How did keeping my head down end with me uniting the realm?
I transmigrated to the late Ming with ten thousand mu of fertile farmland, yielding four thousand jin per mu and filling my granaries to the brim.
But it’s the fourteenth year of the Chongzhen reign. There have been three years of drought, people are eating one another, a million refugees with the rebel army are passing through, and the Qing will breach the passes in three years. If you have grain, you’re a juicy target everyone wants a bite of.
So Chen An chooses to keep his head down. He says nothing about his yields, nothing about how much grain he has, and nothing about whether he can hold his ground. He hides as much as he can and acts as poor as possible. He secretly recruits and trains troops while publicly pretending to be a penniless farmer. Every time he’s backed into a corner, he reveals a little of his hand, then goes right back to hiding.
