Chapter Sixteen: Spring Winds Stir Once More

After another week of school, Lin Nan’s last winter vacation of junior high officially began.

As soon as the holiday started, a little after two in the afternoon, Lin Lang drove Lin Nan back to their rural hometown, Lin Family Bay.

Ye Xinlan, meanwhile, was busy with affairs at the hotel. With the year drawing to a close, the hotel was flooded with New Year's Eve dinner orders. The simple, rustic dishes and the fragrant crispy rice porridge evoked flavors many remembered from childhood. Business was so good that Ye Xinlan was kept constantly on her feet, ensuring every table of guests welcomed the New Year with joy and a superb feast.

The hotel staff, watching their lady boss bustling about, couldn’t help but gossip.

“The boss lady is really busy. Hasn’t the boss himself been absent from the hotel for almost a month?”

“That’s right! I heard the boss has been spending all his time with his son lately. The boy’s about to take his high school entrance exams.”

“Well, that’s understandable. But isn’t it usually the man who handles outside affairs and the woman who manages the home?”

“I’m not sure, but I think the boss lady runs the hotel just as well as the boss ever did.”

“Now that you mention it, the boss kind of looks like a teacher. Maybe he was an educator in a past life!”

“Wow, now that I think about it, he really does!”

...

Meanwhile, Lin Lang and Lin Nan’s drive finally ended as they arrived before a tightly closed gate, a fresh layer of fallen leaves scattered out front.

After parking, they opened the doors and windows to air out the house, which had been uninhabited for a while. In a few days, it would be New Year’s Eve, so Lin Lang and Lin Nan had come ahead to prepare the old house—a thorough cleaning would follow before the twenty-ninth.

Lin Lang switched on the lights in every room. To his relief, all of them worked, proof that last time’s repairs had been well done.

Suddenly, Lin Lang heard Lin Nan shouting, “Dad, Dad, come quick! Come see the backyard...”

Perplexed, Lin Lang wondered what could have happened in the backyard. The last time they’d been back, he hadn’t opened the back door or visited the yard. Passing through the living room, he headed straight for the innermost room. Only last summer, he’d spent money to renovate the backyard: lawn, vegetable patch, and flowerbeds now covered the area, and a path of red-and-green stone bricks wound through the grass.

Many in the village had come to see, praising Lin Lang for remembering his roots—he’d made money out in the world, but the first thing he did was return home to fix up the old house.

There shouldn’t be any problems, he thought.

Crossing through the back door, Lin Lang stepped into the yard and instantly understood why Lin Nan had called.

The entire backyard was now overgrown; flowers in the beds and grass on the lawn had exploded in wild proliferation, transforming the space into a miniature forest—utterly different from the neatly trimmed garden he’d left behind.

Nature’s power, he mused. Without human “care,” and nourished only by sun and rain, plants thrived in ways unimaginable.

Lin Nan stood at the start of the stone path, but the bricks themselves were invisible beneath the dense weeds. Dry yellow grass, nearly twenty centimeters high, spilled from every crack, completely obscuring the once-pristine walkway.

After searching for a while, unable to find the path, Lin Nan asked curiously, “Dad, are these little weeds really so tough? They grow this high, even in the cracks.”

Lin Lang smiled. “Of course. Haven’t you heard the saying? ‘Wildfires can’t destroy them; come spring, they grow again.’ If grass can push up from between stones, imagine how easy it is in brick cracks—after all, beneath those bricks is soil.”

Lin Nan nodded, watching as his father picked up a shovel from under the eaves and walked to the start of the path. With a powerful motion, Lin Lang drove the shovel into the tangled weeds. He pressed his left foot down hard, forcing the blade deeper, then leveraged his weight to pry up a huge clump of weeds, tossing them aside. Only then did a hint of the stone path reappear.

Yet stubborn tufts of grass still clung to the gaps between the bricks. It took several more hard shovelfuls before Lin Lang cleared just a few steps’ worth of space.

Resting the shovel upright, Lin Lang caught his breath and said, “Today, our job is to restore this stone path to its original state—pull up every weed, root and all.”

Lin Nan, seeing his father looking a little tired after only a few shovelfuls, widened his eyes in disbelief. “Dad, is it really that exhausting?”

Lin Lang chuckled, eyeing his son, who had never worked a day in the fields, and handed him the shovel. “Why don’t you give it a try?”

Eager and confident, Lin Nan took up the shovel, copying his father’s motions. But when he tried to pry up a clump of weeds, he discovered it was nothing like he’d imagined. He strained with all his might, but the shovel wouldn’t budge—as if a thousand pounds weighed it down. Could the grass really be so tightly bound to the bricks?

