Peasant Son

Summer had arrived, and the blazing sun beat down relentlessly.

The cicadas made a noisy racket, one screech following right after another.

The soil in the fields was baked white, split open by deep, branching cracks.

Zhou Yan leaned forward, his hands gripping the plow handles with a death-grip as he shuffled forward, stepping unevenly.

The plowshare turned up dry, hard clumps of dirt, and every single step required him to expend every ounce of his strength.

Hiss!

Sweat poured from his forehead, running right into his eyes and stinging them until he blinked rapidly.

He tilted his head back to gaze at the sky and sighed inwardly.

This was already the second year since his transmigration.

In his past life, he had been nothing more than an ordinary college student.

One day, after pulling an all-nighter playing video games, he had suddenly felt a sharp pain in his chest, his lips turning purple as he collapsed in front of his computer.

Right now, treading on a patch of sun-baked, whitened earth, with a plow grasped in his hands, straw sandals on his feet, and coarse linen clothes on his back.

His surroundings were completely and utterly different from his past life.

The dynasty that occupied this land was called the Great Xia, having established the nation over three hundred years ago and founding the country upon martial prowess.

Across this continent, ferocious beasts ran rampant amidst the wilderness, and ordinary folk who happened to run into them stood a nine-in-ten chance of dying.

Only by practicing martial arts and becoming a martial adept could one survive in these troubled times, make something of oneself, and pass the imperial examinations to secure an official title.

Martial adepts held an aloof and transcendent status in this world.

Even mortals in the Body-Tempering Realm who had not yet entered the Martial Practitioner Realm could secure an errand-runner's post in the yamen, draw a regular salary, earn the respect of others, and manage to ensure their entire family was well-fed and clothed with savings to spare.

As for those mighty figures who could truly become martial adepts, they were people who could walk sideways without a care in the world, whom even the county magistrate had to treat with extreme politeness.

Yet none of these things had anything to do with Zhou Yan.

Presently, he was merely a poor peasant's son in Willow Village outside Qingyun County of the Great Xia Dynasty. He was sixteen years old, the third-born son, unloved by his father and neglected by his mother. Every day before dawn he had to head out to the fields to rush through chores, chop firewood, fetch water, and feed the livestock, bearing the burden of all the heavy and exhausting labor in the household.

He took a deep breath, the dry air filling his lungs with a trace of bitterness.

He steadied his nerves, tightened his grip on the plow handles once more, and continued pushing forward.

If he failed to finish plowing, he would simply receive a thorough scolding for nothing upon returning home.

Willow Village was a poor village.

Dozen of households sprawled out in a scattered manner along both sides of a river ditch that had dried up for the most part.

Mud-brick walls, thatched roofs, and the chickens in the yards looking even more emaciated than the people.

The villagers relied entirely on farming to make a living, facing the yellow dirt and raising their backs to the heavens year in and year out, with their harvests depending entirely on the whims of the heavens.

Occasionally, unknown martial adepts would flash past the main road at the entrance of the village.

They were figures from the county town riding tall, powerful horses and wearing fitted martial attire with leather boots, riding past with their gazes fixed straight ahead and kicking up a trail of dust all the way.

The villagers could only gaze at them from afar, their eyes filled entirely with envy and awe.

Those were people from another world.

Between martial adepts and mortals, there existed an innate threshold.

Yet rumor had it that a martial adept had once emerged from the village; after making his fortune, he had taken his entire family with him to live in the county town and never returned.

Some years ago, a wild beast had bolted out from the mountains, sneaking into the eastern end of the village in the middle of the night and biting old man Liu to death.

When he was discovered the next morning, half of old man Liu's body was gone, and blood was everywhere in the courtyard.

The village chief had gone to the county town to report the incident to the authorities, and two men from the yamen had come, inspected the scene, and posted a notice whose general gist was telling the villagers to exercise greater caution themselves, bar their doors and close their windows at night, after which they patted their backsides and cleared out.

In this day and age, the government simply could not look after everything.

The Zhou Family could not hold its own in Willow Village either.

Old man Zhou had two sons: the eldest, Zhou Dazhuang, who was Zhou Yan's father, and the second, Zhou Dashan, who was Zhou Yan's second uncle.

