Great Jin Dynasty, Yongning Commandery, Nan’an Prefecture, Shanyang County, Kaoshan Village.
In a corner of the dilapidated adobe house in Lin Shuanzhu’s courtyard, four emaciated figures lay stiffly on the ground.
“Ah… my head hurts…” Lin Changsong abruptly opened his eyes. His whole body felt as though it had been run over by a tractor and then pieced back together, while his stomach burned fiercely.
Something was wrong! Very wrong!
This sensation, this hard, uncomfortable “bed,” this smell filling the air… an organic fertilizer mixed with body odor?
He should have been on a flight to Hawaii, enjoying the coffee brought by a flight attendant!
He turned his head and collided with another pair of equally terrified eyes.
“Hu… husband?” Wang Ya’s voice trembled. Looking at the bearded, sallow, emaciated man beside her—an ancient-clothed man whose features bore some resemblance to her husband—she nearly stopped breathing.
“Dad? Mom?” Their daughter, Lin Xiaowei, cried out beside them. “Where are we? Is this some kind of prank by a film crew? The costumes and makeup are way too realistic… Huh? Where’s my phone?”
The youngest, little Lin Minghao, woke up as well. Looking at his own small, dirty hands, which had shrunk by an entire size, he burst into tears. “Whose chicken claws are these!?”
The family of four stared at one another. In each other’s eyes, they saw the same shock, bewilderment, and overwhelming sense of “what the hell.”
Their memories surged like a tide. There was the despair of the modern family of four during the plane crash, and the miserable fate of the ancient Lin Second Branch, who had been forced by their vicious Grandmother to sell their granddaughter to raise money for their cousin’s examination. After resisting, they had been locked up and starved to death…
As the two sets of memories collided, they finally understood their situation.
All four of them had transmigrated—together!
Other people transmigrated one at a time. Their whole nest had come through!
The air fell silent for three seconds.
“So…” Lin Changsong, formerly an agricultural expert, wiped his face and said heavily, “Our seaside villa is gone?”
Wang Ya, formerly a pastry master, looked at her rough, cracked hands in despair. “And so is my dream of earning three Michelin stars?”
Lin Xiaowei, a famous inheritor of intangible cultural heritage, tugged at the coarse cloth clothing covered in patches. “And the imported wool yarn I just received, along with a set of carving knives?”
Lin Minghao, a young academic prodigy, sniffed. “And my admission letter from Huaguo University!”
The whole family: “…”
This transmigration was a catastrophic loss!
After the grief came the relief of surviving a disaster.
“Thank goodness…” Lin Changsong put one arm around his wife and the other around his children, his voice choked with emotion. “Our family… is still together.”
Those words instantly hit everyone’s tear ducts.
That was right. They had all thought they were doomed when the plane went down. Although their current circumstances were terrible beyond words, the most important thing—their family—was still by their side!
The four of them hugged each other tightly and encouraged one another.
“Grrrrrrr~”
A tremendously loud rumbling of stomachs shattered the warm atmosphere. The sound had come from all four of them.
They were hungry—hungry to their very bones.
Lin Xiaowei felt that even during a week of intermittent fasting, she had never been this hungry.
“The urgent matter is finding something to eat!” Wang Ya, a former food connoisseur, clutched her stomach, her gaze turning sharp. “If we don’t eat something soon, we’ll become the fastest-dying transmigrators in history—dead from starvation!”
Just as the family was trying to scour the bare room with their eyes for anything edible, the door creaked open a narrow crack.
A thin, stooped figure slipped inside furtively. It was the useless male head of the Lin household, Lin Shuanzhu.
His face was filled with fear and guilt. He quickly glanced outside, then tremblingly pulled a small, black, rock-hard object from inside his clothing—something hard enough to serve as a murder weapon—and stuffed it into Lin Changsong’s hand.
“Quick… eat it… Don’t… don’t let your mother see…” His voice was barely above a whisper. As soon as he finished speaking, he vanished again as swiftly as if a dog were chasing him.
