I just wrote a love poem, how did that make me so powerful?

"Brother, are you just going to watch?"

"Brother, please don't be a gentleman tonight, okay?"

Under the triple stimulation of alcohol, sight, and touch, Xu Qing extended his claws like Lu Shan's...

Snapped!

A slap landed on Xu Qing's face!

Xu Qing felt a daze, as if her face had made intimate contact with the corner of the table in the brightly lit KTV.

Then darkness fell.

When I opened my eyes again, it felt like a lifetime had passed, yet it also felt like a single second.

But the world had changed.

Above him were rotten beams, and beneath him was a hard wooden bed. In the corner lay several well-worn copies of the eight-legged essay.

Another memory flooded into my mind.

He, Xu Qing, transmigrated into the body of a poor scholar with the same name.

A Liang Dynasty different from the original timeline.

The original owner of this body also had a tragic past. Her father died early, and she depended on her widowed mother, Sun, for survival. She studied hard for ten years but failed even the county-level examination. To make matters worse, she gave up on herself and indulged in eating, drinking, gambling, and whoring.

Despite being ambitious but incompetent, and living in poverty, the original owner of this body daydreamed about passing the imperial examination and achieving great success.

"Qing... Brother Qing, I didn't mean to hit you. You were touching me in a daze just now. I... I slapped you unconsciously."

Standing before me was a slender girl, wearing a faded blue cloth shirt with patches on the cuffs, her hair tied up with a wooden hairpin, and a few strands falling beside her ears.

She had very beautiful features, with delicate eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes, and a straight nose. However, her face was pale, and her lips were bloodless. She looked like a slender bamboo swaying precariously in the wind.

But on that slender bamboo, two large fruits were still hanging...

Her breasts were surprisingly full, stretching the oversized old cloth shirt into an inappropriate curve.

Small branches yield fruitful results!

The person who came was Song Yao, his fiancée.

Clearly, he had been in a daze and had reached out to touch her...

That full and proud figure.

Although the two are engaged, they have not yet confessed their feelings.

It's normal for a virgin to have such a strong reaction.

"Cough cough..." Song Yao turned her head and coughed twice, handing over a rough earthenware basin in her hand, and lowered her head, not daring to look at him.

"I made some vegetable dumplings, cough cough..."

Xu Qing took the earthenware basin, looked down, and saw several green wild vegetable dumplings mixed with a little bit of flour, which were kneaded tightly.

In a family where even elm bark porridge was almost unavailable, this was the best thing they could get.

Xu Qing got up, put down the vegetable dumplings, and then ladled out a bowl of elm bark porridge that her mother had cooked, pushing it in front of her.

"Let's eat together."

Song Yao waved her hands repeatedly, "I...I've already eaten, Qing-ge, you eat."

As soon as she finished speaking, her stomach growled loudly.

The sound wasn't loud, but it was exceptionally clear in the quiet courtyard.

Song Yao's face flushed red to her ears, her fingers twisting the hem of her clothes, wishing she could disappear into a crack in the ground.

Xu Qing felt a pang of sadness as she watched this scene.

He recalled scenes from the original owner's memories...

In the dead of winter, Song Yao braved the heavy snow to bring him cotton-padded shoes. The original owner of the body complained that the soles were too thin and threw them into the stove in front of her. Song Yao cried as she tried to peel them off with her hands, burning her fingers with blisters. The next day, she made a thicker pair and brought them to him.

The original owner of this body got drunk, hit her, and called her a "jinx who brings bad luck to her parents." Song Yao, with blood trickling from the corner of her mouth, knelt on the ground silently cleaning up the broken wine bowls, and even made him a hangover soup the next day.

The most outrageous time was when the original owner of this body lost so much money gambling that she used her as collateral, saying, "If I lose, I'll give you my sickly son." The people at the gambling den didn't take it seriously, but Song Yao didn't know. After hearing this, she cried all night at home, and the next day her eyes were swollen like peaches, but she still brought a plate of vegetable dumplings to the Xu family.

Each time, Song Yao would just hold back her tears, never saying a harsh word.

The next day, she would still bring the food she had saved to the Xu family, and would still call out "Brother Qing" softly.

