Great Qi Dynasty, Third Year of Xihe, eleventh month.
Night lay like spilled ink, oppressive and pitch-black.
In Wazi Township, Yuhe County, Jizhou, a lone house stood beside a field ridge. Its rotting wooden door was not quite shut, and when the wind poured through, it let out a long creak, like an old man's groan before his last breath.
Several holes gaped in the paper covering the second-floor attic window. A crooked wooden table was visible in the gloom, and dust coated the cobwebs in the corners. Tattered cloth swayed in the wind, its shadow stretching and shrinking across the floor, uncannily like someone walking with their arms dangling.
A pale-faced youth stood huddled in a corner, his terrified gaze sweeping the room.
He lit a candle and set it on the table, its flame wavering.
Whoosh!
A faint whimper escaped through some gap in a window. There was no telling whether it was the wind or something hidden among the rafters sighing. Even the air carried a damp, musty smell, cold as ice pressed against bone.
The candle flickered, plunging the room into alternating light and darkness.
The youth jolted and dove beneath the bed, as though that cramped space could offer him a shred of safety.
Could there really be a ghost?
Even if there is, it shouldn't be able to find me hiding here.
Cold sweat seeped from his palms and soles, and chills rippled down his back. He kept repeating those words in his mind to bolster his courage.
Just then, a faint sound came from outside.
Thump! Thump! Thump!
It sounded as though something was climbing the stairs.
Before long, the footsteps on the stairs stopped.
The youth wondered why this ghost made such rhythmic thumping sounds when it walked, but he had no time to dwell on it. He vaguely sensed that the ghost was at the attic's shabby wooden door, peering into the room in search of a living person.
"Where are you?"
A dry, cold voice rang out, making the youth jump.
At some point, the window had opened, and cold wind instantly flooded the room.
With a whoosh, the flickering candle finally went out.
The youth's clothes were already soaked through with cold sweat.
His face was white with terror. He held his breath, desperately trying to conceal himself, and squeezed his eyes shut, silently hoping the ghost in the room would leave soon.
Thump, thump, thump.
The sound echoed through the room.
It seemed the ghost was searching every corner.
The youth's heart climbed into his throat.
Soon, however, the thump, thump, thump slowly faded away.
The youth breathed a sigh of relief, inwardly rejoicing. Luckily, he had hidden beneath the bed, and the ghost had left without finding him.
At the thought that the ghost must have gone, his whole body relaxed considerably.
"Oh, there you are. So this is where you were hiding."
A clammy, cold voice suddenly sounded beside his ear.
Every hair on the youth's body stood on end, and his eyes snapped open.
The instant he opened them, he saw, to his horror, a face reduced to a bloody pulp.
Yang Family Village, Wazi Township.
Yang Jing sat on an old square stool at the entrance to the main house, staring blankly at his family's courtyard, which felt both unfamiliar and somewhat familiar.
Counting the main house and the side wings, there were five or six rooms in all, but the paint on the doors and windows had long curled and peeled away, exposing the darkened wood beneath.
Scene after scene surfaced in Yang Jing's mind, leaving him dazed for a time.
He had transmigrated. In his previous life, he had run into a truck on the road-quite a stroke of "luck"-and then arrived in this world resembling ancient China, becoming a farmer's son who had enrolled in a martial arts hall.
Creak.
Just then, the courtyard gate was pushed open from outside.
A slightly plump woman dressed in coarse hemp clothing walked in, carefully cradling a lotus leaf in her hands. Wisps of meaty fragrance escaped through its folds.
"Jing, are you feeling any better?" the woman asked when she saw her son sitting in the doorway.
"Much better, Mother," Yang Jing said.
This woman was his mother in this world, Liu Cuiling. Years of labor had left her skin dark and rough. Fine beads of sweat dotted her forehead, glinting faintly in the sunlight.
"I bought some pork ribs at the market. I'll cook them later to help build your strength back up." As Liu Cuiling spoke, she headed straight for the kitchen.
"Thank you, Mother," Yang Jing said shamelessly.
"Hmph, you little brat. Let's see if you dare agree to things so recklessly again," Liu Cuiling muttered in the kitchen.
Yang Jing knew his mother harbored plenty of resentment.
Still, as the saying went, every gain came with a loss. It was precisely the original owner's recklessness that had allowed him to transmigrate and take over this body.
Half a month earlier, the original owner had asked the martial arts hall's master for leave and returned home to collect money for the next month's expenses. As it happened, his younger paternal aunt was visiting her family.
Knowing that he had enrolled in a martial arts hall in the county town and supposedly become quite capable, his aunt asked him to visit her husband's ancestral house and see whether it was truly haunted.
The original owner considered his blood and qi vigorous and did not believe in ghosts or spirits. After a few flattering words from his aunt, he readily agreed, ignoring his mother's objections.
Then, that very night, he was frightened to death in his uncle's ancestral house.
Only then did Yang Jing transmigrate.
So, as far as everyone else was concerned, Yang Jing had merely fainted from fright.