The family lowered their heads and stared at the object in Lin Changsong’s hand, which appeared to be a “wowotou.”
Silence descended.
Lin Minghao swallowed. “Th-this thing won’t knock our teeth out if we eat it, will it?”
Lin Xiaowei analyzed it rigorously. “Judging from its material, its main ingredients are probably bran, wild vegetable roots, and a large amount of… faith?”
Wang Ya’s professional instincts kicked in. “There’s no fermentation process to speak of. Negative points for texture, negative points for appearance.”
Lin Changsong drew a deep breath and tried to break the wowotou apart, but he nearly failed to move it. He eventually managed to split it into four pieces. “Comrades, this is our first pot of gold after transmigrating… No, our first mouthful of food! We need to replenish our strength before we can fight!”
With tragic determination, the four of them began gnawing on the wowotou that was hard enough to use as a hidden weapon.
The taste was indescribable, but it did indeed ease the burning hunger in their stomachs.
Lin Xiaowei struggled to swallow a bite, stretching her neck out as though it had suddenly extended two li. “Dad, if this were in the modern era, it would be the material for a ‘remember hardship and cherish sweetness’ meal, right?”
Lin Changsong tried soaking the wowotou in saliva to soften it before swallowing and nodded vaguely. “More or less.”
After eating their “combat rations,” they regained a little strength. The eyes of the chuunibyou teenager Lin Minghao lit up.
“Dad, Mom, Sis! Transmigration always comes with a cheat ability! Hurry up and try! Mind control! A system space! Superpowers!”
The whole family instantly perked up!
In an age of advanced information, who didn’t know about cheat abilities?
Lin Changsong concentrated his mind on a pile of firewood in the corner.
“Burn!”
The useless firewood showed no reaction whatsoever.
Wang Ya rolled her eyes. “If you really had a fire-type superpower, were you planning to burn our whole family to death and then transmigrate back to the crash site?”
Lin Changsong: “…”
It was all because his stomach was too empty. It had made his brain stop working properly.
Wang Ya picked up an empty earthenware jar. “Produce steamed buns!”
The jar remained completely empty.
Lin Xiaowei closed her eyes and tried to sense the existence of a space or system. After trying for quite some time, she was still sitting exactly where she had started.
Lin Minghao desperately tried to recall his knowledge points. “The principle of the helium-neon laser is…”
Very good. His knowledge was still there, but the laws of physics appeared not to have changed.
After ten minutes of experimentation…
The entire family collapsed onto the pile of straw.
“Conclusion: no system, no space, no superpowers.” Lin Xiaowei delivered the final verdict. “We’ve started with nothing but our bare hands, on hell difficulty, in a farming-and-infrastructure-development scenario.”
“What are you afraid of!” Lin Changsong sat bolt upright. The fighting spirit of an agricultural expert blazed in his eyes. “Your father has the complete encyclopedia of modern agriculture in his head!”
Wang Ya rolled up her sleeves as well. “Your mother has the entire lineage of Chinese and Western pastries in hers!”
Lin Xiaowei said, “I can make handicrafts and earn money!”
Lin Minghao thought for a while, then raised his hand. “I… I’ll be responsible for shouting ‘666’ for you and studying ancient examination knowledge so I can become your protective umbrella in the future!”
“Good!” Lin Changsong’s gaze swept over his family. Although they were dressed in rags and their faces were gaunt with hunger, their eyes had already changed. “Awful relatives? A hunger crisis? Starting today, the Lin Second Branch is standing up!”
“Our goal is…” Lin Changsong lowered his voice.
“To eat our fill!” Wang Ya joined in.
“To wear warm clothes!” Lin Xiaowei followed.
“To fight the awful relatives! Lin Minghao shouted softly.
“To achieve common prosperity!” the whole family cried in unison, their eyes filled with longing for the future…
And for a full meal.