Such a woman...

It's simply a gift from heaven!

"Eat up." Xu Qing pushed the bowl forward again, her voice much softer than before. "You can't lie, your stomach has already told you."

Song Yao bit her lip, and her eyes suddenly reddened.

"Mom, dinner's ready!" Xu Qing called out to her mother, who was working outside the wall.

When Xu's mother came in, she saw Song Yao and smiled as she took her hand, saying, "Yao Yao, sit down and have something to eat with us."

Song Yao slowly sat down, picked up the bowl, and sipped the porridge slowly.

The porridge was bitter and astringent, but she drank it very carefully, afraid of wasting any.

Xu Qing looked at her, reached out, and took her slender hand in his.

That hand was icy cold, and there were some calluses on the fingertips...

It was honed from years of needlework, chopping wood, and burning firewood.

Song Yao froze, as if she had been burned, and quickly withdrew her hand.

"Qing... Brother Qing... please don't do this." Her voice trembled, and tears finally streamed down her pale cheeks.

"Just focus on your studies, and don't hit me... I'm scared of you. Are you trying to sell me?"

Xu Qing's hand froze in mid-air.

He opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but found that he couldn't utter a single word.

The mess left behind by the original owner was much deeper than imagined.

He didn't reach out again, but instead picked up the bowl of elm bark porridge.

Enduring the bitter and astringent taste that was hard to swallow, he tilted his head back and drank it all in one gulp, then slammed the bowl down and smashed it on the ground.

"I, Xu Qing, swear today that I will make a name for myself and completely cure Yao Yao's illness within one or two years. In the future, I will either become a high-ranking official or a wealthy man, so that Yao Yao and her mother can live a good life. If I break this oath, may I be struck by lightning!"

"Today I taste the bitterness of elm bark, tomorrow I'll surely savor the sweetness of abalone!"

Then, without looking back, he walked into the dilapidated study.

Behind her, Song Yao looked up, her eyes blurred with tears, at his retreating figure. Her lips moved slightly, but she ultimately said nothing.

She lowered her head and continued drinking the bowl of elm bark porridge that had gone cold.

Tears fell drop by drop into the bowl, mingling with the bitterness as they were swallowed.

Madam Xu was stunned for a moment, muttering to herself.

"This child, if you're going to swear an oath, fine, but why are you smashing the bowl... Are you even going to eat tomorrow?"

Song Yao got up, picked up the broken porcelain shards, and carefully wrapped them in coarse cloth.

When Madam Sun saw this, she sighed, "Yaoyao, what's the point of keeping these broken pieces of the bowl?"

Song Yao lowered her head, her voice delicate: "If we repair it... it can still be used."

Sun didn't say anything more, but her eyes reddened.

……

……

When Xu Qing returned to the study, the paper pasted on the walls had turned yellow and black, and the bookshelves were piled with model essays in the eight-legged essay style, all covered in dust.

He sat at the table, with a rough sheet of straw paper spread out in front of him.

He didn't rush to write, but instead closed his eyes and sorted things out in his mind.

Making glass, smelting steel, making perfume... these are all old tricks used by our time-traveling predecessors, which one of them doesn't require capital?

We can't even afford to eat, how are we supposed to make a living?

Moreover, salt and iron were government monopolies, and mishandling them could cost you your head.

With my current status, if I suddenly become rich, I might be targeted and schemed against.

Just look at the reactions of those scoundrels before, and you'll know: of all professions, only studying is noble; those who are called out outside the gates of Jinhua are the true heroes.

Therefore, we must not lose our identity as scholars.

So, all things considered, the only thing that can be immediately monetized is the modern knowledge in one's mind.

Unable to come up with a solution after much thought, Xu Qing first tidied her desk.

Then, his gaze fell on the few well-worn storybooks on the corner of the table...

The Untold Story of a Noblewoman's Daughter and a Down-on-His-Luck Scholar

The Pretty Widow Falls for the Bookish Scholar

He picked it up and flipped through it casually, discovering it was a handwritten copy.

Suddenly, he slapped his thigh and exclaimed, "I've got it!"