From the Start, I Starved to Death, but My Three Wives Glow

Snow blankets a starving land, with corpses strewn everywhere. The protagonist crawls out of a pile of the dead, clutching thirty jin of coarse grain in his left hand and dragging three gaunt women by the wrists, each wearing a glowing jade bangle. With food running out, he boils snow into gruel in a cracked pot, and not only discovers a recipe for filling hardtack, but also learns that the bangles worn by his three “glowing wives” conceal a mystery: pale green can identify “things” and locate resources, pale blue can explain “principles” and solve problems, and dark red can sense “danger” and warn of life-or-death threats. From surviving in a desolate town to political intrigue in the provincial capital, the protagonist follows the bangles’ guidance to build an intelligence network out of sparrows, fire straw ash into glaze, trade smuggled salt for cotton, and pass checkpoints with a forged seal, overcoming one crisis after another. Every step is bound up with the fate of the realm. See how he chews through famine on this starving land and carves out a path to the heavens.