“People are dying!”
“The Xirong soldiers are in the village!”
“Ah!”
Cries for help and mournful wails, sometimes distant, sometimes near, reached her ears. Immediately after, a sharp pain shot through Mei Qian’s temple.
The moment she opened her eyes, she was met with complete darkness.
Just as Mei Qian was about to get up, the sensation beneath her hands made her jolt.
Holy crap!
Where’s the huge, soft, and expensive Simmons mattress I just bought?!
Lying there, Mei Qian incredulously clawed and patted at the surface beneath her.
Great. She could now smell the distinct scent of dry straw in the air, but it was laced with the faint tang of blood.
“What’s go— Mmph!”
Before Mei Qian could speak, a large, rough hand clamped over her mouth.
“Shhh—”
In a flash, words like “kidnapping” and “human trafficker” raced through Mei Qian’s mind.
Just as Mei Qian was about to gather her strength to resolve the situation with the self-defense techniques she had learned, another stabbing pain shot through her brain, causing a muffled cry of pain to escape from her covered mouth.
“Mmph!”
“What is it, Qian girl?”
An old woman’s hushed voice, seemingly right beside her ear, asked with an anxious tone.
Then, feeling the large hand over her mouth loosen, a dizzy Mei Qian managed to reply in a small voice, “It’s nothing, Grandma. My head just hurts a little…”
After speaking, Mei Qian stared blankly into the darkness before her.
She had no time to grieve her sudden death and transmigration right after achieving financial freedom. In that moment of piercing pain, she had absorbed a set of memories that didn’t belong to her, but to the owner of this body.
The reason it was so dark was that they were hiding in a cellar.
Not long ago, the villagers working outside had rushed back into the village in a panic, frantically shouting about an enemy attack and the arrival of Xirong soldiers, telling everyone to run as they pointed at the billowing dust in the distance.
After that, all six members of the old Mei family, young and old, had scrambled into the tunnel that had been dug before the new year.
The original owner of this body had missed a step on her way down, fallen headfirst, and that was how Mei Qian had been thrown into this world.
“Grandma, did the Xirong really break through this time?” Mei Qian asked, confirming her current situation once more.
“Mhm.”
Grandma Mei grunted in a low voice.
As she spoke, a tremor from above them shook another layer of dust down.
Unfortunately, Mei Qian was lying face-up and inhaled a large mouthful of it.
“Pah!”
Mei Qian quickly sat up, and her mind immediately felt as if it were being churned by some blunt instrument. She felt dazed, as if her soul was about to be ripped from her body at any moment.
This is bad!
Did I get a concussion from the fall?
Before she lost consciousness again, Mei Qian instinctively dove into the arms of Grandma Mei, who had been beside her all along.
Only after smelling that not-so-pleasant but deeply reassuring scent did Mei Qian peacefully pass out.
Just as Mei Qian lost consciousness, a voice echoed in her mind—
[Suitable host detected. Gourmet Exchange System is now binding. 1, 2, 3… No response. System has automatically completed binding successfully~]
···
To encounter a military uprising at the very start, Mei Qian didn’t know whether to think the god of transmigration was playing a trick on her.
When Mei Qian woke up again, the straw beneath her had become straw with a quilt laid over it.
The jolting from below startled the newly awakened Mei Qian, and she was about to sit up immediately, but the throbbing pain in her brain once again stopped her rash movement.
“Qianqian, you’re awake?”
A gentle female voice came from Mei Qian’s side. She turned her head to see a gentle-looking woman with a pregnant belly reclining beside her.
“Mother.”
Looking into the woman’s gentle eyes, Mei Qian called out subconsciously.
It was only then that Mei Qian realized she was currently lying on a donkey cart.
Perhaps because the journey had been too quiet, the slightest movement on the cart was noticed. Soon, the other four members of the old Mei family were showing their concern for the awakened Mei Qian.
Her grandmother, her widowed aunt, her older cousin, and her own father.
Aside from her, the patient, and her mother, the pregnant woman, who were riding on the donkey cart, everyone else was walking.
Mei Qian glanced around. It was dark, with a few stars dotting the sky.
In the darkness, Mei Qian could only see a few scattered figures around their donkey cart, so she asked, “Where are we going?”
The question was innocuous, but once asked, the gazes of the entire family fell upon the family’s decision-maker, Grandma Mei.
Grandma Mei pursed her lips and sighed. “As far south as we can. It’s been over twenty years since the Xirong broke through our borders and invaded.
