Yefutidaolu

Chapter 349 Ranch
One of the cities in the Living Soul Ranch.

Five years, no, it's five years, three months, and seventeen days.

Li Si, this young man, has lived for five years, three months, and seventeen days.

Since taking on the heavy responsibility of his family, this young man in his twenties has not had a single day of peace.

Regardless of the cold winter or the scorching summer, Li Si would be awakened on time by the soreness in his bones and the heavy tightness in his chest.

Clearly, this wasn't waking up naturally; it was the body protesting against less than two hours of poor-quality sleep the night before.

He carefully climbed down the cold earthen bed, afraid of waking his old mother who was coughing incessantly on the straw mat next to him, and his five-year-old daughter who was curled up in the corner, as thin as a kitten.

Under the dim oil lamp, he glanced at the almost empty rice jar on the stove, and his stomach clenched. He silently scooped out the last bit of coarse rice mixed with chaff, added several ladles of water, and cooked it into a pot of porridge so thin you could see your reflection in it. This was the only "proper" meal he, his mother, and his daughter had that day.

He swallowed two bowls of porridge that were almost entirely water, but his stomach still felt empty. He picked up the chipped woodcutter and the worn-out hemp rope from the corner of the wall, and, stepping on his dew-soaked straw sandals, headed towards the mass grave near Shilipo outside the city—there was a grove of trees there where he could cut firewood.

Chopping and bundling firewood, the heavy bundles weighed down his already hunched back, making it hunch even lower. Sweat mixed with the morning chill soaked through his thin, coarse cloth jacket. Every time he bent over, every time he swung his knife, it aggravated the old wounds on his back, sending piercing pain through him.

When the hour of Chen (7-9 AM) arrived, he carried the bundle of firewood, like an old ox burdened with a heavy load, and laboriously moved to the back door of the restaurant in the east of the city.

Manager Liu, who was as fat as a steamed bun and always had a toothpick in his mouth, came out yawning and rummaged through the bundle of firewood without even lifting his eyelids: "This? It's damp, of poor quality, and it'll smell musty when you burn it. Ten copper coins, take it or leave it."

Li Si opened his mouth, his throat dry and tight. He wanted to say that he had gone to chop the firewood before dawn, that his mother was waiting to get medicine... but in the end, he just lowered his head, stretched out his rough, cracked and calloused hands, and took the ten cold, worn copper coins.

Ten copper coins... can't even buy half a dose of the cheapest medicine for a cold.

He carried ten copper coins as if they were burning hot coals, hurrying to the Jishengtang Pharmacy in the west of the city. The pharmacy was filled with the bitter smell of herbs. He hesitated, then pulled out five copper coins, his voice almost inaudible: "Shopkeeper... could you buy half a dose of 'Lung-Clearing Powder' on credit? Just half a dose... my mother's cough is terrible..."

Manager Wang, with his goatee, rolled his eyes and fiddled with the abacus beads: "Li Si, no offense, but you still haven't paid off your debts from last month! We're a small business, not a charity! Five copper coins? You can't even afford the dregs of medicine! Come on, come on, don't delay my business!"

The refusal was like a bucket of cold water poured over Li Si's head. He looked at the paper packets on the counter that smelled of medicine, touched the five copper coins he had left in his pocket, and turned to leave.

He still had to work, which was the longest part of Li Si's day. He worked at the Yonggu Brick Kiln in the north of the city.

The heatwave here can dry you out; the swirling dust, carrying a scorching temperature, gets into your nostrils, eyes, and mouth, covering your entire body. His job is to move bricks. The scalding hot bricks, fresh from the kiln, can still cause blisters and sticky skin on your palms, even through thick, tattered gloves soaked in sweat and mud, if you're not careful.

He needed to move hundreds or even thousands of bricks from the kiln to a storage area a few dozen steps away, and then stack them neatly. The foreman was a man with a scar on his face who always carried a water-soaked leather whip. If he was even slightly slow, the whip would lash his back and legs with a whooshing sound, leaving behind a burning pain and humiliation.

"What are you dawdling for! Haven't you eaten yet?!"

"Useless! You can't even do this simple job properly!"

"You don't want your wages for today?!"

Shouts, whips, bricks clashing, the roar of the kiln fire... mixed with dust and sweat, formed the background noise of Li Si's daily routine.

