Chapter 3: The Old Lame Man and the Little Pockmarked Boy

Yes, this question has puzzled Shu Guan for four years now.

Because, biologically or sociologically, such a village should not exist.

Taoyuan Village is an ordinary-looking small mountain village, and the villagers living here are also quite ordinary.

They eat with their mouths, walk with their legs, plow the fields with plows, fish with nets, get sick, and panic if they miss a meal.

Regarding this matter, Shu Guan has been observing silently and has confirmed it for a long time.

Especially toward the old cripple who adopted him, at the beginning, Shu Guan had fantasized that the old cripple might be a hidden expert living deep in the mountains.

The protagonist is taken in by a hidden expert, who then trains them to become a peerless powerhouse before wreaking havoc all around.

Shu Guan thought that it would be nice to spend his life as a transcender in this way, following the template of many web novels.

Especially before Shu Guan turned three, he held such a fantasy.

For this, he tried many methods to test the old cripple. The most ruthless time, he deliberately broke his own leg.

On that day, the old cripple was taking a noon break in the courtyard while Shu Guan secretly climbed the old Gui tree there. Then, pretending to accidentally lose his footing, he fell from a tree branch more than four meters above the ground.

He wanted to test if the old cripple was indeed just an ordinary old cripple.

At the time of doing this, Shu Guan was two years and eight months old. He had been living in this isolated mountain village for nearly three years, and he was nearly going crazy. To get out of here, he wouldn't hesitate to do anything insane.

Shu Guan had foreseen that the soft soil beneath the Gui tree wouldn't kill him if he fell, so he decided to take the risk.

Unfortunately, the final result did not turn out as Shu Guan had hoped. The old cripple didn't leap up to catch him before he hit the ground, revealing himself as a hidden expert.

But that was not how it happened.

The old cripple was awakened by his wailing cries of pain.

So, that day Shu Guan broke his leg.

Fortunately, the old cripple later set Shu Guan's broken leg, and there were no lingering effects.

The only thing that puzzled Shu Guan afterwards was that if the old cripple could heal his leg, why couldn't he heal his own limp?

In short, Shu Guan tried many things like this before he turned three, attempting to find out if there were any hidden experts in the village.

In the end, all his attempts failed. The people living here were completely normal humans.

So the question is, where did the first villagers of Taoyuan Village come from?

Because ordinary humans absolutely could not cross those towering cliffs and reach this valley!

At the same time, the villagers of Taoyuan Village were not uncivilized; their food, clothing, and living habits all showed significant characteristics of a developed agricultural civilization.

However, such a small valley as Taoyuan Village could not give birth to a mature civilization or evolve an intelligent population.

So the villagers of Taoyuan Village could not have lived in this valley in the first place.

In fact, according to Shu Guan's understanding, the people of Taoyuan Village arrived here over two hundred years ago.

As stated by the village elders and the written records left behind, it was during a time when the world was in chaos. Their ancestors were refugees who had lost their homes in the war. They fled to the edge of the mountains in this area, intending to seek refuge in the mountains, but they still encountered marauders. Just as all hope seemed lost, an immortal appeared to save them and sent them here using his Immortal Arts.

To Shu Guan, this was naturally a preposterous legend.

As for the reason for not believing it, it stems from a conclusion that Shu Guan had gradually deduced through observation over four years.

Shu Guan spent four years observing every person in the village and everything in the mountain village because he still hadn't given up on the hope of leaving the valley.

To get out, the first thing he needed to determine was where he had transcended.

And now, he had a fairly clear judgment.

This should still be Earth, and within his own Huaxia Country.

The simplest and most powerful piece of evidence was that the villagers of Taoyuan Village spoke the Huaxia Language.

Of course, it couldn't be Mandarin, but a heavily accented dialect that sounded a bit like the Cantonese Shu Guan knew from his previous life and a bit like the dialect from Xiangxi.

At the beginning, Shu Guan could only understand the general idea, but not long after, he could understand it all.

After confirming that he did not leave Earth, Shu Guan next needed to determine the time period he transcended to.

The first time the old cripple carried him into Taoyuan Village, Shu Guan saw the clothes the villagers wore and determined that he must have transcended to the ancient times.

But it is difficult to determine a more specific time period based solely on the style of clothing.

Unless it's worn by nobles, who have various rules and regulations, or commoners in big cities, their clothing would have some details reflecting the characteristics of the fashion of a certain era.

As for the countryside villagers, their clothing has always been simple for the sake of convenience, and it has not changed much over hundreds of years. For example, there would be no significant differences between the clothes worn by farmers and hunters of the Han ethnicity during the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty.