In an era of warlord chaos and years of drought, the Zhuang family’s crops fail completely. With no other choice, Yang Jingui takes his wife and two children and leaves home. One of his sons is beaten to death along the way, and the family begs for food as they wander hundreds of miles before reaching Chalangou. Life there is miserable: they have nothing to eat and nothing to wear. To make matters worse, the local Wang and Li families bully them. In the freezing winter, with no clothes to wear, they strip clothes from the dead. After ten grueling years, they finally manage to establish themselves with three fen of land. But then someone plots against them.
Kindness is never forgotten by Heaven. Perhaps Yang Jingui really was destined for wealth. The two wealthy families of Chalangou join forces to set him up, forcing him to pay a high price for a rocky wasteland where nothing will grow, a place everyone despises. Yet this unexpectedly brings Yang Jingui success. He becomes the richest man within a hundred li and creates the legendary Yang family, famous far and wide.
As the saying goes, poverty rarely lasts beyond three generations, and neither does wealth. The Black Gold Empire Yang Jingui built through years of hardship lasts less than ten years before his sons and grandsons ruin it completely.
The story is so wonderful and true