Chapter 1 : Chapter 1
Chapter 1. Clan Menial
(Attendants, bring wine for our honored guest!)
(Sorry, the inn only has formalin left...)
...
This was Great Chu, in Qingyang Commandery, Yuquan Prefecture City.
It was late autumn.
A fine rain fell without end, and the weather was turning cold.
“Hurry up and get up, or we’ll miss the hour.”
Inside the silent, dim communal sleeping room, someone suddenly started panting heavily, his voice full of urgency.
Then all kinds of chaotic noises immediately filled the room.
A few nimble youths rustled about for a moment, then shoved open the heavy wooden door with their heads and hurried outside.
Waves of cold air whirled in and struck like knives, biting at the necks of those still asleep, raising goosebumps across their skin at once.
“Which bastard forgot to shut the door again?!”
Amid the noisy clamor, Xu Yuan rubbed his eyes and sat up.
Along with a few others his age, he pulled on his coarse cotton-padded clothes, cleaned himself up in a few quick motions, and walked out of the room.
The first light of dawn was faint, and everything around them was still gray and indistinct.
A few strands of rain landed on his shoulders, and after he took two slight breaths, a chill seeped straight into his stomach.
In front of him, quite a few people had already gathered on the open ground.
Most of them were tender-faced youths of fifteen or sixteen, and they had already started bustling about.
Over here, the boys who had just come out yawned and rubbed their reddened cheeks, just as they did every day.
Washing up, lighting the fire, cooking...
Before long, they were holding bowls of steaming vegetable porridge, topped with a small spoonful of diced pickles, and wolfing it down to fill their stomachs.
Feeling the warmth rolling through his belly, Xu Yuan tightened his collar and joined the ranks of those doing odd jobs.
Chopping firewood, hauling water, wiping dust, mopping floors—nothing more than that.
“I’ve only been here two and a half months, but the contract I signed lasts ten whole years.”
“How am I supposed to endure that?”
As Xu Yuan worked briskly with his hands and feet, he grumbled inwardly.
In his previous life, his heart had been weak.
While reading in the university library, he had come across an important point and taken out his phone to snap a picture.
Who could have known he had forgotten to turn off the flash?
The girl at the table across from him had been so startled that she leaped to her feet and screamed that he was secretly photographing her.
The countless knife-like stares, together with that fat face filled with madness and hysteria, had instantly made it impossible for him to breathe.
That cold junior student had immediately turned into a warm pill guaranteeing postgraduate recommendation.
By the time he regained consciousness, he had already arrived in another world.
“Life is even harder for those at the bottom in this world.”
Xu Yuan sighed inwardly, but his hands did not dare slow down in the slightest.
The eyes of the middle-aged servants watching nearby were sharp as blades.
“What a pity.”
“If I’d transmigrated a little earlier, I could have stopped the hand that signed that contract and avoided being sold into the Shangyang family as a menial servant.”
“Though if the rumors about the benefits were true, that would have been one thing...”
Xu Yuan glanced around.
Although he had enough food and clothing now, and even received a little stipend every month, the rules in this deep and sprawling estate were terrifyingly strict.
If you made a mistake, you would be beaten or cursed at, and your meals might be docked.
If it was more serious, you might even lose your life.
CLANG!
At that moment, something hit the ground with a loud crash.
Xu Yuan instinctively looked up toward the kitchen doorway.
He saw Fatty Wang, iron ladle in hand, kick over a young servant with one foot.
The flesh on his face quivered as he barked harshly, “You dog-fucked idiot, your grandpa here suffered who knows how much to learn this skill, and the moment your pig-bladder-sized eyes open, you think you can secretly learn it?”
The little servant fell to his knees at once and hurriedly kowtowed, begging for mercy.
“Master Wang, I was wrong.”
“I won’t dare do it again...”
Even so, he was still given a vicious beating, and his cries of pain rang out one after another.
The other menial servants in the courtyard all fell silent as cicadas in winter.
After watching for a while, they each went back to their work.
Within these high walls, status and rank were valued above all else.
These menial servants were even lower than the regular servants of the main courtyard.
They stood at the very bottom.
Fatty Wang had been serving as the cook for quite some time, so naturally he could beat and curse them however he pleased.
Xu Yuan watched coldly from the side.
When he had first arrived at this courtyard, he had not understood the situation, and he had nearly suffered the same fate himself.
“Take it easy, all of you.”
“When the masters get here later, if their meal is delayed, that will be a disaster of the highest order!”
Fatty Wang swept his mung-bean-sized eyes over the courtyard, cursing under his breath as he hefted the ladle and went back inside.
The little servant who had been beaten bared his teeth in pain, yet still climbed back up without making a sound and continued working.
Xu Yuan knew that the “masters” he referred to were the martial instructors who taught the martial students from the other courtyards.
This enormous courtyard existed to serve them specifically—cooking, washing clothes, and the like—so their status was obvious.
“As for the Shangyang family members in the inner court, they’re even more exalted.”
“They have dedicated servants attending them, and menial servants like us can’t even touch the gates over there.”
Xu Yuan kept moving without pause as he pondered inwardly.
