Chapter 1: Opening the River

Dalu State, Lizhou State.

There is a big river running through the state, called Lishui.

Lizhou is named after Lishui. This big river not only runs through Lizhou City, but also splits into two in the lower reaches, one to the north and the other to the south. The north enters Song State and the south enters the sea. It can be said that it is well connected and is a very important waterway for Dalu State. Except for winter, other seasons are extremely busy, with hundreds of large and small ships passing through here every day.

So there is a poem since ancient times:

"Lishui is easy to navigate, going south to the sea and north to Song. The waves deliver fat, and one water can make the country rich."

It is clearly the transition period between winter and spring, the river has just thawed, and it is still the season of cold wind, but the dock is hot and crowded, the heat of the laborers and trackers gathers together, and the stench and heat rush out together, which is extremely intense.

Today is the beginning of spring. The Lishui River has thawed from the winter freeze. Even if it has not thawed, the laborers will be called on to break the ice and force the boats through. This set of procedures is called "opening the river".

Every year when the river is opened, people who rely on the Lishui River for transportation will gather here. The laborers will chip the ice to weaken the ice, and then the trackers will pull a heavy boat to crush the ice and completely clear the river.

The trackers carry the boats, the laborers break the ice, the wind blows the blood and sweat, the sun burns the skin, and the horns are non-stop.

"The rope on the shoulder is nine feet and three feet long! Ho-hi!"

The trackers shouted the horns and pulled the big boat together. The thick bottom of the boat was blown with sails and wind, and the sailors on top also echoed, using the wind and manpower to crush the ice.

"You have to work so hard, but you have to shoulder the burden! Ho-ho!"

This boat is not an ordinary boat, but a special large boat that is only used for river opening every year. It has an iron-cast bottom and a hull made of century-old wood. No ice can withstand it.

"Step on the stones with your feet and dig the sand with your hands! Ho-ho!"

The ice was pressed open, and there were cracks everywhere. Some large pieces of ice turned over in the water, and even small icebergs were created.

"Don't say that you can't sail against the current! Ho-ho!"

A river like the Lishui River is five miles wide. River opening is a big project that takes a whole day. Even the governor of Lizhou will come to supervise it in person.

The iron-bottomed boat rushed towards the ice with amazing force, and the loud and frightening cracking sound knocked the ice apart, like a battering ram. Ice fragments were projected into the sky and fell around the trackers like hail. There was also some fine dust and ice mist, reflecting the sunlight, projecting rainbows one after another.

The air was filled with icy mist, and people were steaming. The cold and heat intertwined, creating bursts of white smoke.

The first batch of trackers was exhausted, and the second batch caught up immediately, took over the load, and continued to pull the icebreaker.

The first batch of trackers who had unloaded their loads left quickly, wanting to rest.

Only one person stood there, without moving.

He had a dark brown skin and looked extremely healthy. His muscles were bulging and his figure was well-proportioned after years of exercise in pulling the boat.

What made him stand out even more was that most of the other trackers had rough looks and hunched backs, but he was the only one standing straight and handsome. At first glance, he didn't look like a tracker at all.

His name was Li Qi.

Li Qi, who had just put down the rope, looked at the big ship and the glacier in front of him and sighed. Even though it was the third time he had seen it, he still felt it was spectacular.

However, before he could finish his sigh, an old tracker next to him had already hugged him and pulled Li Qi, who was standing there stupidly admiring the scenery, away.

"Let's go, Xiao Li, it's Erdao's turn, let's go drink some hot soup first!"

"Uh, ah... OK, Uncle Six." Li Qi nodded and walked to the shore with a group of bare-chested boatmen with only a loincloth.

Li Qi is also a boatman, but he is different from others. He has not been a boatman for generations.

On the shore, others had already cooked hot soup and prepared clothes to warm up the boatmen and sailors who came down the river, because they would have to go up again after they recovered their strength.

Sitting together, the boatmen changed their clothes, held the meat soup, and started to eat with a slurp. They all looked ugly when eating.

Only Li Qi squatted by the river. Although he was also very tired, covered in sweat, and had scars from being pulled by the rope, he still waited quietly and did not try to grab the meat soup cooked by the government.

He waited until everyone in the crowd had grabbed one before he walked up, took his own bowl, and returned to the riverside, watching other trackers pulling the boat while sipping soup.

"Brother Li! Come, I found you a stool!" A tracker brought a stool from a distance, and no one knew where he got it from.

