The Living People

In the final years of the Eastern Jin dynasty, the realm descended into chaos. Chen Yan, a modern agricultural student, transmigrates to Qingzhou and becomes Chen Sanlang, a refugee on the verge of death in a mass grave. Thirty-seven people, enough food for seven days, and an abandoned charcoal kiln. That's all he has. The first thing he does is keep everyone alive. Then come iron plows, waterwheels, coke furnaces, literacy classes, and village covenant steles. From a fortified village in a mountain valley, to an alliance of seventy fortified villages across Qingzhou, and then to dealing with the Northern Wei and Liu Song dynasties, he spends half his life planting a seed amid the bloodshed and famine. That seed is called the “village covenant.” It makes no distinction between master and servant, rich and poor. All are welcome, and none are forced to stay. Those who guard the walls receive land; those who study are exempt from labor; the families of those killed in battle receive compensation. The Northern Wei emperor wants his movable type, the Liu Song emperor wants his recognition, and the governor of Qingzhou wants his grain and iron. He gives them what they ask for, but on one condition. He will keep everyone alive, whether they are refugees in Pingcheng, craftsmen in Jiankang, or the most ordinary peasant woman working a Qingzhou field. Four hundred years later, when electric lights shine and trains cross this land, someone will remember the young man who crawled out of a mass grave, and the first words he carved on a stone stele: All villages joining the alliance, large or small, are equal.