In the thirteenth year of Jinghe, three consecutive droughts struck, the Yellow River burst its banks, and twenty million refugees fled south.
Chen Shi, a graduate student in history, stayed up all night working on his thesis and died suddenly. When he opened his eyes, he had become a sixteen-year-old orphan amid a mass of refugees. He had only half a sack of bran, and more than forty people around him were waiting to starve to death.
A gray-white panel appeared before his eyes: [Wilderness Year Sign-in System bound successfully.]
[Today's sign-in reward: two jin of brown rice.]
[Tip: The more people you save, the better the rewards.]
So he led forty-six people, establishing rules, reclaiming wasteland, planting potatoes, digging irrigation channels, and training village militias.
From refugee to squad leader, from stockade chief to county commandant, from the grain stores of one prefecture to the granaries along the nine frontiers.
He had only one goal:
To help more people survive and see the spring of the following year.