Back when the family property was divided years ago, the grandfather had left the vast majority of the estate to the second uncle.

Old man Zhou lived with his second son for a very simple reason: the second uncle had a sweet tongue and knew how to handle people, bringing wine and meat to butter him up during every festival and holiday, and managing to coax the old man into broad smiles with just a few pleasant words.

Those few plots of the most fertile fields, the old bluestone courtyard with its surrounding wall, and the silver coins accumulated over the better part of a lifetime had all gone to the second branch.

The daughter of the second branch was also quite capable, having married the owner of a wine restaurant in the county town early on, which meant the family's circumstances had consistently remained quite good.

Meanwhile, Zhou Dazhuang was honest and slow-witted his entire life, unable to even string together a coherent sentence when meeting people, let alone contend for anything when the family property was being divided.

What was allotted to Zhou Dazhuang's hands were a few plots of poor, thin soil at the western end of the village and an old, dilapidated mud-brick courtyard.

Half the mud bricks of that courtyard wall had already fallen away, and whenever it rained, the yard turned completely to slush.

The thatch on the roof also had to be patched year after year; if it wasn't patched, it would leak.

Even with all this, Zhou Dazhuang hadn't said a word of complaint.

However, Madam Liu refused to accept it. Zhou Yan's mother, Madam Liu, held a deep resentment in her heart over this matter, stubbornly nursing her grudge for over a dozen years.

Whenever life became unbearable, whenever she looked at the second uncle's large bluestone-tiled house, and whenever the dining table offered nothing but thin porridge and salted vegetable lumps, that bitter resentment in Madam Liu would surge upward, getting stuck in her throat before transforming into piercing curses.

"Good-for-nothing!"

This was the phrase Madam Liu used most often to curse Zhou Dazhuang.

"Just look at the kind of house your brother lives in! Look at the one we live in! Your father gave all the good things to him, leaving you not even a fart, and you just take it lying down like this? Go on and fight for your share! You're the eldest, you're the first son! You didn't make a peep when the property was divided, and now look at us—the whole family is drinking the northwest wind right along with you!"

When Zhou Dazhuang was cursed to the point of annoyance, he wouldn't talk back either, having grown long used to it.

Whenever his heart felt troubled, he would squat down beside the threshold, fish out his dry-tobacco pouch, slowly pack a bowl of tobacco leaves, and take drags one after another.

The smoke drifted out from his face, obscuring his expression of utter distress.

He remained utterly silent.

When Madam Liu grew tired of cursing, she would collapse onto the floor beside the stove and wipe away her tears.

Zhou Yan had witnessed this scene from childhood to adulthood and was long accustomed to it.

The Zhou family had many children.

The eldest sister, Zhou Xing, had married out the year before last, moving to a neighboring village.

While the eldest sister was still around, she would occasionally protect Zhou Yan, but once she left, there was no longer anyone in this household who would speak up on his behalf.

The second brother, Zhou Ping, was two years older than Zhou Yan. He was quick-witted and spoke well, taking after his second uncle; while doing farm work behind his father, he knew precisely when to hand over water and when to softly murmur words of hardship.

Both parents favored him, setting aside any delicious food specifically for him first.

When the mother was in a good mood, she would pick out an extra morsel of food with her chopsticks and place it in Zhou Ping's bowl, muttering under her breath that "Ping'er has worked hard farming, so he should eat more."

The younger brother, Zhou Xiaoshi, was only eight and the youngest in the family.

The mother doted on him, refusing to let him do any chores at all as he ran about wildly through the village all day long.

Zhou Yan was ranked third, stuck right in the middle, neither up nor down.

The original owner possessed a gloomy temperament and did not know how to speak pleasant words; he was neither as pleasing as the second brother nor did he require care like the younger brother.

Ever since he transmigrated, he had also walked on eggshells at every step, terrified of exposing any flaws and being found out.

As for fleeing to far-off lands, it wasn't that Zhou Yan had never considered it.

Yet in this world, ferocious beasts ran rampant, and rumors even spoke of mountain spirits and ghosts hiding among humanity.

Since he was not a martial adept, leaving rashly would probably mean not lasting even a few days.

Staying in this household meant nothing more than doing a bit more labor, which wasn't enough to lose his life so easily.

