Zhang Ergou's Counterattack Life

"Beep~"

"Player is entering the game..."

Game Background:

Niu Family Village was a small village located in the remote mountains of southwestern Da Qian Kingdom. It was called Niu Family Village because it sat atop a mountain shaped like an ox. There were sixty-three households in the village, with a population of four hundred and twenty-one and eight hundred and fifty-two mu of farmland. Of that, four hundred and seventy-eight mu belonged to Village Chief Li Shou Zheng. As an outsider, Zhang San Niu possessed only two mu of poor land on the high ground north of the village, along with a Thatched Cottage that leaked from all sides. As Zhang San Niu's second son, Zhang Ergou, you had the misfortune of being born into this family...

"Waaah~ Waaah!"

Struggling to open his eyes, Zhou Ming's first sensation was cold—bone-chilling cold.

With a slight glance downward, he saw that his infant self was wrapped in nothing but a thin layer of burlap, riddled with several finger-sized holes.

"Gui Hua, throw this child away. We already have A'Da. We can't afford to raise two children," the middle-aged man beside her said with a troubled expression.

Zhou Ming's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately stopped crying. Throw me away? Damn it, I was just born, and you want to throw me away?

How was he supposed to play this game?

Two streams of bead-like tears flowed from the eyes of the frail woman holding the infant and landed on Zhou Ming's face. She sobbed, "Husband, A'Da is only two years old. Whether he'll even survive to adulthood is still uncertain. Little Er is also a boy. When he grows up, he can work for the family and give you more sons and grandsons. Let's keep him."

After thinking in silence for a while, the middle-aged man nodded. He brought over a large earthenware bowl with a chipped corner from beside the threshold and handed it to the frail woman. "Gui Hua, eat this bowl of noodles. There are two eggs in it. Once you're done, feed Little Er some milk."

The woman rolled up her sleeve and wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. She held the infant in her arms more tightly, accepted the bowl, and began wolfing it down.

The middle-aged man sighed, picked up the hoe lying nearby, and walked toward the mountain with a slightly stooped gait.

Three days later, after a brief discussion, the middle-aged couple gave Zhou Ming a name—Zhang Ergou. The reason was that Zhou Ming's two-year-old older brother was named Zhang Da Gou, so they simply continued the pattern.

In the blink of an eye, three years passed.

A little bare-bottomed brat running around had appeared throughout the streets and alleys of Niu Family Village.

Tired from running, the little brat plopped down on the large millstone at the village entrance and silently opened the Game Panel in his mind—

Player Character: Zhang Ergou

Property: 0

Status: 0

Reputation: 0

Spouse: 0

Descendants: 0

Lifespan: 3

Total Achievements: 3

Helplessly closing the panel, Zhou Ming stared speechlessly at the sky, feeling like he wanted to cry but had no tears.

Three years had passed. Chronically malnourished, he had only just learned to walk. In between, several bouts of colds and fevers had nearly sent him to an early game over if not for his stubborn vitality.

"How the hell am I supposed to keep playing this game? The start is this hard already. Forget 500 Achievement Points—even getting to 50 would be impressive!"

Zhou Ming couldn't stop complaining. If he had been the protagonist of some other novel, he would have started crushing ordinary geniuses at three, risen to dominate a region at six, and swept across the entire map by sixteen, forced to consider switching to another dungeon. Why was he doing so miserably?

Then, looking down at his tiny arms and legs again, Zhou Ming suppressed his unrealistic thoughts.

At present, he couldn't even lift a hoe. A bout of influenza could take him away at any moment. Defying the heavens? Give it a rest.

"Oh no, oh no! Zhang San Niu's Da Gou has drowned!"

"Hurry to the river and save him!"

"Zhang San Niu, your son has drowned!"

"Hurry and call Zhang San Niu over!"

A burst of commotion suddenly came from the small river near the village entrance as several villagers shouted in panic.

Zhou Ming's heart skipped a beat. He ran toward the river on his little legs and soon saw the child lying motionless on the bank, his belly bloated and round—his older brother, Zhang Da Gou.

"A'Da, Da Gou, my son! Why wouldn't you listen? I told you not to go to the river to catch fish and shrimp, but you insisted on going!" His mother, Gui Hua, held Da Gou's already stiff body and wept hysterically. When his father, Zhang San Niu, rushed over after hearing the news and saw this scene, he froze. The hoe on his shoulder dropped weakly to the ground.

Two days later, aside from the addition of a small grave halfway up the mountain north of the village, life returned to normal.

Zhou Ming was somewhat surprised to discover that after his brother left, the four portions of food the family had originally needed to prepare for each meal became three larger portions. To preserve their only remaining son, Zhou Ming could often eat his fill. His brother's clothes were also altered smaller and draped over him...