"Thank you for your hard work, it's not necessary, no need, everyone has no stool..." Li Qi was about to say something, but was pushed down by the tracker next to him.

"Sixth uncle has one too, brother Li, don't refuse it, this time the first place of the river opening was obtained by you and uncle, it's just a chair, what's wrong with not sitting on it?!"

"That's right!"

"The first place was awarded by the governor himself, brother Li helped us get this position, what's wrong with sitting on a chair?"

"Yes, yes, yes!"

"Me too!"

Seeing this, Li Qi stopped refusing and sat down. While resting, he watched the trackers of "Erdao" pulling the big boat.

Unconsciously, he had seen the river open three times.

It has been almost three years since he came to this world.

Yes, he is not from this world. When he saw the big boat, he felt this emotion again.

The big boat must have a displacement of several thousand tons, but one or two hundred trackers, plus the sails, can actually pull it and break the ice!

He looked at his tendon meat again. Among the trackers, he did not look thin. How could he, an ordinary researcher, have such a physique?

But here...

Thinking of this, he suddenly stood up and punched hard!

The air seemed to be compressed, and with a whistling sound from the fist, the ground not far away was dusty, as if a heavy object had fallen.

Seeing this, other boat trackers praised: "Brother Li's wave power is really handsome!"

"I have practiced for ten years, but I can't compare with Brother Li's two or three years of kung fu!"

"Nonsense, who are you? Who is Brother Li?"

The boat trackers laughed and thought that Li Qi just wanted to move suddenly, and didn't think it was strange.

As a man, it is natural to punch the air when he suddenly gets excited. I don't believe that there are people who have never done it.

But Li Qi was sighing.

More than three years ago, he had a plane crash and lost consciousness, but found that he came here, and he came here in his original body. There was a broken game console and his travel backpack in his pocket, but most of the things in it were burned, leaving only a few pieces of scrap metal.

He traveled through time, and he came with his body.

It's not that I haven't heard of time travel before, but where is the inherited memory? Where is the original identity?

Nothing, not even a household registration.

Some others even brought smartphones, but he only brought half a game console.

Fortunately, he met a local boatman, who saved his life. As a researcher, he was a bit smart, so he established a solid foundation among the boatmen. After gaining their trust, his uncle taught him some of the boatmen's ancestral methods of strength training.

However, in just three years, he can now carry a bag of 700 to 800 kilograms and walk briskly. He even doubted whether he was still a human being? Can humans achieve this level through exercise?

According to his uncle, the boatmen's methods of strength training are still very crude. The methods of the military, government, and sects are more advanced, which are not comparable to the boatmen.

At the beginning, he was very excited and felt that he could achieve great things with what he had in his mind!

Then he was ruthlessly slapped in the face by reality. He realized that this place was so developed that his little cleverness was not needed at all...

He was good at mathematics. There was a sect in Lizhou City called Qianji Sect, which was good at divination. The disciples were all familiar with mental arithmetic analysis tables and probability theory.

There are indeed no cars here, but the people here can travel a hundred miles a day on their own two legs. It is said that the rich have spirit horses at home, which can travel a thousand miles a day.

This is still a mountain road. If there is a highway, can this horse compete with F1?

Yes, there are indeed no machines here, but what are those machines for?

The strange rules here have made this world completely go to another path. Although there are no tools, almost all tools can be replaced by manpower.

Trucks? The trackers can carry 700 to 800 kilograms, and those strong men can each carry 2,000 to 3,000 kilograms of things to work for a day.

Precision machine tools? Li Qi saw a craftsman with his own eyes. In a quarter of an hour, he used a needle to carve a picture of a hundred people fighting on rice to show off his skills.

Do research? Just kidding, the Qianji Sect mentioned before, apart from mental arithmetic ability, is said to be not a big sect in the upper class of Lizhou. But when Li Qi heard them recruiting disciples, he found that their research on probability theory and chaos algorithm was even far beyond his own world, and he couldn't understand it.

The power of people is infinitely magnified in this world. Through things like "gongfa", people completely replace all tools, and no tools are as good as people themselves.

Even if it is weapons, Li Qi believes that even if an entire modern group army is put in this world, it will probably be wiped out by the Lizhou Armed Forces.

He had seen the group of people in the Armed Forces when he was pulling a boat for a big shot. At that time, the general of the Armed Forces performed martial arts for the officials on the boat. He held a long sword and cut off the five-mile wide Lishui River for a few seconds.

