Siheyuan Courtyard: Lingquan Grotto Paradise

Li Jiayi, who transmigrated ten years ago without any cheat, spends the scorching summer of 1958 blowing up a manure pit and teasing the school dean, then returns to the row house compound and clashes every day with the lecherous First Uncle Ying Jiasheng, the money-grubbing Second Uncle Shen Yongcai, and the shrewish Shi family.

On his tenth birthday, he finally awakens a multifunctional spring-water spatial realm, complete with storage, processing rooms, fish ponds, and mountains and forests, with time flowing much faster inside than outside. The spring water nourishes crops and heals injuries and strengthens the body. During summer vacation, he brings pastries and grain coupons to the countryside to visit his elders, secretly uses the space to stockpile rice, flour, meat, and vegetables, improves the family’s diet of mostly coarse grains, resolves the unreasonable bullying from the neighbors, and, relying on the confidence of a heroic father and the space as his trump card, refuses to be dragged down by the schemes of the whole compound’s petty troublemakers.