Rich Rely on Technology, Poor Rely on Mutation?

Although Chen Nan could understand Rat's meaning just by watching it, a definite thought from Rat told him in his heart: Hurry up and eat!

It could be said that his shock had made Chen Nan forget his hunger. Shock and hunger were like mischievous children on opposite ends of a seesaw—while shock went down, hunger rose ever higher.

Chen Nan cast aside his shock, picked up the leavened flatbread and smoked meat, and wolfed them down.

As he ate, a few crumbs fell to the ground, and only then did the rats scramble over one another to eat them.

Because he ate too quickly in his hunger, Chen Nan suddenly choked. The food was lodged in his esophagus; without enough saliva to lubricate it, it felt as hard as a rough stone.

Chen Nan found it difficult even to breathe. Pain pierced through his breastbone and kept spreading across his chest. For a moment, he actually felt as if he were about to die.

Don't tell me I hadn't starved to death, only to choke to death instead. That would really be a joke.

With muddled thoughts, Chen Nan raised his little fist and pounded his chest fiercely. At last, the blockage shifted open by a sliver, and the food began sliding down his esophagus like a many-edged blade.

The pain continued downward, yet Chen Nan instead felt relieved.

When the food finally dropped into his stomach, his heart finally settled. After letting out a long breath, the choking incident made Chen Nan think of many more things.

He slapped himself across the face, hating himself for being so irrational. Had he lost even the basic qualities a transmigrator ought to possess?

Look at those other transmigrators—every one of them was extraordinarily calm, meticulous in thought, and anything but ordinary.

Yet here he was, muddled to this extent over a moment of hunger. Gorging himself after great hunger could kill a person. But Chen Nan was thinking of something even further-reaching.

Watching the rats fight over the food scraps, Chen Nan smiled and crumbled the flatbread and smoked meat to feed them, all while pondering his own affairs.

Though he did not know why he could mentally communicate with small animals and make them steal food for him, he absolutely could not use that as an excuse to eat his fill.

He had to strictly control his meals. At the very least, when he was released after seven days, he could not let anyone notice that he had actually gained weight.

For a child his age, after prolonged starvation, seven days of full meals would bring bodily changes obvious at a single glance.

What would happen to him then? Even thinking about it was frightening. That Orphanage Director would certainly interrogate him in every possible way, or perhaps, out of some twisted mentality, punish him even more harshly.

Whether it was one of those outcomes—or even both together—neither would be remotely good for him.

He was an orphan, apparently an unwanted one, and terribly weak. Someone like him could not withstand much hardship.

Thinking of this, he sighed and gave most of the food to the rats. He only ate a strip of smoked meat as thick as a finger, then stopped.

Afterward, Chen Nan asked the rats to get him some water to drink. The rats lived up to their mission and somehow stole a waterskin.

The waterskin was flat, so it could be squeezed through the crack beneath the door.

With water, staying alive was naturally no longer a problem, though he still had to drink sparingly. Now that he had settled this, he could use his confinement to think things through properly.

At present, he had far too little information.

He had no idea what kind of world this was. He only had a rough outline: it seemed very similar to Earth, at least in its buildings and people.

As for what differences there might be, he did not dare say.

To begin with, on Earth, it was absolutely impossible for a person to mentally communicate with animals and make them obey orders.

It was possible here, but the problem was that he had most likely undergone a soul transmigration because of an electromagnetic explosion. Did the ability on his body have anything to do with that?

Hadn't an old saying been passed down since ancient times? Rich people relied on technology; poor people relied on mutation.

He could not rule out the possibility that he was simply an isolated case after an electromagnetic explosion—in other words, that he had mutated.

But another point against this being Earth was that there absolutely could not be such an orphanage on Earth, one that treated human lives like grass.

To sum it up:

This probably was not Earth, and it was impossible to say whether his ability was a transmigration benefit or an innate power possessed by special people in this world.

Naturally, Chen Nan hoped more that his power to communicate with animals was a transmigration benefit, something like a cheat ability. It would be best if it were not an inherent power of some special group in this world.

He hoped everyone in this world was like Earthlings, without superpowers and able to rely only on technology.

That way, his ability could stand alone like a lone tree, becoming the capital that would let him bloom brilliantly in the future.

But all of that was merely his imagination. To learn the truth, he would need a deeper understanding of this world.

At the very least, he would not die for now. That was the key.

Over the following days, Chen Nan warned Little Black Ox not to take risks bringing him things. At the same time, he kept to a rule of one small strip of smoked meat and a few mouthfuls of water a day, while continuously practicing his ability to communicate with small animals.

