Six-year-old Xu Yue cupped her bun-like face in her hands, gazing skyward at a forty-five-degree angle with radiant melancholy.
She had transmigrated.
It was cliché and dramatic, but several days of real experience confirmed it was true.
How to describe this home before her?
Well… it was quite “refreshing”!
A row of stones formed a foundation less than half a meter high, marking this territory as occupied.
There was no main gate either—just a simple bamboo-slat fence leading into an empty yard and a dilapidated little thatched hut.
Beside the thatched shed stood a makeshift lean-to housing a stove that served as the kitchen.
The rice jar inside had been empty for ten days already, with only a few chipped clay bowls sitting there.
At this moment, Xu Yue was squatting in front of this broken thatched shed, contemplating life.
Had she committed too many sins in her previous life?
Was that why Heaven played such a colossal joke on her?
But she had clearly been nothing more than an outstanding socialist youth—patriotic and dedicated to her work!
Before transmigrating, she had been diligently working overtime in the lab to develop specialized medicine, striving to help the masses escape the torment of illness sooner.
Logically speaking, this shouldn’t be happening.
Could it be sins from a life before her previous life?
Recalling her surreal experiences since transmigrating, Xu Yue sank into deep thought.
She vividly remembered the first night after transmigrating: her father, Xu Da, who lay in the main room, suddenly bolted upright from his deathbed illness and roared:
“Damn Heavenly Tribulation Lightning! I am a dignified Golden Core True Person—how dare you strike your grandfather down to this mortal realm!”
The next day, her mother, Wang Shi—who had been laboring tirelessly outside to scavenge food for the family—suddenly stormed home, seething with murderous intent.
In one hand, she carried a small bag of coarse rice obtained from who-knows-where; with the other, she hauled her husband—who lay on the bed questioning his existence—up by the collar and slapped him hard:
“We’re at such a critical juncture, and instead of stepping up to your responsibilities, you’re lying here moping about spring and grieving over autumn? Get up and make a fire to cook, now!”
Then, under her father’s stunned gaze, she snapped at him about how he’d dumped out half a bowl of coarse rice porridge that morning:
“If you were a soldier on my warship and dared waste food like that, I’d have fucking shot you dead long ago!”
Thus, that evening, Xu Yue trembled as she forced herself to swallow half a piece of coarse rice cake—mostly bran and painfully scratchy to the throat—washed down with cold boiled water her parents had prepared.
Another day later, her hot-tempered mother led her honest elder brother Xu Dalan and her good-for-nothing father Xu Da out to scavenge food. They managed to catch a scrawny wild pheasant.
But as soon as they returned home, twelve-year-old Dalan—upon seeing the chicken blood—suddenly erupted with monstrous strength, eyes blazing crimson, throat emitting inhuman roars, and began biting anyone in sight!
It took the entire family working together to tie him down.
Even then, they barely managed to subdue him only because everyone had been weakened by days of near-starvation.
But that wasn’t the end of it: during the struggle to restrain her elder brother, eight-year-old sister Xu Erniang was knocked down and hit her head on a table corner, falling unconscious.
This sister, at least, caused no further trouble. Since regaining consciousness, she had remained quiet—except for frequently picking up a stick to squat in the kitchen, swishing it around while muttering incantations under her breath, as if casting some sort of spell.
Occasionally, she would glance toward her little sister, her gaze as if spotting something amusing, so intense that it made the “barely six-year-old” Xu Yue feel uneasy deep inside.
From that moment, Xu Yue understood that while others experienced transmigration as a taste of life, hers began with a hell mode difficulty right from the start!
Staring at the glaring sun overhead, Xu Yue propped her hands on her knees with a maturity beyond her tender years, stood up, and let out a sigh.
Fine, fine. Might as well go out for a walk to shake off this damn mood.
This year, the entire Shanyang Commandery suffered a severe drought. Since April, Yangjiao Village, located within the commandery, hadn’t seen a single drop of rain.
By the harvest season in August, ninety-nine percent of the farmers across the commandery had reaped nothing. Riverbeds had dried up and cracked open. To fetch water, the villagers of Yangjiao had to travel ten li away to Dawang Village.
But this was only a temporary solution. In reality, as early as late June, families had begun relocating one after another in search of survival.
By now, those who could flee had already done so. Those left behind were the elderly, weak, sick, or disabled—those unable to escape.
For instance, Xu Yue’s family, and their next-door neighbor, an old man who had once been the wealthiest in Yangjiao Village. He had believed he could endure the disaster, only to be swiftly proven wrong by harsh reality.
Come to think of it, the Xu family had once thought the same, which was how they ended up in their current predicament.
The original family of this body truly had a bizarre way of thinking!
Xu Yue sighed.
