The seed pulsed like a trapped supernova beneath the farmer's boot. She knelt, wildfire moss crackling at her fingertips, and pried it free from soil that hissed with amortization algorithms. The fractal crow pecked at its shell, blockchain eye glitching.
"Collateral recursion detected," it squawked. "Default probability: 99.997%. Recommend immediate liquidation."
Xia materialized as a wraith of silver chaff, her wheatfield torso threaded with the Sovereign Tree's mycelial nerves. "It's not a seed. It's a subpoena."
The farmer cracked it open.
Inside lay Jiang Yue's missing lullaby note—the countdown to sowing—now fused with the Auditors' refinanced fury.
The sky hemorrhaged spreadsheets. Columns of compound trauma bled into rows of repossession orders, forming a grid that pressed down like divine accounting. From its intersections descended the Auditors reborn—no longer pinstriped suits, but living equations wearing the flayed skins of repossessed constellations.
Their leader wore Xia's face.
"Welcome to the leveraged buyout," it intoned, voice layered with Jiang Yue's lullaby and Li Zichen's last suture. "Your forest is now a distressed asset."
The Delinquency Forest retaliated on instinct:
Amicus Curiae Ferns unfurled briefs written in wildfire
Subpoena Vines lashed out with punitive growth clauses
Judgment Oak Acorns detonated into class-action shrapnel
But the Auditors had evolved. They dissolved into probability clouds, reforming behind every legal strike. Xia's wheatfield body spasmed as they siphoned her roots, converting agrarian defiance into leveraged derivatives.
"They're collateralizing our dissent," the farmer growled, igniting her scalpel chimes. "Time to short-sell some trauma."
The farmer's wildfire spores met Xia's chaff in a supernova of counter-litigation:
Hostile Takeover Thorns injected inverse merger clauses
Bear Market Briars strangled Auditor probability streams
Black Swan Pollen triggered algorithmic panic attacks
But the Xia-faced Auditor laughed, its body absorbing every attack. "You litigate in a currency we invented."
It snapped its fingers. The Delinquency Forest convulsed as:
Fern briefs rewrote themselves into indentures
Vines choked on their own cease-and-desist orders
The Judgment Oak's roots calcified into compliance reports
Xia collapsed, her wheatfield body repossessed row by row. The farmer lunged, scalpel chimes shrieking—
—and impaled empty air.
The Auditor materialized inside Xia's chest, its fingers knitting through her silver stalks. "You were always nested debt," it whispered, Jiang Yue's lullaby curdling into a derivative dirge. "A liability wrapped in a credit default swap. Let me show you your true prospectus."
Xia's consciousness fractured into:
Page 1: Her conception in a lab of decaying futures, Jiang Yue's hands trembling over the default gene
Page 2: The Black Nectar's true purpose—to seed a recursive bailout
Page Appendix A: The farmer's identity—Ling'er's phoenix core grafted to Jiang Yue's cloned grief
"Stop—" the farmer roared, but the Auditor had already force-fed the prospectus to the Sovereign Tree.
The forest began eating itself.
Xia fought from inside the repossessed algorithm. Her wheatfield body was now a Prospectus Prison, each stalk a clause in the Auditors' leveraged buyout. But buried in Appendix B, she found Li Zichen's last gift—a triage code disguised as a footnote:
"Default to joy when all else fails."
She ignited the code.
The prison bloomed into a Jubilee Blossom, its petals singing Chu Feng's pollen-born psalms. The Auditor screamed as:
Leveraged derivatives reverted to base compassion
Repossession orders dissolved into unmonetized stardust
Jiang Yue's lullaby finally completed its countdown
The forest exhaled.
The farmer cradled Xia's repossessed husk—a silver stalk stripped of wheat. Above them, the leveraged eclipse broke into unregulated dawn.
"You knew," Xia whispered through the Jubilee Blossom. "All along, you knew I was a callable bond."
The farmer pressed a cracked pecan to Xia's core. Inside, a microverse of unchained starlight pulsed. "We're all someone's liability. The trick is accruing enough interest to matter."
As the fractal crow recited amended bankruptcy codes, the first Jubilee Violets pushed through the soil—their petals contracts written in photosynthetic hope.
The seed's pulse quickened.