The wind came first.
It whistled through the cracks in the mud-brick walls, carrying the sharp scent of frost and distant woodsmoke. In the small side room of the Chen family home, the cold settled like a second blanket—heavy, damp, and inescapable.
Lin Yan felt it before he opened his eyes. Felt the ache in his bones, the dryness in his throat, the hollow emptiness where his stomach should have been. He remembered dying. Remembering the fluorescent lights of a hospital ceiling, the beeping of machines, the quiet resignation of nurses who had seen too much. Forty-two years of spreadsheets and traffic jams and microwave dinners, ending with a whisper in a sterile room.
And then...
This.
He opened his eyes to darkness broken only by the faint glow of an oil lamp somewhere beyond the doorway. Above him, rough wooden beams supported a thatched roof blackened by years of cooking smoke. The quilt covering him was thin, patched in a dozen places, stuffed with what felt like dried leaves and straw.
A hand rested on his shoulder.
Small, rough, calloused. A woman's hand.
"Yan'er?" The voice was soft, hesitant. "Are you awake?"
He turned his head slowly. The movement sent pain shooting through his temples. By the edge of his bed sat a woman in her late forties, her face worn by weather and worry, her hair streaked with early grey and tied back with a faded cloth strip. Her eyes—dark, intelligent, endlessly tired—watched him with an intensity that felt physical.
Mother. The word surfaced from somewhere deep in this body's memories. Li-shi. My mother.
"Water," he croaked.
Her face softened with relief. She reached for a cracked clay bowl on a stool beside the bed and held it to his lips. The water was cold, tasting faintly of earth and wood ash. He drank greedily, water dribbling down his chin.
"Slowly," she murmured, wiping his face with her sleeve. "You've been sick for three days."
Three days. Since the fever took him. Since the original Chen Yang—the twenty-year-old third son of a dirt-poor farming family—slipped away gathering firewood on the mountain slope, and he, Lin Yan, woke up in his place.
"Father?" he managed.
"In the fields. The frost came early this year—he's trying to save what he can of the late beans."
Lin Yan pushed himself up on his elbows. The room spun. He saw now that this "room" was little more than a partitioned corner of the main house, separated by a woven bamboo screen. Through the gaps, he could see the main living area: packed-earth floor, a central fire pit now cold, a low wooden table, and along the far wall, rolled sleeping mats.
This was poverty. Not the romanticized poverty of stories, but the grinding, relentless kind. The kind that wore down teeth and souls in equal measure.
"The others?" he asked.
His mother—Li-shi—hesitated. "Working. Always working."
He heard the unspoken words. Because if they stop, we starve.
From beyond the screen came the sound of a child crying—thin, weak, the sound of hunger rather than temper. Then a woman's voice shushing gently. His elder brother's wife, he remembered. The child would be his nephew, barely two years old.
Li-shi watched him, her eyes tracing his face as if memorizing it. "You gave us a scare," she said quietly. "When Old Zhang carried you down from the mountain... your face was grey."
Old Zhang. The neighbor whose own ox had died last year. The man had found him collapsed by a fallen tree, fever burning through him.
"I'm sorry," Lin Yan said, and meant it. The words felt strange in his mouth—the dialect of this region, rough and practical. But the memories were there, layered beneath his own consciousness. The language, the customs, the unspoken rules of survival.
She shook her head. "Just rest. The land will still be there when you're well."
But as she spoke, her eyes flicked toward the main room. Toward the empty fire pit. Toward the quiet desperation that hung in the air like woodsmoke.
"How much grain?" he asked softly.
Her shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly. "Enough."
"Mother."
A long pause. The oil lamp flickered, its flame guttering low. "Half a sack," she admitted finally. "If we thin the porridge enough... maybe ten days."
Ten days. Then borrowing. Then debt. Then the slow spiral that ended with selling land or children.
Lin Yan lay back against the thin pillow. His mind—the modern part, the part that had managed supply chains and logistics—began calculating. Six adults, three children, two teenage girls. Nine mouths. Half a sack of millet or wheat, probably millet since it grew better in poor soil. Maybe thirty jin? Fifteen kilograms. Spread over ten days...
One bowl of watery porridge per person per day. Less for the children, but children needed more. The math didn't work. The math never worked.
"The tax collector?" he asked.
Her face closed. "Don't worry about that."
Which meant it was coming soon. Which meant they needed to pay in grain or silver they didn't have. Which meant more debt.
The system chose that moment to announce itself.