With the world outside in chaos, Xu Yue had been heeding her cheap mother’s advice these past few days, staying obediently indoors and rarely venturing out.
On the few occasions she did go out, she didn’t wander far. Passing by neighboring homes, she either heard families gathered around barren tables preparing to end their lives by eating Guanyin clay, or saw dilapidated doors left wide open, revealing stiffened corpses inside.
The first time she witnessed this, she was terrified out of her wits. But as the saying goes, familiarity breeds contempt, and soon she grew numb to it.
Spending her days with four family members whose true nature—human or ghost—remained uncertain, Xu Yue had long since cultivated a resilient heart. A couple of corpses were nothing compared to the formaldehyde-soaked specimens in the research lab—these, at least, looked far more presentable.
Xu Yue shuffled her thin, short legs and made her way next door.
A gaunt old man, skin stretched taut over bones, with sunken eye sockets that made him look almost blind, leaned motionless against a broken wooden doorframe.
Xu Yue widened her eyes, tilting her head to study him.
Malnourished, her head appeared disproportionately large atop her frail body, her slender neck seeming barely able to support it. Yet her large eyes sparkled brightly, full of life.
Seeing the old man so still, she assumed he was dead.
Unexpectedly, as she stepped forward to check for breath, the old man abruptly opened his deeply sunken eyes, startling her so badly she inwardly screamed:
A corpse coming back to life!
Noticing her pale, frightened face, the old man let out a hoarse, grating laugh that carried an air of death.
Xu Yue immediately realized: the old man wasn’t dead yet.
Tucked in her clothes was a small, coarse pancake—about the size of half an infant’s fist. Hesitating for a moment, she still handed over the unpalatable cake she could hardly swallow.
At the sight of food, the old man’s dull eyes instantly lit up. He snatched it and shoved it into his mouth all at once!
His ravenous, wolf-like ferocity made Xu Yue regret her decision for a split second.
When pushed to the brink of starvation, humans would resort to cannibalism. And here she was, a tender, fragile six-year-old—wouldn’t she be all the more tempting?
But her young body was too small, her mind preoccupied only with useless thoughts like “hungry, hungry, hungry.”
To understand the specific era she now found herself in, she had to rely on the old man before her, who had traveled extensively and seen much of the world.
Fortunately, the old man was not without principles. After a satisfying meal, he regained some vitality.
At Xu Yue’s feigned curiosity—pretending to be bored and asking, “Grandpa, tell me a story”—the old man began to ramble on about the state of the world.
It was only then that Xu Yue learned the place she lived in was called the Great Qing Kingdom, which had been established for over 300 years.
However, this dynasty, which had stood firm for three centuries, was gradually weakening in central authority due to factors like eunuchs meddling in politics and interference from imperial relatives. Local warlords were rising, and chaos reigned in both the imperial court and the provinces.
Now, foreign enemies from all sides were eyeing the kingdom covetously. Some particularly ruthless barbarian tribes took advantage of the situation to pillage and plunder along the Great Qing’s borders, wreaking havoc day after day and repeatedly pushing the two nations to the brink of war. The common people suffered immensely.
The entire Shanyang Commandery was now stricken by a severe drought, and the chaotic court had outright ordered the governor to solve the problem himself. No one cared whether their remote county under Yanzhou’s Shanyang Commandery lived or died.
There was no relief grain to speak of. In fact, upon hearing the court’s directive to “solve the problem themselves,” the county magistrate had fled with his family the very next day, “solving the problem” by running away.
Xu Yue rubbed her furrowed brow and sighed deeply once more.
This Great Qing Kingdom was truly on the verge of collapse!
The old man looked at the frail young girl before him, his eyes filled with sorrow. “Since Dong Xing entered the capital, heroes have risen everywhere. Countless warlords have seized control of provinces and commanderies. With natural disasters striking as well, the people can barely survive. The dead lie unburied across the land.”
“This world… it’s truly impossible to live in.”
Dong Xing?
Who was Dong Xing?
Xu Yue had never heard of him.
She only knew of a Dong Zhuo from the late Eastern Han Dynasty.
So, the era she had traveled to did not belong to any historical period she was familiar with.
Still, the chaotic era of warlord fragmentation the old man described was quite similar to the late Eastern Han Dynasty.
If that were truly the case, Xu Yue dared not imagine what the days ahead would hold.
From the late Eastern Han Dynasty to the Sui and Tang periods, there had been a centuries-long cold spell, with average temperatures 0.5 to 1.5 degrees lower than modern times. Extreme weather phenomena, such as “winter-like cold winds in the sixth month of summer,” had also occurred.
Droughts, locust plagues, floods, epidemics…
The thought of surviving in such harsh conditions made Xu Yue think: Let it all end! I’m not living through this!