In the eleventh year of Yonghui, there was a biting spring chill.
After a night of wind and rain in the small alley, early in the morning, one could only hear the tofu stall set up at the entrance, with a crisp voice shouting: "Tofu for two coins a pound, dried tofu one coin a piece, all so fragrant!"
In the distance was the South Street morning market, with porters coming and going, merchants haggling.
"This is a real lamb, ten taels of silver for one, how is that expensive?"
...
Long Jun suddenly sat up in bed, breaking out in a cold sweat.
These terms weren't ordinary words, but black market slang for cannibalism!
He hurriedly got up, limping painfully to the window, and pressed his ear to listen to the sounds from the alley entrance in the distance.
Before the sounds arrived, various food aromas wafted over first.
The savory smell of meat buns, the smoke of fried dough, the sweet freshness of tofu pudding... as well as the fishy odor from the slaughterhouse, the rotting smell from the gutters, and so on.
All kinds of familiar scents.
And in the distance, that merchant was boasting about his lamb: "This is lamb raised in a manor near Black Dew Mountain, drinking dew water and growing up eating yellow ginseng, specially supplied to wealthy households. If you don't understand, don't talk nonsense and make a fool of yourself!"
Long Jun heard clearly and shook his head secretly: this merchant could really exaggerate.
At the same time, he let out a sigh of relief.
It seemed he was groggy and had misheard.
Of course, this was the prosperous Yonghui era, a rare time of peace and order. How could there possibly be merchants openly selling human flesh in the morning market?
Long Jun stood by the window, closing it with a click to block out the various complex smells.
While gently regulating his breathing, his thoughts drifted far away.
He wasn't originally from this world. In his previous life, he was an internet company worker who died suddenly at his desk from overwork.
Sadly, this pure science student had transmigrated to this ancient world without technology or internet.
After sorting out reality, he discovered that in this world, for a child from a poor family wanting to rise up, there was basically no second path besides studying.
At that time, Long Jun was seven years old, and his family's circumstances were considered above average in the village.
But still, they couldn't escape the various taxes, corvée labor, and levies imposed from above. These class-based burdens were all mountains pressing on the heads of common people, making it hard to breathe.
Long Jun was determined to take the imperial examinations.
He spent great effort persuading his family to support his studies, starting school at age seven and passing the child scholar exam at thirteen.
After ten years of hard study, he was now seventeen.
Unfortunately, his exam luck seemed to have been forcibly diverted into a rugged path by some invisible force, starting from the year he passed the child scholar exam.
Since then, he had tried to take the cultivated talent exam for three years but was always blocked from entering the examination hall due to various accidents.
Sometimes he fell ill from the change in environment, sometimes he was knocked unconscious by smoke from a fire at the inn, sometimes he was injured by falling tiles on the way.
This year was even more ridiculous. At the beginning of the year, when he went to register at the county school, he tripped on a stone while coming down the mountain and actually broke his right leg.
Such bad luck, failing every exam, had once made Long Jun feel disheartened.
He had deeply reflected and asked himself if he should choose a different path. But if he changed paths, what would he do instead?
Moreover, after years of persistence, it was hard to give up willingly.
Finally, with the help of a classmate, Long Jun rented a small courtyard in Peace Alley, not far from South Market Street, to stay temporarily, healing his injury while studying.
Peace Alley was named "peaceful," but it wasn't actually a quiet, nice place.
It was densely populated and noisy, with its only advantage being that it was cheap.
Long Jun had been healing for over twenty days. Although he still limped when walking, at least he could take care of himself.
But last night, something strange happened.
It was around the fourth quarter of the hai hour, approaching the zi hour (around midnight).
A cool mist rose in the night, and Long Jun woke up feeling cold and couldn't sleep, so he decided to get up and go to the stove to heat some porridge to warm himself.
He didn't light a lamp, just walked slowly to the kitchen with his cane in the sparse moonlight shining through the window.
In the darkness, he heard the crackling sound of burning firewood from the kitchen, and a small orange-red flame reflecting on the broken window frame.
Long Jun immediately stopped in his tracks.
He had extinguished the fire before sleeping, so how had the stove fire started burning again?
"Squeak!"
Suddenly, he heard the low cry of a rat, rustling, squeaking...
In the blue shadows of the dark night, the firelight flickered dimly. As Long Jun listened to the rat's calls, his brain automatically translated these "squeaks" into human speech.
"Hey, this scholar is too stingy with his porridge, just white rice without adding anything else."
