Marin was feeling quite frustrated. He was at home enjoying the game "Europa Universalis," after much effort, he had finally managed to become the Holy Roman Emperor. He was in the middle of his victory when his buddy Li Liang called for help, asking him to join a fight.
The conflict had arisen because Li Liang had gone out that evening to set up a street stall and had a dispute with a group of thugs over territory. As a result, Li Liang got beaten up.
Naturally, Li Liang was not willing to accept this, so he called up a few friends to help him get back at them. Marin, being tall and strong with agile movements, had learned some military hand-to-hand combat from a retired soldier in his childhood. Naturally, he was the first "beast" Li Liang summoned for backup.
Marin, still riding the high from sweeping through the Holy Roman Empire in the game and becoming an emperor worshipped by thousands, didn't hesitate. He hopped on his second-hand electric bike and eagerly set off to "uphold justice on Earth."
Once the group had gathered, Li Liang promised to treat everyone to hot pot afterward and gave each pack of good cigarettes. With that, the mood was set...
Under the leadership of the burly Marin, the group found the young thugs still at their stall. Like a knight, Marin charged at them, initiating an unmounted charge...
The young thugs were indeed just weaklings. They had only managed to gang up on Li Liang earlier because they outnumbered him. With Marin's knightly charge leading the way, the thugs were quickly defeated.
However, Marin got carried away in the heat of the moment, focusing solely on charging forward and not noticing the danger behind him. Suddenly, a sinister brick appeared at the back of his head...
And then, Marin the knight took a blow to the back of his head and lost consciousness...
"Indeed... the brick... breaks martial arts... even gods... can't withstand it..." This was Marin's last thought...
...
After what seemed like a very long time—who knows how long—Marin finally woke up, but something felt off. When he opened his eyes, he didn't see the white walls and soft lighting of a hospital, nor did he see the familiar surroundings of his rental apartment... Instead, he could distinctly smell the fresh scent of grass...
"Damn it! Li Liang, you bastard! I got hurt sticking up for you, and you just dumped me in the wild without even taking me to the hospital! Screw this, I'm cutting ties with you!"
Marin cursed as he tried to get up, but he suddenly realized that the rather immature voice didn't seem to be his own, though it was definitely coming from him...
Having read many time-travel novels, Marin was not unfamiliar with this kind of scenario:
"Could it be... that I've traveled through time?"
Marin quickly stretched out his hand, scanning the parts of his body that he could see...
And then, he saw a young, tender body, dressed in strange clothes, with a pair of snow-white, delicate hands that were clearly not his own...
Suddenly, Marin's heart tightened—could he have traveled into the body of a woman? He had been worried about this ever since that popular series *Go Princess Go* started. The thought of becoming a woman and being pressed down by a man in the future... made Marin's hair stand on end, and he dared not think further...
With nervous anticipation, he skillfully commanded his left hand to reach down to check...
A moment later, Marin breathed a sigh of relief—he was still a man. It seemed that he had traveled into the body of a boy. After all, he hadn't even fully grown down there yet...
As he relaxed, a strong wave of hunger hit him, and Marin fainted again...
...
After a long while, Marin woke up from hunger...
At the same time, a flood of memories merged with Marin's consciousness—clearly, these were the memories of the original owner of this body...
By reading these memories, Marin learned that the original owner of this body was also named Marin. However, he wasn't a Chinese Marin but a Western one. More precisely, he was a young wandering knight named Marin Hoffman from the German region in the late 15th century.
What is a wandering knight, you ask? First of all, a knight (mostly an apprentice knight) typically owns a warhorse, a lance, and a set of knight's armor. Some knights even have horse armor for their steeds, which is part of the basic equipment. Additionally, all knights undergo rigorous training from a young age, excelling in mounted charges and close combat, making them much stronger than ordinary people.
During the European Middle Ages and the Renaissance, knights were the lowest-ranking feudal lords in Europe. Above them were barons, viscounts, counts, marquises, dukes, princes, kings, and emperors.
However, not every knight was fortunate enough to receive a fief. Knights needed to fight and risk their lives for higher-ranking lords to have a chance at being granted land.
Moreover, the fief of a knight was typically small, perhaps only the size of one or a few villages. For instance, this young wandering knight named Marin belonged to the Hoffman family, a small knightly family under the County of Mark in the Ruhr region. This family owned only a small village with little arable land—no more than 100 jugerums (an ancient Roman unit of area, equivalent to about 2 acres in the Middle Ages, or about 12 mu). In total, the Hoffman family owned 1,200 mu of land.
1,200 mu may sound like a lot, right? In the same period in the Ming Dynasty, it would have been enough to support a large family comfortably. However, thanks to the terribly inefficient agricultural techniques of medieval Europe, agrarian yields were so low that it was almost touching. The Hoffman family's 1,200 mu of land, after deducting the 600 mu left fallow (Europeans practiced a crop rotation system, where land was left fallow every two or three years to restore fertility; this tradition persisted in rural Europe until modern times), yielded only 100,000 pounds of rye annually (Cologne pounds, where 1 Cologne mark = 233.85 grams, and 1 Cologne pound = 2 marks = 467.7 grams). On average, each mu produced only 166.7 pounds of rye, or about 156 catties. This was in a good year; in times of disaster, yields could drop to around 100 catties per mu.
Such a low yield was truly moving—no wonder thousands of people frequently starved to death in the German region during the Middle Ages...
Even worse, the yield of wheat was even more touching. A large estate near the Hoffman estate produced less than 100 catties of wheat per mu...
