「Great Qi Dynasty. The third year of Xihua. November.」
The night was inky black, oppressive and suffocating.
In Wazi Town of Yuhe County, Jizhou, a lone house stood by the edge of the fields. Its decaying wooden door was ajar, letting out a long CREAK as the wind gusted in—a sound like the final groan of a dying man.
The paper on the second-floor attic window was torn in several places. In the gloom, one could make out a crooked wooden table. The corners of the room were shrouded in dusty cobwebs. A tattered cloth swayed in the breeze, its shadow on the floor lengthening and shortening, looking eerily like a person walking with limp arms.
A pale-faced young man stood trembling in a corner, his terrified eyes scanning the room.
He lit a candle and set it on the table, its flame wavering.
WHOOSH!
A faint whimpering sound came from some unseen crack in a window. It was impossible to tell if it was the wind or something hidden in the rafters, sighing. The very air was thick with a damp, musty odor, a cold that clung to you like ice on bone.
The candle flame began to sputter, plunging the room into alternating light and shadow.
A jolt shot through the young man, and he dove under the bed as if the cramped space could offer him some sliver of safety.
'Don't tell me there's really a ghost?'
'Even if there is a ghost, he shouldn't be able to find me while I'm hiding here.'
Cold sweat beaded on the young man's palms and the soles of his feet, and chills ran down his spine. He kept repeating the words in his mind, trying to bolster his own courage.
Just then, a faint noise came from outside.
THUD! THUD! THUD!
It sounded as if something was coming up the stairs.
A moment later, the sound of the footsteps ceased.
The young man was puzzled. 'Why would a ghost's footsteps make such a rhythmic thudding sound?' But he had no time to ponder it. He could vaguely sense that the ghost was now at the attic's dilapidated door, surveying the room for any sign of life.
"Where are you?"
A dry, chilling voice rang out, making the young man jump.
The window had been thrown open at some point, and a cold wind instantly flooded the room.
With a single PUFF, the sputtering candle was finally extinguished.
The young man's clothes were soaked through with cold sweat.
His face was deathly pale. He held his breath, desperate to remain hidden. Squeezing his eyes shut, he prayed that the ghost would leave quickly.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
The sound echoed through the room.
It sounded as if the ghost was searching every corner.
The young man's heart was in his throat.
But soon, the thudding sound slowly faded away.
The young man let out a sigh of relief. 'Thank goodness I hid under the bed. The ghost didn't find me and left,' he thought, immensely grateful.
Believing the ghost was gone, the young man finally began to relax.
"Heh, found you. So you were hiding here all along."
A damp, cold voice suddenly whispered right next to his ear.
Every hair on the young man's body stood on end. He snapped his eyes open.
The instant he did, he saw, to his horror, a face of mangled flesh and blood...
...
「Wazi Town, Yang Family Village.」
Yang Jing sat on an old, square stool at the door to the main house, staring blankly at the family courtyard—a place that felt both strange and vaguely familiar.
The main house, flanked by side rooms, had five or six rooms in total, but the paint on the doors and windows had long since curled and peeled away, revealing the dark, weathered wood beneath.
Scenes flashed through Yang Jing's mind, leaving him in a daze.
He had transmigrated. In his past life, he'd had a rather unfortunate run-in with a speeding vehicle, and then he'd woken up in this world, which resembled ancient China, as a farmer's son enrolled in a Martial Arts Hall.
CREAK.
The courtyard gate was pushed open from the outside.
A slightly heavyset woman in coarse hemp clothes came in, carefully cradling a lotus-leaf package from which the savory aroma of meat wafted.
"Jing'Er, are you feeling any better?" the woman asked, seeing her son sitting by the door.
"Much better, Mom," Yang Jing replied.
This woman was his mother in this world, Liu Cui Ling. Years of hard labor had left her skin dark and coarse. Right now, fine beads of sweat dotted her forehead, shimmering in the sunlight.
"I went to the market and bought some pork ribs. I'll make them for you later to help you build your strength back up," Liu Cui Ling said as she headed straight for the kitchen.
"Thanks, Mom," Yang Jing said with a cheeky grin.
"Hmph, you little rascal. Let's see if you still dare to make such reckless promises in the future," Liu Cui Ling grumbled from the kitchen.
Yang Jing knew his mother was still very upset.
But as they say, every loss comes with a gain. It was the original owner's recklessness that had allowed him to transmigrate and take over this body.
Half a month ago, the body's original owner had taken leave from the Hall Master of his Martial Arts Hall to go home and collect silver coins for the next month's expenses. As it happened, his paternal aunt was visiting.
Knowing that her nephew had enrolled in the county Martial Arts Hall and was now supposedly quite capable, the aunt asked him to go to his uncle-in-law's ancestral home to see if it was really haunted.
The original owner, confident in his vigorous qi and blood and dismissive of ghosts and spirits, let his aunt's flattery go to his head and agreed on the spot, ignoring his mother's objections.
And that very night, he was literally scared to death inside his uncle-in-law's ancestral home.
That was when Yang Jing transmigrated over.
