(Mountain farming, family life, pulling together, hunters, fleeing disaster, and stockpiling supplies)
No System, no pocket dimension, no transmigration. This is the everyday struggle for survival of an ordinary hunter's family in the late Northern Song. In troubled times, a family united can overcome anything.
In Dazhou Village, the odd ones were the Zhou family at the end of the village. Their father had come down from the mountains looking like a wild man, and they were so poor they could barely scrape by. Yet with just seven mu of paddy fields, they raised three sons as tall and strong as oxen, and the sons even took three wives in one go. Everyone said the family must have spent all its savings and borrowed loan-shark money from the city.
The three women who married into the Zhou family were at a loss, seeing nothing ahead but a long, hard road of poverty. But as time went by, they began to wonder: Wait, what was going on? What family ate meat as a staple, had white rice at every meal, and always kept snacks on hand?
Old Zhou beamed. It was all thanks to his far-sighted planning. But before he could congratulate himself, he saw refugees heading south and the Jin army preparing to cross the Yellow River. It was clear chaos was about to break out.
As head of the family, Old Zhou could only spring into action, rallying everyone to stockpile food and supplies and prepare to take refuge in the family's old house deep in the mountains.
After all, the Zhou family had lived in the mountains for three generations. They were likely better at reading the terrain and understanding the waterways than reading people. They might not get rich by living off the mountains, but they could eat their fill, stay warm, and live without worry.
But good times didn't last. The Song Dynasty fell, the Jin army pushed south, the imperial family fled in panic, and when the city gates caught fire, the people nearby suffered too. In these troubled times, they had no idea where to turn.