He was baffled. Was there some trick to it? He tried again and again, only to admit defeat—the shovel, once embedded, was impossible for him to lift.

Now he understood why his father had seemed tired after just a few turns. He glanced over for help.

Lin Lang took back the shovel, bent his waist, and, using coordinated strength in his legs and arms, quickly pried up a heavy clump and tossed it aside, revealing another square of the path.

Looking at the ten-meter-long stone walkway, Lin Nan realized how hard the task would be at their current pace.

Suddenly, an idea struck him and he asked softly, “Dad, why don’t we just burn it all?”

“What nonsense!” Lin Lang retorted.

After all, only a ditch separated the grassy area from the house, and the weeds and trees were thick—setting fire to it would be a disaster.

Seeing Lin Nan’s crestfallen face, perhaps daunted by the sheer effort required, Lin Lang teased him. “Son, when I was your age, your grandfather and I did all the heavy chores at home. I never once complained. Are you really scared off by a few weeds?”

“Of course not!” Lin Nan blurted out. If his dad could do it, so could he.

Youthful pride, never willing to admit defeat!

Snatching the shovel, Lin Nan attacked the weeds again, this time smartly avoiding driving the blade too deep—knowing full well his own strength wouldn’t suffice otherwise.

Pleased to see his son adapt so cleverly, Lin Lang reminded him, “Let me know when you’re tired. We’ll take turns—don’t overstrain yourself.”

This only steeled Lin Nan’s resolve; he wouldn’t admit defeat unless exhaustion left him sprawled flat.

Lin Lang wasn’t worried about his son’s health—he had “invigorating medicine,” a panacea for all strains and injuries, with no side effects. Especially for a growing boy like Lin Nan, a restorative herbal bath after exercise would only help him grow taller.

Lin Lang estimated that, with his care, Lin Nan could reach 183 centimeters—just like his favorite AI.

So Lin Lang quietly watched Lin Nan work with fiery enthusiasm.

In just fifteen minutes, Lin Nan was forced to retreat, having cleared barely half a meter. It wasn’t that he lacked perseverance, but he desperately needed a rest; working with such meager reserves of strength, his progress would be too slow to complete the task. For the sake of efficiency, he yielded the shovel to his father.

Lin Lang worked much faster. Raised in the countryside, he knew his way around farm chores, wielding the shovel with practiced ease—every bit of effort spent where it counted, not an ounce wasted.

Watching his father’s rapid progress, Lin Nan realized the gap wasn’t just about strength, but skill born from experience.

He glanced down at the grass, running his hand over its yellow-green blades as they swayed in the wind.

Why are you so tenacious?

He resolved to look it up on the computer that evening.

Dozens of minutes passed before Lin Lang finished clearing a third of the walkway and handed the shovel to Lin Nan, going to sit and rest on a stone bench.

Lin Nan gritted his teeth for another fifteen minutes, laboring until he was spent, then swapped out again. In this way, father and son took turns, and after several hours, the red-and-green stone path finally lay revealed before them.

Dragging his exhausted body, Lin Nan paced back and forth along the path, bouncing every so often, savoring the fruits of his labor.

As dusk fell, two figures of nearly equal height stood side by side on the path amidst the flowers and grass. In the sunset, their shadows stretched long and narrow—one calm and steady, yet brimming with vitality; the other youthful and exuberant, full of uninhibited spirit.

After one last look at their afternoon’s work, the two went inside and locked the back door.

Rubbing his hungry belly, Lin Nan went to the kitchen to help his father cook. For two men, meals were simple: Lin Lang made a large pot of crispy rice porridge, and they each ate four or five bowls.

The fragrant porridge was never tiresome; with their bellies full, the fatigue seemed to melt away.

Back home, Lin Nan made straight for the study, switched on the computer, and searched “the tenacity of grass.”

All he found were essays and poems praising the resilience of grass, but none explained why it was so hardy.

He refined his search to “the reason for grass’s tenacity.” After some reading, Lin Nan learned that its toughness lay in its root system.

Grass roots include primary, lateral, and adventitious roots. The main agents for absorbing water and minerals are root hairs, whose thin cell walls and closely packed cytoplasm form a slender layer, with a large central vacuole filled with cell sap—perfect for water absorption. Typically, the sap inside root hairs is more concentrated than the soil solution, so, by osmotic pressure, water passes through the cell walls and membranes into the vacuole, allowing root hairs to absorb soil moisture.

Moreover, grasses usually have fibrous roots, which are long and firmly anchor the plant in the soil, letting them outcompete crops for nutrients and grow even faster.

...

After this reading, Lin Nan understood the reason for the grass’s tenacity and felt as if he’d stepped into a marvelous biological world.

Little did he know, a tiny seed for high school biology had just been planted.