The eleventh year of Yonghui, the spring chill still lingered.
After a night of wind and rain in the small alley, in the early morning, only the sound of the tofu stall at the alley entrance could be heard, with a clear voice hawking: "Tofu, two wen per jin, tofu cubes, one wen per piece, all fragrant!"
In the distance was the early market on South Street, porters walked to and fro, vendors haggling over prices.
"This is not a sheep to be envied for its bones to break, is ten taels of silver for one too expensive?"
Chen Xu suddenly sat up from the bed, drenched in a cold sweat.
Not a sheep to be envied, bones to break, these were not good words, but rather black jargon for cannibalism!
He hurriedly got up, with a limp, he struggled to walk to the window, pressing his ear to listen to the sounds coming from the alley entrance in the distance.
No sound reached him yet, but the various food aromas wafted through first.
The meaty aroma of meat buns, the smoky scent of oil sticks, the sweet freshness of tofu pudding... as well as the stench of the slaughter market, and the rotting odor from the drains and ditches.
All sorts of smells, still the familiar taste.
And in the distance, a vendor was boasting about his sheep: "These are sheep raised on the other side of Heilu Mountain, drinking dew, and eating yellow ginseng, originally supplied to wealthy families, you don’t understand, don’t talk nonsense and make a joke of yourself!"
Chen Xu listened clearly, secretly shaking his head: this vendor can really boast.
At the same time, he let out a sigh of relief.
It seemed he was drowsy and misheard.
Indeed, this is the prosperous era of Yonghui, a rare peaceful world, how could there possibly be a public early market selling something like "not a sheep to be envied"?
Chen Xu stood by the window, shutting it with a click to block out the various complex odors.
He gently adjusted his breathing, while his thoughts slowly settled.
He was not originally from this world, in his past life an internet worker, who died at his desk from overworking.
Poor him, a pure science student, traversed to this ancient world without technology or internet.
He organized his reality and found that in this world, for a poor family’s child to get ahead, there was basically no second path other than studying.
At that time, Chen Xu was seven years old, and his family was considered middle-upper class in the village.
Yet they could not escape various taxes, corvee labor, and levies from above, which were things born from class, each one was a mountain pressing on the common people’s heads, hard to breathe.
Chen Xu was determined to take the imperial exams.
He spent great effort persuading his family to support his studies, starting schooling at age seven, passing the child student exam at thirteen.
Studying arduously for ten years, now aged seventeen.
Unfortunately, his examination luck seemed to take a bizarre, forceful turn into a rugged path since the year he passed child student exams.
Thereafter, he attempted the scholar exams for three years in a row, but each time he was blocked from the exam due to various accidents.
Either falling ill from unaccustomed climate, or fainting from smoke in inns that caught fire, or hit by falling tiles while walking on the road.
This year was even more absurd, early in the year when he went to the county school to register, slipping on a stone while descending the mountain, and this fall broke his right leg. Follow current novels on 𝗻𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹⟡𝓯𝓲𝓻𝓮⟡𝙣𝙚𝙩
Such bad luck, failing every exam attempt, once made Chen Xu feel disheartened and despondent.
He deeply reflected, questioning himself if he should change his path. But if he changed paths, which should he pursue?
Moreover, the persistence over the years was hard to give up.
Finally, with the help of his classmates, he rented a small yard temporarily in Ping’an Lane, not far from South Market Street, to recuperate while studying.
Ping’an Lane was named "peace," but it wasn’t a peaceful place at all.
The population here was dense, the environment noisy, the only advantage being its cheapness.
Chen Xu had been recuperating for over twenty days, now he was still limping while walking, but at least basic self-care was no longer a problem.
But last night, something strange happened again.
At the time, it was about the fourth quarter of the hour of the pig, the midnight hour.
A cool mist quietly rose at night, Chen Xu woke from the cold, unable to sleep, intending to get up and heat some porridge by the stove to warm himself.
He did not light a lamp, only using the sparse moonlight outside the window, he slowly hobbled to the kitchen with his crutch.
In the darkness, he heard the crackling of burning fuelwood in the kitchen, a small bunch of orange-red firelight illuminating the tattered window lattice.
Chen Xu immediately stopped in his tracks.
Before going to bed, he had extinguished the stove fire, how did the fire in the stove rekindle now?
Suddenly, low mouse-like cries could be heard, rustling, squeaking...
In the shadows of the dark night, the firelight flickered eerily. Chen Xu listened to the mouse calls, but in his mind, the "squeak, squeak" sounds automatically transformed into human speech.
