True Martial

The line of refugees stretched long.

The setting sun was like blood, and the refugees—gaunt, skeletal, and resembling a pack of walking corpses—trudged forward listlessly.

The crowd was vast, yet unexpectedly silent, save for the rustling sound of feet dragging across the ground.

The vast majority of them had last eaten two days ago; every ounce of strength was precious now, so they had neither the heart nor the energy to speak.

...How much further to the next county, no one knew.

The path ahead was a blur, stripping them of almost all hope, leaving them to move forward mechanically.

Thump!

Someone walking suddenly collapsed to the ground, their breathing shallow and rapid.

Those nearby cast a numb glance before looking away, dragging their increasingly heavy and weary bodies onward.

The person on the ground struggled for a brief moment before falling still.

Qin Fang, his head wrapped in a tattered cloth, silently withdrew his gaze and continued his mechanical march among the refugees.

His coarse hempen clothes barely covered his now extremely emaciated frame, and the cloth belt around his waist was cinched tight, yet it could not mask the intermittent, agonizing cramps and growls of his stomach.

He leaned on a sturdy wooden stick to keep moving, his lips cracked and split into several bloody fissures, the blood long since congealed.

Dust obscured what was once a relatively handsome face, but prolonged starvation had caused him to lose at least sixty pounds in just three months; he probably weighed less than eighty pounds now.

His cheekbones protruded sharply, his eyes were sunken, and his cheeks were hollowed out; the flesh on his face seemed to have vanished, leaving only skin stretched over bone, no longer deserving of the description "handsome."

Though his head was wrapped in a rag, the relentless exposure to the scorching sun had caused his skin to peel layer after layer, the flakes of dead skin sticking to him and leaving him unrecognizable.

With a hunched posture, he, a young man, gave off the impression of someone on the verge of death.

His gaze was dim, yet he forced himself to stay alert, deliberately imbuing his eyes with a hint of ferocity as he scanned his surroundings.

Suddenly, he stopped, looked down, and saw his foot gripped by a hand caked in mud.

"Save..."

The person on the ground struggled to lift their head; it was a woman, her face so caked in dust that her original features were lost, and she was just as gaunt and deformed as the rest, though she appeared to be young.

Qin Fang paused for a moment, then exerted a slight force, easily breaking free from her grip... the woman was clearly at her limit, lacking even the strength to hold onto a lifeline.

Qin Fang continued to stagger forward.

The light of hope and pleading in the woman's eyes instantly dimmed as she collapsed back to the ground, panting softly.

...It was not that he was numb or selfish.

It was simply that he knew all too well that he could barely save himself, and he truly had no spare energy to indulge in misplaced kindness.

After walking a few steps, he suddenly heard a rustling sound behind him. He furrowed his brows and turned his head to see several other skeletal refugees pouncing on the fallen woman.

Qin Fang's sudden turn caused the refugees to look toward him.

Their eye sockets were blood-red, and they stared at Qin Fang with a numb expression, saying nothing.

Qin Fang frowned, his gaze unwavering, the ferocity he had deliberately cultivated intensifying.

Seemingly cowed by Qin Fang's stare, the group subconsciously averted their eyes.

But immediately after, one of them gritted his teeth, stopped looking at Qin Fang, and pulled a small dagger from his rags. With a ferocious, cruel look on his face, he slashed hard at the throat of the woman, who had not yet fully breathed her last.

The woman on the ground merely widened her eyes and twitched slightly; she didn't even have the strength to struggle.

Fresh blood flowed out.

The man pounced on the wound, greedily sucking it up.

...He was drinking her blood!

Seeing this, the others no longer cared about Qin Fang; they pulled out daggers and iron shards, sliced open the veins in the woman's arms, and, ignoring the dirt, pressed their mouths to the wounds to drink deeply.

The scene instantly became drenched in blood!

The surrounding people panicked slightly, subconsciously moving away.

Qin Fang's gaze remained steady, a flash of ferocity crossing his eyes before it quickly dissipated. He turned his head and continued his journey, expressionless.

"If I die, find a mountain ravine and throw me in... do you hear me?"

A weak conversation drifted from nearby.

It was an old man and a young boy. They had also seen the actions of the refugees behind them. The elder, equally skeletal and covered in the dust of the road, felt a flicker of confusion and pity in his eyes, which finally hardened into resolve as he spoke to the boy beside him.

The boy was tall but thin as a bamboo pole, his open collar revealing a chest as gaunt as a ribcage, but his eyes were clear. He looked panicked at the words: "Father?"

