Thirty Days to Save a Desolate County

In the seventeenth year of Jinghe in the Great Sheng Dynasty, the third year of a severe drought in the northern lands. When Xu Yan opens his eyes, he has become the newly appointed ninth-rank county magistrate of Qingshi County. The county office has only seven people, the granary holds only forty-three shi of old grain, and outside the city walls are over two thousand starving refugees. Worse still, an official document has already arrived: in thirty days, the household registry will be rechecked; if the population is under three thousand, Qingshi County will be abolished, its officials prosecuted, and its people merged into the neighboring county. Others urge him to abandon his post and flee. But Xu Yan sees a damaged county gazetteer slowly opening in his mind. [Current livelihood: endangered.] [Can deduce: shallow well rewatering, dryland crop rotation, primitive grain storage, simple waterwheel.] [Warning: the gazetteer provides no finished products; everything must be completed by the people of this county with their own hands.] Thus, Qingshi County gains its first well, its first waterwheel, its first refugee workshop, and its first grain-protection team. One year later, the prefect wants his grain. Three years later, the border army wants his grain. Five years later, the imperial court discovers that across the entire north, grain prices, salt routes, military supplies, and canal transport all somehow cannot avoid this small county that nearly vanished from the map. The whole court urges Xu Yan to go to the capital and take a higher office. Instead, he places an account book on the imperial desk: "I need not be promoted; first settle the 370,000 shi of military grain money owed to Qingshi County." — Description from novelcodex.org