"Huh, this scholar is too stingy with his porridge; besides white rice, he doesn’t put anything else in."
The voice, sharp and old, clearly resounded by his ear yet also seemed to come from some distant crevice.
"Squeak!" Another response was still a mouse sound, similarly transforming into human speech in Chen Xu’s mind, "Delicious, even plain porridge is tasty, fragrant, sweet!"
"Silly child, you must have never tasted anything nice, even a bowl of plain porridge seems good to you." The old voice paused for a moment, finally sighing, "But given the state we’re in now, being able to eat a bowl of plain porridge... plain porridge is already good."
[Mouse Demon liked +1]
Chen Xu was instantly frozen, at one moment doubting he was hallucinating, at another feeling a roaring in his brain, as if something strange exploded in his mind into a vast sea of starlight.
Chen Xu’s head buzzed, his worldview shaken.
And the night-time mouse talk continued: "Master Jiu, the plain porridge is tasty, it would be even better to have it every night."
[Mouse Demon liked +1]
Chen Xu closed his eyes, then opened them again.
The view ahead was perfectly clear, and he himself was quite alert.
Yet the strange prompt text still ceaselessly popped out in his virtual vision, and the mouse voices continued by his ears.
"If you find it tasty, then it shall do, but we can’t move easily now, so we can only team up with this scholar to get some food. However, this scholar is so unnaturally unlucky, his aura so dreary and dark, I fear he won’t live long."
"Squeak!" The little mouse hurriedly chirped, "He won’t live long? Master Jiu, then how much longer can we eat his porridge?"
The old voice was silent for a moment, reluctantly saying, "How could one say for sure? Seeing how dense his bad luck is, like it’s almost dripping, I fear someone has schemed against him, and he definitely won’t live much longer."
"Squeak squeak squeak!" The little mouse immediately became disappointed, "His porridge is sweeter than others’, such a pity he’ll soon die."
[Mouse Demon liked +1]
The old voice spoke finely, "Human hearts are like ghostly haunts, always full of the unpredictable; this is the difference in being human. Alas, though we are of the mouse kind, we shouldn’t eat human food for nothing. Ah Shi, take this ’Garment of No Suffering’ to the stove, as if it’s this period’s meal fee."
Then followed another bout of rustling sounds.
Perhaps it was the Mouse Demon now delivering the so-called "Garment of No Suffering"!
Chen Xu was shocked to the core, feeling an impulse to rush into the kitchen to see if there really was a Mouse Demon, to carefully ask if what the Mouse Demon said about "not living long" was true, yet he feared his own mortal body couldn’t contend with the Demon Race’s danger.
Even though the two mouse demons in their talk seemed more knowledgeable and sensible than some humans, not like evil demons.
But if they were really demons, who knows how much credence could be given to their demon words?
Chen Xu gritted his teeth, finally standing firmly in the moonlight’s shadow.
Inside his mind, the world flipped upside down, his worldview collapsed and rebuilt, barely knowing what day it was.
Until the stove’s firelight, extinguished at some unknown moment, and all the rustling sounds had faded away, the excruciating pain from the injured leg brought Chen Xu back to reality.
He dared not make a sound, only quietly shifted his steps, slowly retreating to his own room.
Back on the bed, tightly wrapped in the blanket yet unable to dispel the chill that permeated his body.
Chen Xu tossed and turned, thinking a lot.
Ten years under the cold window, he initially thought he was simply on the arduous path of a country lad facing exams, never expecting there to truly be demons in this world!
With demons appearing, what then did his ten years of hard study amount to?
Ever since passing the boy’s test, he had been plagued by misfortune, thinking he was just unlucky. Now he realized it was abnormal to be this unlucky; could it be that some small person was secretly casting evil magic against him?
Stealing fortune, just the sound is chilling.
Chen Xu recalled his past experiences.
In his previous life, he was a science student, and upon transmigrating, he inherently dismissed the existence of "strange powers and chaos." Furthermore, having been born in a rural farm family, he’d never heard of any cultivation practices within miles around.
There were indeed some rural legends circulating, the neighboring village even had a shaman said to scatter rice and commune with spirits, call back children’s lost souls. Chen Xu heard about it only in passing, dismissing it as simple ignorance and superstition, never associating it with an abnormal world.
But what if the world really was abnormal?
Chen Xu lay on the bed, feeling deeply chilled.
He seemed to figure out many issues, yet more questions grew increasingly unclear.
Ultimately, the most perplexing issue was the information that kept surfacing in his mind earlier, the so-called [Mouse Demon liked], what exactly was that?