By the seventh day, communicating with small animals no longer took any effort for Chen Nan. He could start and stop whenever he wished.

Of course, he only communicated with rats. They were weak, so communicating with them required little effort. At the same time, he knew they were the most useful to him.

When the storeroom door opened on the seventh day, Chen Nan was incomparably excited. Yet he acted like someone at death's door, with peeling lips, like a dead dog.

He lay collapsed on the ground. Other than the fact that he was still breathing, he was practically no different from a corpse.

As for the waterskin, Chen Nan had long since had the rats carry it out.

The two people who came in were still Tie Dan and Ye Gou. Cursing under their breath, they complained that the place reeked of piss and shit. Then they checked whether Chen Nan showed any signs of life. Seeing that he was still alive, Tie Dan cursed, "This son of a bitch really has a tough life. He still didn't die after being locked up for seven days?"

Ye Gou said, "Since Heaven let him live, take him out according to the rules."

Presumably, if Chen Nan had truly died during this inspection, they would have simply left him there. Only the living could be taken out—that was the rule. This punishment was correspondingly called Heavenly Punishment. Surviving was both a miracle and Heaven's will, and Heaven's will naturally could not be defied.

Precisely because Heaven's will could not be defied, what followed happened:

Tie Dan and Ye Gou dragged Chen Nan outside. They had originally planned to toss him into an open space and casually find someone to take him away.

But unexpectedly, this day also happened to be the day an official from above came for an inspection.

What this orphanage was most famous for was the towering tree at the center of its courtyard. Like a ceremonial canopy, it shaded nearly half the orphanage grounds.

It was a symbol, signifying that this orphanage was a place where benevolence and virtue accumulated. Otherwise, how could such a huge tree stand here?

In truth, it was nothing but a gimmick. The orphanage had been built on a hill in the suburbs, and this tree had already stood here for more than a hundred years before the orphanage was constructed.

After the orphanage was built, some flatterer called the tree the Merit Tree. The implication was that the Prefecture Office's plan to build an orphanage here was a merit as great as this tree.

Such flattery had always been one fart sounding, followed by farts all around. Once someone had let out such a fart, who would dare not follow with one of their own? Besides, etiquette would not allow it. Otherwise, one's official career would suffer, and people would call one socially inept.

And so, such an absurd claim spread far and wide.

The Prefecture Office came to inspect every year, not to see how the orphans were living, but mainly to worship the Merit Tree, take commemorative photographs, and let the local news report it. That was all.

That was precisely why the Orphanage Director had flown into a rage and wanted Chen Nan dead after the tree was struck by lightning.

With the Prefecture Office's inspection date approaching, the director had spent no small effort pulling strings above and below to keep his job. Today, the Prefecture Secretary was personally coming to see whether there was any way to remedy the situation.

But when he arrived and saw that the great tree had been split almost in half, he gave the director a thorough dressing-down. It was during that scolding that Tie Dan and Ye Gou happened to be carrying Chen Nan this way.

Tie Dan was quick-witted. The moment he saw that things were going badly, he immediately signaled Ye Gou to drag Chen Nan behind a building and hide, lest the inspectors see this scene.

After a long while, Tie Dan saw that the inspectors had left, and only then did he carry Chen Nan out again.

The director had actually noticed them long ago. He cursed inwardly that he had been so overwhelmed dealing with the lightning-struck tree that he had actually forgotten about Chen Nan.

Fortunately, Tie Dan had handled it properly. Otherwise, he would have been in for another scolding.

The director hurried toward them, his imposing manner utterly crushing Zhu Bajie when he commanded the Celestial River Navy.

Seeing the director approach, Tie Dan happily shouted, "Uncle... Director Wang, the time is up, so we let this guy out."

Director Wang peered through his narrow lenses, his triangular eyes glaring viciously at Chen Nan as he said coldly, "He isn't dead yet?"

Tie Dan said, "Yeah, he still has one breath left."

"Good, very good!" Director Wang said. "Go get him some thin porridge and give him a little to eat first. Ye Gou, go get me a long whip and a roll of rope."

The two boys answered and left.

Director Wang shouted after them again, "Ye Gou, get me a bucket of water too. Throw in handful after handful of salt!"

Immaculate, cold leather shoes stepped over the stone-paved ground. Chen Nan narrowed his eyes as he looked at those shoes, and his heart turned ice-cold.

With that string of orders, he could figure out what he was about to face even with his toes.

He had read some wish-fulfillment novels and idly imagined transmigration before, but at this moment, he felt that being blown to death outright would have been much quicker and more merciful.

More importantly, what kind of melodramatic transmigration trope was this? Was there really something this damn fraudulent?