"There's no hope for a proper burial anyway. I just don't want to end up in the hands of these blood-eaters after I die... even being fed to the beasts is better than ending up in their bellies."

The elder murmured.

The boy stammered.

Many refugees nearby fell silent.

Then...

They continued to move forward.

There was no helping it.

When people are starving to the extreme, there is nothing they won't do.

Qin Fang had seen more than a few incidents like this over the past few months... As soon as someone died, others would immediately rush forward, taking advantage of the lingering body heat to slit the throat and drain the blood, drinking it right there in plain sight.

The first time he saw it, Qin Fang's scalp had gone numb and his entire body had stiffened.

But now...

He was already numb to it.

There was a reason the old man had asked his son to throw him into the mountain ravine after he died... With so many refugees and so many people dying, those "blood-drinkers" wouldn't waste their energy specifically searching the ravine for his corpse just for a mouthful of blood.

Besides drinking blood, only a very small number of people would eat the flesh directly.

Because it was too much trouble...

Cooking it was difficult; for one, there was no source of fire, and for another, cooking it would require wasting a massive amount of energy to find firewood... If they had that kind of energy, wouldn't it be better to pick up the pace and head toward the next town?

Unless they were dying of hunger, who would want to drink human blood?

Human blood is incredibly pungent, even more so than the blood of livestock; did people really think it was some kind of delicacy?

Furthermore, although it is a liquid, it actually makes you thirstier the more you drink.

Heaven hadn't sent rain for three or four months, and water was more precious than grain.

In a desperate situation, people prioritize cost-effectiveness.

Naturally, they wouldn't do it.

Of course, when starving to the extreme... some would chew on a few raw bites.

But this actually consumed a great deal of energy; raw meat is incredibly tough and requires significant effort to chew. Most of the time, they could only choose to swallow it whole.

But swallowing it whole carried risks... when you are both starving and parched, your throat feels constricted. There were cases where people didn't manage to get the meat down and ended up choking to death instead.

Time passed, the setting sun dipped below the horizon, darkness fell, and the moon peeked its head out from the edge of the sky.

A hint of coolness entered the sweltering air, lifting the spirits of the refugees slightly.

But as their spirits lifted, the hunger in their bellies felt all the more intense.

"Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle"...

The rumbling of stomachs sounded like thunder.

Qin Fang used to think this was an exaggeration.

He hadn't expected it to be a realistic description.

Stomach acid churned, and the violent contractions caused waves of sharp pain in his gut. Qin Fang furrowed his brows, sweat beading on his forehead, but he could only clutch his stomach and grit his teeth.

After a long while, it eased slightly, and he subconsciously performed a swallowing motion.

The result was a searing heat in his throat; there wasn't a single drop of saliva, and the movement only caused his throat to stick together, resulting in a sharp, stinging pain.

His face stiffened slightly, and he dared not attempt to "swallow" again. After catching his breath for a moment, he let out a soft sigh and continued on his way.

Others transmigrated, and he transmigrated too, but even if one were to transmigrate as a death-row prisoner, wouldn't that be far better than transmigrating as a refugee fleeing a famine?

At least... you wouldn't be hungry.

Qin Fang thought silently.

He used this to distract himself from his own suffering, his feet moving forward mechanically.

On his feet were a pair of straw sandals he had scavenged from a corpse, but he could feel that the soles had worn through once again. The soles of his feet were covered in dense clusters of large and small blood blisters, some areas already festering; every step felt like walking on the edge of a knife.

His legs were long since sore to the point of numbness.

Yet he knew he couldn't stop, because once he stopped, he feared he would never be able to get back up again.

And the next moment, someone would be crawling on top of him, slitting his throat...

He needed to keep his legs in this mechanical motion... perhaps he could hold on for a little longer.

He was not from this world; he had only arrived three months ago.

The one who sent him here... was a Dayun.

To this day, he remembered the look of terror on the face of the Dayun driver, who seemed to have just woken from a dream, as the truck cab "flew" toward him from the opposite lane of the highway...

Then, with a "boom," he knew nothing more.

When he woke up, he had become this refugee, "Qin Fang," on the road of exile.

From the initial confusion, terror, and shock.

To the later pain, anger, and despair of an empty stomach.

And now... numbness, acceptance, and the struggle to survive...

It had not been an easy process.

Over the three months of his exile, Qin Fang had passed through many places and witnessed things he could never have imagined before.

