Ancient Farming and the Imperial Exams

Female to male. Xu Anning was born with congenital heart disease. She couldn't run or jump as a child, or get too excited. She couldn't drink soda when she was little, and when she grew up, she couldn't drink tea. She couldn't eat spicy food or anything too oily or salty. She couldn't... After struggling through life for thirty-five years, she died not long after her grandparents passed away... She never made it to the afterlife. Instead, she came back to life in someone else's body as Xu Fangning, a twelve-year-old boy, along with the villa from her old hometown where she'd lived. At last, she could eat all the delicious food she'd been dreaming about for years. Her parents ran a supermarket, and their hometown wasn't far from the city. Her father had turned the villa's three underground floors into a storeroom. When the pandemic hit and her parents scaled back their business, the storeroom filled up with goods. With all those things, plus the valuables around the house that could be exchanged for silver, she had her grandfather's jade, her grandmother's gold jewelry, and the accessories her mother had bought her. Even an ordinary glass could fetch a good amount of silver. And there was more... Xu Anning, now Xu Fangning, wanted to lie flat and live a carefree life. It all sounded wonderful, but she'd forgotten about the harsh taxes and levies, the rampant bullies, and the lowly status of ordinary people in ancient times. She had no choice but to pick up her books and earn the title of licentiate as a shield. But as she kept taking exams, she somehow, without even realizing it, pressed on along the road of the imperial examinations without looking back. A hundred years ago, the Xu family of Yang County had produced a jinshi of the same rank as a regular successful candidate. He served as a county magistrate for over a decade, and the Xu family enjoyed great prestige in the area. His descendants made the maxim that studying was the highest pursuit their guiding principle. The more they studied, the poorer the family became. The more they studied, the frailer the men grew. The elder cousin from Great-Granduncle's family had a constitution as delicate as Lin Daiyu's. The elder cousin from Second-Granduncle's family spent every day spouting classical phrases. Her own uncle was stiff and dull. Xu Fangning reasonably suspected that these men studied to shirk their responsibility to support their families. At this rate, tsk, tsk... Theme: Working hard at studying so she can enjoy delicious food without hiding it