That scene gave Li Qi nightmares for three nights.

Moreover, the productivity is not bad at all.

It was said that people from other worlds have brains that are full of lumps. Why are they still in an agricultural society after 10,000 years of development?

They are indeed farming, but the problem is, have you ever seen rice that produces 3,000 to 4,000 kilograms per mu? And it is spiritual rice, the energy is probably terrifyingly high. When Li Qi first started practicing Pai Bo Jin, he couldn't even eat half a bowl of rice in one meal, and felt uncomfortable.

But now, a meal of three kilograms can only be considered half full.

It's just that you can't eat meat.

Because there is not much aquaculture in this world, meat is basically obtained by hunting, but the cost of hunting is very high, so only during festivals, such as when the river is opened now, can we eat some minced meat and meat soup.

Because of this, the boatmen eat like starving ghosts.

There is almost no aquaculture. Li Qi also thought it was a business opportunity at the beginning, but he gave up after trying it.

In this world, people are so fierce, and those wild beasts are even more fierce. A pig is like a tank, which is very difficult to domesticate on a large scale. Li Qi has never seen a tiger in this world, and he estimates that it should not be a big problem for that thing to dismantle Gundam.

So far, the only domesticated livestock he has seen are the spirit horses that occasionally appear on the dock.

I heard that there are also demon beasts and spirit beasts, but that is too far away from Li Qi. He is a boatman, belonging to the bottom of society, and has no chance to see them.

It’s not that he is not motivated. In the first two years, he did not give up climbing up, hoping that he could become a protagonist.

However, in such a world, "gongfa" will inevitably become the most precious resource.

People rely on gongfa to gather into small groups one after another.

For example, in this Lizhou City, there are three boatmen gangs, one is their Pai Bo Gang, the other two are called Shui Ma Gang and Li Zhuang Gang, adding up to a total of 700 to 800 boatmen.

The internal gongfa of the three gangs is extremely strictly guarded. Only after going through the identity check, the letter of surrender, and observing for a long time can they be given the right to practice gongfa and officially become gang members.

After that, they have to swear a poisonous oath and sign a written agreement not to pass on the gongfa to others. If there is a traitor, not only will they be punished internally, but even the government has clear regulations that the gongfa after the written agreement is not allowed to be leaked. The punishment is extremely severe, and they can be exiled for 30,000 miles at any time. I don’t know how big this continent is.

In this case, the small groups in each city divide people according to the gongfa, and the gangs and groups are so solidified that it is unbelievable that he can’t learn the gongfa of other families at all.

In the past three years, apart from relying on his brain to get a position as a think tank in the Paibo Gang and being respected by one or two hundred trackers, he really did nothing.

"Alas..." Thinking of this, he sighed.

He was doing nothing. Although he could eat rice every day, he had to think about adding some vegetables. As for meat... it all depended on the rewards from the bigwigs above.

After traveling through time, life seemed to have become worse... except that his body was a little stronger.

Oh, more than a little.

But, he was a little unwilling.

"Uncle Li, the Sixth Master is looking for you!" At this time, a child, with another tracker who looked to be in his forties or fifties, ran over and shouted to Li Qi.

The child drooled while shouting, and couldn't stop.

Seeing the child's appearance, Li Qi was amused, and smiled as he handed over the half bowl of meat soup he had not finished: "Okay, seeing you like this, take it, and remember to return the bowl after you finish drinking!"

The child cried out, jumped up happily, grabbed the bowl, and drank it with the saliva that just flowed out, chewing the meat inside, and even forgot to thank.

But the old boatman called Uncle Six frowned when he saw the child, put the stool next to Li Qi, and then sat down: "He can't eat meat many times a year, and you give him a guide?"

"I will hold an umbrella for others after being caught in the rain, and I will know the preciousness of a bowl of soup after being hungry. If Uncle Six hadn't given me a bowl of soup, wouldn't I have died?" Li Qi laughed casually.

Then, he turned to business: "Okay, let's not talk about this, Uncle Six, what do you want to talk to me about?"

"I gave you vegetable soup at the beginning!"

Uncle Six muttered, but did not delay the matter, and immediately brought up the business: "Xiao Li, you are smarter, help me figure it out, it seems that we have encountered a problem."

A new book has been published! It is not a systematic flow, so I declare in advance

It has been completed with one million words, and it is constantly updated without interruption, so you can rest assured to read it.