Sweat stung my eyes; the aches in my back and waist went from sharp to dull, and finally to a numbness that went deep into my bones; the muscles in my arms trembled uncontrollably.

Each breath carried hot dust that choked him and made his lungs ache.

He was like a broken machine, wound up tight but about to fall apart, mechanically repeating the actions of moving, transporting, and stacking. All he saw were scorching hot bricks, all he heard were the foreman's shouts, and he could only catch his breath at noon and eat a whole grain pancake.

As the sun set, Li Si finally dragged his leaden legs, taking one step at a time, away from the brick kiln.
The body looked as if it had been disassembled and hastily pieced back together, with every bone groaning.

He received his wages for the day—twenty copper coins. The foreman withheld ten, claiming that "two cartloads of bricks were stacked crookedly, so the wages should be deducted." Li Si numbly accepted the coins, too exhausted to even argue.

Clutching his coins, he returned to Jishengtang. This time, he bought half a dose of the cheapest cough medicine. With the remaining money, he bought three of the worst quality, hard-to-crack multigrain cakes at the street corner, along with some brown rice, and that was it—nothing was left.

When it got dark, I pushed open the creaking, drafty, broken wooden door and found the house eerily silent.

The old woman was curled up in the corner of the kang (a heated brick bed), coughing so hard it was heart-wrenching, her breath barely a whisper.

The daughter huddled in a pile of hay in the corner, her little face flushed red and her breathing rapid—she had been caught in the rain yesterday and had fallen ill. Li Si's heart sank.

He hurriedly fed his mother her medicine, then tried to pick up his daughter. The child, delirious with fever, clutched his clothes tightly with her little hands, her voice as weak as a kitten's meow: "Daddy...hungry...cold..."

Looking at the two hard pancakes left in his hand, and then at his sickly mother and his daughter who was burning with fever, Li Si felt a huge sense of powerlessness and sorrow rush to his nose.

He broke the slightly softer biscuit into pieces, soaked them in water, and fed them to his daughter little by little. He broke off a large portion of the other biscuit for his mother, and only ate the smallest piece himself.

The hard biscuit scraped across my dry throat like swallowing a handful of sand.

Late at night, he sat on the cold mud floor, leaning against the earthen bed.

His mother's painful coughs and his daughter's rapid breathing were like two blunt knives repeatedly cutting into his nerves.

Outside, the night was deathly still; inside, there was only desperate gasping for breath.

By the dim moonlight streaming through the window, he looked at his hands, blistered, cracked, and calloused, ravaged by the heat and dust of the brick kiln. These hands couldn't support his family of three, couldn't save his elderly mother, and couldn't protect his daughter. As for his wife… she was long dead.

Many things, like countless needles, pierced his already numb heart.

Why? On what basis?!

Working day and night, exhausted like a dog, why can't we even get a full meal? Why can't we even afford a life-saving dose of medicine?
Why are those managers and shopkeepers able to eat their fill and become so fat? Why can the foremen arbitrarily beat, scold, and deduct wages?
God, are you blind?!

I'm so tired... so tired my bones feel like they're going to break...

What's the point of living like this? Might as well... just die... just die... and be done with it all... This resentful, desperate, and utterly exhausted thought, like the last straw, crushed his already overburdened mind. Pure, deep, and immense resentment towards life itself, like tangible black smoke, rose from the depths of his depleted heart, so intense that it almost swallowed him whole.

Just at this time--

It felt like something had dripped onto my body, and it was sticky.

Li Si called out, and the motion-activated light came on. He looked at the spot where the liquid had been dripped and found it to be a clump of thick, black mucus. He suddenly felt nauseous, unable to tell whether it was a physical discomfort or a psychological aversion. He felt dizzy for no reason when he saw the dark shape, and just staring at the black spot made him want to gag.

He shook his hand in disgust.

But suddenly a dark shadow blocked his way, obscuring the light.

Li Si looked up and was so frightened that his heart stopped beating.

A humanoid figure... something that could barely be considered humanoid stood in front of Li Si. It was entirely composed of those black shadows, dripping black viscous liquid. Bubbles rose and fell on its body, but there was no sound.

