Chapter 2: The Cruel Reality

  This is a small hill, looking very desolate, even the feeling of the wind blowing on the body is that kind of primitive feeling. A narrow dirt road passes by the side of the small hill, extending all the way to the distance. Yang Bo's hands are propped up on his eyebrows, gazing far into the distance.

  Yellow!

  Besides yellow is still yellow.

  Desolate!

  Desolate as before, still desolate.

  Suddenly, Yang Bo's heart moved, and a black object that was vaguely visible behind the distant hills caught his attention. Yang Bo bent down, crouched low, and slowly crept over.

  The terrain is higher here, no wonder he couldn't see this black shadow just now.

  Circling around the mound, Yang Bo carefully poked his head out to take a look and found a corpse with green spots all over its skin lying behind the hill!

  That corpse had become a mummy, the dark eye sockets had long since lost their eyeballs, but the white teeth were still very neat, as if smiling at Yang Bo.

  "I... grass, grass, grass!" Yang Bo suddenly jumped up "Who the hell is joking again? Are you done?"

  Apart from his faint echo of speech, there was a silence between heaven and earth, and the corpse still stared at Yang Bo with a mocking gaze.

  Although Yang Bo was convinced that the mummy was a prop in his heart, he calculated for a long time and still didn't have the courage to go forward and check it out personally.

  Yang Bo looked around and gazed down at the yellow dirt road below, then he saw more skeletons lying on the side of the road!

  "Am I in hell?" Yang Bo was stunned for a moment and asked himself softly.

  "It's definitely true, but... I haven't done anything bad, have I?" Yang Bo was already in a daze, wondering why heaven was being so severe in punishing him.

  His frail body seemed unable to withstand the successive mental blows, and Yang Bo's eyes turned black as he fell to the ground.

  After an unknown period of time, Yang Bo slowly woke up, he was awakened by the sound. The hell in front of him was still there, which made him no longer have any luck.

  Just then, a faint sound seemed to come from afar, and Yang Bo, who was in a daze, suddenly came to his senses, flipped over and crouched behind a mound, carefully looking towards the source of the sound.

  A group of people in tattered clothes walked unsteadily on this yellow land, just like Yang Bo, they were all skin and bones, with deep eye sockets. Each of them was dressed in tattered clothes, especially many women and children, their clothes were torn like sacks, revealing dark skin inside. The words "shame" could no longer be seen on them, except for numbness or despair...

  These people soon walked to the bottom of the slope where Yang Bo was hiding, and Yang Bo plucked up his courage to poke his head out and greeted them: "Hello? Excuse me, where is the director? Where's the camera? You guys are really professional, aren't you just extras? Hey, I'm talking to you..."

  Those people completely ignored Yang Bo, as if Yang Bo was air, and walked away to a distant place with an expressionless face...

  Yang Bo lay on the hillside, he knew that the top priority was to find someone to ask about the current situation, but seeing these people who seemed to die with just one more word, even though he was anxious in his heart, he had no way.

  After waiting for half a day, a guy who looked somewhat angry finally walked over from afar. Yang Bo took a closer look and saw that the guy appeared to be in his early twenties with a silly-looking face.

  "Hey!" Yang Bo stuck his head out and waved at him.

  The man was startled and cautiously looked over at Yang Bo for a few moments, then seemed to hesitate before walking towards the mountain after seeing that Yang Bo didn't seem to have any malicious intentions.

  Yang Bo enthusiastically ran down and tightly grasped the man's hands "Good brother, good brother! Come come come, I have something to ask you"

  That man was startled by Yang Bo's sudden movement and struggled to break free from the devil's claw for a long time: "Brother, what's the matter? Just ask, Tie Niu will tell you the truth..."

  "It turned out to be... Iron Bull brother" Yang Bo's mind surged with unpleasant thoughts, this person's way of speaking was very different from modern people: "I wanted to ask Iron Bull brother, where is this place?"

  Tie Niu raised his head and thought for a moment "We set out from Guidu Prefecture, and have been on the road for ten days. Shouldn't we be arriving at Xiayi by now?"

  Yang Bo's heart had already begun to feel a little faint when he heard these ancient place names. As for Gui De Fu, he did know that it was in Henan.

  "Brother Iron Bull, do you know what year it is now?" Yang Bo felt like he was about to cry.

  "I don't know..." Tie Niu rubbed the back of his head, thinking for a moment: "But I've heard some things from others..."

  "Come on, Tie Niu! Spit it out!" Yang Bo said impatiently.

  As Tie Niu's intermittent narrative continued, Yang Bo sank into a deep despair.

  Chongzhen 5 years!

  It turns out I really did cross over, and unexpectedly crossed over to the end of the Ming dynasty!

  Yang Bo had actually been aware of this for a long time, but when Tie Niu uttered the two words "Chongzhen", the vague hopes in his heart were still ruthlessly crushed by the huge hammer.

  Yang Bo's grades were not good when he read books, and in the whole class, he was hovering around the bottom ten. The head teacher arranged the school flower with good academic performance to sit next to Yang Bo due to his parents' three bottles of oil every year. As a result, the school flower's grades dropped from the top five to over twenty.

  That strict history teacher couldn't stand the two of them flirting in his class, so he reported it to the principal. The school flower's parents carefully considered and transferred her to another school, and Yang Bo's first love ended like that. In a fit of anger, Yang Bo took this strict old man's class with a confrontational attitude, and it can be imagined that he didn't learn much history either.

  However, although Yang Bo's history is not great, he also knows that the great disaster in Henan and other places in Chongzhen 5 years is only one sentence in historical books: "In June of the fifth year of Chongzhen, Henan and Shanxi were drought-stricken. The red earth was thousands of miles away, and the dead bodies were loaded on the road. The people were greatly starving, and they ate each other."

  Yang Bo only knew that now everywhere here is withered and yellow, all the mountain trees he saw were white and flowerless, the grass was eaten up, the bark was eaten up, even the roots of the grass were dug up, and there were corpses of refugees starving to death everywhere, he was very lucky to have witnessed history.

  Yang Bo also knew that this era was an era when the people were struggling to survive, and the common people were selling their children for food. Internally, there were corrupt officials and greedy clerks who were extorting and plundering, externally, there were Manchu Tartars eyeing them covetously, and everywhere, bandits were constantly digging at the corners of the Great Wall.

  This is Late Ming, a scene like hell!

  "Oh heavens!" Yang Bo couldn't hold back anymore and roared towards the sky "Are you blind? Bringing me to this era? I... grass?"

  Tie Niu saw Yang Bo's frantic appearance and was a little scared, wanting to leave but not daring to, standing helplessly on one side.

  It's no wonder that Yang Bo, who had always been optimistic, was extremely disheartened and depressed when he found himself in such an era. He had read a few novels about alternate histories, and he had even envied the protagonists who could kill with abandon, but now that it was happening to him, he wasn't so calm after all.

  "Who the hell said crossing over is fun? Why don't you try it?"