So, as far as anyone else knew, Yang Jing had merely been frightened into fainting.
And in the half-month since, despite knowing Yang Jing was recuperating, his aunt and uncle-in-law hadn't once come to visit, which naturally angered his mother.
'That thing... it was so strange. Was it really a ghost?'
The image of that mangled, bloody face from the original owner's memory surfaced in Yang Jing's mind.
It was no wonder the original owner had been scared to death; the face was truly nauseating and terrifying.
As he continued to recall, more scenes flooded his mind.
The original owner's family owned over twenty mu of land and had been relatively well-off, a fact reflected in their spacious courtyard. But to support his martial arts training, the apprenticeship fees, cost of medicinal ingredients, and living expenses piled up. The family sold off everything they could, leaving the courtyard feeling empty. They never had the money to repaint the peeling doors and windows.
"Sigh."
Yang Jing sighed to himself.
Having absorbed the original owner's memories, he knew the family had exhausted its resources to fund his training. In their eyes, the original owner was a heaven-sent prodigy, the pride of the entire family.
But Yang Jing knew the truth: the original owner's aptitude was merely average. He didn't train diligently at the Martial Arts Hall, instead spending his days drinking and carousing with a few other slacker disciples. Only when he came home for money would he lie to his family, spinning tales of his hard work, his great progress, and the high regard in which his masters and fellow disciples held him.
Yang Jing was left speechless.
His grandfather, grandmother, father, and mother all hoped he could pass the county examinations. Even gaining the lowest official rank would be a monumental event for the Yang Family, an honor that would make their ancestors proud. Most importantly, an official position granted exemption from taxes and corvée labor.
The official tax levied by the Court was already a steep twenty percent of the annual harvest. But in reality, with all the additional local and miscellaneous taxes, the total burden amounted to a staggering fifty to sixty percent of their yield.
Rumor had it that rebel armies had already appeared in some of the eastern prefectures. To suppress the insurrections, the Court might impose even more levies on the peasants to cover military pay and training expenses.
These various taxes were like a great mountain, crushing the peasants beneath its weight.
That was why the entire family had placed all their hopes on him.
They would support his training even if it meant selling everything they owned and surviving on scraps.
The cost of pursuing martial arts was, after all, unimaginably high.
Across the twenty-odd villages in Wazi Town, very few peasant families could afford to have a son practice martial arts.
"What an animal," Yang Jing cursed under his breath.
The original owner knew perfectly well how much his family was struggling, yet he continued to waste his time and money on debauchery, with no ambition whatsoever.
It reminded Yang Jing of news stories from his past life: a high school senior would skip classes and sleep all day, ranking dead last in his grade, all while telling his parents he was making incredible progress. Then, the results of the final college entrance exams would come out, and everything would blow up.
The original owner, by comparison, had put on a good act. The bomb just hadn't gone off yet.
'If things had continued on the original owner's path, the bomb wouldn't have been far from detonating,' Yang Jing thought. 'Getting knocked out in my uncle-in-law's house was a catalyst. Anyone paying attention could probably guess that the original me was all show and no substance. Damn, that explosion is just around the corner.'
As the old saying goes: a poor man studies, a rich man fights.
Practicing martial arts required money—a great deal of it.
The cost of supplementary medicinal herbs and a diet rich enough to replenish one's blood and qi was itself a staggering sum.
And the Yang Family was out of money.
The original owner's aptitude was mediocre; among all the disciples at the Martial Arts Hall, he was utterly ordinary.
Once the Yang Family could no longer afford to support him, he would have had no choice but to return home in disgrace.
'But just because the original owner was a failure doesn't mean I will be.' Yang Jing's eyes narrowed.
The next moment, a line of text appeared in his mind.
[Mountain-Shattering Fist: Novice (30/200)]
When he first discovered this line of text in his mind, Yang Jing had worried there was something wrong with him mentally.
However, through some mysterious process, more information about this text had also appeared in his mind.
Yang Jing decided to call it his "panel."
The panel's ability was that Yang Jing would never encounter a bottleneck while practicing any Cultivation Technique or martial art.
This meant that breakthroughs, which were incredibly perilous for others, held no risk for him.
As for whether it was truly reliable, Yang Jing couldn't be sure yet. He would have to test it out slowly.
But if it was real, he could one day walk step by step to the very pinnacle of the Martial Dao—to the highest peak imaginable!
After all, the greatest challenge on the path of the Martial Dao was breaking through bottlenecks.
The vast majority of Martial Artists were unable to advance to higher realms precisely because they were stopped by these bottlenecks.
And he had no bottlenecks!
"Phew!"
Yang Jing let out a long breath, suppressing the excitement welling up inside him, and began to quietly make his plans.
He had recovered from the fright of that night after just a few days of rest.
But Yang Jing had needed time to slowly sort through the multitude of memories he had inherited from the body's original owner.
He had pretty much finished by now.
'To get ahead in this world, mastering martial arts is the only way.'
'It's time to head back to the county town.'
'It was one thing for the original owner to screw up, but now that I'm in this body, I can't let everything blow up in my face!'
Yang Jing plotted silently.