Life in a Simulation - Chapter 2

“Drip~”

“The player is beginning to enter the game……”

Game background introduction:

Niujia Village is a small village located in the remote mountainous area of southwest Daqian State. It is named Niujia Village because it is situated on a mountain shaped like an ox. There are sixty-three households in the village, with a population of four hundred and twenty-one people and eight hundred and fifty-two acres of arable land. Four hundred and seventy-eight acres of which belong to the family of the village head, Li Shouzheng. As an outsider, Zhang San’niu only has two acres of thin land on the highland in the north of the village, plus a thatched cottage that is drafty on all sides. As the second son of Zhang San’niu, you were unfortunately born into this family……

“Wah~ wah!”

Struggling to open his eyes, the first feeling Zhou Ming had was coldness, a coldness that penetrated to the marrow of his bones.

His gaze slightly shifted downwards, and he saw that as an infant, he was only wrapped in a thin layer of hemp cloth, which even had several holes the size of fingers.

“Guihua, just throw this child away. We already have A’dà. With two children, we can’t afford to raise them,” a middle-aged man with a worried expression said.

Zhou Ming’s heart skipped a beat, and he immediately stopped crying. Throw away? Damn it, I’ve just been born, and you want to throw me away? How can this game even be played?

The thin woman holding the baby in her arms shed tears like rolling beads, which fell on Zhou Ming’s face. She sobbed and said, “Master of the house, A’dà is only two years old, and it’s still uncertain whether he will grow up to be an adult. Èr’èr is also a male child. When he grows up, he can work for the family and even give you more grandchildren. Let’s keep him.”

The middle-aged man pondered for a while, then silently nodded. He picked up a large pottery bowl with a missing corner that was placed by the threshold and handed it to the thin woman, “Guìhuā, eat this bowl of noodles. There are two eggs in it. After you finish, feed some milk to Èr’èr.”

The woman rolled up her sleeves, wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes, held the baby in her arms tighter, and took the pottery bowl, eating heartily.

The middle-aged man sighed, picked up the hoe that was placed aside, and walked towards the mountain with a somewhat stooped gait.

Three days later, after a brief discussion, the middle-aged couple named Zhou Ming—Zhang Ergou. The reason was that Zhou Ming’s two-year-old brother was named Zhang Dagou, so they just continued the naming pattern.

……

In the blink of an eye, three years had passed.

In the alleys of Niujia Village, there was a little brat running around bare-bottomed.

When he was tired from running, the little brat plopped down on the big millstone at the head of the village and silently opened the game panel in his mind—

Player character: Zhang Ergou

Property: 0

Status: 0

Reputation: 0

Partner: 0

Offspring: 0

Life span: 3

Comprehensive achievement: 3

Helplessly closing the panel and looking up at the sky speechlessly, Zhou Ming felt like crying but couldn’t.

It had been three years. Having been malnourished for a long time, he had only just learned to walk. If it weren’t for his strong constitution, he would have almost had a game over due to several colds and flu.

“How the hell can this game even be played? The beginning is so difficult. Forget about 500 achievement points, it would be great to even get 50 points!”

Zhou Ming kept complaining. If it were the protagonist in other novels, by the age of three, they would have already started to outshine ordinary geniuses. By six, they would rise to dominance in one area. By sixteen, they would have swept across the entire map and would have to consider changing to another scenario. Why was he suffering so much?

Looking up again at his own thin arms and legs, Zhou Ming suppressed his unrealistic thoughts.

At present, he couldn’t even lift a hoe, and a bout of influenza could take him away. Forget about defying the heavens, save it.

“Bad news, bad news! Zhang San’niu’s Dagou has drowned!”

“Hurry to the river to save him!”

“Zhang San’niu, your son has drowned!”

“Quick, go call Zhang San’niu over.”

A sudden commotion came from the small river at the head of the village, and several villagers shouted in a panic.

Zhou Ming’s heart skipped a beat, and he ran towards the river with short steps. In a short while, he saw the child with a bloated belly lying motionless on the shore—his own brother, Zhang Dagou.

“A’dà, Dagou, my son! Why didn’t you listen? I told you not to go to the river to catch fish or shrimp, but you insisted on going!” Mother Guìhuā held the already stiff Dagou and cried her heart out. Father Zhang San’niu, who rushed over upon hearing the news, was stunned by the scene, and the hoe on his shoulder fell to the ground powerlessly.

Two days later, apart from a small grave added to the hillside in the north of the village, life returned to normal.

Zhou Ming was somewhat surprised to find that after his brother’s departure, the four portions of food that the family originally needed to prepare for each meal became three portions, even a bit more. In order to protect the only remaining son, Zhou Ming often had enough to eat, and his brother’s clothes were also altered and worn by him…

At the age of five, with good care, Zhou Ming was able to carry a small hoe and work in the fields. Occasionally, he could also go up the mountain to search for bird nests, dig up some sweet grass roots in the fields that tasted like sugarcane, and sometimes, when he was lucky enough to find a wild chicken injured by a hunter, it became one of his few opportunities to supplement his nutrition.

