I want to die!

The jolt beneath him pulled his consciousness back from the chaos.

The cold wind howled in his ears. Zhou Xing opened his eyes. The rough texture of the tattered straw mat rubbed against his skin, and beneath him was the creaking wooden railing of the oxcart.

An old ox slowly pulled the cart ahead, and a little girl of seven or eight years old sat on its back. Her thin shoulders swayed in the dim twilight, and her intermittent sobs drifted on the evening breeze.

She was so engrossed in crying that she didn't notice the person in the straw mat who had suddenly sat up in shock from their deathbed.

"Is it my younger sister, Li Ziqing, who came to collect the body?" Zhou Xing rubbed his temples.

But as he reached out, he felt a cold, metallic protrusion between his eyebrows, and his heart skipped a beat.

It was the head of that coffin nail.

Before his death, Li Xuanqing hammered the nail into his own head seven times in a row.

The blood had already congealed, but the wound seemed to have healed with the soul transfer and stopped bleeding, while the nail remained firmly embedded in his head.

Character: Li Xuanqing

ability:

【Martial Beggar (White)】The ability to withstand blows and tolerate pain, honed through years of injuries.

【Flesh-in-the-Hand Nail (Green)】A long nail stained with mud, its shape is unsettlingly reminiscent of the nails sealing a coffin.

Soul Ability:

【Exhibitionist (Blue)】Enters a berserk state of excitement when exposing oneself, unleashing monstrous strength capable of overpowering ferocious beasts. The more exposed one is, and the more people one attracts, the stronger the effect.

Last wish: To leave an inheritance for my family

Yangshou: 3 days

"Does this time I have three days of lifespan?" Zhou Xing pondered for a moment.

Within three days, leave an inheritance for his family... This must have been Li Xuanqing's dying wish, born from the realization that he couldn't bring his hard-earned money home with him.

The problem is not big.

The money Mrs. Zhao spilled on the ground was estimated to be around a hundred taels.

If Zhou Xing could recoup his seventy taels of silver for risking his life and pay off his family's debts, he would surely be able to die with his eyes wide open in peace.

But the problem is, how do you rob money from beggars? And there are about a hundred beggars, after all.

Should we report this to the authorities?

As the thought crossed my mind, another set of memories surfaced in my head.

The magistrate of Qingshui County was named Wei En. He was an incorruptible and impartial official who could even execute his own younger brother on the spot for breaking the law.

Since Taichang took office in 95, he has already made a name for himself in just five years.

Wayne? Five years in office? Could Emperor Taichang of the Great Mang Dynasty have lived for over 100 years?

Zhou Xing's mind was a bit confused.

From the moment he transmigrated into Wei Liu's body to the moment he transmigrated into Li Xuanqing's body, he only felt that a moment had passed. But in this world, five years had actually passed?

Was it because he had been buried underground for too long and had lost his sense of time, or is there some other mystery?

While his thoughts were in turmoil, they had already arrived at the Li family's residence.

The courtyard house had a wide gate and walls, but the eaves were mottled, giving it a desolate and dilapidated appearance in the twilight. Only one window shone with a dim yellow oil lamp, stubbornly shining in the dead of night.

Mother Zhang is still waiting.

The oxcart stopped at this moment, and the young girl riding the ox jumped off its back and tiptoed to pull the wooden gate of the wall.

As Zhou Xing watched this scene, a thought stirred within him.

Li Ziqing, the youngest daughter, is only eight years old this year. If Zhang Shi knew about his death, she would never allow this little girl to go to the county town to collect his body...

"Since I don't know he's dead, I'm outta here..."

Zhou Xing jumped off the oxcart. He wasn't very interested in Li Xuanqing's family affairs and didn't want to deal with them.

When his soul transmigrated into the body of the deceased and faced his relatives, he always felt it was more difficult than robbing money from a hundred or so beggars.

As long as I recover the money I earned while risking my life and fulfill my last wish, that's enough...

But just as he jumped off the oxcart, a small black shadow flashed by beside him.

"Hey! Where are you going, you little devil!" It turned out that the little bean sprouted out from behind the door at some point, holding a yellow talisman in his hand. He jumped twice in front of Zhou Xing, trying to reach his forehead.

Zhou Xing looked down and saw that the little boy's tear stains had long since dried. He must have been faking his crying just now, but now his face was genuinely red from jumping up and down several times.

Zhou Xing stood there for a moment, then bent down and knelt down.

The little girl slapped a yellow piece of paper onto Zhou Xing's forehead, muttering to herself:

"Demons and monsters, leave! Demons and monsters, leave!"

When the little one finally got tired of playing around, Zhou Xing ripped the yellow paper off his forehead and said impatiently:

"My dear child, I'm not dead, I'm just in a deep sleep. I wasn't possessed by anything dirty."