At the very beginning, everyone still carried some food, so the situation was slightly better.

But as the rations gradually ran out, the fighting began.

For the sake of a single bite to eat, he was once forced into a struggle, and a hoe had gouged a wound into his waist... If he hadn't reacted quickly enough, he would be attracting flies by now... That strike had been aimed at his head.

In that life-or-death moment, his ferocity was ignited, and he used the dagger the original owner had brought for self-defense to stab the other man indiscriminately, "puchi puchi," until he didn't know how many holes he had made.

In the end, the other man died, and he lived.

The man's accomplices were frightened off by his savagery, which allowed him to keep his meager rations.

Once, while resting in the middle of the night, he was ambushed. If the attacker hadn't stepped on a twig while sneaking up on him—startling him from his half-awake state—he likely would have been killed in his sleep.

As a result, he took a dagger to the shoulder... but after realizing what was happening, he slit the attacker's throat with his own blade.

He had also...

Recalling the journey thus far, Qin Fang's expression was numb.

"Nine deaths and one life" was not enough to describe this past.

Thinking of this, he stared blankly at the empty space before him.

"Golden Finger..."

Yes, he possessed a Golden Finger.

In fact, if not for this Golden Finger, the probability of him making it to this day would have been slim.

"Diligent practice brings results!"

"Basic Dagger Technique (Minor Achievement): 132/1000"

The first time he killed someone, this panel and these words appeared automatically.

It made him realize that he was someone with a system.

After careful study, he discovered that this was a proficiency panel.

It had no extra functions, only one...

By doing one thing for a long time, the results could be permanently solidified.

When breaking through a bottleneck, a sensation similar to an "epiphany" would occur.

For instance, when the Basic Dagger Technique first appeared, it wasn't "Minor Achievement," but rather "Basic Dagger Technique (Entry) 1/500."

According to his research, as long as he focused his entire heart on studying how to use the dagger—such as "slicing," "stabbing," "piercing," and so on—the numbers behind it would jump and increase.

But it wouldn't work if his heart wasn't in it; he had to be fully immersed.

As a result, when he spent over a month grinding the proficiency to 500/500, he felt a sudden flash of inspiration, as if he had suddenly "opened his mind."

He looked down at his thin, gaunt palms and took out the dagger from his waist, which was sharp but covered in mottled spots.

The next moment, the dagger seemed to come alive in his hand; the sharp blade spun and danced between his fingertips...

It was extremely nimble.

Yet, it didn't cut his fingers in the slightest.

This was something he couldn't have done before.

Now, however, he performed it with absolute fluidity.

This was all thanks to the "epiphany" gained when his "Basic Dagger Technique" promoted from (Entry) to (Minor Achievement).

And on the day he was ambushed... if his Basic Dagger Technique hadn't reached "Minor Achievement," he might not have been able to win against that attacker.

Because he had even learned moves like "blocking" and "parrying" for the "Basic Dagger Technique" out of thin air. When he was ambushed, he had used these moves subconsciously, which allowed him to successfully counter-kill.

This discovery left him feeling invigorated.

Over the following months, he had the intention to train in other things... such as fist techniques or leg techniques.

If he could do that, his chances of survival would undoubtedly increase significantly.

But the result...

After he tried to throw a few punches on his own and nearly collapsed with stars in his eyes...

He didn't dare to mess around anymore.

He was a refugee, after all!

With no food and no water, every bit of physical strength was precious...

Where was the room for trial and error?

To try was to die!

Therefore, he could only continue to study the "dagger," and only for a small amount of time each day... After three months, the "Minor Achievement" dagger skill had only gained 132 proficiency points...

The vast majority of his time was spent on the road.

...First, survive, then worry about the rest.

He thought to himself.

A sudden commotion erupted from up ahead.

"True Martial County is here!"

Qin Fang felt a jolt of energy and looked up.

The government runner from Yanping City they had passed earlier mentioned that True Martial County was the closest place to them.

The imperial court had prepared a massive amount of supplies in True Martial County to provide disaster relief and aid the refugees!

There was a chance to live!

A smile spread across his face; he had finally glimpsed the dawn of hope, and his steps felt as if they had grown lighter.

But before the smile could fully bloom, a wail rang out from the front.

"It's over!! The soldiers in True Martial County say there's no extra grain! Th-they're forcing us to move on to the next county!!!"

In an instant, a single stone stirred up a thousand ripples.

The previously numb refugees erupted into chaos!