At the age of five, well cared for, Zhou Ming could carry a small hoe to work in the fields. Sometimes he went up the mountain to raid bird nests, or dug up sweet grass roots that tasted like sugarcane from the ridges between fields. On rare occasions, he might find a wild chicken wounded by a hunter, which became one of his few opportunities to supplement his nutrition.

When he was six, his mother Gui Hua became pregnant again.

This cast another shadow over the impoverished family, whose circumstances had only just improved somewhat.

After ten months of pregnancy, the baby was born crying. Zhou Ming smiled happily. He had gained an adorable little sister.

But one night, a fierce argument woke the sleeping Zhou Ming.

"Husband, please don't throw her away. We can suffer a little more and work a little harder. She's only a child who was just born!" the woman begged desperately.

"This child was born to be given to someone else anyway. What's the point of raising her for so many years? Doesn't Ergou need food and clothes?" the man's voice was utterly resolute.

"But... but she's flesh of my flesh. I can't bear to let her go!" the woman wailed.

"You think I can bear it? But another mouth means another burden. Our family's two mu of poor land can't support so many people!" the man cried as well.

"I'll eat less and use less, won't that do?" the woman said through gritted teeth.

"No. You still have to help me support this family!"

The man shook off her hands, snatched the baby girl from her arms, broke free from her desperate tugging, and ran outside without looking back.

Beside them, Zhou Ming, who had been secretly watching everything, stared blankly at the thatch on the roof. Yet he found that he did not have the courage to get up and stop it all from happening.

Yes, the yield from two mu of poor land had reduced this family's circumstances to the point where it could support at most three people.

Of course, his father Zhang San Niu could also become a tenant farmer for Village Chief Li Shou Zheng and rent one or two mu of good land. It would be more exhausting, but the family's circumstances would surely improve somewhat, even if the rent was an unbearable seventy percent.

But Village Chief Li Shou Zheng was no philanthropist. A seventy-percent rent did not mean seventy percent of whatever the land happened to yield that year. Rather, regardless of drought or flood, as long as a tenant rented that land, he had to hand over seventy percent of the yield from a normal year—even if he had to sell his wife and young children.

It was precisely because of this that no matter how difficult things became at home, Zhang San Niu had never considered renting Village Chief Li Shou Zheng's land.

Early the next morning, his exhausted father returned covered in dew and sat weakly outside the house. His mother, Gui Hua, climbed out of bed and, as usual, prepared breakfast for the family of three.

In the blink of an eye, another five years passed.

His mother, Gui Hua, passed away. A severe cold had drained the family's few remaining savings before taking her life.

When he was thirteen, his father Zhang San Niu passed away as well. Perhaps it was from overwork, or perhaps he missed Mother too much. He, too, passed away.

Only Zhou Ming was left alone.

With both parents gone, Zhou Ming let out a sigh of relief. He had stayed in this game for so long, wanting to make something of himself, yet he had never managed to accomplish much. He wanted to invent things, but had forgotten all the chemical equations for smelting steel and iron, making glass, and producing cement. Of course, he could slowly figure them out, but with only a broken thatched house and two mu of poor land, where could his family find the resources for such money-burning research?

Since inventions were out of the question, he would farm. As an outstanding university graduate, he still understood the three essentials of farming: water, fertilizer, and temperature. Add scientific breeding, proper planting density, regular weeding, and scientific pest control, and it would be hard not to achieve high yields.

Thus, Zhou Ming conducted a series of experiments on his family's two mu of poor land. For the first two years, he harvested almost nothing and nearly starved to death. In the next two years, he began seeing results, and the land's output increased by ten percent.

In the fifth year, when Zhou Ming was eighteen, his proper planting methods combined with favorable weather brought a bumper harvest to his two mu of poor land for the first time. Its output even surpassed the best irrigated fields of Village Chief Li Shou Zheng's family, causing a sensation throughout the village.

Zhou Ming could finally walk with his head held high. At the urging of interested parties, some matchmakers also began visiting his home to inquire about him.

Everything was moving in a good direction. Zhou Ming planned to build a better wooden house within two years, save up a little money to marry a passable wife, have three sons and two daughters, and live a fairly complete life.

However, after going to a childhood friend's home for a meal one day, Zhou Ming could not withstand the friend's bitter pleas. In a moment of softness, he agreed to teach him his top-secret farming techniques.

One spread to ten, and ten spread to a hundred. Before long, villagers throughout the entire village invited Zhou Ming over. After treating him to fine food and drink, they all earnestly begged him to share some farming experience. Zhou Ming agreed to each of them.

A few days later, late at night, Zhou Ming's door was kicked open as if it were rotten wood. Several mysterious men rushed inside, raised their knives, axes, and clubs, and viciously struck at the figure on the bed.

Only after the bloody, mangled figure on the ground could no longer make the slightest sound did the mysterious men set a fire. They watched the broken Thatched Cottage burn to ashes before swaggering away.