One moment, I was organizing data on famines in the late Ming at the library. The next, I was lying on a dilapidated kang in the seventh year of the Chongzhen reign. I'd become a poor scholar with the same name, living in a bare-walled house with nothing but an inherited, dried-up inkstone to my name.
The village elders scraped bark off trees to stave off hunger, widows knelt over five fen in tax silver, and children huddled in caves waiting to die. Was this a distortion of human nature, or the collapse of morality?
Li Xin decided to use the hands that had once held a brush to do something different.
Starting with a bar of medicated soap and a jar of purified water, he organized village defenses and taught practical skills. In a world falling apart, he would leave this land one last, undying spark.
"A transmigrator can't change history, but at least he can change how a few people live."
This is a story about how civilization passes on its spark in the face of utter desperation.
