Fleeing Famine to the Prefectural City, the County Magistrate Took Me as His Son

Transmigrated into a refugee orphan on the road to escape famine, with both parents dead and corpses strewn everywhere. Five thousand refugees crowded outside the prefectural city gates, fighting over food. A riot seemed imminent. The county magistrate was frantic, the accounts were a tangled mess, and the constables had been beaten bloody. No one noticed the muddy boy in the corner holding out a sheet of paper: It listed the refugees, the grain allocations, and the number of days' worth of food, carefully calculated by head count and divided by age. Every figure was exact. The county magistrate froze. “Who was your father? What did he teach you?” The boy looked up. “My father starved to death while fleeing the famine. All I learned was how to read, write, and do arithmetic.” The county magistrate fell silent for a moment, then took off his own hat and placed it on the boy's head. “From today on, you're my son.”