I traveled to the Ming Dynasty and became a woodcutter. I started with a debt of fifty taels, and if I didn't pay it back for three days, my hand would be chopped off.
Everyone thought I was dead.
The neighbors shook their heads and sighed, saying that my father had just died, and I, a silly boy who only knew how to chop wood, would definitely not be able to survive.
I ignored them and silently exchanged the last bit of rice at home into money, and shamelessly borrowed money from all over the village to collect a few taels of silver.
Then, with the whole village looking at me as a fool, I took all the money to stock up on charcoal.
Are they laughing at me for being crazy, hoarding charcoal on a sunny day, waiting for it to get moldy?
I laughed.
Because they don't know that I am a PhD student in history who just came back from time travel.
I also know that the first terrifying cold wave covering the entire south of the Yangtze River, the "Little Ice Age" that swept through the Ming Dynasty for nearly a hundred years, will arrive on time in three days.
When the creditor was about to come and cut off my hand, I was leisurely drinking hot tea in the courtyard.
And those wealthy country gentlemen who once laughed at me were wrapped in three layers of quilts and shivering in the heavy snow. They sent servants with ten times the price, crying and begging me to sell them some life-saving charcoal.
"Fifty taels? I'm sorry," I looked at the account book without raising my head, "This little money is only enough to buy me three loads of charcoal."
My counterattack started by monopolizing the entire Jiangnan winter.
