Chapter 1: Famine and Guanyin Earth

Sunset at dusk.

Under the glow of the setting sun, a long dragon of a procession composed of tens of thousands of disaster victims moved slowly along the edge of the desolate official road.

A light breeze stirred up dust; the people walking were in twos and threes, stumbling in their gait. Regardless of gender or age, all were in rags and thin as skeletons, so frail they seemed as if a gust of wind could blow them over.

A stench permeated the air. The disaster victims, with numb gazes, were like walking corpses. During the journey, people would collapse from weakness from time to time, but those around them would only glance once before continuing to trudge forward with heads bowed.

"Sigh."

Within the long procession stretching for several miles, Lu Yuan, dressed in tattered cloth clothes and holding a wrist-thick, pointed branch as a walking stick, also sighed secretly while bypassing the disaster victims who had collapsed on the ground one after another ahead.

His gaze swept over them; these victims were so hungry they were nothing but skin and bone, barely looking human anymore.

Yet, while their heads, faces, and limbs were as thin as firewood, their abdomens were distended like those of women six months pregnant, appearing exceptionally eerie.

Lu Yuan had already seen too many such scenes on the road of fleeing the famine.

Over half a month ago, the Liu Jiang burst its banks, submerging several surrounding counties and over a hundred thousand mu of farmland. Thousands upon thousands of disaster victims abandoned their land to flee the famine in search of a way to survive.

The road of fleeing the famine was long. Most of the victims were poor commoners; half a month had passed, and the rations they carried had long since been eaten. Now, wild vegetables, tree bark, insects, and rodents along the way—anything edible—had become people's hope for survival.

And even so, these things could not fill the bellies of so many people. In the past half-month, no small number of victims had starved to death. Those who truly could not bear the hunger had no choice but to eat Guanyin Earth.

Guanyin Earth was something that could be seen everywhere; its texture was fine like flour. Although eating it could temporarily fill one's stomach, it could not be digested and only made people more thirsty.

Moreover, once one began to drink water, the Guanyin Earth in the stomach would rapidly expand and solidify, blocking the intestines and stomach to the point of being unable to excrete, until it suffocated the person to death.

In just these few days, Lu Yuan had seen at least hundreds of victims who died from eating Guanyin Earth; every corpse had a drum-like abdomen, and their state of death was unbearably miserable.

He did not know which was more painful: starving to death or dying from eating Guanyin Earth, but everything he had heard and seen along this road was no different from a living hell.

If not for his identity as a transmigrator and the "golden finger" he possessed, he would never have been able to persist until now and would have long since turned into dry bones by the roadside.

Amidst a full mind of thoughts.

After following the long procession for a while longer, the sun set at the edge of the sky, and the sky began to grow dark.

On the wild road, the walking-corpse-like disaster victims also stopped their steps, using Heaven as their quilt and the earth as their bed, lying or sitting on the ground to settle down and rest.

Under the dark sky, there was silence; there was no conversation among the victims, clearly because they were already too hungry to have any strength left.

Only a small number of men who still had some strength were each bracing themselves to start searching the nearby area, wanting to see if there were any grass roots, insects, or rodents to satisfy their hunger.

At this moment, Lu Yuan also avoided others to find a secluded spot, took out his old water skin, and cautiously drank two mouthfuls.

Under the dim starlight, although he was also thin, the spirit in his eyes was much better than the vast majority of the surrounding victims; he did not look like someone who had been hungry for a long time.

It was just that his clothes were tattered, and he smelled foul, just like a beggar.

But in the half-month since he transmigrated, he had already grown accustomed to it.

Half a month ago, Lu Yuan was still a 996 corporate slave burdened with a mortgage, his life plain and simple, predictable until old age.

Yet, just during a rare New Year holiday back in his hometown, while tidying up his unoccupied old house, he had inexplicably transmigrated here, becoming a disaster victim in this ancient world fleeing the famine due to a flood in his hometown.

The original owner of this body was also named Lu Yuan. His family was originally a small landlord in Liujiang County with over a hundred mu of land. He not only knew how to read and write but also liked to brandish spears and sticks, and was preparing to take the County Examination to obtain a scholarly rank.

However, last month the Liu Jiang burst its banks. The sky-filling flood not only submerged half of the Liujiang County seat and all the surrounding fertile land, but also washed away and swept off the original owner's family of several members along with their house.

After the flood, the area for a hundred miles became a marshland, and the number of victims was unknown. Although the original owner survived by luck, his relatives all met with disaster, and even their corpses were hard to find; it could be said that his family was destroyed overnight.

Following the flood came epidemics and famine. The official granary of Liujiang County had long been embezzled by officials in the county, leaving no way to provide disaster relief. A large number of victims could only flee the famine to seek survival. The original owner, whose family was destroyed, could only follow the masses in extreme grief to head to other counties to seek a way to live.

