In Qingzhou, spring brought famine. The earth cracked, locusts swarmed, and the powerful Zhao clan laid a trap, with the county clerks and village headmen all in cahoots. The Chen family had been nothing more than an ordinary poor household: their father coughed up blood but still had to work at the kiln, their mother scraped the bottom of the pot to make ends meet, their little sister had learned not to cry, and Chen Er thought he could slowly pay off their debts with his own two hands.
But the hardest debts to repay in this world are never debts of grain. They're the fates others have already written for you. After clawing his way back from the brink of death, he began to find strange, inexplicable memories slowly surfacing in his mind: things about fire, iron, wind, and medicine, and about a completely different way to live.
He wanted to be an obedient subject, but that proved impossible. Then he tried to protect his family, only to lose them all in the end. With no other choice, he took the others who had also been driven into a corner and fought to survive along the desolate roads, seizing their chance amid the chaos.
The Chens' bullpen is empty, but not empty. It's not that there are no cows, it's that the cowshed still has the smell of old grass, the marks of broken stone troughs, and the newly stepped mud. They arranged the empty pens to look more decent than if they had actually raised cattle. The Zhao family's day laborer took the dog and sniffed it, then just cursed "There's fart to see" and left.