The Iron Plow Breaks the Frozen Earth: A Poor Boy's Savory Sauce Rises from Qingya

Chen Yuan transmigrates as the youngest son of a poor family in the late Ming dynasty. He opens his eyes to a drafty thatched hut and a grain jar with less than three days' food left.

His biased grandfather gives him only three mu of barren hillside and half a jar of moldy wheat when dividing the family estate. His relatives scoff that he won't survive the winter.

But with his modern knowledge of food, he ferments the unwanted moldy wheat into fragrant wheat paste, and a single jar earns him the copper coins that open a way out of desperation.

Just as “Green Cliff Paste” becomes famous at the canal wharves, a greedy grain tax collector slaps the workshop with taxes ten times higher than before.

Chen Yuan hefts his hoe and heads for the drying yard. “If we don't root out corruption today, our neighbors who farm these fields won't have a way to live tomorrow!”