Chen Li knew that this world had Martial Arts.

Right after he transmigrated, a memory fragment from the original owner of his body came to mind.

When he went to a brothel to demand an explanation, a tall, skinny man, thin as a bamboo pole, had sent him flying several yards with a single casual punch.

Fortunately, he had gone with his cousins and a childhood friend from the village, who were able to carry him back. Otherwise, his bones would be lost somewhere unknown.

During his first year after transmigrating, Chen Li had taken advantage of a trip to the county seat to ask about practicing Martial Arts.

The county seat had three martial arts dojos that specialized in teaching Martial Arts, but the threshold for entry was terrifyingly high: an annual gift of fifty taels of silver.

And that was just the beginning. The real money-burning started after one became an entry-level student.

All sorts of expensive herbs were needed to nourish one’s qi and blood and strengthen one’s muscles and bones. If you wanted to make a name for yourself, you could forget about it without sinking several hundred taels of silver into it.

After thinking it over and over, Chen Li temporarily put aside the idea of practicing Martial Arts.

He still hadn’t cleaned up the mess his father had left behind. The family was deeply in debt, he hadn’t awakened any system, and he simply didn’t have the means to gamble on an uncertain future in the Martial Dao.

Besides, he had no idea what his own aptitude for Martial Arts was. If he plunged in recklessly and it all came to nothing, wouldn’t that just make a bad situation worse?

’Staking everything on one roll of the dice like a profligate son isn’t a wise choice.’

There was another reason: practicing Martial Arts didn’t seem to lead to a long life. Of course, that might just be due to his limited perspective.

According to the waiter at the teahouse, the Martial Masters at the dojos looked more robust and powerful than ordinary people, but they still got sick and grew old.

Some Martial Masters who had overexerted themselves in their youth would be completely spent by their fifties or sixties, dying even earlier than sturdy farmers.

This was a far cry from the "attaining divinity through the Martial Dao" he had imagined.

After his first child was born, the system rewarded Chen Li with a Martial Dao Technique, the "Five Grains Qi Storage Technique."

The book’s pages were yellowed, its script ancient, and it was filled with diagrams of qi circulating through the human meridians.

Once he got it, he couldn’t put it down, poring over it for a long time. Then, following the book’s instructions, he attempted the Breathing Technique and guided the qi through a full Circulation.

Perhaps it was because he had no one to guide him, or perhaps this body’s aptitude was simply mediocre, but his Cultivation progress was heartbreakingly slow.

A full year passed, yet his Dantian Qi Sea remained completely empty. He hadn’t even managed to condense a single trace of Qi Sensing.

He couldn’t even perceive his Cultivation progress.

’It would’ve been better to give me a proficiency panel so I could grind my way to the top. At least then I’d have something to look forward to.’

Helpless, Chen Li could only pin his hopes on receiving another reward when his second child was born.

But heaven does not grant one’s wishes. When his second child was born, the system was like a fickle lover, giving him the silent treatment.

You try to communicate with it, and it doesn’t even send a single message back.

Later, when his third child, a daughter, was born, there was still no reaction.

Chen Li completely gave up on the idea of "getting epic drops" by having children and could only settle down and figure things out on his own.

Whenever he ran into something he truly couldn’t figure out, he would take a strip of cured meat and go ask his father-in-law for advice.

Perhaps his hard work finally paid off.

In his ninth year—his fifth year of Cultivation—Chen Li finally reached the Entry-level stage of the "Five Grains Qi Storage Technique."

That day, he was sitting cross-legged in meditation, guiding his breath according to the Heart Method.

He suddenly felt a slight warmth in his lower abdomen, in his Dantian. A faint but undeniably real warm current was quietly born, like a tender sprout breaking through the soil in early spring—delicate, yet brimming with vigorous life.

A few wisps of barely-there qi finally took up residence in his Dantian.

Chen Li was ecstatic.

He tried to mobilize this faint Inner Qi and channel it to his arms. Where before he could only manage to lift two sacks of grain weighing around two hundred pounds, he could now easily lift four at the same time.

After developing Inner Qi, Chen Li’s life didn’t change because of it.

