Transmigrate into a Refugee Exodus: My System Can Grow Crops

In the seventh year of Jinghe, the earth across the Huang and Huai plains was cracked wide enough to fit a finger, and locusts crawled over the field ridges after the floods. Wearing a ragged hemp garment that barely covered my body, I woke in a corner of a ruined temple, coughing up blood. This was the third day since I had transmigrated into Su Wan, who had been cast out by her in-laws for supposedly bringing about her husband's death.

All I had left in my arms was half a moldy millet cake. Outside, starving refugees fought over food, and not far away, rumors spread of people trading children to eat. The original Su Wan had been so hungry that, after being shoved into a corner, she had finally breathed her last.

At death's door, a voice suddenly rang out in my mind: [Agricultural Emergency System successfully bound. Beginner quest: Save one elderly or infirm person to unlock drought-resistant wheat seeds.]

I clung to my last breath, grabbed a blind old woman who had been knocked down by the refugees, then shielded a five-year-old orphan girl, nearly fainting from hunger, beneath the altar table. From then on, the three of us “castoffs” became each other's reason to live.

With no road ahead, we followed a dry river valley, using the System's instructions to identify wild vegetables and filter dirty water. At night, we shared a rabbit caught in a homemade trap. When we found an abandoned village with a mountain spring, I led everyone in digging earth and chopping wood to build earthen houses that could keep out the rain, then sowed the System's wheat seeds in newly cleared fields.

When people came to steal our grain, we fought back with sharpened wooden stakes and traps, laying down the rule that “those who don't work don't get to touch the bowl.” When a clan from a neighboring village came to seize our water source, we worked together to build a waterwheel and cut off the flow downstream, forcing them to sit down and discuss “sharing.” When the county magistrate imposed crushing taxes and falsely accused us of rebellion, we gathered evidence of his corruption and joined forces with nearby refugees to bring him down.

Later,