When was it that my fate was changed?
Liu Yu's memory was somewhat hazy.
I remember when I was very young, I was really ordinary. I was thin and weak, bad at studying, and lazy at work. My father would chase after me and beat me, while my mother would spoil me and protect me. If things had gone according to plan, I would probably have been a spoiled brat, squandered the family's savings in middle age, and become destitute, right?
But the unexpected happened quickly. His father, who was quite capable in business, suddenly died outside. The reason for his death was a closely guarded secret among the people around him, but he still managed to find out some details. He heard that he was killed by a water ghost, and his skin was even peeled off.
Merchants at sea risk their lives to make money, and the chances of dying a natural death are slim. My short-lived father always said it was his last time going to sea, but he never stopped. Many old people in the village said he would die at sea sooner or later, and I never expected it to come true so quickly.
Central Plains: "When it rains, it pours." It really applied to my situation at that time. My father used the family's savings to buy a whole ship full of goods, but he never came back. My family was already in dire straits, and to make matters worse, my mother fell ill.
The disease he had was very rare, and he needed expensive medicine to stay alive.
Without my father as the breadwinner, how could we possibly survive relying solely on our family's savings?
So they sold the furniture, the house, everything, and were even forced to move to a farm.
Fortunately, my family still has some meager assets back in our hometown, enough to barely make ends meet.
The mother didn't want to continue treatment, believing that she shouldn't have started in the first place. She felt that at least she could have left something for her child. She blamed herself for being too eager to see her child get married and have children, and for being too greedy for her life.
He didn't understand why his mother would say that. Isn't it normal for people to be greedy for life? What's wrong with that?
So, behind his mother's back, while selling things to buy medicine for her and sorting through ancestral property, he found a notebook autobiography. Thinking it was an antique, he planned to find some knowledgeable scholars to exchange it for some money.
That was the first time he felt guilty for not studying hard enough, because if he had known even a little, he wouldn't have sold his father's fine calligraphy and paintings like cabbages.
He became more astute later, but the ancient book still couldn't be sold because many scholars considered the writing on it to be mere scribbles, not writing at all, and therefore didn't consider it a valuable antique.
I remember that I went all the way back to the county town to sell that book. I didn't eat all day, and then it rained heavily that night, so I couldn't go home. When I finally dragged my starving body home the next day, intending to eat a bowl of noodles cooked by my mother, I discovered that she had already died.
The corpse was rotting!
His relatives were so eager to seize his family's property and land that they completely ignored him. He was distraught at the time; after his mother's death, he didn't even know what to do.
But it was at that time that he met a girl.
A very beautiful girl, said to be born to the widow Wang next door. She's as pretty as a sculpted doll, and many people think the widow Wang will sell her. There are even rumors that some big brothels have started to have their eyes on this country girl.
The little girl called herself A Li, a name she chose herself. She didn't like the name her mother gave her; she said she felt she should be called that.
The girl was special; not only was she beautiful, but she could also understand the characters in her ancient book.
At that time, I was indifferent to everything, but I was suddenly captivated by the words she read in the ancient book.
The things described in ancient books are strange, like stories from the book itself, but far more interesting than the stories made up by those boring scholars.
It tells the story of a person from another world and their experiences in this world!
The story is bizarre and absurd, but very interesting. The more you listen, the more captivating it becomes. The underwater dragon Dragon Palace, the Nine Heavens Mirror Valley, the Heavenly Python Palace, and the Ghost Domain —this world hides many terrifying things, which have been waiting in the shadows, waiting to return to this world.
As we listened, both the little girl and I felt it was real, and so a bold decision was made.
They planned to follow the descriptions in the book to find something, something that was closest to them.
That was the deep mountain behind their village, a place where strange noises would occasionally be heard. The villagers dared not approach it, saying that there were ghosts and monsters there. The book said that the place was called Evening Elephant Mountain, and that there was an ancient artifact inside that could travel between the worlds. If one could obtain it, it would save a lot of trouble.
The protagonist of the book found this place, but then discovered an even more terrifying truth, which made him not to go there. In the end, he decided to live a life of idleness in these last peaceful days, acquire some property, marry ten or eight beautiful wives, and live the life of a rich landlord.
His ancestral home was always located here for convenience. One day, when he grew tired of this ordinary life and planned to live a grander life again, he went to Evening Elephant Mountain. However, in the end, he didn't do that, perhaps because he was never tired of his life.
Liu Yu was skeptical of the book's author's words, thinking he was just a guy who liked to make things up. But that guy was his ancestor, so after thinking about it, he finally decided to give it a try and see if this unreliable ancestor was really a madman.
This decision changed his life!
As Liu Yu slowly recounted his childhood stories, Chen Qing's eyes widened, and she was completely stunned.
There are many things in this world that don't surprise him; after all, he created them all, so how much could they possibly surprise him?
But what was happening in front of him made him unable to hold back any longer.
"Your ancestors were..."
"Ah," Liu Yu laughed, "You must be like me, someone from that so-called other world, right?"
Chen Qing: "."
Is that so?
That guy... he was already dead.
Chen Qing suddenly laughed, inwardly sighing: This brat!
I was so worried about him, but it turns out he turned out to be a pretty good guy. He even married more than a dozen wives and became a landlord. What a good-for-nothing.
But just like before, I remember asking that kid in my past life what his biggest dream was after making money.
He said he wanted to marry Liu Yifei.
What great things can you expect from a loser like him here?
"Are you happy?" Liu Yu asked, looking at Chen Qing.
"I'm quite happy," Chen Qing, looking at Liu Yu with a slightly different expression. "Your ancestors lived a good life."
"Really?" Liu Yu laughed. "Actually, I wanted to follow in his footsteps. After traveling all over the world, I was exhausted. Seeing so many terrifying things and terrifying truths, I always felt too insignificant. So I decided to be like that ancestor and become a wealthy man. I had already bought all the land."
"Oh?"
"Don't disbelieve me. That's really what I'm planning to do. Since it's still a long way off, and with my abilities, as long as I don't get married, don't have children, and have no worries, no matter how chaotic the world becomes, the threats to me will always be limited. I can live more freely than anyone else. Life is only a few hundred years long, so what's the difference how I live it?"
"What changed you?" Chen Qing asked curiously.
" King of Qin!"
Chen Qing: "."
Liu Yu laughed and said, "I always thought my ancestors were unique, but I was wrong. This world will always produce people like you, and it will always change because of you. From the very beginning of those actions against the King of Qin, I knew that he was the same kind of person as my ancestors!"
"I was very curious at the time, because I really wanted to know, how far could people like my ancestors have gone if they hadn't chosen to be content with an ordinary life?"
"After all, he once said in his autobiography that one day he would get tired of the ordinary life and go for something spectacular, but by the end of the book, he never tried to go for something spectacular."
"So I really wanted to know the other ending, so I chose to follow the King of Qin!"
Chen Qing was stunned. "But didn't I hear that the King of Qin's ending wasn't good?"
"The process was excellent!" Liu Yu exclaimed excitedly. "He demonstrated to me how to suppress the ancient with the power of a mortal, and how to change the world with the power of a mortal!"
"From that moment on, I knew I would never choose the same path as my ancestors!!!"
--
West Sea:
Following the trail of the Heavenly Ghost Octopus Ziyue arrived at the place where Chen Qing disappeared. Gazing at the traces left behind, extremely complex emotions flashed in Moon Eye.
"I knew it. A Li didn't believe you weren't dead!"