Yet throughout the past half month, despite knowing that Yang Jing was recuperating, his aunt and uncle had not once come to visit. Naturally, this angered his mother.
There was something strange about that thing. Was it really a ghost?
The bloody, mangled ghost face from the original owner's memories surfaced in Yang Jing's mind.
No wonder the original owner had been scared to death. That face really was revolting and terrifying.
As he recalled the past, more and more scenes emerged in his mind.
The original owner's family owned over twenty mu of farmland and had lived fairly comfortably, as their spacious farmhouse courtyard suggested. Later, however, to support his martial training, they had poured money into apprenticeship fees, medicinal herbs, living expenses, and more. They had sold everything they could, leaving the courtyard empty and the paint peeling from the doors and windows, with no money to repair them.
"Sigh."
Yang Jing sighed inwardly.
He had inherited the original owner's memories and knew that the entire family had exhausted their resources to support his martial training. In their eyes, the original owner was a heaven-blessed talent, the pride of the whole family.
But Yang Jing knew that the original owner's aptitude was merely average, and he did not work hard at the martial arts hall. He spent his days drinking and making merry with several equally unmotivated disciples. Only when he went home for money did he deceive his family with tales of how hard he trained, what progress he had made, and how he had earned his teachers' favor and fellow disciples' respect.
Yang Jing was rather speechless.
His grandfather, grandmother, father, and mother all hoped the original owner would pass the County Examination with distinction. Even the slightest measure of official status would be such a tremendous blessing for the entire Yang Family that smoke would rise from their ancestral graves. Most importantly, official status would exempt him from taxes and corvée labor.
For taxes alone, the regular tax levied by the Imperial Court took twenty percent of each year's harvest, already a very high proportion. In reality, beyond the regular tax, there were numerous local surcharges and miscellaneous taxes, bringing the total to fifty or sixty percent of the harvest.
Apparently, a Rebel Army had already appeared in some of the eastern prefectures. To suppress the rebellion, the Imperial Court might also impose additional military pay charges, a military training levy, and other burdens on the farmers.
All these taxes were like a mountain weighing heavily on the farmers' shoulders.
That was why the entire family placed such high hopes in the original owner.
Even if they had to smash their cooking pots and sell the iron, subsisting on bran and greens, they would support his martial training.
After all, the cost of practicing martial arts was staggering beyond imagination.
Among the twenty-odd villages of Wazi Township, very few farmers' sons practiced martial arts.
What a beast, Yang Jing cursed inwardly.
The original owner clearly knew how hard things were at home, yet he still spent his days outside drinking and carousing, with no desire to better himself.
It reminded Yang Jing of news stories he had seen in his previous life: final-year high school students who skipped classes and slept all day, ranked at the very bottom of their year, yet told their families their grades were improving by leaps and bounds-until the bomb finally went off at the college entrance examination.
By comparison, though, the original owner had kept up his act quite well so far. The bomb had yet to go off.
If things had kept going as they were, that bomb would have gone off soon enough. Getting frightened unconscious in Uncle's ancestral house has only hastened things. Anyone paying attention might realize the original owner was just an embroidered pillow-pretty outside, stuffed with straw inside. Good grief, the bomb is right in front of me, Yang Jing thought.
As the old saying went, the poor studied letters; the rich practiced martial arts.
Martial training required capital, and plenty of it.
Even the medicinal herbs used as supplements and the food rich in blood and qi amounted to an enormous expense.
And the Yang Family had no money left.
The original owner's aptitude was mediocre, placing him among the most ordinary disciples in the martial arts hall.
Once the Yang Family could no longer afford to support him, he would have no choice but to slink home with his tail between his legs.
"But just because the original owner couldn't do it doesn't mean I can't." Yang Jing narrowed his eyes.
The next instant, a line of text appeared in his mind.
[Mountain collapse fist initiation (30/200)]
When he had first discovered those two extra lines of text in his mind, Yang Jing had worried that something was wrong with his mental state.
Yet, somehow, information about this line of text had also appeared in his mind.
Yang Jing simply called it the system panel.
The system panel's ability meant that Yang Jing would encounter no bottlenecks while cultivating any cultivation method or martial art.
This meant that breakthroughs which were perilous beyond measure for others posed no risk whatsoever to Yang Jing.
As for whether it truly worked, Yang Jing could not yet be certain. He would have to test it gradually.
But if it was real, he could advance step by step to a towering height in martial arts-the highest point his eyes could reach!
After all, the hardest part of ascending the martial path was breaking through bottlenecks.
The vast majority of martial artists could not advance to higher realms because bottlenecks barred their way.
And he had no bottlenecks!
"Whew!"
Yang Jing let out a long breath, suppressed the agitation in his heart, and began silently making plans.
He had suffered a fright that night, but recovered after a few days of rest.
He had simply needed more time to slowly sort through the many memories inherited from the original owner.
By now, he had more or less finished sorting them out.
In this world, the only way to rise above the crowd is to master martial arts.
It's time to return to town.
It would have been one thing for the original owner's bomb to go off, but now that I've taken over this body, I can't let it explode!
Yang Jing silently weighed his plans.
Before you continue