The first sensation was pain—a hollow, grinding ache that seemed to radiate from his very bones. Then came the smells: damp earth, woodsmoke, and underneath it all, the sour, metallic scent of unwashed bodies and despair.
Lin Yan opened his eyes. Instead of the sterile white ceiling of an ICU, or the familiar, rain-streaked window of his apartment, he saw rough-hewn wooden beams, blackened by decades of smoke. A tattered spiderweb danced in a weak draft. His body, unfamiliar in its slightness and weakness, lay on a hard kang, a heated platform of packed earth, covered by a scratchy, patched quilt.
Where…?
Memories, sharp and fragmented, sliced through the fog. The endless overtime. The blur of code on his screen, a marathon of 72 hours. The crushing pressure in his chest, the gasp for air that never came, the world fading to grey.
And then… this.
A flood of alien memories, soft and worn like old cloth, seeped into the cracks of his consciousness. A name: Lin Yan. A place: Willow Creek Village, in some backwater of the Great Yan Dynasty. A life: of perpetual hunger, of stooped labor in unyielding fields, of a body that had been frail from birth. A family: large, poor, and clinging to survival by the thinnest of threads.
"He's awake! Mother, Second Brother is awake!"
A child's voice, high with relief. Lin Yan turned his head, a movement that cost him alarming effort. A small, pinched face with enormous dark eyes peered at him. It was his… little brother. Lin Xiao. The memories supplied the name and a surge of protective fondness that felt both foreign and deeply ingrained.
Before he could speak, a woman appeared, blotting out the dim light from the single small window. Her face was lined far beyond its years, her hands rough and red, but her eyes, the moment they met his, were pools of such profound worry and tenderness that his breath hitched. Wang Shi. His mother.
"Yan'er," she whispered, her voice raspy. A cool, calloused hand touched his forehead. "The fever broke. Thank the ancestors." She tried to smile, but it was a trembling thing. "Xiao, fetch the porridge. The thin one at the back of the pot."
Lin Xiao scampered away. Lin Yan tried to sit up, and the world swayed. His mother's hands, surprisingly strong, helped him lean against the mud wall. He looked down at himself. He wore a coarse, grey hemp tunic, patched at the elbows. His arms were sticks, the skin pale and lacking vitality. This was not his body. Yet it was.
The rest of the family began to filter into the low, cramped room as word spread of his waking. A tall, gaunt man with a permanent stoop—Lin Dahu, his father—nodded at him from the doorway, his eyes shadowed with a fatigue that was more than physical. Two older men, bearing clear resemblance to his father, followed. The stern-faced one with solid shoulders was Lin Tie, the eldest brother. The one with cleverer eyes, darting to assess the room's condition, was Lin Zhu. Their wives, Chunhua and Meilan, hovered behind them, their faces politely concerned but etched with their own strains. Two young girls, one gentle and one bright-eyed, stood together—his sisters, Xiaohua and Xiaolian. The air in the room grew thick with the presence of too many people and too little hope.
Lin Xiao returned, carefully carrying a cracked ceramic bowl filled with a watery, greyish liquid. A few sparse grains of millet floated on the surface. Porridge. It was an insult to the word.
"Here, Second Brother. It's hot." Lin Xiao held it out, his own small stomach giving an audible gurgle.
Shame, sharp and acidic, cut through Lin Yan's disorientation. This child was hungry, yet he was giving the best of the scraps to him. He took the bowl. The warmth was the only substantial thing about it. He sipped. It was bland, with a faint, dusty aftertaste. It did nothing to touch the void inside him. This was what sustained eleven people.
"We'll need to borrow more grain from Old Chen before the next harvest," Lin Zhu said quietly, his voice practical. "The interest…"
"We have no choice," Lin Dahu interrupted, his voice a low rumble of defeat. "We pay the land tax next month. The magistrate's men won't be put off again."
A heavy silence fell, broken only by the sound of Lin Yan sipping the miserable porridge. The despair in the room was a tangible weight. He saw it in his father's stooped shoulders, in the way his mother's hands never stilled, pleating a corner of her worn apron. He saw it in the downcast eyes of his sisters, whose marriage prospects grew dimmer with each passing season of poverty. He saw it in the resigned set of his brothers' jaws.
This is it? The thought roared in Lin Yan's mind, drowning out the vestiges of his past-life memories. I die from overwork in one world, only to be reborn into a life of slow, grinding starvation in another? A life where my entire family is one bad harvest away from dissolution or death?
