Dividing the Family in a Famine: From an Ancient Well to a Mighty Border Fortress

After three years of drought, grain prices soared. When Zhou Ye transmigrates to the northern frontier of the Great Qian, his uncle is about to sell Zhou Ye's twelve-year-old sister to a grain merchant for twenty jin of millet. Using his status as the orphan of a military household, Zhou Ye drives the merchant away and splits from the family. He takes only a broken hatchet, half a sack of wheat bran, and a barren mountain with an abandoned kiln that everyone else despises. Everyone says the siblings won't survive three days. That is, until Zhou Ye activates the Settlement Heavenly Book and discovers an ancient well buried beneath the mountain. A drink of water in exchange for a refugee's labor. A bowl of grain in exchange for the loyalty of a veteran. Carpenters, hunters, blacksmiths, and deserters whom no one else wanted all find a new way forward in his hands. They dig wells, clear fields, store grain, fire bricks, build walls, and train soldiers. The ruined kiln becomes a village, the village becomes a fortified settlement, and the settlement eventually grows into a mighty city that spans the northern frontier. Years later, the Hu cavalry rides south, the imperial court collapses, and city after city on the northern frontier falls. Only one city, built by refugees, stands against a seemingly endless army. Zhou Ye stands atop the city wall, gazing at the enemy forces stretching beyond the horizon. “They once said a crowd of refugees couldn't build a city. Now this city is the last home of the northern frontier.”