The tone was high-pitched and elderly, clearly sounding in his ear, yet it seemed to come from some distant crevice.
"Squeak!" The response was still a rat's cry, but similarly translated automatically in Long Jun's mind into human speech: "Delicious, white porridge is also delicious, fragrant, sweet!"
"Silly child, you've never eaten anything good, even plain porridge seems delicious to you." The elderly voice paused, finally sighing, "But given our current situation, being able to eat a bowl of white porridge... white porridge is good too."
[Rat Demon Like +1]
[+1]
Long Jun froze. For a moment, he suspected he was hearing things, but then his mind roared, as if something strange had exploded into a sky full of stars in his brain.
Long Jun's head buzzed, his worldview shaken.
And these midnight rat conversations continued: "Jiu Ye, white porridge is delicious, it would be even better if we could eat it every night."
[Rat Demon Like +1]
Long Jun closed his eyes, then opened them again.
His vision was clearly extremely clear, and he was fully awake.
And the strange prompt text kept appearing in the void before his eyes, while the rat talk continued in his ears.
"If you think it's delicious, then it is. We can't move around easily now, so we can only share food with this scholar. However, this scholar has abnormally bad luck, with a dark and gloomy aura. I fear his life won't last long."
"Squeak!" The little rat became anxious, "He won't live much longer? Jiu Ye, how much longer can we eat his porridge?"
The elderly voice was silent for a moment, then said with resignation: "How can we be certain? Look at the misfortune on him, so thick it's almost dripping like water. I fear his fortune is being stolen. He won't live long regardless."
"Squeak squeak squeak!" The little rat became dejected, "His porridge is sweeter than others. It's a shame he'll die soon."
[Rat Demon Like +1]
The elderly voice said carefully: "Human hearts are treacherous, there are many unpredictable things. This is the difference in being human. Anyway, although we are rats, we shouldn't eat people's food for nothing. Shi, take this 'trouble-free skin' to the stove, as payment for our meals these days."
Afterward, there was more rustling.
Perhaps this was the rat demon coming to deliver the "trouble-free skin"!
Long Jun's heart surged with shock. He had an impulse to rush into the kitchen immediately to see if rat demons really existed, and to carefully ask if the rat demon's words about "his life not lasting long" were true or false. But he was also worried that his mortal body would be no match for the dangers of demon-kind.
Although these two rat demons seemed to know more about proper behavior than some humans in their speech, and didn't seem like evil demons.
But if they were truly demon beings, who knew how much of their demon words could be trusted?
Long Jun gritted his teeth and finally stood firm in the shadow of the moonlight.
His mind was in turmoil, his worldview collapsing and rebuilding, almost not knowing what day it was.
Until the fire in the kitchen went out again at some point, and all the rustling sounds had gone away. The pain from his injured leg became bone-chilling, and Long Jun finally came to his senses.
He didn't dare make a sound, just quietly moved his feet, slowly retreating back to his room.
Returning to bed, he wrapped himself tightly in the blanket but couldn't dispel the chill throughout his body.
Long Jun tossed and turned, unable to sleep, thinking about many things.
After ten years of hard study, he had thought he would only experience the difficult path of a farmer's son taking the imperial examinations. Who would have expected that there were actually demons in this world!
Now that demons had appeared, what did his ten years of hard study amount to?
Since passing the child scholar exam, he had been plagued by bad luck. He had thought it was just his misfortune, but now thinking about it, such extreme bad luck had already deviated from the norm. Was it possible that some villain was secretly casting evil spells on him?
Fortune stealing, fortune stealing, just the sound of it made his skin crawl.
Long Jun recalled his past experiences.
In his previous life, he was a science student, and after transmigrating, his preconceived notions had immediately rejected the existence of "supernatural powers and bizarre phenomena." Additionally, being born in a rural farming family, he had never heard of any cultivation practices within ten miles.
There were some strange folklore circulating, and the neighboring village had a shaman who allegedly could ask spirits questions by scattering rice and summon souls for children. Long Jun had heard bits and pieces but dismissed it as villagers' superstitious ignorance, and never thought because of this that this world was abnormal.
But what if this world truly was abnormal?
Long Jun lay in bed, feeling a bone-deep chill throughout his body.
He had vaguely figured out many questions, yet even more questions became increasingly puzzling.
Finally, what puzzled him most was what the information that kept floating in his mind, the so-called [Rat Demon Like], actually meant.