1.
Zhang Si transmigrated one day into the body of Zhang Laosi, a lame man. Four years earlier, Zhang Laosi had been gored by a wild boar while gathering firewood in the mountains. He fell down the mountainside and remained unconscious, and his medical expenses came to more than ten taels of silver.
His father, Zhang Qing, was a hunter who had served in the military in his youth. He too had been gored by a wild boar and never made it down the mountain, but he had still built up some wealth for the Zhang family. They had enough to eat and wear, but it wasn't a solution to keep supporting their simple-minded Fourth Son forever.
So Zhang Laosi's mother, Shi Daming, worried that her own son would leave her with no hope of being cared for in old age. She rushed to get him married and settled down in just three days, finding him a husband who came with a younger sister.
The Zhang family split up on the day after Zhang Laosi's wedding. His family was given a hunter's cabin in the mountains and two hundred copper coins, without even a single mu of poor farmland. That was only because Zhang Laosi's spouse had swallowed his pride at the Zhang family gate and nearly thrown a screaming fit to get them that much.
The night was quiet, but the hunter's cabin's thin earthen walls kept out no sounds at all. Zhang Laosi's spouse, Song Xiange, listened to the chirping insects and birds, the howls of wolves and tigers, and was terrified. But he still had to hold the family together, wondering how he and his younger sister would survive if his husband died.
2.
"Well, I'll be..."
Hearing the heartbreaking tale of this family, Zhang Si, an ability user from the apocalypse, couldn't help remarking that his household really was one big bitter gourd bringing home a little bitter gourd. Things couldn't get any worse.
He had always been unlucky, so he was used to it. As long as he wasn't dead, it was all right. He checked himself over and, thankfully, his ability core was undamaged, though he was still extremely weak and had to rely on his convenient wife to look after him.
To show his gratitude, Zhang Si gave his wife Zhang Laosi's hidden savings. His wife wanted to buy him medicine, but Zhang Si put on a fierce face and told him to buy coarse rice instead. Unexpectedly, his wife truly thought of him as her husband. When he heard that Zhang Si wouldn't get treatment, his eyes turned red, so Zhang Si had to comfort him again.
"I can't exactly tell him that getting struck by lightning will fix me... If I said that, my convenient wife would just cry in anger again."
Zhang Si felt miserable.
3.
After several thunderstorms, Zhang Si, who had been struck by lightning several times, got back on his feet and became a rather unusual hunter.
Looking at their bare-walled home, his pitifully skinny wife and his wife's younger sister, who would sneak up the mountain now and then to bring her brother food she had gathered, and his sister-in-law, who refused to go home and be beaten, he realized he needed to make money, and a lot of it.
"How can a farming novel not have any farmland? I want to buy eighteen mu of land and a cow... Then I can make malt sugar and cook some braised offal or something..."
Zhang Si, who had found an electronic reader during the apocalypse and read quite a few BL farming novels, said strange things as he skinned a wolf. Song Xiange listened nearby and said, "You can already get braised offal in town."
"Oh no! There goes another path to prosperity."
Zhang Si was shocked, making a comical face. Seeing him like that, Song Xiange couldn't help laughing too.
1. This is a gong-focused story, but readers with strong preferences in any direction should proceed with caution.
2. Couple: Zhang Si, an outwardly warm but inwardly cool, talented hunter who loves a joke and likes getting struck by lightning, x Song Xiange, a resilient, cool-headed, unlucky scholar.
3. No children. Zhang Si has a mildly abnormal, very strong possessive streak and doesn't like children taking Song Xiange's attention away from him.
Theme: Food is the people's first priority