Every single day he had to get up before dawn to chop firewood, fetch water, and feed the livestock, before heading out to the fields to rush through farm work.

When the sun went down, he had to return home to split firewood, sweep the floor, and haul items.

Whenever there was a bit of meat on the dining table, his chopsticks never got a turn.

When a chicken was slaughtered for the New Year, of the two chicken thighs, one belonged to the second brother and the other to the younger brother.

Zhou Yan would pick up a mouthful of greens with his chopsticks and lower his head to shovel down his rice.

Whenever the mother was in a bad mood, he was invariably the one who suffered misfortune.

"Third! Have you finished turning over the fields?"

"Third! Have you chopped the firewood?"

"Third, have you got eyes in your head? Can't you see the water vat has hit rock bottom?"

Zhou Yan never talked back.

He knew all too well that talking back was useless and would only earn him a heavier lashing of curses.

He simply worked in silence, shoveled down his food in silence, and lived in silence within a corner of this household.

The sun was leaning toward the west.

Zhou Yan straightened his back and glanced back at the field behind him.

He had plowed roughly half of it, and whatever remained would have to wait until tomorrow.

He pulled the plow out of the ground, hoisted it onto his shoulder, and walked back slowly.

His shoulder had been chafed by the plow beam the entire day, burning with pain, and the skin had likely broken again.

When he reached the entrance of the village, he paused to catch his breath.

Beneath the old locust tree at the village entrance, several old men were squatting down playing a game of chess.

The chessboard was a flattened stone slab.

Lying nearby was an emaciated dog with its belly pressed against its ribs, eyes closed and unmoving.

Further away stood the rolling mountains.

The mountain shadows pressed heavily and darkly against the horizon like a dark-blue city wall.

The villagers all said there were ferocious beasts within those mountains.

Old man Liu was the creature that had bolted out from those very mountains and bitten to death.

Yet Zhou Yan gazed at that shadowy mountain outline, and what he thought of was not fierce beasts.

What he pondered in secret was a single matter.

In this life, could it really just be like this?

In this lifetime, he was sixteen years old, spending every day farming, chopping firewood, and carrying water, living through a mediocre life of no accomplishment?

He could no longer go on like this.

Zhou Yan gripped the plow on his shoulder tightly.

He could not figure out what he was capable of doing.

In this world, if a peasant's son wanted to get ahead, there seemed to be only one path—learning martial arts.

However, sensible people knew that studying required poverty while martial arts required wealth, and practicing martial arts required money, talent, a master, and martial techniques.

He possessed not a single one of these things.

After more a dozen years of scrimping and saving, he only had a few copper coins in his hands.

Let alone going to the martial arts hall in the county town to apprentice, he could not even afford to buy a copy of the most superficial Stake Stance formula.

His father Zhou Dazhuang could not possibly give him this money, and Madam Liu even less so.

Yet he still refused to resign himself to fate.

Having lived across two lifetimes, he surely could not live cowardly in both of them.

Zhou Yan glanced at that mountain outline once again.

The place for chopping firewood was right at the foot of the mountain; as long as he did not go deep inside, normally nothing bad would happen.

In a few days, he would have to go deep into the mountain to chop firewood.

The firewood pile at home was nearly at the bottom, and his mother had already nagged about it several times over the past two days.

He withdrew his gaze, hoisted the plow, and walked home stepping on the evening glow of the setting sun.

The low wall of the adobe courtyard cast a long shadow under the setting sun.

The voice of his mother Madam Liu drifted from the courtyard, though it was unclear whom she was scolding this time.

Zhou Yan pushed open the door and stepped into the courtyard, leaning the plow against the corner of the wall.

"Back?" Madam Liu's voice came from the kitchen, carrying her habitual impatience. "The water vat is empty. Go carry back two loads of water. By the way, sweep the yard. Look at how filthy this yard has become."

Zhou Yan made no sound, habitually picking up the shoulder pole and buckets, and turned to step back out of the courtyard gate.

The well was in the middle of the village, and a round trip took about the span of half a cup of tea.

He carried the empty buckets and walked slowly forward, the setting sun stretching his shadow very, very long.

The buckets swayed gently at both ends of the shoulder pole, emitting a creaking sound.