are some things I just don't get no matter how much I think them over, and I thought you could help teach me.' Shu raises her head, the Tianshi apparatus that was hovering before her gracefully collapsing into a cube before falling back into her palm. Her young visitor's arms and legs were hooked into the branches of a tree, her hands grasping some brilliant red fruit, her sharp eyes quite unlike her youthful figure hanging upside-down, and staring at the apparatus in Shu's hand. Shu laughs, holding the apparatus tight, and says: 'It's rare to see you in the fields. Do you not have schoolwork to mark?' 'That group of layabouts? Let someone else who cares take charge of that lot!' The child wipes the fruit with her sleeve, gobbling down a bite, its sweet scent clear even from two or three zhang away. 'What about you? You're hardly an ordinary person yourself, so what are you doing mucking about with a Tianshi apparatus for? Can't you decide how good the harvest will be with a point of your finger and a glance of your eye?' 'And what if I don't have this mystical power you speak of? What if I have simply seen enough to know if the weather will change, or if the seeds will successfully become crops?' 'You do, though! Look, don't play dumb, I'm asking you seriously here.' Shu stoops down towards the field, her cloud-like tail slowly sweeping across the chilly crop ridges. These plants had just passed the seedling stage, and would soon join the sprouts that had been brought onto the agricultural plate alongside their fields, gleaming in the burning embers of the summer evening. 'Springtime drizzles wake the seeds, grain buds dance in summer's heat. Autumn gifts the crops their gold, but they can't stand winter's cold.' She recites this softly, as if reminiscing on the prior night's dream. 'One person's strength alone could not order the myriad grains everlasting. But before I was I, before Shu was Shu, there was already someone who had achieved half of what was dictated in this song of the jieqi solar terms. 'A thousand years hence, those that came after her created this Tianshi apparatus. It can take on six forms, knows how seeds will develop, can share data between different plates, and can direct Sky Poles.' The little green cube floats above Shu's palm once more. 'Although mine is somewhat different, its functions are still interlinked: whether it is the song of the jieqi or a Tianshi apparatus, they are but manifestations of the power of the architecture of time.' 'Pah.' A fruit pit leaps into the heavens like a signal flare, its furious rise startling some featherbeasts roosting in the tree, only landing far away a long while later. 'Forget I ever asked. Breaking out some old Shennong cliche again to avoid the question, how boring.' The child leaps down from the tree, walking off along a small path without another look. As if coming to a sudden realization, Shu lightly claps her hands. 'Could it be that the reason you came... is that you don't know how to use an apparatus? How about I go ask He Sheng to teach you...' 'Don't talk rubbish!'