Help! I’ve Become Addicted to Picking Up People on the Run from Famine

[Fleeing famine + farming and development + ensemble character growth + no pocket dimension + no System + lighthearted daily life]

In the second year of the great drought, sixteen-year-old Jiang Laixi does something everyone thinks is crazy.

While everyone else fleeing famine is desperately trying to ditch their burdens, she keeps picking people up and putting them on her rickety cart.

A lame carpenter? Picked up.

A one-armed veteran? Picked up.

An unlucky midwife, a sickly doctor, a failed scholar, a little thief who uses fake names, and a down-on-his-luck guard with an injured shoulder…

As her growing caravan gets longer and longer, Jiang Laixi starts to panic a little.

There’s barely enough food to go around, and every one of these people is more trouble than the last.

But then…

The cart breaks down, and the lame man can fix it.

There are pitfalls ahead, and the veteran can spot them.

Someone gets sick, and the “sickly” doctor can really save them.

The food is running out, and the failed scholar can calculate their supplies better than anyone.

Even the little rascal who’s always sneaking food and hiding provisions can slip into places no one else can reach to scout the way.

That’s when Jiang Laixi realizes:

They aren’t useless.

It’s just that this world decides far too early what kind of person counts as “useful.”

From a rickety cart that breaks down every few steps, to a home no one wants to leave, and then to a place that can shelter countless people in a chaotic age…

The people she casually picked up along the way all turn out to be more remarkable than the last.