The last time it happened, almost half of our Anguo fell into Xirong hands. It took five years of fighting to fully reclaim it.”
Hearing Grandma Mei’s words, people in their teens like Mei Qian and her cousin Mei Shitou had never experienced such things.
However, Mei Qian’s father, Mei Erhu, seemed to recall something. “I remember you saying, Mother, that I was born right after you returned home. When the Xirong dogs invaded before, you and Father also fled, and only came back later?”
At his question, Grandma Mei nodded. Then she couldn’t help but sigh again, looking back in the direction they came from, her eyes shimmering with tears as she murmured, “I wonder when we’ll be able to return this time…”
It is hard to leave one’s homeland.
The older one gets, the more deeply one feels it.
However, Grandma Mei was only sentimental for a moment before she spoke up. “Before dawn, we’ll enter the mountain ahead to hide from the Xirong dogs on their wild hunts.”
Wild hunting referred to the small-scale Xirong soldier units that broke off from the main southward-marching army after entering Anguo territory, staying behind to continue their slaughter and plunder.
Although described as small-scale, their numbers often ranged from a dozen to several hundred.
The group that attacked Mei Qian’s village was one such wild hunting party.
“How long was I unconscious?”
Taking advantage of her lucidity, Mei Qian asked about what happened after the Xirong soldiers entered the village.
“A day and a night.”
Her mother, Madam Jiang, spoke in a gentle voice, her tone unhurried as she recounted the subsequent events to Mei Qian.
The Xirong soldiers had slaughtered almost everyone above ground in the entire village.
Their family had hidden in the cellar from day until night, and then from night until the next morning. Only when it was completely silent above did the whole family climb out.
“The village was completely destroyed. Only those who hid in cellars or fled into the mountains behind the village escaped.
Everyone else was killed. All the food in the houses was looted, and what couldn’t be taken was smashed or burned…”
Towards the end, Madam Jiang was unwilling to say more.
Lying on the bumpy donkey cart, Mei Qian only just remembered that before the Xirong entered the village, her grandma had specifically whipped their donkey, driving it into the mountains.
To have found it again, and to have a donkey to pull them on their journey, was a stroke of luck for the Mei family.
As Mei Qian thought about this, she glanced at the several burlap sacks squeezed next to her legs. The moment her hand touched one, an electronic voice suddenly sounded in her mind:
[Fresh ingredient detected: Yellow Millet. Host, please make a stunning dish with yellow millet for the exchange platform~]
Mei Qian: “Who?!”
The sudden development scared Mei Qian into letting out a yell, startling everyone around her!
“What’s wrong?!”
As the only two men in the family, Mei Shitou and Mei Erhu both pulled out the hunting bows slung over their backs and looked around nervously, asking repeatedly, “What happened?”
“Ah… nothing. The sack of yellow millet just hit my foot. It startled me~”
Mei Qian, having recovered from her shock, quickly made an excuse for her outburst.
At the same time, she lifted the sack of yellow millet she was holding and moved it aside, then grabbed a handful from the burlap sack next to it.
[Fresh ingredient detected: Whole Wheat Flour. Host, please make a stunning dish with whole wheat flour for the exchange platform~]
This time, Mei Qian was finally certain she wasn’t hearing things.
Composing herself, Mei Qian cautiously asked in her mind, [What are you?]
[I am the Gourmet Exchange Platform System. Host, you can also call me Xiao Mei~]
[What do you do? What are you for?]
Hearing that it was a system, Mei Qian didn’t get excited right away. She first asked about its function.
[Ah, it’s like this, Host. The Gourmet Exchange Platform System binds to qualified hosts across myriad worlds.
Hosts from different planes exchange cuisines of different styles. Note, it has to be gourmet food~]
The system even specifically emphasized “gourmet food,” which made Mei Qian’s expression suddenly turn very strange.
Then, Mei Qian heard the system called Xiao Mei continue:
[By exchanging gourmet food from different planes, we promote emotional exchange and mutual progress among hosts of all planes, and also… (eight hundred words of grandiose nonsense omitted)
So, Host, isn’t it great?]
Xiao Mei’s words were met with Mei Qian’s endless silence.
[Host?]
[Xiao Mei, do you understand what I’m doing right now?]
Mei Qian deliberately stressed the words “right now.”
[Escaping for your life~]
Xiao Mei’s crisp and clear answer allowed Mei Qian to form a judgment about the system that had found her:
It seemed this system wasn’t blind, but an idiot.