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

Reborn as an orphaned refugee fleeing famine, he finds his parents dead and the land strewn with corpses. Five thousand disaster victims crowd the gates of the prefectural city, fighting over grain. A riot is on the verge of breaking out. The county magistrate is frantic, the accounts are a tangled mess, and the constables have been beaten bloody. No one notices the muddy boy in the corner as he holds out a sheet of paper. It lists the refugees, allocates the grain by headcount and age, and calculates how many days it will last, all without a single mistake. The magistrate stares at him. “Who is your father? What did he teach you?” The boy looks up. “My father starved to death on the road. All I was taught was how to read and do arithmetic.” The magistrate falls silent for a moment, then takes off his own hat and places it on the boy's head. “From today on, you are my son.”