Good Fortune upon Opening This Book

Great Yao Kingdom, Fog City.

"You little bastard, when the hell are you going to get out of my house?"

The woman speaking was Ye Qianfan's Elder Uncle's wife.

People often said a broad heart made for a plump body, but Auntie Fat went against the grain. Not only did she have a foul temper, her sharp, vicious tongue was notorious.

"My father left me this house. What right do you have to throw me out?"

Ye Qianfan was getting a little angry!

Although he had transmigrated here, the house had been left behind by the original owner's father. Why should he have to move out?

"Oh, give it a rest! The old man left this house behind, and your Elder Uncle is still alive, so naturally it belongs to him!" Auntie Fat continued twisting the truth. "If you want to live here, you have to pay rent! Otherwise, get out! Someone's moving in tomorrow, paying five hundred copper coins a year. What can you give me?"

"I may not have paid you money, but every day I'm up before dawn and working past dark, chopping wood, tending fires, kneading dough, rolling flatbreads, and even running deliveries for you. Doesn't any of that count as wages?"

Ye Qianfan felt a painful tightness in his chest.

Ever since the original owner's father had died, Auntie Fat had become increasingly harsh with him, giving him little to eat while working him without end.

The original owner had collapsed from overwork at the edge of the Fog Forest, where an evil spirit had caught him and taken his life.

That had conveniently benefited Ye Qianfan, the transmigrator!

Ye Qianfan had only been in this world for a few days, but he had already begun to understand this eerie ancient world. It was no ordinary ancient world, but a strange place teeming with evil spirits.

Beyond the city, dense white fog shrouded the countryside all year round.

Legend had it that the white fog was filled with wandering souls and wild ghosts. Anyone caught by them would have their yang energy sucked dry while still alive, and those killed by evil spirits were especially prone to rising from the dead!

Thus, this world had many special professions. Daoist priests, spirit-medium disciples, and Buddhist monks were all highly respected.

But there were also lowly professions, such as corpse carriers and corpse burners!

Usually, nobody wanted to do such work.

So the authorities had decreed that sons must inherit their fathers' trades. In other words, Ye Qianfan could only be a corpse carrier for the rest of his life!

If he were old enough, Auntie Fat would probably have already shoved him out to carry corpses for money!

"Oh! So you've learned to talk back now, have you?"

Auntie Fat was deeply displeased with Ye Qianfan's attitude, though she could not understand it. He had always been such an honest, dull-witted child. How had he suddenly grown such a sharp tongue?

Had that fever burned his brains out?

"Everything I said is true," Ye Qianfan continued. "Besides, you know perfectly well whether Grandfather left this house behind or my father bought it with the money he painstakingly saved from carrying corpses! And if you hadn't insisted that my father carry that vicious corpse, he wouldn't have died..."

"Aah!!!"

Auntie Fat suddenly shrieked, cutting Ye Qianfan off.

Then she promptly plopped down on the ground and slapped it frantically with both hands. "Everyone, come and look! This nephew is bullying his aunt!"

"This nephew's got the nerve to defy heaven! Not only has he seized his Elder Uncle's house, he even dares to hit his aunt!"

"Come and judge for yourselves!"

"A strapping young fellow is using his youth and strength to bully his aunt! His aunt feeds him and gives him something to drink every day, and this is how he repays her kindness! Boohoo!"

As she spoke, Auntie Fat began bawling.

She acted as though she had suffered some terrible injustice. Anyone who did not know better would truly have thought Ye Qianfan was the bully.

Just then...

Ye Qianfan's Elder Uncle, Ye Fu, was drawn outside by his wife's wailing.

Deep furrows creased his forehead, seemingly carved there by years of brooding and worry. This ridiculous performance was hardly a first, so naturally he knew better than anyone what had happened!

"Enough, enough! Stop making a scene!"

"I'm making a scene?"

Seeing that her husband would not take her side, Auntie Fat grew even angrier. "Your nephew is bullying me!"

"I'm just a woman! I have to wait on you and your nephew. All I did was tell him that a grown man ought to go out and earn some money instead of eating for free in this house, and now your heart aches for him?"

