Armor: After finding the Demon-Sealing Box, I won't eat beef.

1994 年。

A torrential downpour that lasted for half a month caused D City to swell up.

It also plunged those living at the very bottom of this city into endless bitterness.

Lin Zhen dragged his broken body.

He shuffled back step by step to the underpass where he was staying.

Blood was seeping from his forehead, and there was a large scrape on the back of his hand, with blood mixed with rainwater flowing down.

Ten minutes earlier, he had just passed by a street corner when he was targeted by a group of drunk thugs.

There was no reason, just because he walked slowly and looked disheveled, which annoyed them.

They roughly dragged the person into the alley and punched and kicked him for a while.

He slumped on the half-dry, moldy piece of cardboard, staring at the leaky bridge arch overhead.

I don't know if I can survive this endless rainy season.

"Dead...it's for the best."

Lin Zhen closed his heavy, leaden eyelids.

If there's no food left, and no one lends a hand...

Within three days, passersby will discover a frozen corpse under the overpass.

But so what? After I die, I don't care if the world is flooded.

Lin Zhen hated this world, and he hated this useless body even more.

He's not from here.

To be precise, his soul comes from the 21st century, a prosperous age where food and clothing were plentiful.

A sudden accident cost him his life at a young age.

When he opened his eyes again, he found himself as a newborn baby from seventeen years ago.

Perhaps because she was reborn with memories of her past life, she remembered everything from the very first second she opened her eyes.

When he was one year old, his biological parents abandoned him in a hospital corridor.

Fortunately, she was discovered by a cleaning lady and taken to the police station, eventually ending up in an orphanage.

Lin Zhen didn't actually care about these things.

For someone with an adult soul, there is not much difference between growing up in a family of origin and growing up in an orphanage.

But fate seemed determined to play a cruel joke on him.

After spending three years in the first orphanage, he gradually discovered that his body was different from that of the other children.

When I was five years old, the hospital diagnosis came down—congenital cerebellar motor development disorder.

That's right.

He had a premonition.

This is probably why his biological parents would not hesitate to throw away a newborn baby.

His development is always a step behind his peers; he has severe hand and foot incoordination; his mind is clear, but his body is always a step behind.

He can't do fine motor skills, his sense of balance is terrible, and he will fall and get bruised and battered if he walks even a little fast.

Naturally, he also became the target of bullying by all the children.

Lin Zhen did try to resist, but each time he did, he was met with even more brutal beatings.

He can't beat anyone.

From the age of five to nine, he was transferred from one orphanage to another.

No family would want to take in a disabled child who can't even walk properly and is always bullied by other children.

At the age of nine, he was kicked out of the last orphanage and began a life of homelessness and begging.

Even begging is not an easy thing.

In City D, the best locations with high foot traffic and opportunities to beg have long been taken over by a group of strong, professional beggars.

If he dared to step inside, he would be met with a brutal beating.

So they can only stay in some remote corners that no one wants to go to all year round.

He often had to beg for a leftover meal every day or two. The seventeen-year-old boy was so thin that he was just skin and bones.

Even so.

Like a weed growing in a crack in the rock, she stubbornly endured until she turned seventeen.

In three months, it will be my eighteenth birthday.

pity.

I probably won't live to see that day.

Lin Zhen wanted to just fall asleep and never wake up again.

But the pain all over his body felt like countless needles pricking him, making it impossible for him to sleep.

In his hazy consciousness, the only glimmer of light in his seventeen years of dark life involuntarily surfaced in his mind.

Four years ago, he fainted from hunger on the roadside and lay there for two whole days.

A girl of about fifteen or sixteen years old passed by, took pity on him, and placed the boxed lunch she had just bought in front of him.

That was the first time in his seventeen years of rebirth that he had eaten a proper meal with both hot food and vegetables.

From then on, every three to five days, the girl would appear at the street corner where he was begging, carrying a boxed lunch.

Three whole years.

If it weren't for her, Lin Zhen would have starved to death in some forgotten corner long ago.

But a year ago, she suddenly disappeared.

She was the only warmth in his dark and hopeless life.

Lin Zhen searched for her frantically.

But where can a beggar who doesn't even know where his next meal is coming from go to look for people?

I don't even know her name.

All I remember is that when she smiled, her eyes curved like crescent moons.