At the age of six, mother Guìhuā became pregnant again.

This cast a shadow over the poor family, whose conditions had originally improved a bit.

After ten months of pregnancy, the baby was born, and Zhou Ming was very happy. He had a lovely little sister.

But one night, intense arguing woke up Zhou Ming, who was fast asleep.

“Master of the house, please don’t throw her away. We can endure more hardship, but she is just a newborn child!” The woman was pleading bitterly.

“This child was born for others anyway. Why bother raising her to such a size? Doesn’t Èr’èr need food and clothes?” The man’s voice was extremely resolute.

“But… but she is my own flesh and blood. I can’t bear to part with her!” The woman wailed.

“Do you think I can bear it? But with one more mouth to feed, there is one more burden. Our family’s two acres of land can’t support so many people!” The man also cried out.

“I can eat less and use less, can’t I?” The woman gritted her teeth and said.

“No way, you still have to help me support this family!”

The man shook his hand, snatched the baby girl from the woman’s arms, broke free from the woman’s desperate tug, and ran out of the house without looking back.

Zhou Ming, who was secretly watching all this, stared blankly at the thatched roof, but found that he just didn’t have the courage to get up and stop all this from happening.

Yes, the output of the two acres of thin land made the family’s conditions so poor that they could barely support three people at most.

Of course, Father Zhang San’niu could also become a tenant farmer at the house of the village head, Li Shouzheng, and rent an acre or two of good land. It would be tiring, but the family’s conditions would definitely improve a bit, even though the rent was as high as seventy percent that was hard to bear.

However, the village head Li Shouzheng was not a philanthropist. The seventy percent rent did not refer to seventy percent of the random yield of the land’s crops each year, but rather, regardless of drought or flood, as long as the tenant farmer rented this land, they had to pay seventy percent of the normal annual yield, even if the tenant farmer had to sell their wife, children, and daughters.

It was precisely because of this consideration that no matter how difficult the family was, Zhang San’niu never thought of renting the land from the house of the village head Li Shouzheng.

The next morning, the exhausted father came back with a body covered in dew, and sat powerlessly at the doorstep. Mother Guìhuā got up from the bed and, as usual, prepared breakfast for the family of three.

……

In the blink of an eye, another five years passed.

Mother Guìhuā passed away due to a severe cold, exhausting the family’s few savings before letting go of life.

At the age of thirteen, Father Zhang San’niu also passed away. Perhaps it was due to overwork, or perhaps it was too much longing for his wife, he also let go of life.

Only he was left alone.

With both parents gone, Zhou Ming let out a sigh of relief. He had been in this game for so long, wanting to make a name for himself but failing to do so. He wanted to invent and create, but he had forgotten all the chemical formulas for steelmaking, ironmaking, glassmaking, and cement production. Of course, he could slowly figure them out, but with only a dilapidated thatched cottage and two acres of thin land, where would he find the resources for such costly research?

If inventing and creating was not an option, then farming was. As a top student who had been to university, he still understood the three key elements of farming: water, fertilizer, and temperature. Plus, with scientific breeding, reasonable dense planting, regular weeding, and scientific pest control, it would be hard for the land not to yield a good harvest.

Thus, on his two acres of thin land, Zhou Ming carried out a series of experiments. The first two years were almost a total loss, nearly starving himself to death. The following two years saw initial success, with the land’s output increasing by 10%.

In the fifth year, when Zhou Ming was eighteen, thanks to the proper farming methods and favorable weather conditions, his two acres of thin land unexpectedly yielded a bountiful harvest for the first time, producing more than the most fertile irrigated land of the village head Li Shouzheng, causing a sensation throughout the village.

Zhou Ming could now hold his head high when walking. Some matchmakers, at the behest of interested parties, began to inquire about his situation.

Everything was moving in a positive direction. Zhou Ming also planned to build a better wooden house within two years, save some money to marry a decent-looking wife, and have three or four children, which would make his life quite fulfilling.

However, after attending a meal at a childhood friend’s house one day, Zhou Ming, unable to resist the pleading, and in a moment of soft-heartedness, agreed to teach him his secret farming techniques.

Word spread quickly, and soon all the villagers in the village invited Zhou Ming over, treating him to fine wine and meat, and earnestly asking him to share his farming experience, to which Zhou Ming agreed one by one.

A few days later, in the middle of the night, the door to Zhou Ming’s house was kicked open in a shabby manner. Several mysterious people rushed into the room, raising their knives, axes, and clubs, and fiercely hacked at the figure on the bed.

It was not until the figure on the ground, now a bloody mess, ceased to make any sound, that the mysterious people set the thatched cottage on fire. After watching it burn to the ground, they left the scene.