Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors
Chapter 175 - 170 The Many Hardships of the People

Chapter 175: Chapter 170 The Many Hardships of the People

Starting anew.

After a good beating opportunity, Lu Heng finally understood that cattle tending was not a leisurely task.

Because leisure meant that this child’s labor was not fully utilized.

This was unacceptable for both his elderly father and the village landlord.

Lu Heng led the landlord’s cattle and returned to the entrance of the village.

He snapped a twig off a nearby sapling and continuously swatted the mosquitoes bothering the old ox.

In ancient times, the draft ox was a most valuable asset, far more valuable than a cattle herder boy because it could provide a huge amount of labor, essential for plowing and tilling the land—without it, cultivation was impossible.

Thus, the ox could not go hungry, nor could it lack strength. Its labor had to be preserved for plowing the fields, not wasted.

Carrying a herdsman was clearly a severe waste of this labor and absolutely prohibited.

And tending the cattle wasn’t simply throwing them into a pasture and forgetting about them, as the wild mosquitoes bred outdoors would bite both humans and the oxen.

The oxen’s hairy body parts were not easily bitten, but their hairless areas, such as nostrils, the corners of their eyes, had dense nerve endings and were particularly itchy when bitten.

Once bitten, the ox would become agitated, wouldn’t graze properly, and over time, would lose weight, becoming increasingly thin.

If the landlord noticed the ox losing weight, Lu Heng, as the cattle herder boy, would inevitably receive a harsh beating.

After all, this opportunity to tend the oxen had come through his father’s hard toil, it was a gesture of trust from the landlord after his father had worked for him for so long—an opportunity many impoverished children coveted but couldn’t obtain.

Apart from swatting mosquitoes off the old ox, Lu Heng also had other tasks, including collecting firewood and cow dung along the way.

The dilapidated basket he carried on his back was used for collecting the cow dung.

In ancient times, cow dung was an important resource, used as fertilizer to increase the soil’s fertility.

In short, failing any task inevitably led to a beating.

Sometimes, even when he did everything with all his heart and effort, he would still be beaten—it was normal. After all, the landlord was no philanthropist; finding faults to punish him was expected, and he had to be grateful.

Fortunately, tending cattle, while torturous, was not overly difficult.

Having grasped these details, Lu Heng diligently tended the cattle for a day and safely passed this trial.

But this was only the beginning.

During this period, Lu Heng’s diet was almost the same every day—a meal of rice porridge.

Given the humidity in the area, it was not possible to husk all the rice and store it in a vat; doing so would easily lead to mold. They could only husk rice every other day, and the husk was not thoroughly removed; it had to be eaten along with the grain.

Moreover, rice was mainly for the strong laborers in the home; only when extremely exhausted could they eat a bit of salt, otherwise they couldn’t cope. As for others, they made do with drinking soup to stave off hunger.

Being practical and hardworking might barely count as a virtue in later times, but in this era, it was a necessary condition for survival.

Lu Heng sipped his porridge, pondering if he was about to enter the next stage?

During this time, he had managed to adequately fulfill the cattle tending job. Perhaps according to the progress, the next stages would be natural disasters, the successive deaths of his parents and siblings, and his own forced entry into monastic life.

However, the Trial Illusion did not develop as Lu Heng had anticipated.

No natural disasters occurred, the family’s financial situation did not continue to worsen, and they were barely surviving.

This was already fortunate, given that tracing back, though Emperor Taizu of Sheng’s lineage had been farmers for generations, they had also been part of a significant clan at one point. They became tenant farmers because they had to avoid the imperial taxation.

Generations of grandfathers and fathers had fled their hometowns, and the family property, mostly in-kind, couldn’t be carried away; each escape diminished their wealth further, leaving little for this generation.

Why flee taxation?

Because the officials excessively levied taxes, compounded at every level, with the officials seizing the opportunity for extortion. Selling homes, lands, sons, and daughters might still not suffice to pay the taxes. Failure to pay meant lawsuits, direct imprisonment, and even the destruction of one’s family.

Thus, they could only flee, hoping a new place might offer a few years of peace; good luck meant barely managing to save some surplus grain.

Daily labor in exchange for just enough food to get by hardly allowed for any luxury.

And as Lu Heng grew into a teenager, capable of working the fields, his parents also began arranging for his marriage.

Yet before the marriage could occur, an unexpected event unfolded.

Winter arrived, and field work became idle. The government dispatched agents to conscript corvée labor. Lu Heng’s status was no longer that of a cattle-tending herdsman but now that of a strong laborer able to work the fields, and naturally, he was also subjected to the corvée.

