Jianzhou Jurchurs watched menacingly from outside, and the border defenses urgently needed to be consolidated.
Disasters and man-made calamities continued unabated within, needlessly exhausting the Ming Dynasty's last bit of luck.
The disasters brought by the Little Ice Age went far beyond this.
Abnormal weather. Extreme weather.
The drastic reduction in crop yields was only one of them.
More importantly, the temperature plummeted.
Not to mention that the north was already bitterly cold.
Even the originally warm and humid south began to grow as cold as the twelfth lunar month all year round.
And under such circumstances...
With no cotton and no padded cotton clothing,
the people of the Ming Dynasty, who could only continue using silk and hemp cloth to ward off the cold and keep warm,
were like completely defenseless creatures... struggling desperately through the harsh winter and frozen soil.
And then!
They died one after another.
Years passed.
Those who starved to death and those who froze to death—
they were beyond counting.
Corpses littered the land!
Faced with the pressure of survival,
moral boundaries that should never have been breached were broken again and again.
Exchanging children for food became a reality once more.
When a family had no surplus grain, selling daughters and sons to survive was commonplace.
And among these,
selling daughters... became the most common.
Because
in ancient times, sons were inherently valued more than daughters.
It was widely believed that boys could carry on the family line, while girls would marry out and were nothing but money-losing burdens.
If a daughter could be sold in exchange for some food,
then first, the family's population and burden would be reduced.
Second, what the eyes did not see would not trouble the heart.
Even if they knew perfectly well that their daughter would be