By the Songhua River: Warlords and Nobodies in a Time of Chaos

[No System + No Cheats + No Transmigration + Not Reborn]

In the twenty-second year of the Guangxu era, drought ravages Shandong, and Li Shouye boards a ship bound for the Northeast with his wife and children, hoping only to scratch out a living from the black soil. But beyond the passes is no paradise: Mongolian nobles seize the land he clears, landlords tear up his rental contract, and his young children die one after another. With a lame leg, he struggles on the edge of life and death, while his son Li Minghua, hardened by hatred, brings down a bully through sheer cunning at just fifteen, planting the seed of a future warlord...