Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Song Xiaotao was an unremarkable old woman.

When she was younger, she was an unremarkable country woman.

Of course, that isn’t to say she was anything special as a young girl either.

Song Xiaotao’s life really wasn’t much to write about.

Born, married, bore children, and served her old man.

That was it.

Song Xiaotao’s days were equally uninspiring.

Eat, sleep, work.

Day after day, year after year.

Yet, she had managed to live smoothly until the age of seventy.

Her old man hadn’t been so blessed, and neither had her children.

She didn’t think much about the meaning of life. She simply felt that living was good and dying was bad. So, when her vegetables were crushed to death by this young lad, it was a catastrophe of the highest order.

She crouched in front of the youth and delivered a swift slap with both hands, one after the other.

After slapping him awake, her first words were: “Pay up!”

When Li Yanlai first woke up, he only felt pain in his face. But when he clearly saw the wrinkled face before him, his heart ached-it felt as though it were shattering.

“I knew it. I’ve never had any luck in this life.”

Li Yanlai considered himself cursed by fate.

On the day he was born, his mother died in labor and his father was conscripted. He was the only one left in the house still breathing.

If not for the Old Monk who had come to the door for alms, he would have kicked the bucket long ago.

The Old Monk took him back and raised him until he was three. One day, while playing with him, the monk suddenly stopped moving; he had passed away in meditation.

At the time, the boy knew nothing of life and death. He even crawled into the Old Monk’s arms to sleep. He only felt that something was different from usual-why did it get colder the longer he slept?

The Old Monk had tended to a dilapidated temple all by himself. Once the Old Monk was gone, there was absolutely no one left to look after Li Yanlai.

In a daze, he wandered into the town at the foot of the mountain and aimlessly drifted into a Gang made up entirely of little beggars.

The eight-year-old Little Gang Leader led a group of scrawny runts, who could barely speak, to survive on petty theft and begging. Whatever they got was shared among them. Those who were lucky enough not to get sick, or strong enough to survive their illnesses, managed to pull through.

Li Yanlai had bad luck, but he had a strong constitution.

The Little Gang Leader had good luck, except for the one time it ran out-he was chased by a dog while stealing a chicken and didn’t survive.

Li Yanlai still remembered the wound on the Little Gang Leader’s leg, the size of a fist. The blood wouldn’t stop, no matter what. They were all panicked, but none of them knew what to do.

Later, the blood turned black. The Little Gang Leader grew delirious with fever. Usually, he hated it when people cried out for their parents, but that night, he called for his mother until dawn.

When the Little Gang Leader died, the Gang disbanded immediately.

Li Yanlai was nine that year. With nowhere to go, he saw a recruitment drive for the army and went to enlist.

Warlords were vying for supremacy, and the world had been in chaos for years. No faction was picky; they even took children.

They asked him for his name.

He didn’t have one, so he had to make one up on the spot.

“Li…”

He didn’t remember the Old Monk’s Buddhist name, but he remembered the Little Gang Leader’s surname was Li.

As for the rest… he happened to see a swallow flying toward him.

He said, “Li Yanlai.”

However, the registrar wrote: Li Yanlai.

The “Yan” that meant loathing.

Li Yanlai only learned about this after becoming close with a Scholar in his barracks who had traded his pen for a sword.

The Scholar was a few years older than him but was a thin, frail thing. Li Yanlai could never understand why he had joined the army.

But the Scholar told him about his name and taught him how to read. Regardless of their size, they were best friends.

Li Yanlai went to the registrar, demanding a name change.

The registrar spared him a glance.

“Can’t be changed. The waist tag is already made.”

When he returned after being rebuffed, the Scholar comforted him.

“‘Yan’ has another meaning: ‘to be satisfied.’ To have come to this world and be satisfied… it means everything you encounter in the future will be good.”

He believed it.

Until the Scholar’s body, riddled with arrows like a sieve, collapsed on top of him.

He thought that, contrary to what the Scholar had said, “Yan” simply meant hatred. It meant he should never have come to this world at all.

He realized then that there was no need to change his name.