The so-called corvée labor was essentially hard labor, involving various strenuous tasks, certainly much more tiring than farming.

And the rations provided by the government would definitely not be sufficient, as the officials were also hoping to make a fortune from this opportunity.

How much was withheld depended entirely on their conscience.

During the corvee labor, many people starved or worked to death. Lu Heng once again survived due to his innate talent of "enduring hunger."

He had finally completed his labor service and returned home to live a few peaceful years.

In the ever-changing scenes of the Trial Illusion, Lu Heng found himself in his thirties, astonishingly, both his parents were still alive, and he also had several children.

Although life had not improved much, it was slightly better than before.

Another busy farming season began.

But this time, the natural disaster finally struck.

Severe drought and locust plagues left the crops dead in the fields; those not dead were completely eaten away by locusts.

After the disaster, an epidemic was inevitable. As the death toll rose, the plague started to spread.

His parents both contracted the plague, and with no money to seek medical help, they could only lie in a pile of weeds, groaning in pain. A few days later, they passed away one after another.

As they were tenant farmers with no land of their own, they scraped together the family savings to buy a small plot in a cemetery from the landlord, and resorted to burying the bodies wrapped in straw mats.

With all the crops dead and all the food consumed, to survive, they had to crawl out of their thatched huts and scavenge for anything edible. However, they had to be cautious; a wrong turn could mean being dragged back by desperately hungry people to potentially be cooked in their pot, as the accounts of "people eating each other during great disasters" were not at all exaggerated.

They safely reached a wasteland outside the village, where frenzied people did everything possible to consume anything edible.

Roots and bark were clearly too luxurious and had already been consumed by other villagers. As for fish in the water, birds in the sky, or beasts in the forest... wishful thinking; either the rivers had dried up leaving no fish, or they were too weak from hunger to catch any birds or beasts.

People daring to hunt in deep mountains could not only possibly find wildlife, but even if they did, it wasn’t sure who would consume whom.

As for eating locusts, that was even more nonsensical. Not to mention that locusts could devour all vegetation in half a day, even if one were lucky to catch a few, they were simply not substantial enough to satiate hunger.

And locusts contained very little energy, moreover, the locusts of disaster years were often poisonous.

The starving masses, weak and without the tools for mass foraging, would not face famine otherwise.

After all edible things had been consumed, there were only two options left: either eat humans or eat Goddess Earth.

Lu Heng saw a fellow villager, who with great difficulty had brought back a bag of Goddess Earth from outside, breathlessly exhausted his last bit of strength.

This soil was very fine in texture, almost free of sand and stones.

The villager sifted the Goddess Earth finely, mixed it with water to form cakes, then steamed them in a pot, concocting what appeared to be belly-filling cakes.

Lu Heng, of course, knew it was inedible, but his sons, extremely hungry, had secretly gone to the neighbor’s to ask for a cake.

Eating Goddess Earth did create a feeling of fullness, but it contained no nutrients. Moreover, it caused extreme thirst afterwards, necessitating the consumption of a large amount of water. Once the Goddess Earth encountered water, it would expand and solidify, becoming indigestible and irretrievable from the stomach.

Such behavior was akin to drinking poison to quench thirst.

Thus, Lu Heng could only watch as his young sons, with distended bellies, died one by one on the kang bed.

In a village of over a thousand people, there was no movement during the day; even entering homes only revealed a few emaciated individuals bare-skinned on their kang beds, bodies skeletal, with only slight movements in their chests and slow shifts in their eyes.

Their clothes had long been sold or boiled for consumption. They hadn’t eaten in a long time, so they could neither move nor dared to.

At night, those with remaining strength would squat by other people’s windows, watching for anyone who died so they could start a fire and eat their flesh at night.

Lu Heng persisted for a while but eventually also lay on the kang bed and silently passed away.

...

Back to the starting point.

Lu Heng was somewhat puzzled. It was supposed to be possible to rebel, right?

How could he rebel?

Rebel as a child? Not to mention the landlord, his father could pull him out and beat him on the spot.

Rebel as an adult? So many were conscripted for corvee labor, beaten and starved to death, yet none dared to fight the soldiers.

Rebel during a natural disaster? They were starving to the bone, uncertain if they could even leave the village, let alone rebel.

Through this entire process, Lu Heng’s predominant feeling was helplessness!

In theory, he had choices, but in reality, no matter what he chose, death was the only outcome.

After thinking for a long time without clarification, he decided to continue choosing the talent "enduring hunger" and start over.