"Fine! You're all bullying me! You all think a woman like me isn't fit to run this household, so I'll go die!"

"I'll go die! Will that satisfy you?"

As she spoke, Auntie Fat actually made to charge toward the Fog Forest.

Lowly people like Ye Qianfan could only live in the outskirts outside the gates. Two li farther out lay the Fog Forest, where there was nothing but dense, man-eating white fog and thick woodland.

Every year, quite a few people from Fog City lost their lives in the mist. Anyone wishing to leave for another place only dared to follow when a large merchant caravan or the Patrol Army cleared the way. Entering the mist alone was a road straight to death!

"Have you made enough of a scene?"

Ye Fu grabbed his wife's wrist. "Are you ever going to stop? I'll talk to Qianfan. If that doesn't work, I'll find a way to take him out and earn some money for you. Happy now? You've fallen headfirst into a money hole!"

"Yang Hua said he's taken a fancy to that room in our house. It's closer to the city wall and farther from the fog, so he wants to rent it," Auntie Fat finally admitted. "He's offering five hundred copper coins a year. You decide what to do!"

"Five hundred copper coins?!"

Ye Fu's eyes lit up too.

After all, even risking their lives to carry a corpse to the Mass Burial Ground outside the city for burning or burial only earned them twenty or thirty copper coins.

Mining paid even less, only five or six copper coins a day. Even with good luck, eight was the absolute most they could earn!

Yet this man was willing to pay five hundred copper coins to rent a room?

With five hundred copper coins...

Their household's circumstances could improve considerably. They could even have a few sips of wine and a few bites of meat. What a wonderful little life that would be!

"Exactly!" Auntie Fat looked smug. "Listen here, you old fool! No matter what, you have to throw this brat out today and free up that room. Once you pass this village, there won't be another shop like it! If Yang Hua takes a fancy to someone else's house, you can go cry about it!"

"I know. Stop talking!"

Ye Fu waved her off, the furrows between his brows deepening.

Standing nearby, Ye Qianfan finally understood. Auntie Fat simply wanted him to vacate the room so she could rent it to someone else, and was finding ways to drive him out!

"Elder Uncle, I've decided to carry corpses. Could you speak to the authorities for me?"

"Absolutely not!"

Ye Fu waved his hands repeatedly. "Not just anyone can carry corpses. You need a life tough enough to withstand it, and strength too! You're still a child. You can't do this..."

"Don't try to talk me out of it, Elder Uncle. I've already decided!"

Ye Qianfan shook his head, unwilling to say more.

He knew perfectly well that in this world, without money, he had nothing. Even as a transmigrator, he needed his first pot of gold!

Without that first sum of money to get started, anything he said was empty talk!

Was he supposed to argue with Auntie Fat for the rest of his life?

All for a house that could be swallowed at any moment by the spreading mist?

He wanted to enter the city!

Entering the city required a lot of money!

So he had to earn money. He had to earn that first pot of gold to get started!

"Recruiting!"

Just then.

Three scouts wearing gleaming silver scale armor and pointed, spear-tip helmets emerged from the city gate and shouted, "We're recruiting fifty corpse carriers to take bodies to the mass grave outside the city and burn them!"

"One hundred copper coins a day, and all the flatbread you can eat!"

"If you're interested, come register!"

"Whoa!"

As soon as the Patrol Army's representative finished speaking, the entire outskirts erupted in an uproar.

Never mind the wonderful offer of a hundred copper coins a day!

The promise of unlimited flatbread alone was enough to tempt countless people!

And yet...

The words "burn them" made everyone shrink back!

People in this ancient world believed the dead should find peace beneath the earth. If there was nothing wrong with a body, who would not want to bury it properly?

If the bodies had to be burned, then they were surely at risk of rising from the dead. Carrying corpses that could rise at any moment into the Fog Forest was practically no different from courting death!

No wonder the city's Patrol Army was offering a hundred copper coins this time. After all, who would willingly take a job that meant dying ten times and surviving nine?

P.S. This book starts at a somewhat slower pace, but it will grow more and more exciting later on!

To all you readers tired of conventional stories, read another dozen or twenty chapters and you'll discover that this book definitely doesn't follow the usual formula. It won't disappoint you!