It didn't appear with fanfare or glowing screens. Rather, it surfaced in his consciousness like a long-forgotten memory. Words formed behind his eyes, clear and stark:
[SURVIVAL THRESHOLD REACHED]
[GRASSLAND PROSPERITY SYSTEM: ACTIVATED]
[CURRENT STATUS: CRITICAL]
[ASSETS: 0 cattle, 0 sheep, 0 horses, 3 chickens (aged)]
[LAND: 3 mu (0.5 acre) poor-quality farmland]
[RECOMMENDATION: ACQUIRE LIVESTOCK WITHIN 30 DAYS TO UNLOCK BASIC FUNCTIONS]
[WARNING: FAMILY FOOD RESERVES AT 8% OF MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS]
Lin Yan blinked. The words remained, etched against the darkness of the ceiling. No interface. No buttons to press. Just... information. A statement of facts more brutal than any spreadsheet he'd ever seen.
"Yan'er?" Li-shi's voice brought him back. She was looking at him strangely. "Your eyes..."
"Tired," he said quickly. "Just tired."
He closed his eyes, and the words faded. But the knowledge remained. The system—whatever it was—was real. And it had given him his first, most important piece of information: they had less than he'd calculated. Eight percent. A week, maybe, if they stretched.
"Mother," he said, opening his eyes again. "The chickens. The old ones."
She frowned. "What about them?"
"They're not laying anymore, are they?"
A pause. "Not for months."
"Then they're just eating grain."
Understanding dawned in her eyes, followed immediately by resistance. "They're the last breeding pair. If we eat them..."
"If we don't eat something substantial soon, we won't be strong enough to work," he said gently. "And if we can't work, we lose the land anyway."
The words hung between them. Harsh. True.
Li-shi looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. They were a farmer's hands—knuckles swollen, nails cracked, lines etched deep with dirt that never fully washed out. For a long moment, she didn't speak. Then she nodded, a single sharp movement.
"Tomorrow," she said. "I'll ask your father."
But they both knew what that meant. In this house, in this family, Li-shi was the silent steel that held everything together. When she asked, it would be done.
From the main room came the sound of the door opening, then closing. Cold air swept through the house, carrying the scent of turned earth and frost. Low voices murmured—his father and brothers returning from the fields.
Li-shi stood. "Rest now. I'll bring you some broth later."
She stepped through the bamboo screen, leaving him alone in the gathering dark.
Lin Yan lay still, listening to the sounds of the house coming alive with evening. The scrape of a pot being set over the fire pit. The crackle of kindling catching—precious wood being burned. The low voices of his brothers, weary and resigned. The higher voices of his sisters-in-law, discussing in whispers what could be made from nothing.
And beneath it all, the ever-present silence of hunger.
He closed his eyes again, and this time, he looked inward. Toward the system. Toward the words still lingering at the edge of his consciousness.
Acquire livestock within thirty days.
With what? They had no silver. No copper to spare. The chickens were their last asset besides the land itself.
Think, he told himself. You didn't survive corporate mergers to die in a mud hut.
Memories surfaced—both his and Chen Yang's. The mountain behind the village. The common grazing land, poor and overgrazed. The stream that ran through the valley, shallow but year-round. The government wasteland to the west, leased out occasionally but mostly abandoned because nothing would grow there.
Nothing would grow there... with traditional crops.
But grass was different. Some grasses grew where grains wouldn't. And grass could feed animals. And animals...
He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.
A plan began to form. Fragile. Desperate. Dependent on a hundred variables he couldn't control.
But it was a plan.
Outside, the winter wind picked up, howling through the village like a mourning cry. In the main room, the family gathered around the single pot of thin porridge, bowls in hand, faces illuminated by the meager fire.
Lin Yan listened to the sound of their quiet endurance—the spoons scraping bowls, the soft murmurs, the occasional sigh.
He had died once. He had no intention of dying again.
And if he had his way, neither would they.
[SYSTEM NOTICE: FIRST OBJECTIVE SET]
[ACQUIRE 1 HEAD OF LIVESTOCK WITHIN 30 DAYS]
[REWARD: UNLOCK GRASS IMPROVEMENT KNOWLEDGE]
The words glowed briefly in his mind, then faded.
In the darkness, Lin Yan smiled. It was a thin, tired smile. But it was a start.
The pot might never have filled before.
But he was here now.
And he intended to change the recipe.
---
Word Count: 1,850
POV: Lin Yan (MC) with subtle shifts to Li-shi
Key Introductions: Family poverty level, system activation, first survival decision (chickens), first objective