"Newspapers for sale, newspapers for sale!"
"Miss, please be kind, give me something to eat!"
"Shopkeeper, please be kind, give me something to eat!"
"Sir, please be kind, give me something to eat!"
"Madam, please be kind, give me something to eat!"
"Young master, please be kind, give me something to eat!"
Qin Huai watched in stunned amazement as An Youyou knelt, kowtowed, and skillfully performed a series of smooth maneuvers along the way, so surprised that his mouth hung open.
An Youyou now looked like a child of about eleven or twelve, wearing ragged clothes, with dirt and grime covering her face, body, hands, and even hair, too filthy to discern gender, a very standard beggar disguise.
How should I put it, he knew that spirits in their first life always walked an unconventional path.
Chen Huihong buried herself in the ground, Qu Jing wanted to hide in the mountains, Luo Jun, bold with his skills, disguised himself as a rich young man returning from abroad, Cheng Gong steadily earned his first bucket of gold, these four paths Qin Huai could all understand, belonging to different styles of different spirits.
But what kind of method is this beggar style of An Youyou?
What kind of race is this? What does the textbook even say? It’s one thing to not take ordinary paths like Qu Jing and be a child, but why become a beggar?
Seeing An Youyou’s skilled "please be kind" style begging, if she gets something, she earns it, if not, she quickly slips away, dodging to the max if peers snatch food, and if she can win, she swings her fist for a good fight, Qin Huai knew An Youyou had to be an experienced beggar.
Having come to the human world, she begged quite a bit.
To say the least, she integrated quite successfully.
If only she were born in a different era, she could just shout into a phone, "Brothers, I got food again," and An Youyou would already be financially independent by now.
Qin Huai watched An Youyou diligently beg for food the entire day.
I’ll tell you, the competition is quite intense.
The scene of An Youyou begging was familiar to Qin Huai, it was Shanghai. Because of her identity, An Youyou couldn’t beg within the concessions, only roaming between ordinary city areas and remote suburbs, begging, but Qin Huai had already seen many buildings before in Luo Jun’s memory, so it was very clear that An Youyou was indeed begging in Shanghai.
Big cities are just different, An Youyou, Luo Jun, and Cheng Gong were all in their first life here, only at different times, with different identities, otherwise the three of them might have met in their first life.
As a professional beggar, An Youyou was very quick to read people’s expressions when begging for food and money.
Encountering wealthy young ladies who were clearly sheltered, suitably dressed, and accompanied by servants, An Youyou would pounce and roll on the ground, wailing with exaggerated gestures and tragic words to evoke sympathy, prompting them to throw a few coins her way.
Even when rolling around, An Youyou would deliberately keep her distance so the young ladies could see her act but not get too close, avoiding being beaten by the servants.
When she met a wealthy young master escorting a beauty, An Youyou knelt on the ground and employed a verbal strategy, sweet-talking like her lips were smeared with honey, making the young master happy enough to toss a few coins too.
She would persistently cling onto the naive simpletons.
She’d go all out on sob stories around students but couldn’t do so with a group of them, only targeting those who were alone.
When encountering formidable types who looked like trouble, she kept a distance, just silently begging from afar, hoping for a lucky coin toss.
Begging at restaurants was after mealtime, choosing the busy ones. She couldn’t beg at the main entrance but at the side door, full of gratitude, with tears and snot, displaying a miserable appearance like she would starve without food today.
If she met a softhearted waiter or shopkeeper, she might not only get some delicious mush but, with luck, some leftover stale food too.
Even ordinary people had target demographics.
She definitely couldn’t beg from laborers and porters in short jackets, they not only had no money but could also be aggressive, and if she encountered a thug, it wasn’t clear who would end up conning whom.
Rickshaw pullers were also off-limits; most looked skinnier than a dinner stick and seemed more in need of begging than An Youyou, not to mention they ran fast, she was at a disadvantage in skills.
However, women who appeared a bit plumper than average, with some flesh on their cheeks and chins, not as dark nor as worn-out, were ideal targets for begging.
All it took was acting deathly ill, laying on the ground, rolling with her face smeared with black mud and tangled, dirty hair, making it impossible to tell if she was truly at death’s door. Typically, the women would back away in disdain while muttering how pitiful, then fetch some simple food from home, like porridge or boiled beans.
Of course, the begging process wasn’t devoid of danger.
In Luo Jun’s storyline, little gangsters serving as frequent scream-backgrounds, and fellow beggars were potential threats.
The former might directly vent their own bad mood on her, and the latter could, out of jealousy over An Youyou’s earnings for the day, start a nasty confrontation.
For An Youyou, she would dodge the former if she could, and punch out the latter if she had to, embodying maximum flexibility.
As the sun began to set, the light dimming as it prepared to descend, An Youyou cheerfully hummed an out-of-tune ditty as she skipped towards the outskirts.
An Youyou’s begging route was clearly a route home, as she begged from the city all the way to the suburbs, starting her day’s work in the morning, ending with the last act at the riverside at a kindly woman’s home with black beans, perfectly concluding her day’s work, clocking out and heading home.