The Whole Village Pooled Their Money for the Imperial Exams, and I Talked My Way into Becoming Chief Councilor

During the Great Qian dynasty, a severe drought struck Qingzhou, and the people of Xu Family Village and a neighboring village fought a massive brawl over water. Three-year-old Xu Changshou’s father was beaten to death, and when Xu was six, his mother couldn’t bear the hardship and ran off with a peddler. Under the “Xu Clan Rules,” orphaned children with no surviving family were raised at the clan’s expense. But the soul that awoke in this body belonged to a modern office worker. Faced with just half a bowl of rice gruel a day, so watery he could see his reflection in it, Xu Changshou didn’t choose to defy fate and change his life. Instead, he put all his adult wisdom toward figuring out “how to get some meat to eat.” He used the sales pitches from his past life to talk his cousin into raiding birds’ nests for eggs, and conned the village chief’s chubby grandson into trading meat buns for his “muddy battlefield tactics.” Everyone in the village said that the only child of the Xu family’s eldest branch had turned out crooked, with more tricks up his sleeve than a beehive had holes. Then, when he was seven, the Xu clan chief watched Xu Changshou use a few stones and a stream of urine to effortlessly foil another attempt by the neighboring village to steal their water. Overruling everyone’s objections, he made a decision that went against their ancestors’ ways: the whole clan would sell their pots and pans to send this “little rascal” to school! When Xu Changshou saw his great-grandfather trembling as he brought out a handful of copper coins earned through sweat and blood to pay his tuition, he stopped grinning. In this brutal age, where clan feuds were commonplace, the imperial examinations were the only weapon he had to help his people stand tall.