But what's the use of that?

In his fragmented memories, Lin Zhen finally succumbed to exhaustion and fell into a deep sleep.

When I opened my eyes again, I had no idea how much time had passed.

He had no watch and could not see the sun.

I felt that this sleep was exceptionally long.

Gritting his teeth, he used his arms to support himself on the ground and slowly sat up.

Looking down at her body, so thin that you could count her ribs, she couldn't help but laugh at herself.

Although this body was born with a disability and could not even walk steadily, its vitality was as tenacious as an unkillable cockroach.

Yesterday's brutal beating would have killed most normal people, but after a nap, he was able to sit up.

My stomach was completely empty, without a trace of oil or fat.

I don't know where the strength came from, but I was still able to hold on.

Lin Zhen himself couldn't understand it either.

"never mind.

Better to live a miserable life than to die a glorious death; let's just live one day at a time.

Since we're not dead, we have to keep looking for food.

For Lin Zhen, the first thing he always thought about when he opened his eyes each day was where he could beg for a meal.

As for being beaten yesterday, that's long been forgotten.

I've been bullied since I was a child, and I've long since become numb to it.

He doesn't hate anyone.

Seventeen years of hard work and struggle had long since taught him the cruelest rules of this world.

The weak eat the strong, the fittest survive.

If given the chance, Lin Zhen also wants to climb to the top of the pyramid so that he will never have to be bullied again.

pity.

There are no "what ifs" in this world.

I looked up at the sky; the rain had stopped for the time being.

Lin Zhen dragged his leaden legs and slowly walked out of the overpass.

Five hundred meters away was a garbage transfer station, a place that others found dirty and smelly, but it was his only hope of finding food.

It took him a full hour to walk just 500 meters.

The garbage transfer station reeked of a foul stench; the stench of decay assaulted the nostrils.

But Lin Zhen was already used to it.

He skillfully rummaged through piles of garbage, hoping to find something that others had thrown away that was still edible.

I searched for a long time.

It got completely dark.

Lin Zhen's hands and clothes were covered in mud and garbage, but he couldn't find anything.

have to.

Another day of hunger.

It's okay, I'm used to it.

For him, going hungry was the norm; finding food was a stroke of incredible luck.

Anyway, this body is used to being hungry.

The rain started again, and it was getting heavier and heavier.

The cold rain quickly soaked his thin clothes, making him shiver with cold.

He had to hurry back under the overpass, otherwise he would catch a fever and a cold if he stayed in the rain any longer.

Getting sick in a place like this is practically the same as waiting to die.

Just as he gave up the search and was about to turn around and walk back...

Out of the corner of my eye, I suddenly caught a glimpse of something flashing beneath a pile of discarded old furniture not far away.

Lin Zhen was stunned for a moment, then raised his hand to wipe the rain off his face.

Look again.

There was nothing there.

Am I seeing things?

Just as I was about to turn around.

The faint light flickered again.

This time, he saw it clearly.

There was indeed something reflecting light under that pile of rotten wood.

Lin Zhen gritted his teeth and walked over, starting to slowly move away the wooden boards and discarded furniture that were pressing down on them.

For others, it's just a matter of minutes.

He spent a good ten minutes on it, and was exhausted, sweating profusely and panting heavily.

"What the hell is this?"

Lin Zhen pulled the thing out of the garbage heap, struggling to control his trembling hands, and brought it close to his eyes.

It feels heavy and cool to the touch.

It's not iron, nor is it ordinary stainless steel; its texture is incredibly smooth.

He looked at it over and over again.

This is a palm-sized metal box with intricate and ancient patterns engraved on its surface. In the very center of the box is a clear Tai Chi symbol.

"It should sell for about two yuan."

Lin Zhen had only this thought on his mind right now.

If I could sell it for two yuan, I could buy two meat buns and have a nice meal.

suddenly!

Without warning, the metal box burst into a blinding white light!

Lin Zhen was so startled that he loosened his grip, and the box fell to the ground.

Instinctively, I stepped back, instantly lost my balance, and fell heavily into the mud.

When he rubbed his sore back, grimaced as he got up from the ground, and saw what was in front of him...

He froze completely.

My mind went blank, as if all my thinking abilities had been instantly stripped away.