He only knew this one Inner Power Heart Method and was completely clueless about fist, foot, saber, or sword techniques. At most, he was just a fellow with a bit more strength than average.

Its greatest use was that he could hire fewer day laborers when moving things, saving a little more money.

Contrary to what one might imagine, as a small landowner, he actually had to do a lot of the work himself most of the time.

There was only one maidservant in Chen Li’s home, and he had only bought her after his mother had gotten old and his wife had fallen ill with various ailments after giving birth to their third daughter.

During the busy farming season, they still mainly relied on hiring day laborers for help.

...

The busy farming season was a flurry of activity, and time passed in the blink of an eye.

A month later, the newly harvested rice was dried and sent, sack by sack, into the family’s storehouse.

Gazing at the granary piled high with grain, Chen Li felt a solid sense of satisfaction swell in his heart.

「That day.」

Someone from the Chen Family clan came to inform him that the County Magistrate had issued a new decree, and the clan patriarch was summoning everyone to the ancestral hall for a meeting.

As for the specific details, the messenger just shook his head, saying he didn’t know.

Lingxi Village had about five hundred households, which sounded like a lot, but in reality, the Chen Family and the Wang Family accounted for four hundred of them. Most of the remaining families were also related to these two clans by blood or marriage.

Chen Li was also from the Chen Family, and his great-grandfather had even served as the Chen Family patriarch.

Later, however, a descendant from his great-grandfather’s third elder brother’s line—one of Chen Li’s great-granduncles—passed the examination to become a Martial Scholar. Many clansmen, hoping to register their land under the new Martial Scholar’s name to avoid taxes, united to elect that branch’s leader as the new patriarch.

Even after that great-granduncle died unexpectedly and the tax benefits were lost, the position of patriarch never changed hands again and has been held by that branch ever since.

The Chen Clan Ancestral Hall was in another hamlet, about two miles away.

It was a residence with two main courtyards.

When Chen Li arrived, the place was already bustling and packed with over a hundred people. The chatter of many voices made it exceptionally noisy.

Before long, a stern-faced old man with graying hair slowly walked into the main hall of the ancestral hall, supported by a middle-aged man.

The old man was the current patriarch of the Chen Family, Chen Xingjia. The middle-aged man was his son.

Although the Martial Dao flourished in this world, imperial power still didn’t extend down to the villages. Local governance relied heavily on clans and the Gentry. In a village like Lingxi Village, decrees from the Court were usually passed down from the village head to the clan patriarch.

Elder Chen took a puff from his long-stemmed pipe, tapping the bowl repeatedly against the edge of the table, making a crisp sound.

Once the noise in the hall subsided a little, he cleared his throat and said in a deep voice, "I’ve gathered everyone today to discuss a matter. This year’s autumn harvest is more or less complete. A couple of days ago, the County Magistrate sent Constable Zhao with a message: it’s time to pay this year’s Land Tax. The rules are the same as always.

"However, the County Magistrate intends to repair the Lishui River Embankment this year. The levy assigned to our village requires an additional four thousand bushels of grain. By my calculations, that means each household will have to pay an extra eight bushels of grain..."

Before his voice had even faded, the ancestral hall erupted in an uproar.

Eight bushels of grain!

For many families, that was the entire harvest from a sixth of an acre of their land.

Although the Lingxi Chen Family shared a common ancestry, the circumstances of each family within the clan were worlds apart.

The wealthier ones, with several acres of fertile land, could bear it by gritting their teeth.

But for the smaller households with only an acre or two of poor land to support seven or eight people, life was already a struggle. They could barely make ends meet, relying on the able-bodied men to find work as day laborers.

Paying these eight bushels of grain would be like pulling the rug out from under them—it was a move that would drive people to their deaths!

"Third Great-Uncle! This is unfair!" a sallow, emaciated man shouted emotionally. "Our village has over thirteen hundred acres of land, so why is the levy being divided per household? Why not collect it based on the amount of land each family owns?"

"That’s right! My family only has less than an acre of land in total. The Land Tax already takes the harvest of nearly half of it. If we have to pay these extra eight bushels, is my family supposed to starve this winter?" another hoarse voice added.