------------

In the alley, a man was sliding down the cold brick wall, inching his way down. He wore a faded, coarse cloth jacket with badly worn cuffs, revealing thin, bony wrists. His face was covered in heavy, almost imperceptible dark circles, his eyes puffy, and his gaze was vacant as he stared at a faded notice posted on the wall opposite the alley entrance. He clutched half a hard, dry grain pancake in his hand, seemingly too weak even to chew.

This was a man utterly drained by life. Xia Youdu could clearly "smell" the intense, almost tangible weariness and... resentment emanating from him. It wasn't fierce hatred, but rather a profound sense of disappointment and powerlessness towards life itself, accumulated day after day, like a thick layer of sour-smelling mud, enveloping his soul.

This resentment is so deep, so pure, that it means... the time for harvest has come.

The man seemed to want to sigh, but in the end, only his chest rose and fell weakly, not even having the strength to sigh. He was too tired. From the rooster's crow to the ghost's howl, his wages were so meager that they were barely enough to make ends meet. His elderly mother was bedridden at home, and the cost of her medicine was like a bottomless pit. His child was still crying for milk... Every brick of life weighed heavily on his shoulders, with no end in sight and no hope in sight.

He felt like a blindfolded donkey, forever going around in circles pulling a millstone, unable to even bray, only feeling a deep weariness and resentment seeping into his bones.

Why? Why?
So tired... so very tired...

Maybe... forget it...

These thoughts, like silent poisonous insects, gnawed repeatedly at his already withered heart, and resentment... was rising.

Just as his last thought of "forget it" surfaced, and his spirits plummeted to rock bottom, leaving him too numb to even muster the slightest resentment—

The man's hand holding the dry biscuit melted without warning or a sound.

Like a wax figure under high temperature, or like being thrown into strong acid, the rough fingers, the calloused palms, and the half of the hardened grain cake became transparent at a speed visible to the naked eye.

The boundaries between skin, muscle, and bone blurred instantly, transforming into a viscous, black semi-fluid. Not a drop of blood, not a sound. The fluid, like a living thing, spread upwards along his arm; wherever it passed, his clothing remained intact, but the flesh beneath it liquefied eerily!
The man lowered his head blankly.

He saw his arm "melting".

He saw the black fluid engulfing his forearm.

Severe pain? No.

Fear? It seems we were a step too late.

A profound sense of absurdity gripped him first; he felt nothing, numb, as if he were looking at someone else's arm.

He even subconsciously wanted to touch it with his other hand—but as soon as he raised his hand halfway, his fingertips began to become transparent, viscous, and fluid!

"Ah..." He finally let out a short, sharp sound, like a leaking bellows.

It wasn't a scream, but rather extreme confusion and... a hint of bewildered relief? Is this... the end? Well... I'm too tired...

The eerie green light spread rapidly, covering his shoulders and chest. He felt like a block of ice being melted.

Through the translucent skin of his chest cavity, he could clearly see his exhausted heart inside, now enveloped and permeated by a black fluid, each beat pumping out "blood" that flowed to his shrunken lungs and other organs.

His bones softened and deformed in the fluid, emitting an extremely faint, teeth-grinding creak.

The fear brought on by this realization finally brought the man's last shred of numbness. It was a chilling despair, deeper than the feeling of his body dissolving! He was going to die!

So, it's over, right?
Therefore, there was no resistance.

They won't resist.

I'm too lazy to move, whatever.

"Ho...ho..." He squeezed out a discordant wheeze from his throat, but there was no light in his eyes.

The fluid had spread to his neck and was beginning to devour his chin. His head was also starting to become transparent, and the skull revealed a strange outline beneath the fluid. His eyes, like two dusty glass beads, reflected the yellow light outside the alleyway—whether it was the afterglow of the sunset or lamplight—and his own dissolving body.

Just as the fluid was about to devour his last vestige of consciousness, transforming him completely into a pure "living soul"—

call out!
A dark, swift, and chilling beam of light tore through the air and pierced the man's translucent chest with unparalleled precision!
It was a jade hairpin, clearly a woman's hairpin, which came with a spell.

A loud bang, like cold water being poured into boiling oil, rang out! The moment the jade hairpin pierced through, the wildly raging, dark fluid inside the man's body seemed to have been hit by its nemesis, violently twisting and boiling.

Xia Youdu's figure appeared silently in the shadows at the alley entrance.

(End of this chapter)