The injustice of it was a fire in his gut. He had been a fighter in his past life, in his own quiet, stubborn way. He had coded through nights to build something, to provide. That drive, that desperate need to build and sustain, was the core of him. And here, watching his frail little brother's hungry eyes, feeling the brittle fragility of his own new body, he felt it ignite again.
No. The word was silent but absolute. Not like this. I will not watch this family break. I will not die hungry in the dark again.
As if in response to that silent, furious vow, the air before his eyes shimmered.
A rectangle of cool, blue light materialized, hovering at the edge of his vision. Text, in clean, modern characters, scrolled into being.
[Life Signal Stabilized. Host Consciousness Synced.]
[Welcome, Host: Lin Yan. Initializing Ranch Development System…]
Lin Yan froze, the bowl halfway to his lips. He blinked rapidly. The blue screen remained, superimposed on the sight of his worried mother.
[Scanning Host Assets…]
[Status: Critically Under-nourished. Debilitated. Minor Congenital Qi Deficiency.]
[Family Unit: Detected (11 members). Cohesion Level: High. Livelihood Status: Critical.]
[Land Assets: Barren Plot (1 Mu) – Family Plot. Soil Quality: Barren. Yield: Negligible.]
[Livestock Assets: Scrawny Chickens x3. Health: Poor. Egg Production: Low.]
[Initial Assessment: Survival Priority One.]
[Initial Mission Generated.]
Mission: Sustain Your Family.
Objective: Produce 50 viable eggs from current poultry assets within 30 days.
Reward: System Points x100. 'Basic Poultry Care' Manual (Integrated). Improved Chicken Breed (Hens x5).
Penalty for Failure: System Energy Withdrawal. Host Vitality -30%.
Lin Yan's heart hammered against his thin ribs. A system. The transmigrator's cliché. But here, now, in this desperate place, it was not a cliché. It was a lifeline thrown into a raging sea.
The system's interface was simple. A mission log. An inventory, currently empty. A small points counter at zero. A section labeled "Knowledge" and another labeled "Livestock," both greyed out except for the blinking mission prompt.
Fifty eggs. In thirty days. With three half-starved chickens. It was an impossible task for the frail village youth he had replaced. But he was not just that youth anymore. He was Lin Yan, who had debugged impossible code under impossible deadlines. He was Lin Yan, who now had a system that quantified reality.
"Yan'er?" His mother's voice cut through his trance. "Are you alright? You look… strange."
He lowered the bowl, his hands steadier than they had any right to be. He looked at his mother, then at little Lin Xiao, at his worn-out father, at his waiting family. For the first time since awakening, the hollow in his chest wasn't just from hunger. It was filled with a terrifying, exhilarating sense of purpose.
He managed a small, shaky smile—the first genuine expression this face had likely worn in weeks. "I'm… better, Mother," he said, his voice a dry rustle. He glanced at the nearly empty bowl, then at Lin Xiao. "Thank you for the porridge. It helped."
His eyes drifted to the small, grimy window, beyond which lay their meager plot of land and the rickety lean-to that housed the chickens. Three scrawny chickens. Fifty eggs. The first step.
"I think," he said slowly, the plan already forming, connections firing between his modern managerial mind and the system's cold logic, "I should go check on the hens. They might have laid something."
Wang Shi looked perplexed. "Now? You've just woken! And those useless birds barely give an egg a week between them."
"Maybe they just need… a different approach," Lin Yan said, pushing back the thin quilt. Every movement was an effort, but the blue screen in his vision, a constant, pulsating reminder, fueled him. "I feel a need for some air."
As he stood, leaning briefly on the kang for support, his gaze met Lin Xiao's. "Xiao, come with me. You can help."
The boy's face lit up, eager to be useful, to be near his brother who had been sick for so long. Lin Yan took a final look at the room, at the faces of his new family, etched with worry and want.
Fifty eggs, he thought, the mission objective burning in his mind like a beacon. It starts with fifty eggs.
He walked out of the dim hut, his little brother at his heels, into the weak, late-afternoon sunlight of the Great Yan Dynasty. The path to the chicken lean-to was only a few dozen steps, but to Lin Yan, it felt like the first steps on a vast, uncharted range. The weight of his family's survival was on his shoulders, but for the first time, he felt the solid ground of a plan beneath his feet.
The Ranch Development System was active. And Lin Yan was no longer just surviving. He was ready to build.