Transmigrated in the Ancient World During Famine, Surviving by Keeping a Low Profile

Lin Mei is a twenty-six-year-old office worker in the modern city of Haishi, living a life defined by frugality and relentless labor. Orphaned by her father’s death in a violent dispute and abandoned by her mother, she was raised by her grandmother in a rural village. After her grandmother passes away from cancer, Lin Mei returns to the city with a singular goal: to save enough money to retire to the countryside and live a quiet life. She works a full-time job and spends her nights delivering food, accumulating a savings of nearly two hundred thousand yuan. Her existence is solitary and exhausting, marked by a deep-seated fear of uncertainty and a desire for stability.

The narrative shifts when Lin Mei is involved in a minor traffic accident involving a delivery scooter. While checking her injuries, she notices that her grandmother’s silver ring, which she has worn for years, glows with an eerie amber light after coming into contact with her blood. That evening, while feeling lazy after a meal, she discovers she possesses a supernatural ability to make objects disappear and reappear. Through online research and experimentation, she realizes she has acquired a spatial storage ability, though the space is disappointingly small—only about eleven square meters. Recalling novels she read in college, she fears an apocalypse or transmigration is imminent and decides to prepare for the worst.

Lin Mei takes a month of annual leave and returns to her hometown county town. She rents a small, closed storefront to serve as a cover for her activities and begins an intense period of stockpiling supplies. She spends her entire savings and takes out a significant loan, purchasing industrial shelving, vast quantities of clothing, bedding, and hygiene products. Her most critical purchases are food-related; she buys live pigs, sheep, chickens, and ducks, which she has processed and cooked into ready-to-eat meals. She also acquires massive amounts of rice, flour, grains, salt, sugar, and oil. Recognizing the importance of medical knowledge, she spends a substantial sum on a wide variety of medicines, including prescriptions for chronic illnesses and basic surgical tools. She also gathers books on historical knowledge, agricultural techniques, and survival skills, along with self-defense weapons and high-yield crop seeds.

After twenty days of nonstop work, the space is nearly full, containing enough cooked food to last five years and enough water to last two. Satisfied with her preparations, Lin Mei returns to the county town for one last night. She eats barbecue and drinks beer at a night market, then returns to her hotel room to sleep. She never wakes up in her modern world. Instead, she finds herself reborn as a newborn baby girl in ancient China, specifically during the Northern Song Dynasty. She is born into the Lin family in Peach Blossom Village, the third son’s household, which is large, poor, and deeply traditional. Her mother, Tian Guihua, struggles to produce breast milk, and the family relies on goat’s milk and rice broth to feed the infant.

As a newborn, Lin Mei retains her adult consciousness and her spatial ability. She quickly learns to retrieve the baby formula she had stored in her space, ensuring her survival during the critical early days when her mother’s milk has not yet come in. She observes the complex dynamics of her new family, including the hardworking elders, the ambitious youngest uncle who is preparing for imperial examinations, and the strict but fair matriarch. The story follows her adaptation to life in ancient times, navigating the challenges of infancy while relying on her hidden reserves and knowledge to secure a comfortable existence in a world vastly different from the one she left behind.