The Shangyang family was a powerful and illustrious clan in Yuquan Prefecture City.
The clan alone had more than a thousand members, with servants spread everywhere and businesses vast and far-reaching.
Even the government offices had to watch their expression before acting.
As the saying went, even the gatekeeper before a prime minister’s residence ranked seven grades high.
With a family this large, even a mere doorman at the edge of their estate could go outside acting proud and imposing.
So although they were only menial servants, once people heard they belonged to the Shangyang family, no one thought them especially lowly.
Still, behind their backs, people inevitably muttered that they were nothing but dogs bullying others on their master’s authority.
“Meal’s ready, meal’s ready...”
By the time the sun had risen stronger and the air had warmed, basins of lunch were finally brought out, and smiles immediately appeared on quite a few faces.
The work in this estate was exhausting, but the food was not bad.
It could not be called good, but at least it was better than starving outside.
Everyone hurriedly grabbed rough porcelain bowls and carefully packed them full of rice before eating with great gusto.
GULP!
At that moment, the sound of someone swallowing rang out.
Xu Yuan turned his head along with the others.
He saw that in the bowls used by the martial instructors, there were still a few chunks of meat left, thick with oil and dark sauce.
The meat was extremely fatty, but that trembling, glossy texture hooked straight into the noses of the young menial servants.
Xu Yuan forced himself to turn away and continue eating the polished rice and green vegetable stalks in front of him, but the food in his mouth became more and more tasteless.
Menial servants only got meat once every ten days.
Even that was enough to make them deeply satisfied.
Most people outside could not even fill their stomachs.
If they had the chance to eat a fragrant piece of fatty meat, that would already be the greatest good fortune imaginable.
“Go on, get lost.”
“What’s there to stare at?”
“Eat your food properly!”
Fatty Wang came out wearing a greasy, filthy cook’s apron, cursing as he moved with astonishing speed to slip that bowl of meat away into his own hands.
Looking at his waist, thicker than a water barrel, some of the younger servants could not help muttering under their breath.
“You damned fat pig, all you know how to do is stuff your face.”
“Why don’t you choke to death already?”
After lunch, the menial servants all returned to work and stayed busy until their feet hardly touched the ground.
Aside from the time spent eating and sleeping, they had almost no free time at all in a day.
...
By the time the setting sun spread its remaining light across the sky, dusk was already deepening.
After attending to the martial instructors’ daily needs, the late-autumn night darkened very quickly, and before long, people could no longer see one another clearly.
The menial servants all hurriedly shed the outer shell of their exhaustion and burrowed into the communal sleeping platform, eager to enjoy that rare bit of warmth.
Wearing coarse clothes full of patches, Xu Yuan walked to a secluded corner of the large courtyard.
Only after confirming that no one was moving nearby and that everyone had already gone to rest did he draw a deep breath and slowly begin a set of boxing movements.
Although it was called boxing, it was leisurely and unhurried, clearly more like a kind of calisthenics.
The motions flowed like drifting clouds and running water, gentle and graceful.
It was unmistakably the famous Taiji Fist.
[Name: Xu Yuan]
[Skill: Tai Chi Exercise (Beginner 99%)]
[Aptitude: 1 (Utterly Mediocre)]
“Just a little more, and I’ll break through.”
By the time Xu Yuan finished the set, quite a bit of sweat had already seeped out over his body, but he felt refreshed from head to toe, and much of the day’s exhaustion had faded.
Looking at the numbers on the panel before his eyes, he felt immense curiosity and decided to do it one more time.
Just like the vast majority of transmigrators before him, he had come with a panel after arriving in this world.
As a sainted veteran of Tomato Reading with a total reading time of 21,900 hours, Xu Yuan had quickly realized that this was his golden finger.
So after many attempts, he had successfully activated the panel using the Taiji Fist he had taken as an elective in university in his previous life.
He had practiced it for nearly two months like this, but aside from being able to see the progress of his boxing technique, he still had not discovered any other use for it.
“I hope it actually does something.”
Xu Yuan could not help feeling disheartened.
This body was not an orphan’s.
He still had an elder brother and sister-in-law at home, and because life was too difficult, he had no choice but to enter the Shangyang family.
Only on the one day of leave he received each month could he find the time to go back and visit them.
“In another two days, it’ll be my day off.”
Xu Yuan pondered inwardly.
Move by move, the form unfolded skillfully from his hands, his posture light and fluid, each circle complete and seamless.
In less than half a quarter of an hour, he had finished a complete round of Taiji Fist.
Xu Yuan stopped moving and wiped the fine sweat from his forehead.
At the same time, his body trembled.
It felt as though a warm current was spreading downward through him, flowing all over his body and making him feel as comfortable as if he were soaking in a hot spring.
He could not help letting out a low groan.
“Could it be that my Taiji Fist just broke through?”
Startled and uncertain, he hurriedly looked toward the panel.
[Name: Xu Yuan]
[Skill: Tai Chi Exercise (Small Success 1%)]
[Aptitude: 3 (Above Average)]
At a single glance, the difference was obvious.
The aptitude section, which had previously read utterly mediocre, had clearly changed.