However, as if misfortunes never come singly, not two days after stepping onto the road of fleeing the famine, the original owner unfortunately caught a cold, and the only bit of dry rations he had on him happened to be finished.

Alone, sick, and starving, with no one to help, the original owner died after holding on for two days, which led to the soul transmigration of Lu Yuan.

"Better to be a dog in times of peace than a human in times of chaos; the ancients did not deceive me."

Recalling the experiences of these days, Lu Yuan shook his head, took out a palm-sized, thick cake from a cloth bag in his bosom, and then began to gnaw on it in large mouthfuls.

The cake he was eating was naturally not a flour cake made of grain, but a dirt cake made of Guanyin Earth. The method was simple, and the materials could be seen everywhere.

In this half-month of transmigrating and fleeing the famine, everything along the road had been plucked and eaten by the victims, but Guanyin Earth was everywhere. Lu Yuan only survived because he ate these dirt cakes he made himself.

And it seemed that they discovered he was eating.

More than ten steps away, among a family of victims resting, a middle-aged man and two half-grown youths looked at each other, their eyes flickering, and slowly stood up and walked over.

The leading middle-aged man was short and thin as a monkey, staring tightly at the thing in Lu Yuan's hand under the dark sky:

"Th-this little brother, what are you eating?"

"Our family is truly too hungry to bear it; could you share some food with our family?"

"Please, have mercy. In another two or three days, we will be able to reach Fengyang Prefecture. My son and I will work like oxen and horses to repay you."

Although the middle-aged man was pleading with his words, the eyes of both him and the two youths beside him were like those of hungry wolves, emitting a greenish light, their gazes exceptionally chilling.

This was not the first time he had encountered such a situation in these days. Lu Yuan did not take it to heart; he took the cloth bag containing the Guanyin Earth cakes from his bosom with one hand and tossed it over:

"This is the Guanyin Cake I made. If you want to eat, take as much as you want."

The middle-aged man was stunned upon hearing this. He hurriedly stepped forward two steps, squatted down to open the cloth bag, grabbed a cake from inside, took a bite, and then spat it out repeatedly.

Even if Guanyin Earth is made into a cake, eating it is still like drinking poison to quench thirst, and even leads to death faster.

With so many disaster victims, no one would eat this kind of thing unless they were about to breathe their last.

Putting down the dirt cake in his hand, the middle-aged man looked suspicious, seemingly not believing that Lu Yuan would eat Guanyin Cake, and probed with a hoarse voice:

"Little brother, we won't eat the cake; let us drink some of the water in your water skin."

While speaking, he moved forward, and the two thin, skeletal youths beside him also surrounded him, seemingly harboring evil intentions.

However, at the same time they moved, Lu Yuan had already grabbed the sharpened wooden walking stick beside him, stood up abruptly, and swept it out with one strike.

"Ah!"

This strike was swift and fast. In just an instant, all three of their thighs were struck, and they all let out a miserable cry in unison, stumbling backward.

Lu Yuan stood tall, the sharpened wooden staff pointing at the three from afar, and said expressionlessly:

"A few days ago, I already stabbed two who wanted to commit evil acts to death. If you aren't afraid of death, come over and try."

The original owner liked to brandish spears and sticks and had even prepared to participate in the Martial Examination; he had some foundation in martial arts.

Lu Yuan inherited the other's memories, and with his current physical strength being sufficient, dealing with three disaster victims who were already too hungry to have any strength in their hands and feet was naturally not a problem.

"We were wrong, we'll leave right now."

Realizing in an instant that Lu Yuan was definitely not someone to be trifled with, the old man and the two youths, already dizzy with hunger, clutched their thighs in fear and hobbled backward, not daring to harbor any more ideas.

He stared at them until they had retreated straight back more than ten zhang away.

Only then did Lu Yuan step forward to pick up his bag of Guanyin Earth cakes and sit back down in his original spot to continue eating them bite by bite.

In desperate straits, in order to survive, the beastly malice in people is often magnified; in this group of disaster victims, quite a few people die every day from fighting over food and water.

Because he was alone and unsupported, he had encountered such situations more than once along the way and had long since become accustomed to it.

After wolfing down the two large Guanyin Earth cakes, he felt a parched thirst in his mouth, while an indescribable sense of bloating rose in his belly.

Normally speaking, whoever ate these two large earth cakes would basically be near death.

Once they drank water, it would take no more than a short while for their intestines to knot up, and they would drop dead on the spot.

But at this moment, Lu Yuan seemed like a man with nothing wrong, holding his sharpened wooden staff while maintaining a seated posture, his thoughts shifting slightly.

Hum.

The next instant, an invisible force generated within his body, causing his stomach and intestines to emit a faint humming sound.

And under this mysterious force, the large amount of indigestible Guanyin Earth in Lu Yuan's belly actually began to digest rapidly, as if ice and snow were melting!

(End of this chapter)