Thirty-Eighth Year of Emperor Wenchang of Zhaoyang Country
The twenty-fourth day of the twelfth lunar month. Winter had begun.
The weather grew colder.
Though Zhaoyang Country lay at the southern edge of Human Race territory, where the climate was warm and humid,
Great Wasteland lay at the empire's northernmost reaches. It had also endured three years of severe drought. Even though heavy rain had recently fallen across the land, it was nowhere near enough to ease the damage and losses caused by three years of drought.
Residents of some large cities could still scrape by, but in small villages and mountain hamlets, people had already begun exchanging children to eat. The common folk were living in utter misery.
At that moment,
three hundred li northwest of Chiyang City stood a village called Sanyang.
Sanyang Village had more than two hundred households and nearly a thousand people. It had once been one of the largest villages in the surrounding area, but after three years of drought, its people had died or fled. Now, fewer than a hundred remained.
The same was true of the fourteen villages and eight towns nearby.
In three years, the population had plummeted by as much as ninety percent. These were truly hard times; in some places, nine out of every ten households stood empty.
The imperial court had been so enraged that it stripped many local officials of their posts on the spot. Some had their homes confiscated, some were exiled, some thrown in prison, and quite a few were sent straight to the executioner's block.
They were all accused of failing to do enough to fight the disaster.
But no matter how many useless officials were executed, they still could not stand against natural and man-made calamities.
Today, the more than one hundred villagers who