Damn, as a top student of history, the time-traveled Marin knew well that since the Han Dynasty, wheat yields in China had stabilized at around 200 catties per mu. By the Ming Dynasty, the rice yields in Jiangnan could even reach 500 catties per mu.
The key issue, as Marin knew from various time-travel novels, was that Westerners didn't know how to use manure as fertilizer. For a long time, Westerners didn't fertilize their fields; they simply tilled the soil, scattered seeds, and then watered them. After that, they went off to do other things, and farm laborers didn't even bother to weed.
As for excrement, medieval Europeans generally defecated anywhere, causing cities to reek of a foul odor. This led to flies swarming and diseases spreading everywhere. The repeated outbreaks of the Black Death in the Middle Ages were inseparable from Europe's terrible sanitary conditions at the time.
Meanwhile, in the East, farmers even pushed manure carts to the city to collect excrement for use as fertilizer in their fields. There were also children who went around picking up manure pellets.
Chinese people used their excrement in the fields, leading to high agricultural yields, which supported the prosperity of Chinese civilization. Europeans, on the other hand, left their excrement all over their cities, breeding countless flies and fostering the spread of various plagues...
Ever since the principle of primogeniture (where the eldest son inherits everything) was established in Europe, the other sons of noble families were left in a difficult position. The eldest son would take everything, leaving the other sons to merely watch their brother's good fortune...
In the case of great noble families, the situation was slightly better. For example, although the king's other sons didn't have inheritance rights, the royal family was large and wealthy enough to grant them titles like duke or count, allowing them to enjoy life with their own estates. Dukes, counts, and other high-ranking nobles had large enough territories to share a bit with their other sons.
However, lesser nobles were less fortunate. Their land was often so limited that it was barely enough to support the eldest son's family. If they divided it further among the younger sons, everyone would starve. For instance, the Hoffmann family had only 1,200 acres of poor land. That small yield could barely support the eldest son's family (which involved more than just feeding them—it also included feeding warhorses, buying and maintaining weapons and armor, and supporting attendants—all of which were significant expenses). Supporting Marin Hoffmann and his younger siblings would have been impossible.
Therefore, the smallest feudal lords in the German region—the knights—were forced to make a tough decision. When their sons, other than the eldest, came of age, they would give them a warhorse, a set of armor, and a lance, and send them out to make their way in the world. As for daughters, some poor nobles, to save on dowries, would send them to convents to become nuns.
Typically, these sons who were driven out would seek service under great nobles, acting as bodyguards or fighting for them in battles.
However, not every knight's son driven from home was lucky enough to find a noble who appreciated them. Many knights, unable to find work, had no choice but to wander and look for temporary employment opportunities. Thus, a new group emerged—the wandering knights.
These wandering knights, who grew up in knightly families and received rigorous martial training, were skilled both on horseback and on foot. They could easily take on two or three ordinary strongmen, and the stronger ones could even single-handedly take on a group of bandits.
In fact, these wandering knights were the earliest mercenaries. However, they were freelancers, seeking to serve great nobles and wealthy men as individuals, without forming organized groups.
It wasn't until a few years ago, when Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I witnessed the formidable combat strength of the Swiss mercenary corps, composed of Swiss mountain folk, during the war for the Burgundy region, that he considered recruiting mercenaries in his German territories. The famous German mercenaries of later times began to officially appear during this period.
(Note: Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I was not formally crowned by the Pope in Rome until 1508, at which point he officially became the Holy Roman Emperor. Before this, his title of Emperor was self-proclaimed, and recognized only within the Holy Roman Empire. Without the Pope's coronation, foreigners only acknowledged Maximilian I as the King of Germany. However, in 1508, Pope Julius II not only officially crowned Maximilian I but also permitted future Holy Roman Emperors to be crowned by an archbishop in their own country, without needing to travel to Rome.)
Now it was 1494, a time when Emperor Maximilian I was recruiting soldiers and preparing for war. Marin Hoffmann's father, Friederich Hoffmann, upon hearing of the emperor's recruitment of mercenaries (Maximilian I had already recruited a batch in 1487), decided to send his second son—16-year-old Marin Hoffmann—out early to join the emperor's forces and become one of his mercenaries.
Originally, by tradition, Marin would have had to wait until he was 18 to be driven out. But old Hoffmann saw the emperor's recruitment as a rare opportunity. If Marin could achieve military success, he might even earn a noble title and some land. So, he decided to send Marin to seek his fortune early.
However, he overestimated his son's street smarts. Not long after leaving home, the original Marin Hoffmann had all of his travel money—just 10 gold coins—swindled by a fraudster who claimed to know the emperor's chief guard...
Then, the poor Marin Hoffmann found himself without money for lodging or food. With no other options, he had to ride out into the wild to hunt. The game could fill his stomach, and the pelts could be sold for travel money.
But Marin Hoffmann was a knight, not a hunter. So, young Marin couldn't catch much. Can you imagine a heavily armored knight, wearing full plate armor and wielding a lance, chasing after a small, quick rabbit?
The heavy armor slowed the horse's speed and agility, making it impossible to catch any wild animals. The slower ones had long been hunted to extinction.
Moreover, young Marin didn't have a bow or crossbow and didn't know how to shoot, so he had to continue riding around, chasing animals with an empty stomach...
Finally, after two days without food, the starving and dizzy Marin fell off his horse while chasing a young deer and passed out on the grass. That's when Marin from modern-day China transmigrated into him...