"Big brother?!" The little boy looked up, his eyes brimming with tears, and threw himself at him.

"Even a corpse that's been dead for three days isn't as stubborn as you, brother. You weren't asleep, you clearly passed out from the pain."

"If it weren't for my second uncle next door telling me about this and lending me his oxcart, your sleep deprivation problem would have been cured forever."

Zhou Xing: "....."

It's clear that the siblings get along very well; once they confirmed that Zhou Xing was alive and unharmed, they started bickering.

He learned the whole story from his younger sister's fragmented account.

Qingshui County is not a large town.

The beggar nailed himself to the ground in the street, begging for seventy taels of silver but dying before he could take it... His second uncle, Li Yingjie, happened to enter the city and witnessed dozens of beggars robbing silver.

"So, Mother doesn't know about this?" Zhou Xing re-examined the little boy in front of him.

At eight years old, without her mother's knowledge, she borrowed a cart and went into town to collect her older brother's body. On the way back, she found her brother had risen from the dead and was even faking crying. She went home, got some talismans, and stuck them on him...

I don't know if it's because poor children mature early, or if collecting corpses is just the norm in this world...

"I don't know yet... I'll go get you some clean clothes to change into." As he said this, the little boy couldn't help but look up at Zhou Xing's forehead again.

The long nail embedded in the forehead was quite conspicuous, and it was even driven at a slightly crooked angle, piercing the upper part of the skull at an upward angle, with a slight protrusion visible.

Zhou Xing understood, and simply let down his long hair to cover his forehead and the top of his head, making the long nail disappear into the hair.

But this made his head look a bit pointed, and Zhou Xing felt that his vision had become clearer.

After removing his blood-stained clothes, Zhou Xing noticed that the body had numerous scars of varying sizes on its hands, feet, and chest.

Cuts, bruises, and swelling, all located on visible areas like the chest and wrists, have long since healed, but have left behind a dense array of scars.

"He worked as a martial arts beggar for a year, earning money for the family. He's really a wolf in sheep's clothing." After changing into clean clothes, the brother and sister tiptoed into the courtyard.

The front door creaked open.

Li's mother stood at the boundary between the shadow and the candlelight inside the doorway.

She was thin, and behind her, an oil lamp on the table cast a dim, yellowish light, casting her shadow on the earthen wall behind her, long and blurry, swaying slightly.

Beside the candlelight, a needle and thread basket lay scattered, and an unfinished cotton-padded coat for an adult man was draped over the back of a chair.

Since Li's father disappeared a year ago, the burden on the family has suddenly become much heavier.

During the day, Li's mother had to work as a maid in the kitchen of Zuixianju, a restaurant in town; at night, she had no rest either, as she had to take on odd jobs such as sewing and embroidery to supplement the family income, and the lights often stayed on until late at night.

At this moment, the night was so dark that it was impossible to see any darkness, and a few distant sounds of clappers could be heard, indicating that it was well past midnight.

Her two children had only just returned home at this hour, and she looked rather anxious. She carefully scanned the two siblings' bodies, and only after seeing no obvious wounds did she nod slightly.

"You today—" She opened her mouth halfway, but then changed her mind and asked:

"How was today's harvest?"

She naturally knew that her eldest son, Li Xuanqing, was making money through shady dealings and working as a beggar.

The debt was mountainous, and she was powerless to stop it. She could only silently take on more odd jobs to keep the lamp burning a little longer and to make the needle and thread in her hands move faster, as if in this way, she could mend something that was about to collapse.

"Tomorrow, it will definitely happen tomorrow." Zhou Xing breathed a sigh of relief.

The simple conversation carried an intangible yet weighty significance...

Suddenly, he felt that the chubby shopkeeper of the cold noodles shop was quite handsome, and he preferred to confide in the shopkeeper rather than chat about everyday matters in the Li family's old house.

He turned around, intending to slip into the inner room quickly. As he passed the candlelight by the table, he heard a sound behind him.

"Wait a minute." There was a hint of doubt in Li's mother's voice.

Zhou Xing turned around and saw that Li's mother's gaze was fixed on the top of his head.

This gave Zhou Xing a slight chill, a feeling reminiscent of the tension he felt in his previous life when he climbed over the wall to go online and landed on the principal's face.

"Hey buddy, give me a hand..." Zhou Xing glanced sideways at the little kid Li Ziqing beside him, though he didn't know why he was asking a teenager for help.

The little girl seemed to really understand. She tilted her head, looked at Zhou Xing, and suddenly pointed at his head, laughing:

"Brother, why is your head so pointy?"

Zhou Xing remained silent for a long time.

"...Doesn't having such a pointed head make me look like I have something special about me? What's wrong with that?" he replied, while simultaneously raising his hand to tidy his hair, intentionally or unintentionally blocking Li's mother's view.